Changing All

Sometimes when I work with the Jewish roots of the Christian faith I get the sense that some believe that to be truly Christian one has to become culturally Jewish to a rather great extent. In light of that I found the following words from missiologist Andrew Walls in his article "Africa and Christian Identity" to be particularly helpful, "Christ took flesh and was made man in a particular time and place, family, nationality, tradition and customs and sanctified them, while still being for all men in every time and place. Wherever he is taken by the people of any day, time, and place, he sanctifies that culture--he is living in it. And no other group of Christians has any right to impose in his name a set of assumptions about life determined by another time and place. But to acknowledge this is not to forget that there is another and equally important force at work among us, Not only does God in his mercy take people where they are: He takes them to transform them into what he wants them to be."