Curiosity: bad for the cat, good for a Christian on mission.

If you’re going to reach out beyond your comfort zones in order to interact in meaningful ways with people who are not like you, it’s helpful to foster a healthy sense of curiosity. Curiosity, of course, is a strong desire to know something. It’s the drive to explore, to study, to investigate, to understand. It’s the reason we try new things or take things apart.

Applied to culture, curiosity is what leads someone to explore the different ways people from all walks of life express themselves and solve life’s challenges. Have you ever wondered why people in the West tend to greet one another with a handshake while folks in the East greet with a bow? Have you ever thought about how meals in cultures around the world have basically the same categories and set out to explore the ingredients that make them unique? Have you ever heard the story behind a cultural expression and found it so compelling that you incorporated it into your own? These

People who aren’t curious are content to navigate life with just as much insight and understanding as they currently have. These are people restricted to deal in assumptions, stereotypes, and ignorance. But God’s people know that there is always more to learn. Our pursuit of Him (and His pursuit of us) compels us to explore nuance, details, perspectives, and effects of the world around us. This curiosity makes us better missionaries.

How to foster a sense of curiosity:

Ask why? If you know any 3-year-old children, you’ve heard them ask why? “It’s time for dinner.” Why? I’m sorry, but you can’t have ice cream for breakfast. Why? We only draw on paper! Why? Their young brains are trying to understand the world around them, and the answers to why? help them make connections and see how one thing might relate to another.
Adults, likewise, should ask why? Literally. Make it a habit of responding to everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or feel with this simple yet profound question. Like solving a mystery by following a trail of clues, each why? will lead you to another piece of information. After a while, you’re bound to stumble upon something that interests you.
Thought exercises. Consider the most interesting thing you’ve observed in the last day or so. Maybe it’s something remarkable, maybe it’s something mundane. Stop and give yourself 10 minutes to think through how that thing works. Traffic: a chain reaction to someone not merging from one lane into another in a timely fashion. A stapler: a lever that makes it easier to push pre-formed pieces of metal wire through sheets of paper and then conveniently bends the ends of the wire in on themselves in order to fasten the pages to one another.
These thought exercises may not at first be very fulfilling, but eventually you’ll start to see patterns in the series of small things that make up more complex things. Entertain hypotheses about things you can’t easily know, and then test those theories with a quick Google search, “How does work?”
Share what fascinates you. Did you know that "huh?" is the closest thing humans have to a universal word? Can you believe that fortune cookies are not from China? (try San Francisco.) You may be surprised that Muhammad (or one of its variants) is the most popular name in the world? Sharing something that you find remarkable is a great way to connect with other people. It can also add social incentive to be more curious–if you are always on the lookout for interesting tidbits of information to share with your friends and family, it might spark curiosity about a variety of things.
Try new things. Eat food from another country. Wear clothing that isn’t your first preference. Listen to music that you may initially find off-putting. Push yourself (and those you’re discipling!) to try new things on a regular basis. As you do, resist the urge to point out what you don’t like about the new thing, and try instead to find something that you can affirm. The more you try new things, the better at it you’ll become. Before too long, your old standbys will seem boring; new and different will be more interesting to you.

Why should God’s people foster a sense of curiosity? Because our mission is to make disciples–not only of people who are like us, but also of people who are not like us. This requires interaction outside our comfort zones. Curiosity motivates us to expand (or ignore!) our comfort zones, which opens up opportunities to relate to people across cultural, linguistic, political, and social barriers.

What’s more, God made humankind to have a lot in common with each other. Whatever it is that you’re curious about–stories, art, math, science, medieval dance, chemistry–odds are that someone who is quite different from you shares that same curiosity. Your curiosity can be a great opportunity to relate to people!