Against Reductionism

February 9, 2026

Andrew Hedinger

"I swear, I have to tell Andrew a start time half an hour later than when we are actually starting, since he’ll always be early; and I should tell you a start time half an hour before we actually start…then all of us will be on time!” My youth pastor was laughing as he expressed his frustration. At the time I was still living in Mexico, and the normal cultural pattern was to show up 10-15 minutes after the stated start time; at least for youth group. (Across cultures there is a lot of variability around what events deserve punctuality, and which allow for being “fashionably late.”)  My youth pastor’s problem was that he had two youth who failed to follow the pattern. I, despite growing up in Mexico, am unfailingly and irritatingly early to everything. My friend was always 30-40 minutes late, leading to multiple instances of everyone having to wait around for him.  

Missionaries must learn the cultural patterns of the people they are serving. A missionary who fails to do so will soon find that they are causing offense or getting frustrated, or both. At CultureBound we teach attitudes, skills, and knowledge missionaries can use to reflectively learn a new language and culture. However, there is a danger to learning these skills and knowledge; a danger that we will reduce people to a set of labels and stereotypes making caricatures that we find easy to understand, but that don’t do justice to the individuality of those we serve. Missionaries must remember that every individual they encounter is unique, with their own story, personality, and interest, created in the image of God. This is why our training is all about relationships. We help missionaries skillfully and relationally engage the very heart and soul of the people they serve through fluency in their cultures and languages.

Writing about the danger of reduction and abstraction, Wendell Berry, a novelist, poet, and essayist who has thought deeply about culture, said:

“There is, empirically speaking, no average and no type. Between the species and the specimen the creature itself, the individual creature, is lost… The uniqueness of an individual creature is inherent, not in its physical or behavioral anomalies, but in its life… Its life is all that happens to it in its place. Its wholeness is inherent in its life, not in its physiology or biology. This wholeness of creatures and places together is never going to be apparent to an intelligence coldly determined to be empirical or objective. It shows itself to affection and familiarity.”* 

Here, again, Jesus offers us a model for cross-cultural ministry. Jesus’ love for the world is not a love for the world in abstract, but a love for each individual, marked by interactions that take into account the individual needs and personalities of those he loves. In Mark 8:22-26 we are told of Jesus healing the blind man at Bethsaida. When the man is brought to him, Jesus leads him out of the village, then spitting on his eyes, he asks him, “Do you see anything.” The man replies that he can see a little: “People – they look like trees walking.” Then Jesus places his hands on the man’s eyes and his sight is fully restored. Just two chapters later, in Mark 10, another blind man approaches Jesus, begging him to heal him. Jesus simply says, “Go, your faith has saved you.” Mark tells us that “immediately he could see and began to follow Jesus on the road.”  

Why the difference? I know there are many interpretations of these healings; however, I would suggest that one possible reason Jesus healed different people in different ways was because he knew each person he healed… and he healed them in a way that cared for their spiritual, emotional, and physical needs. I wonder how often the man in Mark 8 was spat upon and cursed by those walking past him as he begged. Could it be that Jesus knew the pain this man experienced, and now the dreaded sound of spitting was not accompanied by a curse but rather it was the precursor to healing? The Bible doesn’t tell us why Jesus chose to heal different people in different ways, but it at least seems clear that Jesus did not simply react to individuals on the basis of their cultural patterns. Instead he interacted with them as unique individuals.   

Missionaries entering a new culture must learn the cultural patterns of the people they wish to serve, but then they must respond to each individual they meet as unique, precious people, created in the image of God and beloved, as an individual, by God. And then it will make sense why some of us within the same culture arrive irritatingly early, and others fashionably late! 

*Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (Counterpoint, 2001), 39, 40. 

Andrew Hedinger grew up as a missionary kid in central Mexico. He now lives with his wife and children in Portland, Oregon where he serves as the Director of Admissions for Western Seminary.