A young missionary, wife and mother learns life in a new home.
Learn how to pray for all new missionaries as Becky tells you her story...

Smiling Is Next To Godliness! . . . Right?

When we moved to Russia, my husband and I promised ourselves we would never become those types of missionaries that start confusing biblical truth with their own opinions, desperately trying to convert the heathen to their own preferred cultural ways. Rather, adopting the attitude of a learner, we were prepared to be the ones to change and adjust. After all, since we were guests in their country, we felt that the weight of adaptation fell to us.

Occasionally, an ill-adjusted expatriate pastor would visit and be given the honor of preaching. I rolled my eyes at the culturally inappropriate illustrations and non-transferable punch lines. Obviously, I grumbled to myself, somewhat pridefully, this guy was not as culturally sensitive as I was. Therefore his teaching sounded hollow. His examples didn’t register and his points were met with more confusion than clarity.  

During one such occurrence, the visitor began to wax eloquently about the necessity for Christians to profess their faith by wearing a smile on their faces. Having myself survived my first winter in Russia, witnessing very few smiles, I recalled going through the cycle of at first considering the nationals to be rude. Later I decided they were cold. Eventually I reached the conclusion that they just don’t smile very much. It wasn’t really a spiritual issue, it was just the way most people tended to be. Smiling existed, it was just reserved for smile-worthy occasions: meeting a friend, hearing a good joke. Posing for the camera, on the other hand, was not generally considered smile-worthy. Neither was greeting people one passed on the street.

After living in Russia for several years, I found myself not as concerned with smiling as I was when I had first moved there. Perhaps it was okay to not smile so much…!?! To listen to the visiting preacher, however, one would be convinced that smiling was next to godliness, commanded in the Bible right after the Ten Commandments! I shook my head at the folly of wasting one’s only opportunity to preach before a national congregation, to expound on a cultural practice that did not really communicate the same thing in every society. After all, smiling was not really in the Bible!

I left church feeling smug about my own cultural sensitivity and thanked the good Lord that I was not like that preacher, blind to confusing biblical absolutes with my own cultural preferences.
   
Several years later my husband and I were deeply involved in a young church. We were pouring our heart and soul into this church and our deepest desire was to see it flourish. At times we spoke out about what we felt should be done, while other times we kept silent and waited for God to prompt in his own way.

At one point, I began to get really bothered by a tendency I noticed. A new person would visit our church, and hardly anyone seemed to go and welcome them. I quickly fell into that role, partly out of compassion for the newcomer, and partly out of embarrassment that our church had become so inward focused. I felt that our people were being selfish, inconsiderate, rude.  

Week after week I went home with a growing bitterness inside me at the lack of friendliness shown to our visitors. How did we expect people to come back a second time if we didn’t make them feel welcome the first time, I fumed. After all, aren’t Christians supposed to be known by our friendliness? Wasn’t extending our hand in welcome one way to extend Christ’s love to those around us?

I honestly wrestled with this issue for a long time before I realized what was happening to me. When the visiting preacher had come proclaiming his gospel of smiling, I was quick to perceive that, while his culture valued smiling as an expression of love and faith, his ignorance of Russian culture prohibited him from understanding that things were not regarded the same way in Russia.

I began to realize that my own personal values, no matter how noble, are not gospel truth and should not be treated as such. I realized that I had considered friendliness next to godliness, and that my own definition of friendliness, in the incarnation of greeting visitors at the door, had become my own gospel truth.

Thankfully I had decided to keep silent on this topic. At this point, I made one of life’s most difficult decisions: I decided to give this one up. Removing my most precious conviction of friendly greetings from the pedestal I had placed it on, I decide to let it go. While I continued to look after our newcomers, I now welcomed them out of love and sincerity, and no longer to set an example to the Russians, in hopes of changing their ways.

Not long after that, I witnessed a most interesting thing. A young couple came to visit our church. I read awkwardness on their faces as they looked around at the roomful of unfamiliar faces. I longed for my Russian brothers and sisters to run up to them with open arms of welcome, perhaps even smile at them!? They did not. I worried that this couple would never come back. But they did. They came back again and again. Several weeks later, I noticed a few awkward hellos exchanged. A few more months and they began to get absorbed into the group, chatting after services along with everybody else. I had to smile, startled (and grateful!) that they had found their way into our church family, without the help of Becky’s spiritual laws of friendliness, thank you very much.

I realized afresh what I already knew about relationships in Russia taking a long time to develop. People can seem icy cold at first but turn out to be warm and sensitive, once the door to their soul has been opened. Whereas some cultures tend to dive into the cool waters of friendship, others, like Russia, need to enter in slowly, allowing time to adjust with each baby step that brings them deeper.

Although I still wholeheartedly hold to my convictions of the importance of noticing strangers and welcoming visitors, I realized through this experience that my job has never been to impose my values on the people I came to serve. Although friendliness is an excellent thing, and can be a tremendous expression of love, love also at times compels us to let others be who they are. And love is, after all, the gospel truth!