Getting shocked hurts. Shock is usually thought of as a jolt of electricity shooting through one’s body leaving them stunned. When strong enough its extremely dangerous. Every time I go to Africa, I think about culture shock in those terms. 

What exactly is culture shock? It is the natural reaction to a series of transitions that occur when we are uprooted from our cultural environment and transplanted into a new situation where the language, gestures, customs, signs, and symbols that have previously helped us to make sense of our surroundings suddenly have no meaning.

Electric shocks are viewed as negative, but on my way to the Hope Center today I started thinking about it entirely differently. If your heart has stopped beating, the right dose of electric voltage to the heart can save your life. Driving through the slums of the DRC, I began asking if culture shock could have the same effect on one’s spiritual heart - our soul?

1 John 3:17 reads, ‘But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God remain in him?’ There is a Greek word in 1 John 3:17, ‘splagchnon’ translated heart. Its definition is, ‘the inward parts; the heart, affections, seat of the feelings and emotions.’