Most of us recognize that there are forces at work in our world that make communicating more akin to communicating across cultures—even within our home countries. Twitter, texting, and other forms of modern short-hand must be learned just as one would learn a new language. #margaretmanning, @ravizacharias, TTYL, LOL, and other combinations of letters form almost indiscernible words for the tweeting and texting uninitiated.

Beyond these new technological changes in language, simply moving from region to region within a country can mean another language, dialect, or even phrases that are unique to that particular place. Moving, as I did, several years ago from one part of the United States to another introduced me to a new world of sayings, customs, and local culture.

In a similar way, trying to find ways to communicate about matters of my own faith can feel like trying to cross a broken bridge. Beyond that, anyone who claims to present a clear language of faith speaks into a cacophony of languages claiming the same clarity. Is it any wonder, then, that blank stares are the all too often response to the particulars of the unique vocabulary of faith?

Yet everyone—even those who speak what seems to them a clear message—are also informed and shaped by a culture. Speech embodies a whole world of language, experience, and ways of understanding that experience, which in turn shapes the way in which individuals speak about beliefs and values.

There are, therefore, particular difficulties inherent in translation from within one’s own culture. An ancient Chinese proverb highlights this difficult task: “If you want a definition of water, don’t ask a fish.”(1) In other words, on what platform does one stand in order to speak into one’s own culture? We are products of the very culture into which we seek to communicate, and we can never fully stand outside our own culture. We are, in the words of the proverb, like fish trying to define water.

Notably, Christians affirm that the heart of the gospel message transcends culture and language, just as surely as it was originally proclaimed within a particular culture and language. After all, the good news of the gospel is about “the Word made flesh“—the Son of God stepping into humanity. Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains the dialogical nature of the gospel as a product of culture and yet as a trans-cultural communication when he suggests: “Every statement of the gospel in words is conditioned by the culture of which those words are part, and every style of life that claims to embody the truth of the gospel is a culturally conditioned style of life. There can never be a culture-free gospel. Yet the gospel, which is from the beginning to the end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures, including the one in which it was originally embodied.”(2)

Newbigin uses the conversion and transformation of Saul into the apostle Paul as a case in point. His trial before King Agrippa, as recorded in Acts 26, illuminates this cultural dialogue. As Paul shares the story of his conversion, he speaks the language of the Empire, Greek, and not his native Hebrew. Yet earlier, when he was blinded by “a light from heaven, brighter than the sun” and he heard a voice from heaven, it was not in the predominant Greek language. Paul tells Agrippa: “I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’” Paul then asked who was speaking to him, and the voice answered, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”

Newbigin suggests that this passage provides a means by which we can understand the challenges and the opportunities for gospel communication and translation from within a given culture.(3) First, just as Paul hears the as yet unnamed voice from heaven in his native tongue, the “voice” of the gospel must be offered in the language of the culture into which it is spoken. The gospel must be communicated in a way in which it can truly be heard, and we must accept that the way in which we present it will on some level embody that which is understood and experienced in a particular culture.

Truly communicating the gospel, however, means it will also call into question the way of understanding that is inherent in the culture. Saul truly believed his actions against the Christians were in keeping with the God-ordained desire to preserve and protect Jewish identity and purity of belief. Yet, the voice from heaven revealed that this devotion of Saul was a form of persecution against the very God he claimed to serve.

Finally, as Christians seek to clearly translate and communicate the gospel, conversion is the work of God. No human persuasion, no lofty speculation ever accomplishes the work of conversion. This is God’s work alone accomplished by the Holy Spirit, and those who bear witness in multiple cultural contexts can depend on the work of the Spirit to accomplish what God desires. “[I]n the mysterious providence of God, a word spoken comes with the kind of power of the word that was spoken to Saul on the road to Damascus…it causes the hearer to stop, turn around, and go in a new direction, to accept Jesus as Lord, Guide, and Savior.”(4)

The communication of the gospel into every culture is filled with challenges and opportunities. Without the work of careful translation, Christians can sound as if they are babbling in a foreign tongue. On the other hand, they may immerse themselves so much in cultural study and experience that they lose the prophetic power of gospel proclamation. Indeed, as culture-bound people, there is always a risk of proclaiming a version of the gospel that is more cultural than Christian. Can Christians be willing to hear the radical call to conversion in their own proclamation? Making room for in these proclamations for the transformational work of the Spirit, there is hope that the unique message of God’s deliverance in Christ will not be lost either on the one who hears or the one who speaks.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Cited in Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 21.

(2) Ibid., 4.

(3) Ibid., 5.

(4) Ibid., 7-8.