More Americanized than Americans?

Since the academic year at SAIACS was over, we guys decided to pick up on every opportunity to chill out and kill the stress that assignments and dead lines had loaded on us.

We began with some music concerts. Our enthusiasm suffered badly when in the very first concert, we found ourselves out of place. In the bang-bang of rock music, I was wondering whether anyone standing there understood what was going on (singing in tongues?). Many of us still pretended to understand everything and enjoyed it. Perhaps, we wanted show how westernized (and so civilized?) we were. Apart from a person who did some good rap songs on the portions of the Bible (and then only we knew that we were in a gospel concert, not in Metallica live), everything else was so confusing. Rita and Boicy must be wondering, "why in the world we decided to be here?", just as every other friend was.

But the irony was here. There was a group of American ladies standing in a corner. Soberly dressed and wearing smiles on their faces, they were greeting people around them. It was a quite pleasing scene. Did they look more Indian than those Indians around me?

After some days there was another concert. The scene was quite similar, but just that this time there was no westerner around us.

These incidents challenged my 'contextual theory.' Contextualization has been an important issue in Christian mission. However, I wonder whether we are contextualing and asking our people to contextualize with us. Are we, especially the youth-workers, giving the young people gospel that would fit into their life-style, or are we altogether giving them a new life-style? Do the young people really need what we say they need or are we trying to first decide and then tell them that this is what they need?

I do not intend to demand outright rejection of everything that is western. I really admire these Pakistani bands- Strings and Junoon. They appeal to me as models of western-eastern blending. Why can't we have gospel music like that?

When Americans are appreciating Indian values, we are becoming more Americanized than Americans. Perhaps, its a high time to learn some contextual lessons from them.