Social norms are the codes of a culture. These are rules of behavior that the members are acutely aware of and which dictate their daily interactions. To the outsider, however, they can seem strange or even mysterious. A visitor may make major faux pas when they are unaware of them.
I was recently in a culture where sitting in a manner where the bottom of your foot was up (such as the common ankle over knee position) was considered highly insulting and vulgar. Feet are viewed as terribly unclean. I did not pick this up through observation. A friend who had lived in the culture for many years was kind enough to tell our team. Even he mentioned it more in passing. It had just become part of his own habit pattern.
Though I consciously worked to avoid insulting anyone by how I positioned my feet, our team and our national partners spent the week actively breaking other social norms. And I was proud of it. We reached past ethnic barriers to those who had been pushed to the margins of society. We broke past religious walls, and my heart rejoiced when a woman felt seen and cared for.
Our actions may have caused tremors in the culture around us as we welcomed those unlike us and even opposed to us. We treated their needs with compassion and respect. The governor of the region came out of curiosity. He had trouble understanding why we were there. In his worldview, this just didn’t make sense. The answer was simple. We wanted them to see Jesus.
Jesus compassionately and deliberately broke the norms of His own culture. He touched the unclean like lepers, dead bodies, and a woman who had a menstrual flow that wouldn’t stop. He ate with those who were considered the bottom of the bottom. These were people with flagrant, obvious sins. He spent time talking with a Samaritan woman. That broke several rules at once. Samaritans were considered dirty and less than Jews, and a woman was a second class citizen. She also was living with a man she wasn’t married to.
The Sabbath was the high holy day. No one was to work, yet He allowed his disciples to pick grain and eat on the Sabbath because they were hungry. He also healed a man on the Sabbath. He wanted people to understand the heart of the rule. The Sabbath had been given for their benefit.
Another time, He made a whip and chased money changers out of the temple, even overturning tables. They had taken people’s need to worship and exploited it for their own profit. This had become the norm. Jesus challenged that.
For all these reasons and more, the religious leaders of His day didn’t like him. They accused Him of all sorts of things. Ultimately, He accomplished a spiritual revolution by willingly dying in the most humiliating and painful way possible. This, too, was against human ways of doing things. Of course, the biggest norm he broke, is one common to us all. He didn’t stay dead.
Jesus caused cultural tremors and a literal earthquake. The results of that have had an undeniable impact. Even those who don’t believe He was the Son of God or that He rose from the dead can’t deny His long reaching influence on the world. However, it is important to recognize that Jesus didn’t just break rules randomly. He was always seeking to honor God and demonstrate His heart.
I’m back in my own culture now and find myself wondering which social norms I take for granted. What “rules” are so ingrained that I don’t even see them, much less question them. Are there any that Jesus would break if He were walking here today? What walls have we built up that He would tear down?
Would He unplug our praise and worship service because it’s become more about performance than praise? Would He go out and actively invite the homeless, the messy into our churches and homes? Would He show up on our doorstep without calling, perhaps bringing others with Him? Would He stay past the socially acceptable time because conversation and connection are important? Would He even come to my home or would he prefer to hang out in the seedier sections of town?
I’m pretty sure He would talk to strangers in elevators and at gas stations, but I suspect He would skip the small talk. He would be truly curious about their lives, and when He left, they would know they had been seen. I’m also sure that He wouldn’t care if they looked like him or thought like Him.
Jesus always mixed truth with love. He did not sacrifice one for the other. He didn’t dance around or soften the uncomfortable. He didn’t tell people their sins were ok. But He didn’t argue about the sin either. He loved them in their sins and called them so something better. “Go and sin no more.”
Perhaps you can think of other cultural norms that surround us that I haven’t touched on. What “rules” do we need to be breaking? We need to speak truth with love and act with compassion. Where have our norms made it ok to do otherwise? Who has been pushed aside? Who is unseen or unheard? God has a heart for those on the other side of the wall of social norms.
Let’s join God in knocking down walls with truth and love.
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