Language is central to culture. Strip away one’s language and you deprive one of their culture to a large extent. For me, one of the things that I love about being in my home country where I was born is the chance to freely and frequently speak my mother tongue in my community and society — to "aunties" and "uncles" and younglings at food stalls, in the market, in shops, at train stations and bus stops, in every corner of the public square. I love the sound of Mandarin Chinese, with smatterings of Hokkien and Cantonese Chinese.
While I acknowledge the near universal utility of the English language, I do not think of its success as a matter of inherent linguistic or cultural superiority. Nor do I fetishize western culture, whatever its positives that I have imbibed through my western academic studies and training. Rather, the “success” of English has more to do with geopolitics and military prowess, colonialist and imperialist domination, and historical power play and power differentials than with language and culture per se.
For similar reasons do I find myself loving Christ but not Christianity. I love Christ and have a lot of time for Christ but have little time for Christianity. To me, Christianity is little more than Anglocentric churchianity rooted in imperialism and colonialism far removed from the spirit of the gospel of grace and truth. Such an institutional behemoth is not for me a source of inspiration and spirituality but a totem of domination, disenfranchisement, bullying, and naked brutal arrogance. That is why I am not a “Christian.” And much happier for it.
