What does Jesus want us to do for the Sawi?

This question is answered in a very similar way to the question of what God expects of us when confronted by another culture. So, Jesus wants us to continue to be the Salt and the Light of the world, even when we enter a culture such as the Sawi. The Sawi is an interesting culture in that its ideals, expected behaviors, and morals are nearly the polar opposite of what our societies consider acceptable, or ethically correct. The Sawi had built their culture based upon a simply-complex system of treachery, presented in the book Peace Child as “fattened with friendship...” We however have formed the opposite of the Sawi in that the ethics that we favor are trust, honesty, and uprightness. So how can Jesus expect us to be able to help the Sawi at all? Clearly what we see as morally upright and ethically acceptable is significantly different, so how can it be that we could help?

God calls us to be the Salt and the Light that was discussed earlier, to witness to those who encounter us, to be the light in a dark world. Jesus doesn’t call us to ‘help’ the Sawi by seeking to change who they are as a culture, but instead to introduce Him into their culture. He doesn’t expect us to infiltrate their culture and corrupt the infrastructure with our own ideas and present to them the ideals that are seen as acceptable in a ‘modern’ world. By introducing the idea of Jesus into the culture the culture and its roots remain intact, the hierarchy and system of government are still stable and the culture can still function. As presented in Peace Child, Don and Carol had to look into the Sawi’s culture and find where it was that God could be introduced and the idea of Him allowed to develop and grow. This is what Jesus calls us to do, to offer to the culture everything that comes with Jesus, not to force Him upon anyone, but to present Him as an opportunity for him or her. In Peace Child, Don and Carol first do the typical and try and impose their ideals on the culture and just expect it to change. When the realization that this method is flawed becomes apparent Don and Carol seek to merely introduce their ideas to the Sawi and let the principles and ideas from this teaching spread throughout the society gradually by the Sawi themselves gaining understanding. This is found in the Sawi culture as the peach child in which later Don and Carol understand the significance of a peach child for the Sawi and then make the connection that God gave Jesus as a peach child for the world. This is what Jesus wants us to do for the Sawi, inform not impose, offer but don’t force, teach but allow them to teach themselves through their own developing understanding for all that is offered by Jesus.