My parents came here as migrants early in the 1950’s – before I had ever set foot inside a classroom.  So for my siblings and me, education was not only learning the three ‘R’s but also learning to adapt to a whole new culture and lifestyle.

In our little country school in Bonnie Doon, in central Victoria, we were something of a novelty.  Post war migrants were a new phenomenon and in this rural setting we were unique.  In our small, two-classroom school there was only one other person without an Anglo-Saxon name – a lad of Italian descent whose family had migrated much earlier and were already assimilated into the community.

I grew up acutely aware that we were different.  I recall that we were often asked in class how certain things were done in Holland.  When our teacher decided on a geography project on the land of my birth, our family provided most of the resources.

There were some painful aspects to my cultural adjustment.  I learned the hard way that certain words were not appropriate.  ‘Six of the best’ ensured I wouldn’t use ‘that’ word again.  But there were also some positives to my cultural adjustment.  A classmates asked me one day what I had in my sandwiches for lunch .  Brown sugar!  Not uncommon among people from my background in those times.  What did he have in his?  Ham and pickles!  Did I want to swap?  Sure!  From that day on I always made sure I took “brown sugar” sandwiches to school but always ate ham and pickles instead.  That was my earliest introduction to cultural assimilation.

In that post-war period the emphasis was very much on assimilation.  The Oxford dictionary defines ‘assimilation’ as “the process of becoming like; being absorbed into the system”.  So although one of my Aussie peers learnt to appreciate brown-sugar sandwiches the expectation was really that I would be the one who would change and conform.

In that respect Dutch migrants were regarded as good citizens.  We fitted in fairly easily.  We were seen to assimilate rather readily.  If foreigners were going to come to Australia then let them become Aussies.  By that was meant, of course, average Anglo-Saxon Australians and not indigenous Australians.  In those days Australia still followed the ‘White Australia Policy’.

Assimilation was far more difficult for some other migrant groups.  When we later moved to the city, I attended a secondary school where some kids were called ‘Wogs’ – a label rarely used for those of us who were born in the land of tulips and dikes.

Today we’ve tended to move away from the need to assimilate – instead, since the Whitlam era, we’ve been big on multi-culturalism.  However we’ve also struggled with that as the way forward.  There is a big concern today about those who try to maintain their own culture in Australia without making any effort to integrate into Aussie society.  The recent extreme example of radicalised young people getting involved in ISIS is a case in point.  The government has tried to deal with this failure to assimilate by introducing the citizenship test which consists of 20 multiple-choice questions.

When it comes to assimilation the Christian church has been a wonderful example, a great blessing and a place where folk can maintain their cultural identity and yet be part of the community.  In the church I served in Sydney we had, at that time, some 15 different ethnic backgrounds represented – from Swedish to a variety of Pacific Islanders and from South African to Sudanese and Indian.

Well, yes, it brought its challenges.   I could give many examples of that.  However, overall it is much easier to assimilate in the Christian church.  We have a head start when we put our faith in Christ Jesus.  The Gospel gives us an advantage.  Our shared relationship to our Saviour God trumps all our ethnic diversity.

The apostle Paul addressed this issue in his letter to the Ephesians.  He was concerned about a major division – that between Jew and Gentile.  He points out that when Jesus died on the cross to reconcile us to God then that also broke down the diving wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile.  Today it breaks down countless other barriers as well.

In a sense the Christian church should have a great diversity of ethnic backgrounds because it’s a small and weak foretaste of God’s restored creation where there will be people from every tribe, language and nation... and all one in Christ Jesus.

John Westendorp