Traditionally, many have described Australian cultural identity in a way that stresses and often even encourages self-reliance. Russell Ward speaks of the myth of the “typical Australian”:
a practical man, rough and ready in his manners and quick to decry any appearance of affectation in others. He is a great improviser, ever willing to ‘have a go’ at anything, but willing too to be content with a task done in a way that is ‘near enough’…
This description did not really apply to Australians or even country people in general, but to “outback employees, the semi-nomadic drovers, shepherds, shearers, bullock-drivers, stockmen, boundary-riders, station-hands and others of the pastoral industry.”
In Jensen and Payne’s book Have Evangelicals Lost Their Way? and other Stuff, Don Carson identified the following commonality in Australian and American culture:
We immediately think, ‘What can we do about it?’ It’s a frontier, can-do mentality – ‘Just give this tough one to me, and I’ll sort it out.’ I guess at least it’s better than hiding your head in the sand and bemoaning the fallen world, but it’s not adequate.
What we must do is acknowledge that unless God does something, we can’t do much, even with our best effort. In other words, the starting point is to learn to pray, to seek God’s face…
Lorna Lippmann finds “in white Australia” a perception
of an autonomous self, apart from other people, and apart from the world. The typical Australian does not have a strong desire to integrate with nature, nor does he possess the idea that humans, animals and plants are made of the same basic stuff. The modality of motivation is achievement through competition; a person is what a person achieves.
Indeed, there are many new Australians, perhaps driven by their desire to create a future for their children, who are intensely competitive and focused on achievement.
In Romans 5:3-5 Paul urges:
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
In Cross-Cultural Paul Cosgrove, commenting on Romans 5:3-5, observes the contrast between Paul’s concept of what people should seek to attain and what Americans [and, I add, “many Australians”] think they should seek to attain:
What Paul says seems downright illogical to us. To see Paul’s point, we have to keep in view from the outset that the entire passage is about acquiring hope. For Paul, the task of a human life is learning to hope. This poses an extraordinary challenge for people who are used to getting what they want now, or at least to demanding it now, and who therefore tend to define their life goals in terms of what they think they can reach by their own effort in the relatively near future. It strikes us as extraordinarily odd, or beside the point of life, to see life’s journey as a process aimed at producing character in us so that we can finally learn to hope.
In a striking manner Cosgrove observes how Paul’s words might be rewritten so as to express American (and Australian) self-reliance ideology:
We boast in our self-reliance, knowing that self-reliance produces character and character makes it possible to work hard, endure hardship, and win the prize of success.
In the culture of self-reliance character comes early in the process. It is the first product of self-reliance and, indeed, self-reliance itself involves character of a certain type. By contrast, Paul treats suffering, not character, as the starting point. Character is not automatically produced by suffering, human decision or self-reliance. It is God who produces this through the process set out in Romans 5:3-5 and character does not produce worldly success but hope.
Posted June 4, 2008
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