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Question 6

Dean uses the Frisian/Flemish cultural clash (dress, food, furnishings, “bourgeois” vs. farmers) and then Titus 1 (“Cretans are always liars… this witness is true… rebuke them sharply”) to argue cultures have weaknesses that must be confronted rather than excused; what cultural “sins and weaknesses” in your own background would you least want another culture in the church to expose, and how could that exposure become a gift rather than an insult?

Another way to ask: What weaknesses or sins from your own culture would you hate for another group in the church to point out? How could their honest feedback become a gift instead of an insult?

Direct Answer Dean’s teaching suggests that cultural habits can become spiritual blind spots, and unity requires each group to “bend” and surrender its weaknesses rather than defend them as “just our culture.” Exposure from another culture can be a gift if it helps us “lay those down” for a unified body.

Support from Transcript:

He describes real cultural offense: Frisians were “farmers… simpletons,” while Flemish were “bourgeois… fine dressers… fancy food,” and furnishings/linens became points of dispute.
He states Rule #2: when cultures form one church, “all must be willing to bend and give up as many of their own cultural sins and weaknesses.”
He brings Titus 1 as a model of confronting culture: “The Cretians are always liars… This witness is true.”
Paul’s response (as Dean reads it) is not accommodation: “rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith.”
Dean’s conclusion: don’t “make excuses for… cultural weaknesses,” but let cultures “help each other to see those weaknesses” so they can be “laid down” for unity.

Discussion Follow-ups What would repentance look like for your culture’s “respectable sins”? How could a church normalize correction across cultures without turning it into insult or superiority?

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