Multicultural
19 July 2008 - 17 תמוז 5768 by Huw
EDNESDAY We were discussing the use of images of Jesus - and the races depicted thereon. I realised two things: 1) the Renaissance cultures that produced the all-white Jesus never really expected to run into any other culture. 2) Traditional icons of Jesus (not the cartoony ones done in the last 40 years or so by Americans - converts or not) have Asiatic eyes, Mediterranean faces, stiff, curly hair (it’s called a Jewfro) and strong intimations of other forms of miscegenation. Jesus is, in traditional iconography, all races mixed. So also, in this picture, at St Gregory’s:
This came to me today when I was walking through town. Stopping in Talking Leaves on Elmwood, I saw a copy of a book I read in college: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Who is right?
Here’s one one reviewer on Amazon said about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,
Many of the reviews here praise the book for its balance in presenting two sides of a serious cultural clash- one that leaves a little girl brain dead by the end. Ostensibly, neither side is right nor wrong, and well, the fact that this girl ends up as a vegetable is just how it goes in this awkward dance between the Hmong family and the American doctors treating her.
Phooey. A little girl gets treated by competent, caring doctors, who do their damnedest to insure that this girl gets the care she deserves, and her superstitious family stymies their every attempt at healing. They throw vital anti-seizure medicine away, ignore it on the shelf, double dose when they do remember, and otherwise cling to their animistic beliefs in trying to cure her. There is no doubt that the family loves this girl, but it breaks my heart to see such utter negligence in caring for a child. I don’t care that they have these charming native ceremonies or are a proud, downtrodden race. Presented with the best medicine the world can offer, they prefer to sacrifice chickens instead- and wonder why their girl falls apart at the seams.
If anything, this book is a stark, yet unconscious, advertisement for missionaries to go and “tame the savages”. On every page I wanted to slap the parents silly, and have their custody terminated by the state.
I generally feel uncomfortable at making jingoistic statements about how we in the west know what’s best for the world, but my god, what more obvious illustration can there be than this book?
And, to be honest and forthright, that’s pretty much exactly what I said on my paper about this book back in 2001: Phooey.
I noted a while ago (and shared, recently at Church) that we often had persons in our treatment programme who were living with Dissociative Identity Disorder. They popped in and out of their personalities, some seemingly at will, some at the moments of trauma. There were times when I admit I didn’t believe what I was hearing, convinced it was an act. In some cases it was severe, however.
And then one day we got a client who heard God’s voice at every turn and he told her who was good and who was bad, and who was on her side, and who wasn’t. One night, when she was having a fight with a therapist, he watched her relax into a deep peace right in front of him. He asked what had happened, but the client wouldn’t say. Later I overheard her tell her mother, that God had said, at that point, “Look, don’t worry about this man that’s fighting with you. I am with you always.” And she felt at peace.
The next morning I asked “What’s the difference between this client and another other client with Dissociative Identity Disorder? Are we simply treating her different because she has named one of the voices in her head, ‘God’?”
Was she hearing God? Was she simply hearing voices in her head? Can any of us tell the difference? She was, in her riled up moods, as angry as any OT prophet, telling all of us who had demons in a loud voice and telling us that God had cursed us for our unbelieving ways. Was she right?
When cultures clash can we say who is right and wrong? I don’t know the answer to that.
One thing I find interesting - in many cultures of animist teaching, the Hmong girl might have been raised as a shamaness. The fits of epilepsy would have been terrifying for her and all her friends and family, but she would have been revered as a channel for the ancestors or spirits to reach out to the people. In some cultures (not sure about the Hmong) she might have had all her needs met and be treated like semi-royalty for her spiritual gifts. In ancient Judaism she would have been treated as a demoniac: the story of her healing might even now be in the NT. In Rome, it was seen as a curse from Apollo.
It is still incurable - although it is manageable through drugs.
Who is to say what spiritual gifts we are blocking with those drugs? Whose to say what spiritual gifts we’re blocking in my my former client?
I must admit to agreeing with the reviewer. Someone call family services and take that girl away. (No, I have not read the book.) The danger of going “multicultural” is that one can lose the ability to exercise judgment. If the girl ended up as a vegetable, then whatever was happening was not godly or appropriate.
There are no easy answers. Multiculturalism is often used as an easy answer to a much harder task, the task of evaluating, as best one can, the differing belief structures to reach truth (small “t” not capital “T”). There are times when one must say that the belief structure is not correct (as far as one knows) and one must intervene.
On the other hand, the recent raid on a Mormon polygamist household illustrates the dangers of allowing preconceptions to guide one’s decisions. As I said, there are no easy answers, but certainly to not act, on the grounds of “multiculturalism”, is caving in to the easy answer.
SO… we should imagine Jesus getting sued for malpractice?
In many (most?) we medicate symptoms today: take the pain away. Pain control nurses get paid a LOT of money. And hospitals get sued if the patient is not “comfortable”. That’s not medicine, that’s drug abuse.
The book does document everyone’s failures here: the Doctors who failed to deal well with the culture and the Hmongs who refused to imagine any other way. The coma arose (if I remember correctly) from the Doctors not taking the time to ensure proper understanding in the family. But, again: we don’t have a way to cure the disease - just manage it. And, in some cultures, that altered state of consciousness is highly valued (not sure about the Hmong).
So… what are we medicating?
Hmong culture, too, hasn’t a way to cure the disease: just manage it. If they had been left alone, the coma wouldn’t have happened.
But would it have been right to do so?
You point to the issue of the Mormons, but I think the better place to look is Terri Schiavo (pardon the spelling). The issue with Terri got compressed into taking her off of life support. “Is life support valuable” is the better question. 30 or 40 years ago, Terri would have died anyway - without the false hope offered by modern medicine: a hope that says “we might be able to do more later… maybe not, but spend your money now.”
The Hmong people, in some respects, should never have been here. 50 or 60 years ago, I doubt they’d even heard of us. Then the US involved them in her dirty war in south-east Asia and had to whisk them away to a foreign land just to keep them from being killed. One of the results of that was this girl’s death.
My point is that neither science no our culture has all the right answers. Nor should we impose them on others.
I feel safe admitting that.
Unfortunately, there are times when one makes the lesser of two evils decision. There have been several cases lately in which a child is forced by the courts to get treatment, when the parents wanted either a faith solution or an alternative medicine solution. In those cases, the prevailing thought was that it was a lesser evil to force on the child the best modern science had to offer rather than to “gamble” that either God would answer or that the unproven alternative approach would work. In those cases, it has also been clear that had the child been an adult, the State would have had nothing to say on the subject.
We do not tend to like that type of solution. It does indeed endanger believers in some ways. For instance, France’s decision a couple of years ago to allow no public display of religion in its pre-university schools strikes me as a mistake. There will be cases in which the State will make a big mistake. But, again, it is the lesser of two evils approach. And, when the decision potentially involves the death of a child, then the lesser of two evils approach can be quite justified.