Christianity is Cross Cultural

The Gospel is cross cultural. To become a Christian you aren't required to cease your ethnicity, culture, and race. Granted you may have to purge certain aspects that conflict with faith, such as Aztec, Occultist, Chinese, and Haitian rituals like human sacrifice, doing witchcraft and etc; but you don't cease being Haitian or Mexican. In contrast, Islam requires all adherents to become Arab, as their Prophet Muhammed is Arab (actually Ishmaelite), and this is why Islam, and other religions struggle to get adherents, they require purging and denying your culture and race; denying who God made you (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16). In Christianity this was settled by the Early Church Council in Acts, who decided not to impose the Jewish traditions of Jewish Christians on Greek Christians, "Peter stood and addressed them as follows: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so that they could hear the Good News and believe. God knows people’s hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith. So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus." (Acts 15:6-11). The only requirements that the Church of Jerusalem imposed was to reject immoral practices found in all cultures such as, "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these few requirements: You must abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. If you do this, you will do well. Farewell.” (Acts 15:28-29). The commands in this final consensus of not eating food offered to idols was to witness to pagan (1 Corinthians 8:13, 1 Corinthians 10:28, 1 Corinthians 8:8-13), consuming blood of animals was dangerous it contains all kinds of diseases including Rabies and Aids, strangled animals tend to be gamey and not tasty anyway, and abstaining from sexual immorality is a given (Galatians 5:18-24). The point is these rules were universal, rather than merely cultural. They protect people and witnessing for Christ. 

The Church expanded into many different geographic, ethnic, and cultural regions. There were the Jewish Christians, those who were Jews who believed in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and Messiah, the Eleven Disciples were among these Christians. There were the Greek Christians (Acts 6:1), who many classify as Hellenistic Christians, but I find that word no where in the Holy Bible and I think it is later addition. Then there was Roman Christians (Romans 1:7), who had problems with keeping their pagan practices that the Apostle Paul confronted (). It is obvious there were many converts made in Arabian (), Syrian (Acts 9:19, 27), Egyptian, Ethiopia-Africa (Acts 8:26-40), West Bank/Samaria (Acts 9:31), and other kinds of Christians, "Parthians (Iranian and Iraqi), Medes (Iranians), Elamites (Iran and Southern Iraq), people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus (Black Sea, Turkey), the province of Asia,  Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome  (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs." (Acts 2:9-11). However none of them was told to adopted the Jewish culture, they could believe in Jesus Christ as they are, "There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you." (Galatians 3:28-29), "Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all," (Colossians 3:11), "For there is no difference between Jew and Greek: The same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich to all who call on Him," (Romans 10:12), "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commandments is what matters," (1 Corinthians 7:19), "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given one Spirit to drink," (1 Corinthians 12:13), "Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles in the flesh and called uncircumcised by the so-called circumcision (that done in the body by human hands)— For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. All that matters is faith, expressed through love," (Galatians 5:6), "Take notice: I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all," (Galatians 5:2), "For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace," (Galatians 5:4), "remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world, But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ, For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility , Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death." (Ephesians 2:11-16). The Apostle Paul makes it clear via the Holy Spirit that there isn't a factional, ethnic, cultural, or even race requirement or tradition from a said race like being circumcised, but that salvation comes by faith in Jesus Christ (John 6:40, John 3:16, Acts 15"11, Romans 10:9-10, Ephesians 2:5-9) no matter what your nationality and race is!

It is incredible how many believers at Pentecost are from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey! The fact that so many of the Early Church where from Middle East, not just Judea is exciting! Why don't we often reflect on that many of the early Christians were from these regions? That the faith in Christ is deeply seeded in the Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, and Turkey. We need to pray for these nations, along with Asia, Greece, Rome, Europe, Russia, America, Africa, and the rest of the world! Do not let anyone make you believe that you need to leave your nationality, race, and all your culture to become Christian! For look in the New Testament and you will see the nations following Christ by faith. Amen.