What is Culture?

What is Culture?

The first definition listed for culture on merriam-webster.com is...

"...the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time."

Welp. That covers a lot of ground. So what is culture, exactly?

In regards to my time spent as a chaplain at Medical City Hospital here in Dallas, TX, culture has often been defined practically as what about the patient I am visiting separates them from me? What about them joins me to them? With each patient I am constantly confronted by the ways in which I am joined to them and separated from them.

To be sure, what we would commonly assume culture to mean, often a blending of ethnic and religious and linguistic norms, is at play. But it should not be limited to that. For example, if I enter a room and see that the patient is Jewish, or Muslim, or Catholic, is that effectively any different than if the patient is very poor, or very rich? Young or old? There are so many different ways in which we might be different from one another.

As much as it is true that culture is, in its way, hard to define, I would also like to suggest a positive. Rather than difficulty, I've found ease with culture in regards to interacting with patients. You see, just as it is difficult to define culture, it is then easy for there to be culture. Any way in which life is normal for a patient in which it is not for me, runs the risk of creating for them, and those like them, a culture of sorts.

With this conceptual proposition in mind, I would like to suggest a practical use. As a chaplain, if I actively seek to verbally acknowledge any sort of cultural identity (as I suggested may be very loosely defined) then I am loving the patient in a way that allows them feel recognized, understood (at least in part), listened to, valued...etc.

This is one of the greatest practical gifts that we as chaplain, that we, as lovers of people, can give to anyone that we meet. But especially patients in a hospital. A patient is told what they can and cannot do. Sometimes hospitals can feel like prison. Sometimes even our bodies can be prisons of pain and limitation! And as a chaplain, when we allow patients in this context to tell us who they are, we are doing something for them that they are unlikely to receive from anyone else. We are giving them a voice, and we are listening to it.

This is only a small window in the enormity of being a chaplain, which I am still attempting to chew on. But for now I would encourage all of you to be mindful of who you are talking to, who you are interacting with. Is there more to them then you are allowing to be recognized? Are you giving them a voice, or are you making them nothing more than a receptacle for your own...?

Culture is incredibly flexible. Let us also be flexible in interacting with whatever may or may not be culture in the people around us, for it is ultimately God who is Lord over all people. Our love for the cultures around us of all sorts should be deeply informed by Revelation 7:9, which says...

"After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,"

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