by Phillip Piper, Mozambique
6 December 2006

Understanding Mozambican culture is a key process for our work. Our central tasks – communicating the Gospel and bringing about growth in godliness – require deep insight into people’s lives.

Culture is a shared web of understandings, many of which are deep, mysterious, and completely unguessable. The superficial aspects are easy, but it’s the deep ones that jump up and bite you unexpectedly.

Marriage Viewed Through the Lens of Culture

The relationship between Nicola and me is an example. Our marriage is different from most Mozambican husbands and wives. It’s based on Christian ideals and on our own cultural background of chivalry. So, we help each other; I cook dinner and (sometimes) look after the kids; I carry the heavy bags.

We’re consciously trying to set a counter-example to the more common “economic-model” of marriage: the man gives food and security and, in exchange, the woman gives marital privileges and takes care of the house and children.

We assume that when people see us, they see that counter-example. To us, it seems obvious. But, we’ve discovered, what is “obvious” is also culturally determined.

Recently, someone explained how he understood our relationship. Nicola regularly gives me drugs (from the curandeiros) to make me hopelessly in love with her. Because of those drugs, I am a pateta (“fool”) for her, doing whatever she wants me to do. Nicola does this so she can sit around and be lazy. To him, it was obvious.

We were completely surprised and a little amused: how could someone think that? Apart from not matching reality (Nicola is never lazy), his explanation made no sense to us. We would never have imagined that explanation. Yet, for him, it made more sense that a wife would bewitch her husband than the husband would serve his wife. A husband voluntarily helping his wife was just as unexpected to him as a wife drugging her husband was unthought-of to us.

Applying the Culture Lesson to All Aspects of Life

Once we had digested this, other questions naturally followed:

• What do people see in other aspects of our life?
• What do people really hear when we preach about grace, or forgiveness, or holiness?
• And most profoundly, how will we know?

We think we are being understood; they think they understand. But, because of some deep cultural differences, we actually completely miscommunicated. We thought we were showing God’s plan for marriage, but he saw an advertisement for the power of the curandeiro. It’s daunting and a little discouraging to think that everything we do could be misinterpreted in a way that dishonours God.

So, in the face of such potential miscommunication, what are we to do?

• Work to form trust relationships. Only someone who trusts us will risk telling us what they really think. That is the chance we have to find out where our understanding is faulty. Please thank God for the gift of friendship between us and Pastor Marcelino’s family. In them, we have friends whose advice and opinions we can trust.

• Pray. We ask God to cover over our mistakes and misunderstandings (and our outright sins) so that, somehow, people see and hear the Gospel through us. God is not limited by our faulty understanding. He can advance his Kingdom even through our mistakes.

Read about life and ministry in Mozambique on the Piper's website