The Hospitality of God

The Central Asian believers and I leaned forward around our table, holding the earpieces tight against our ears to make sure we understood the assignment. Simultaneous translation meant that our preaching training was being taught in English, yet we were each hearing it in one ear in the local tongue – a complex, yet not impossible way to learn solid principles for teaching and preaching God’s word. Other tables were made up of believers and leaders from a neighboring people group, hearing the translation in yet another language.

Live translation, when the teacher or preacher pauses to let you translate, takes a fair amount of skill. Simultaneous translation, on the other hand, takes an extra special kind of linguistic ability and mental quickness. The local believing gal we usually hired for this kind of translation was in another country for an ultimate frisbee tournament, of all things, so we were trying out a couple of other believers who had traveled up from Poet City to help with the conference. Of the two of them, the teenage gal -whose parents had in recent years been outed as spies for a neighboring regime- was by far doing the better job.

As she translated, I mulled on the riddle of what to do when a teenager shows all the signs of true faith and a solid commitment to gathering with the body, but it seems that her parents are on the payroll of a foreign Islamic government – and likely reporting on things they’re learning through their daughter. So far, the wisest thing seemed to be to trust God and carry on. If they ended up reporting on this particular training, then at least mom and dad and their foreign handlers would be getting some sound homiletics principles.

“What were those foreigners telling people to do?”

“To make sure they could identify the biblical author’s intended message for the original audience.”

“And then what?”

“To find valid connections from that message to the good news of Jesus.”

“And after that?”

“To apply the main ideas to the daily lives of both the Christians and non-Christians who might be listening.”

“No! Those foreign infidels! Is there no end to their schemes? Make sure to report back if they start talking about how to craft effective sermon illustrations.”

I laughed to myself, thinking about what that kind of conversation might sound like.

“Wait, what are we supposed to do?”

This actual question from one of the brothers at my table brought me back to the current moment.

“Oh, right,” I responded. “The trainer asked if we could read Isaiah 25:6-9 and summarize it with a phrase or title that describes the main idea.”

One of the men at the table cleared his throat and then read out the passage in the local language.

	[6] On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
		a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
		of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
	[7] And he will swallow up on this mountain
		the covering that is cast over all peoples,
		the veil that is spread over all nations.
	[8] 	He will swallow up death forever;
	and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
		and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
		for the LORD has spoken.
	[9] It will be said on that day,
		“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
		This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
		let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

After the passage was read, the table was quiet for a minute as we each thought about what major themes were present in the passage. Our Central Asian locals are not typically strong in this kind of exercise. Their educational system majors on rote memorization and repetition. It does not equip them to do things like summarizing a passage in their own words and recognizing the main point. But this was year four of this preaching training, and, slowly but surely, these crucial textual analysis skills were getting stronger.

“The hospitality of God!” one man exclaimed.

“Interesting,” I replied, “Where do you see that?”

“Well, what is the main thing happening in this passage? God is hosting all peoples on top of a mountain for a great picnic with the very best food. Look at how this passage overflows with his generosity and hospitality!”

I took another look, and sure enough, there it was, clear as day in verse 6. I had skipped right over this theme to focus on the theme of God destroying death forever (also a major theme in the passage). Leave it to Central Asians to spot what is obviously an eschatological mountain picnic hosted by God himself when the Westerners skip right past it.

It seemed our British trainer did the same thing I did, because he sort of looked confused when the same man raised his hand during the larger group discussion time to mention the theme of God’s salvific hospitality that had jumped out at him.

This is why it’s so helpful to study the Bible with those from other cultures and backgrounds. It’s not that the meaning of the text itself is relative and shifts according to the culture of the interpreter. It’s that each of our cultures gives us eyes for certain things, and blind spots for others. My culture is weaker in hospitality, so I’m less likely to see that when it’s there in the text. But there are other areas where I can see things because of my background that my Central Asia friends are likely to miss.

This is an argument not just for studying the Bible with those from other cultures, but also with those from other ages. Saints from the past are going to be awake to things to which my generation has grown dull and blind. I need their help to more fully understand the Bible, just as future generations will need ours.

The Bible is so rich and so deep. Sometimes I wonder if God’s plan in allowing so many languages and cultures is, in part, so that we might be better equipped to see more aspects of the Scriptures’ richness and beauty.

As for me, I’d like to spend more time looking for the hospitality of God in the Bible. Now that I’m more ‘awake’ to this idea, it seems to pop up just about everywhere.

We only need to raise 14k ($1,166 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash.com

Church Membership on The Mission Field is Inefficient – Or Is It?

“No, we didn’t want to join a church, and we didn’t start one. I didn’t come here to plant a church and didn’t want to get pulled into all that would entail. I came here to translate the Bible. And for a number of years, the expat house fellowship that we led every week went great. But in recent years, we’ve had to deal with some serious sin issues among those who attend. And let me tell you, I have spent so much time trying to deal with these problems that I have found myself thinking maybe it would have been more efficient if we had just started a church in the beginning after all!”

I found this confession from an older missionary very insightful.

Here was another admission that one of the primary reasons for so many missionaries sidestepping the local church on the mission field is the Western value of task-driven efficiency. This value is often a strength of Western culture, but when it causes us Westerners to neglect other areas of biblical faithfulness, such as a week-in-week-out commitment to a church in our community, it becomes an idol. In this case, this missionary couple was so focused on their good task of translating the Bible that they decided that joining a local church on the field, or planting one, would take up too much of their time, time that they felt would be better stewarded by a singular focus on the task they’d been sent to do.

A huge number of missionaries overseas are not members of local churches on the field. Nor are they interested in doing the work to transform their team or coalition of missionary partners into an organized church. A few of them will have more advanced reasoning for this, sometimes related to missiologist Ralph Winter’s sodality vs. modality framework (a position to be analyzed in a future post). Other missionaries serve in places with no churches, no churches healthy enough to join, or no team or locals to form into a church. But many coming out of the West simply no longer have the biblical instincts or ecclesiology to feel that they should join or form a church on the field. “Isn’t it enough to meet weekly for bible teaching, songs, and prayer? Wherever two or three are gathered, right? Isn’t my team my church?” Add to this posture that joining or starting a church seems so, well, time-consuming, and it’s no wonder that the Western missionaries who do join churches on the field, or start churches that they then join, are the oddballs.

No, many, many missionaries think that the best thing is to retain their membership in their churches back in the homeland while they perennially sidestep the local church in their actual geographic locale. This all too common posture in the name of stewarding the time is both misguided and shortsighted.

The missionary’s confession I began with is a good example of what can go wrong when missionaries on the field commit themselves to what I’ve dubbed elsewhere, ‘weekly missionary chapel’, instead of joining or starting an actual local church. This family thought things would be simpler with a loosely defined house worship gathering every week with a bunch of other missionaries. Even when a good international church was planted in their city, they chose to stay separate from it and continue their house fellowship.

However, that earlier simplicity disappeared once serious sin arose among the attendees. Why? Well, there were no recognized pastors for this gathering, just a small team of casually-designated ‘leaders.’ There was no real system of membership, just a vague agreement among the missionaries attending about who was allowed to come (no locals, mind you). There was no mechanism for church discipline because from the very beginning, the aim of this group was to not be a church. The missionaries attending this group who ended up in sin were members of their sending churches back in America, so what kind of spiritual authority could the ‘leaders’ of this group really exert over them?

As wise Central Asians say, “Pray, but tie your camel tight.” And as wise Westerners says, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Set out to establish an efficient pseudo-church but haphazardly leave out a bunch of the biblical stuff that feels too time-consuming, and you are asking for trouble. Those biblical structures are there for a reason.

And yet, for most missionaries, it continues to feel simpler, more focused, and more efficient to sidestep the local church on the mission field. However, as we’ve seen, this means that when there are serious problems to deal with, they then have to quickly cobble together new systems to deal with them. Yet because they’re intentionally not a church, they don’t have clear biblical guidance or precedence for the structures and mechanisms they build. Instead, they’re just depending on their own wisdom and on what seems practical. Dealing with conflict and sin is always time-consuming, even in a healthy church, but reinventing the wheel and cobbling together solutions in this way ends up taking so much more time in the end (not to mention how it ends up hurting people).

Consider how coming to an agreement on a doctrinal statement may seem very time-consuming. But that process is far more efficient in the long run than suddenly having to figure out what to do every time a missionary with doctrine quite different from yours wants to join your house group.

Hammering out a church covenant also seems like a laborious process. But it’s far more efficient than having to explain in the middle of mess after mess why certain behaviors and not others justify expulsion from the group when you’ve never mentioned them before.

Taking time away from your main ministry to disciple believers from other people groups – maybe even in English – might seem like a costly side quest. But it’s not nearly as inefficient as your team burning out because you tried to live for a decade on the mission field without truly being connected to the Body.

These are just a few examples of how joining a local church on the field or planting one may seem inefficient in the short term, but in the long run will counterintuitively mean actually going faster. When conflict comes, there are biblical mechanisms to deal with it. When issues arise, clarity on how to navigate them already exists. When your gifts fail, the diversity of the local church comes to the rescue. Investing in the local church always pays off, and often in ways we never could have predicted.

Missionaries, let’s not sidestep the local church on the mission field. Let’s either start one or join one. If we’re in a context where this isn’t possible, we should pray and work for that to eventually change. Let’s not continue to pretend that church membership in a body on another continent is a good long term posture for our families – good stopgap measure though it may be. And please, let’s not hold ourselves aloof from the local church for the sake of efficiency.

After all, we are not called to be efficient above all else. We are called to be faithful. And that will often involve things that, at least initially, feel quite inefficient indeed.

We only need to raise 15k ($1,250 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash.com

A Fruitful Tree – A Local Believer’s Poem

Here’s another poem I’ve translated, written in our local language by Shepherd*, likely the first Christian poet among our people group.

In this poem, Shepherd starts with a very Central Asian image – that of ripe berry trees generously dropping their fruit when kids throw rocks up into the branches. Shepherd uses this picture to allude to how even when believers are attacked, what comes out of us is the fruit of the Spirit. What a helpful image to illustrate how believers are now able to love even their enemies. The rest of the poem is a walk-through of the remarkable effects in the life of a believer that come from knowing Jesus, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the Father’s kingdom and calling.

As with the previous poem of Shepherd’s that I posted, my aim has been to try to do as direct a translation as possible while also seeking to keep the original rhyme scheme and some sense of meter. To read this as a Central Asian would, be sure to slow down and emphasize the last word of each line.

A Fruitful Tree
by Shepherd H

We must be like a tree where fruit is gleaned when stone is cast
We’ve followed Jesus, are assured we will not die in spirit at the last 
This body weak, which cannot a virus even forestall
By light of Christ alone can on its shoulders mountains haul
In scheme of life, the Bible is the only true way and artery 
The light of the earth and heaven, full of joy and humility 
May Jesus’ Holy Spirit be to us as a shield, our protection
If not for the Father’s kingdom, we would not know embrace or affection
Hallelujah for the joy you have given us in these, our lives
You call us as your children, not as strangers, nor as slaves

We need to raise 22k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

Bedbugs in The Bowels of The City

The plan was simple. And at no point was it supposed to involve bedbugs or mafia-style van transfers.

I was carrying luggage needed for two single gals from our church who were headed to Western China for six months. They were flying out from a different part of the US, so we would meet up in the Beijing airport, then take the final flight together to the city where our missionary friends were living. On the way, my route had me spending the night in Guangzhou. Since the airport hotel had looked like it might break the trip budget, and I was at the time a youthful 26-year-old missions pastor, I just planned on sleeping in the airport.

Shortly before midnight, I had just got the bags from baggage claim and was scanning the airport for good spots to camp out, when the light started turning off. Airport staff then started shooing people out of the buliding. It didn’t seem like I would be able to sleep in the airport after all.

The airport emptied remarkably quickly, and I found myself following the signs for the airport hotel. What else was to be done? Close to the external doors, I was approached by a kind-looking middle-aged Chinese woman holding a laminated paper that said ‘Airport Hotel.’ She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t know any Chinese, but we nodded enthusiastically at one another to indicate that I was looking for the thing her sign advertised. She then motioned for me to follow.

True, the picture on her sign didn’t have any branding on it or necessarily look like the airport hotel I had seen online, but perhaps it was another one nearby. After all, major airports tend to have multiple airport hotels. If it were a different hotel, chances were good it would be more affordable.

We walked out to the curb and got into a small white van, where the big bags were lugged into the back. I settled in for what I assumed would be a short transfer. Sure enough, after only a few turns, we pulled into the parking lot of a big, shiny hotel.

This was where things started to get weird. Rather than dropping me off at the door, they pulled up next to an identical small white van in the parking lot. Then, they transferred the bags from one van to the other, indicating that they wanted me to also get into the back of the second van.

I didn’t know any Chinese, and they didn’t know any English, so I motioned questioningly toward the airport hotel fifty or so yards away. The two men driving the second van shook their heads and pointed at the back of the van. At this point, the first van with the woman drove off. I tried to ask if they were taking me to another airport hotel, and it seemed like maybe-possibly-hopefully that’s what they were trying to tell me in Chinese.

So, in what was not my soundest of travel decisions, I got in the back of the second van, hoping for the best. As soon as we started driving away from the hotel, I realized I may have made a serious mistake. I had no international data on my cell phone. I had no way of contacting anyone as I, and the bags I was supposed to be safeguarding, were driven away from the airport and into a strange and foreign city.

As the next half hour passed, I became increasingly concerned. We had left the major roads and had entered what I can only describe as the bowels of the city. We drove through tight alleyways full of wires, puddles, and humming neon signs advertising local establishments that had clearly seen better days. I am typically quite good at problem-solving in a pinch, but as we drove deeper and deeper into the dark maze of alleyways, I was utterly at a loss for what I should do next. I decided I might as well sit tight until we reached our destination, and simply try to make the best of things once we arrived – even if that meant I was soon to find myself robbed, stranded, or hostage to the Chinese mafia.

As I chewed on how my poor wife and toddlers might never know what became of me, I made a promise to myself, one I have largely kept to this day, to never travel again without some kind of way to contact others, some kind of working mobile data. And to keep an eye out for kind-looking middle-aged foreign women holding signs who turn out to have nefarious intentions. I chewed on this last one, especially. If it had been a young, attractive woman, I would have been more on guard. But her appearance, like that of a friendly 3rd grade teacher who just wants to tell you about the book fair, had been remarkably disarming.

At last, the van came to a stop. I leaned over and glanced up out the window. To my surprise and relief, I saw a faded hanging sign, one with the unmistakable shape of a plane on it. The building we stopped in front of was the sketchiest, smallest, and dirtiest airport hotel I had ever seen. But it was, in fact, some kind of lodging establishment. It was only fifteen feet wide or so, and three or four stories up, sandwiched in a row of other similar establishments that dripped and smoked and bulged and sprouted blackened wires and old AC compressors.

My erstwhile captors groaned and complained as they heaved the girls’ very heavy and very bulky suitcases up to the half room that functioned as the lobby and front desk. Then, they simply drove off into the darkness, leaving me with an older, jaded-looking man who seemed the proprietor. He was very unhappy that all I had on me was a credit card and gave me some kind of a talking-to, which, of course, I understood none of. When he was done, I simply smiled and shrugged and motioned that I had no cash on me whatsoever.

Resigned, the man muttered and walked me back out into the alley, where he pointed up the street toward a dilapidated ATM. To my great surprise, one of my cards worked. The clerk took something like $15 from me in Chinese yuan and then took me up to my room.

By this point, I was exhausted and more than ready to pass out on the little bed. But even though disarming middle-aged Chinese school teachers had not been on my threat radar, bedbugs definitely were. My wife and I had already faced them a couple of times, an unfortunate but common outcome of living in refugee communities in Louisville’s South End. I had learned the hard way the vital importance of always checking the sheets and seams of the mattress near the head of the bed for the tell-tale black spotting and little shiny bumps that indicate an infestation.

As soon as I knelt down and pulled back the sheet, I knew it was bad. There was not only widespread black spotting, but lots of the little reddish-brown bumps as well, evidence that baby bedbugs were growing. That meant the grown-up ones were also nearby, ready to munch on my Yankee blood as soon as I fell asleep.

By the grace of God, my main concern in that moment was not how to avoid being a midnight snack for bedbugs, but how to avoid accidentally infesting the home of the missionaries we were on our way to stay with. They’d had such a rough go of it already and were currently alone, the only missionaries in their city of several million. The last thing they needed was their missions pastor to bless them with a stubborn infestation of Guangzhou bloodsuckers.

So, I hatched a plan. I remembered that bedbugs don’t travel on bodies. They travel on clothes and luggage. So, I piled the bags up high on a table in the far corner. Then, I made the decision that the most loving thing to do was to sleep naked with my clothes for morning safely hung up in the shower. The bugs may get a free meal, but they would not get a free ride to Western China.

I fell asleep remembering a Korean friend from Bible college who was petrified of spiders and had to sleep on an old mattress on the dorm floor one night. Terrified, she poured out her heart to God in prayer, asking for angelic protection from the bugs – and awoke in the morning to see a dozen nighttime arachnids and insects seemingly struck dead by the angel of the Lord, legs up in the air, forming a little ring around the mattress where she had slept. Perhaps the deliverer of Hezekiah and my Korean friend would guard me as well from my own little army of six-legged foes.

I slept remarkably well considering these bleak surroundings, and woke up downright refreshed. I didn’t notice any dead bugs in a ring around me, but neither did I notice any bites or blood streaks on the sheets. I scanned my body for bugs, hopped in the shower, dressed, and went downstairs to greet the same grumpy man who had welcomed me the night before. He offered me some pork bawza dumplings. Anytime you get to have some form of pork for breakfast, things are on the upswing.

From there, things were remarkably smooth. Back to the airport. On to Beijing, where I met up with the two gals from my church. Then, on to our destination in Western China. The girls got their stuff there safely, I got to visit a family on the field who had not had anyone come to visit them yet, and – God be praised – I did not infest their apartment with bedbugs.

On a later trip, we visited some Chinese friends in Guangzhou and had a wonderful time, seeing a very different side of the city and the culture than I had on that fateful night when I was traveling solo. But my wife and I still laugh (and shudder) as we think about that night when I rode that sketchy second van down into the bowels of the city, thinking I was getting kidnapped by some kind of East Asian mafia.

Thankfully, it was not a kidnapping, only a relatively modest con job, one where the disarming lunch lady and her associates duped unwitting passengers into staying somewhere they’d never have chosen to stay willingly. It had that slimy deceptive feel to it, you know the one, like when that free breakfast suddenly turns into a wild eyed attempt to sell you a timeshare. Except that even timeshare presentations don’t mean you have to sleep as naked sacrificial tribute to the bugs.

And yet, considering the various pieces that could have gone very wrong, overall I felt I had escaped relatively unscathed. I determined that next time I’m stuck in an airport quickly shutting down, I’ll just pay the outrageous rate to stay in the legit airport hotel. That day would, in fact, come, many years later, far away in frozen Munich, dragging my exhausted kids in tow. But that is a tale for another post and another day.

For now, good night, sleep tight, and well, you know the rest…

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 23k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

Should I Keep Sharing the Gospel With Someone Who Has Repeatedly Rejected It?

Every believer who shares the gospel has a relationship or two with unbelievers that they don’t quite know what to do with. This might be a family member, a friend, or a coworker, someone who has heard the gospel many times, yet has not embraced it. Their bearing toward the gospel can run the spectrum from super friendly to somewhat hostile, but for whatever reason, they still want to be in regular contact with you. Or, in the case of family or coworkers, they are somewhat stuck in a relationship with you.

For my American readers, today is July 4th, Independence Day. That means you may even today find yourself at a cookout with just the sort of person I’m describing.

The question is, what should our posture be toward these sorts of people? Should we go on sharing the gospel when they seem so, well, hardened? Should we keep investing precious time and relational energy into those who have rejected the gospel so many times, especially when there are others who have never heard?

The answer, I believe, is a nuanced yes. In this post, I want to share how I have tried to navigate this over the years, in hopes that these principles and practical suggestions might prove helpful to others also wrestling with this.

First, we should aim to be sure that the gospel these individuals have rejected is actually the gospel, and not a misunderstanding of it. Far too often, we think someone has rejected the gospel when they’re actually rejecting a caricature of it. Remember, lost people are spiritually dead. Dead people do not naturally and easily comprehend the meaning of the good news you are sharing with them. They misconstrue what we are saying constantly. It often takes a lot of repetition before it becomes clear that they are rejecting the gospel from a place of having firmly grasped its message. Even Paul asks for prayer that he might make his gospel message clear (Col 4:4). But lost people can reach a place of rejection from understanding. As one of my Central Asian friends recently said to me when discussing how Jesus takes our curse upon himself, “I’m a Muslim and not a Christian, but wow, I can see how this is the heart of the Bible right here.”

He sees and understands the heart of the Bible. But he doesn’t believe it. Since that’s the case, what do I do with him?

This brings me to my second point. If this person is still open to spiritual conversation, then from here, I’m still going to aim to regularly seed my conversation with biblical truth. If, at this point, my friend has heard the message of the gospel clearly a good number of times, I will often back off from repeatedly pressing to the center of the gospel itself, instead looking for opportunities to inject all kinds of other aspects of the truth into our conversations. My hope in doing this is to impress upon my friend how the gospel affects and transforms everything else. I want to focus on the fruit of the gospel, the power and change that the gospel and the rest of God’s truth bring, in hopes that my friend will then want to revisit the gospel itself from one of these different angles.

Paul reminds the Romans that God’s kindness is meant to lead them to repentance (Rom 2:4). It may be that some simple but genuine remarks upon God’s kindness in a conversation are what lead to breakthrough. Or, it may be talking about how the faith transforms marriage and parenting. Or, how eternity and resurrection give us an answer for the countless desires we have that in this life will never be fulfilled. Sometimes it feels unnatural or redundant to revisit God, Man, Christ, Response yet again, but there are a thousand other angles of truth I can touch on in conversation that can strengthen and support that central refrain.

Injecting my conversation with spiritual truth also gives me a sense of whether or not my friend or relative wants to get into the claims of the gospel in this particular moment or setting. Believers can, with practice, learn how to naturally and tactfully fold spiritual truth into our everyday conversations. And every time we do that, it functions like an indirect invitation. If we are continually and graciously opening the door like this, there is no need to force unbelievers through it. If they are ready and willing, they will often take the conversation to the next step – and sometimes even reveal the specific questions they are wrestling with. This approach is a great way to not only see if unbelievers are open to spiritual conversation but also to keep the conversations in a place where our friend or relative feels that they consented to once again discussing these weighty and personal things.

For long-term relationships, this sense of consenting to the spiritual conversation is very important. We want to avoid being seen as the person at work or family gatherings who forces gospel conversation on others against their will. In the long run, this type of posture will serve more to close doors than open them. Rather, we want others to see us as those who genuinely care for them, genuinely believe the gospel, and truly enjoy speaking about Jesus.

Third, when someone has repeatedly rejected the gospel through my words, I want to double down on winning them with my life. As Peter says about wives married to unbelievers,

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

– 1 Peter 3:1-2

We must use words to make sure that the unbelievers in our lives have clearly understood the gospel. But after that point, there are times when it is not only appropriate, but even faithful to focus on displaying the gospel to them ‘without a word.’ Similar to seeding our conversations with other aspects of biblical truth, we can show by our lives and actions the power and the difference that the gospel makes.

One refugee friend who came to faith when I was a newlywed told me that observing my marriage was a big part of how the gospel came to make sense for him. I was surprised by this, since we were so new at the whole marriage thing, but I praised God for it nonetheless. This brother and I had argued about the gospel for months on end. At times, I was convinced we were getting nowhere. But the whole time, he was not just arguing, but also watching.

This point helps us know what to focus on when we’re not sure what to do next with an unbelieving friend who has rejected the gospel. But it’s also particularly helpful for family and friends who have made it clear to us that the door is closed for any conversation about spiritual things. What do we do with that kind of relationship? In spite of all the pushback against that “preach the gospel, when necessary use words,” quote, the fact is that our lives do, in fact, ‘preach’ something. At least in the fact that they powerfully illustrate, apply, and argue for what we’ve already verbalized and would like to verbalize again.

Fourth, we should consider how to stay in relationship with unbelievers who have rejected the gospel, even while we prioritize others who are more open. We are called to redeem the time and untold numbers Jesus’ sheep are out there, just waiting to hear his voice (Col 4:3, John 10:16). We should not be spending all our time on those who have clearly heard and clearly rejected the gospel. At the same time, we do not want to cut off those who have heard and rejected and who are still open to relationship with us. How should we thread this needle?

One practical way to do this is to have regular gatherings that are open to all. These sorts of gatherings are places where you can always invite that stubborn or seemingly hard-hearted unbelieving friend, even if most of your time is spent elsewhere investing in those who are showing a genuine openness. When we were doing refugee ministry in the US, we hosted weekly community meals together with our community group. This was a time when we could invite all of our unbelieving friends for a no-expectations gathering of food and community. Similarly, when I was an English teacher in Central Asia, we had a weekly conversation cafe. If I didn’t feel I should prioritize a certain friend who had heard and rejected the gospel, I nevertheless had a time when the relationship could be maintained, and we could see each other.

Because the Holy Spirit is sovereign over salvation, not me, I want to keep the relationship going in the chance that, defying expectations, this person really is seeking the truth. Regular gatherings of this sort mean I have a place to invite all of them to, even while the bulk of my time goes to prioritizing those friends who are responsive to the truth.

The other advantage of having regular ‘bucket times’ like this is that unbelievers can, in this way, be exposed to believing community. This could have been a point by itself, since there is great power and wisdom in getting our unbelieving friends and family into places where they can see Christian friendships displayed. The Bible says our love for one another proves the incarnation and proves that we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:35, 17:21). That’s one powerful apologetic. Also, we never know if exposure to some other believer with very different gifts than we have might be the key that leads to breakthrough for that unbeliever we’ve made so little progress with.

Fifth, we can continue to pray for those unbelievers who have repeatedly rejected the gospel, those whom we just don’t know what to do with. I remember reading how George Müller prayed for decades for one of his friends’ sons to believe. He didn’t give up praying for this young man, even after so many years had passed. Decades later, he repented and believed. There is great power in persistent prayer, even for those for whom we see no hope that they will ever believe. Spiritually, they are no harder to the gospel than we were before we believed. One sovereign word from God is all that is needed to break their resistance and to flood their hearts with the love of Christ. We might not know if we can or should say another word about the gospel to certain individuals. But we can keep praying for them. If they are still alive, the verdict is not yet out on their soul.

Sixth, and last, there is a category in scripture for unbelievers who reject the gospel and are therefore to be cut off by us, though still in hopes that they might be open at some point in the future. Jesus calls them ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and in other places commands the disciples to wipe the dust off their feet in protest against their rejection (Matt 7:6, 10:14). It seems that there is a kind of evil and violent rejection of the gospel message that can occur, one that responds to pearls of gospel glory with fangs and violence or scandalously shameful rejection. The points I’ve made above are not for this kind of person, perhaps with the exception of persevering prayer. No, the purpose of this post has been to help us with those unbelievers who want to or have to stay in some kind of peaceful relationship with us.

For long-term relationships with unbelievers, seek to make sure the gospel is clearly understood. Seek to saturate your conversations with all kinds of spiritual truth. Seek to win them with your lives. Seek to invite them into community even when you can’t prioritize them. And pray for them with perseverance.

I am deeply troubled about my unbelieving friends who have heard the gospel so many times yet have not bowed the knee to Jesus. Like my Central friend who can pinpoint the heart of the Bible, I know that their situation is a very dangerous one. They have been exposed to so much light, and if they ultimately reject it, their fate will be worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. And I will have been to them the aroma of death (2 Cor 2:15-16).

And yet, at the same time, I’m so thankful for my unbelieving friends who keep coming back around, even though they’ve rejected the gospel so many times. I desperately hope that if they are still open to friendship with me, then there may be some part of them that is also open to friendship with Jesus. The verdict on their soul is not out yet.

No, if they’re still living, there’s still hope.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 26k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

The Earliest Painting of a Biblical Scene

The earliest known painting of a biblical scene comes from a house in Pompeii, the Roman vacation town destroyed in a volcanic eruption in A.D. 79. Just as wisdom is one of the emphases of this blog, this first known biblical painting also focuses on wisdom, depicting one of the most well-known scenes where its power is put on display. The painting (which you can see here) is unmistakable to anyone who knows their Old Testament. It shows King Solomon discovering the identity of the true mother by shrewdly calling for the baby in dispute to be cut in two, which is recounted in 1st Kings 3:16-28.

In an unexpected addition, it seems the artist also painted Socrates and Aristotle into the bottom left-hand corner of the painting. These two foundational Greek philosophers are observing the scene from the margins, looking on in admiration or astonishment as the elevated Solomon dispenses his wise judgment.

What this curious painting seems to tell us is that the Bible and its teaching were present even in this holiday town beloved by the Empire’s rich and influential citizens. The fact that it was painted on the wall of a home like this likely means that there were well-to-do Jews, proselytes, or God-fearers who lived in Pompeii, perhaps even early Christians. I think it likely that whoever commissioned this painting was from a Greek or Roman gentile background, hence the inclusion of Socrates and Aristotle. Viewed in this light, the painting is a kind of apologetic, arguing that the apex of Greco-Roman philosophy points, from the margins as it were, to the superior wisdom found in the revealed Word of the God. This would echo the kind of approach that Paul takes when preaching in Athens at the Areopagus – “As some of your own poets have said” (Acts 17:28).

If a gentile was the one who had this scene painted so prominently in his home, it could be a way of him arguing that his believing in the God of the Jews was not, in fact, a betrayal of the Western pursuit of wisdom, but rather, its unexpected and true fulfilment.

You can read more about this fascinating painting here at Biblical Archaelogy Society.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

First Flight Into Central Asia

Long ago, in late 2007, I took my first flight into Central Asia. I expected it to be significant. All first flights into a new place bring their own excitement and anticipation. But I did not expect it would turn out to be quite as colorful as it turned out to be.

Our motley crew of a team had been sitting on the floor of the old Dubai regional airport, which was not at all like the shiny new international airport we had just flown into. Most of us were signed up for six months of serving in Central Asia. Another couple of single guys and I were considering staying a full year. Our mission was to do relief and development work, along with evangelism and discipleship, hopefully laying the groundwork for a long-term church planting team. However, our coworkers on the ground had recently been chased out of the city we were supposed to serve in, escaping only by hiding underneath a car in a gun battle between terrorist assassins and local security forces. So, we were to land in another city, Poet City* in fact, and to be an ‘office in exile’ as it were. The idea seemed to be to figure it out as we went, and to do our best not to cause problems for the long-term personnel who were already living there.

The year that followed was to be a wild one. I would almost get blown up by tutoring next to a car bomb. Another teammate would almost get blown up by peeing next to a landmine. My friend Hama* would come to faith in part because of bad beer and a Jesus action figure that he got from a Samaritan’s Purse shoebox. It was one of the best years of my life.

However, at this point, we were still sitting on a dirty airport floor, camped out near what was (hopefully this time) our actual gate. Near us was a crowd of men from Bangladesh, also sitting and lying on the tile floor. They looked like they had been there for a while. It also looked like we were going to be on the same flight. In fact, these twenty or thirty men had been stuck in the airport for several days, caught in a deceptive migrant labor scheme. We later learned that they had been told they would be traveling to Mediterranean Greece to work in restaurants. Instead, they were being flown to the deserts of Central Asia to be street sweepers, and their passports by this point had already been confiscated, trapping them into doing a job they had never signed up for. In God’s strange sovereignty, some of these men would later come to faith through the faithful work of another missionary.

After what seemed like a very long time and not a little confusion, our plane was finally ready to be boarded.

Walking out onto the blazing tarmac, I caught the faded name on the side of the aircraft – the national carrier of a faraway former Soviet Republic. Must be a rental. The inside of the plane did little to reassure me. The plane itself was an older craft. The cream walls were stained brown, and the flimsy legs of the seats seemed like they might snap off if you leaned too strongly to one side. Even the paint on the lit no-smoking signs was cracking, creating an interesting glowing web design that sprawled outward.

This seemed to be only the second time for many of the Bangladeshi men to be on a plane. And they were still quite giddy at this new experience – the lights, the seats, and the free snacks. They kept pushing all the buttons, apparently just to see what they did. The Russian stewardesses, for their part, mostly ignored them. Some of the men, like the guy next to me from Dhaka, were obviously nervous. He didn’t know how to fasten his seat belt, so I leaned over and helped him, asking him questions about his homeland to try and put him at ease.

Soon, the intercom crackled, and the captain came on. But instead of the usual message of welcome and flight information, he informed us that there was something wrong with the plane’s landing gear. For our safety, we would need to disembark and get on another plane.

Everyone groaned. Our flight was already hours late.

Ten minutes later, we were still sitting on the plane when our captain came on the intercom again, announcing to everyone that he had, in fact, been mistaken.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will be taking off shortly. There is nothing wrong with the plane’s landing gear. Really. There is nothing wrong with the aircraft. Let me just say one more time that everything is perfectly OK. There are no problems with our aircraft… so… don’t be worried… again, our landing gear is… fine. [crackle, crackle, silence].”

After this very reassuring speech, we all joined the man from Dhaka in being more worried than ever. One Central Asian businessman in the front stood up and demanded to be let off the plane, but it was too late. We had already started taxiing to the runway, and the flight attendants forced him to sit back down.

The engines roared, and soon we were airborne. We were all in this together now, Americans, Central Asians, Bangladeshis, and even our stern Slavic flight attendants. Scenes flashed in my mind of what it might mean to land on a Central Asian mountain runway with our “perfectly OK” landing gear. But being somewhat accustomed to flying in sketchy aircraft overseas, these thoughts soon faded from my mind.

Before long, the air in the plane took on a distinct odor, just as the regional flights in Melanesia would, the inevitable result of air travelers whose culture pays no mind to deodorant, and who have been stuck in an airport for several days. This pungent yet natural smell was especially pronounced in the area where I was sitting. At some point mid-flight, our stewardess had had enough. Stopping in our area, she started shouting in a Russian accent, to no one in particular, that the shoes should be put back on.

“Poott shooz ohnn! Poott sshhoozz ohnn!”

I stared at my feet. I stared at my neighbors’. Everyone’s shoes were on… so we all just stared back at the stewardess. Met with these dozens of blank stares, she let out a frustrated huff, gave up on her remonstrating, and got back to serving drinks. The man from Dhaka and I had some tea. Unlike airplane coffee, surprisingly horrid stuff, I have always found tea at 36,000 feet truly delightful.

Eventually, we began seeing lights dotting the blackness below. We began our descent, neared the runway, prayed for our landing gear, and then breathed a sigh of relief as the landing gear did indeed perform “perfectly OK.” Praise the Lord.

To top it all off, upon landing, all of our Bangladeshi friends broke out in rapturous applause. Even the grumpy stewardesses couldn’t help but crack a smile.

Soon, we were off the plane into the chilly air of a Central Asian November night. We got through customs surprisingly quickly, grabbed our bags, and most of the team hopped in a car. This left me and the two other college-age guys standing on a curb, alone, in the dark. Over to one side, we noticed a man chilling with an AK-47 and a cup of chai.

Welcome to Central Asia. What had we gotten ourselves into?

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

Why The Bible Is Against Bad Calendars and Time Travel

Humans are not the only rulers or vice-regents created by God in Genesis chapter one. This fact jumped out at me this year when rereading Genesis again – more proof that no matter how well I might think I know a text, there are almost always things that I’ve missed. No, there are rulers other than humans in Genesis 1 that are created and given authority. These rulers are none other than the sun, moon, and stars.

[14] And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, [15] and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. [16] And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. [17] And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, [18] to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. [19] And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

Gen 1:14-19

This text says that God created the sun, moon, and stars to:

Separate the day from the night, the light from the darkness
Be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years
Give light upon the earth
Rule the day and rule the night

These entities in the heavens are created to be separators, signs, givers, and rulers. These roles that God himself carries out directly in the first verses of chapter one, he will now do vicariously through his appointed rulers, similar to how he will rule through mankind.

As an aside, this shows the silliness of the objection that holds that Genesis 1 is in error because the creation of light comes before the creation of the sun and stars. Of course, the God who is able to create a light-giving star is also able to create and give light directly without that star. The order of events simply shows a logical movement from direct ruling and giving to mediated ruling and giving. Throughout history, great emperors in Central Asia tended to rule our mountain peoples through emirates, client kingdoms that ruled in the name of the great shah or pasha far away. To govern well, any emperor who conquered our area would, for a period, rule directly, but then quickly raise up representative kings who would exercise his rule locally. This is a helpful metaphor for what we see going on in the Genesis creation account.

Also, what a fascinating window this account gives us into what the sun, moon, and stars actually are, as opposed to merely what they are made of.

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”

-CS Lewis, The Dawn Treader

The sun is a separator, a sign, a giver, a ruler – one in the form of a giant ball of flaming gas.

The necessary implication of all of this is that there are things that fall under the creation mandate of the sun, moon, and stars that do not fall under the creation mandate of mankind. Yes, humans are tasked with multiplying and filling the earth, subduing it, and having dominion over the plants and animals (Gen 1:26-30). We are charged with tending and guarding Eden (2:15), and through it, eventually the whole earth. But it seems that this dominion does not trespass into the dominion given to the heavenly lights. They have rightful rule over some parts of creation. We have rightful rule over others. We have neighboring, yet distinct, client kingdoms.

Fallen man is, of course, going to attempt to usurp their rightful place and to take dominion in ways and spheres which do not belong to them, just like our first parents did. And this will somehow lead to disaster, just like it always does. In light of this, it seems like it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what those areas of creation are that are not part of our rightful dominion. True humility and freedom so often come down to simply being honest about what God has or has not given, and then seeking to live within those good, sovereign lines.

First, it seems that we must not attempt to rule the separation of day and night, their light and their darkness. This is one we are actually flirting with, at least in one direction. Advances in technology and the unprecedented affordability of artificial light in our modern age mean that humans are increasingly chipping away at the natural darkness, the nightness of night. This is allegedly resulting in greater economic productivity and physical safety, but it’s also playing havoc with our sleep, health, and happiness. No, the darkness of night is a good part of creation from before the fall. We ignore its importance or set out to conquer it at our own peril.

I have often thought about the fact that the generations living today are likely the first in the history of the world to be largely unable to see the stars in the night sky. Humanity is overwhelmingly an urban race now, living in cities and towns where light pollution means that, when we look up, we simply do not see what every other age of humans before us has seen – stars too many to number. What kind of effect might this be having on us? What happens to a humanity unable to feel how small it is because, when it looks up, all it sees is the haze created by its own electric creations? Does this mean we are losing one of the primary ‘preachers’ of the glory of God in creation (Psalm 19:1)?

To live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars’ separation of day and night.

Second, we must not attempt to usurp the sun, moon, and stars’ roles as the primary signs of the passage of seasons, days, and years. They set the rhythms of time, and we (and our calendars) are wise to honor that. Civilizations that have attempted to organize their time in different ways, which to them seem more convenient or efficient, have discovered this to be either impossible, illogical, or at least extremely inconvenient. Thus, the Soviet Union’s attempts to replace the seven-day week with a ten-day week, the Nepreryvka, ended in abject failure. Similarly, in order to better ambush his enemies, Mohammad did away with the sacred days that served every year to sync the Arab lunar calendar with the solar year. By doing this, he foolishly untethered the Islamic calendar from the solar year, meaning calendar dates were no longer reliably fixed to agricultural seasons, and events like Ramadan rotate through the entire year on a confusing 33-year cycle. In the opposite direction, our modern Western calendars contain evidence of a time when our months needed to be changed so that the West could better align with the rule of the celestial spheres. September, October, November, and December originally meant “seven, eight, nine, ten,” but the Romans had to insert July and August in there because they found their harvest festivals increasingly taking place further and further away from the actual harvest – something they correctly felt to be foolish and unsound. These ancient Westerners wisely sought to align their annual calendar with absolutely crucial things like harvest time.

In contrast to the annual calendar, one of the odd things about being a Westerner living in Central Asia is realizing that my Central Asian friends are still living in daily rhythms closer to the patterns of creation than I am. Their closing up shop and family dinner times are still attached to sunset, not to a fixed 24-hour clock. They know that the appearance of a certain star on the horizon means the hottest part of summer has come to an end. All of the mothers sense at once when the weather is saying it’s time to bring out the rugs for the annual autumn cleaning. In all of this, I can’t help feeling like they know and sense things about the heavens that I should also know and sense, were it not for the culture I hail from, with its relentless impulse to act like nature is irrelevant.

To live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars’ signs regarding the seasons, days, and years.

Third, it seems we must not attempt to usurp the heavenly bodies’ role as the primary givers of light. This is related to the first point, but it’s worth restating that even though cheap, artificial light is a great blessing, it needs to be stewarded carefully. It is not a good replacement for natural sunlight. Things like vitamin D deficiency, poor sleep, and depression are some of the more obvious consequences that come from pretending like LEDs or fluorescent lighting can replace the good old-fashioned light of our patron star. Our teams in Central Asia learned this the hard way as many of the houses we rented early on were like dark cement caves that only increased the mental health challenges otherwise faced on the mission field.

To live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars as the primary givers of light on the earth.

Fourth, we must not attempt to rule day and night, to rule time itself. What might this look like? Well, I like a time travel story as much as the next guy, but it would seem that Genesis 1 makes a case against humans seeking to manipulate time in ways like this. We may not be as far along in invading the heavenly lights’ dominion of time as we are invading their dominion of light and darkness, but stories of time travel continue to captivate our popular culture just as stories of artificial intelligence captivated it half a century ago – and look what’s happening with AI. No, it’s only a matter of time before humanity figures out how to mess with time itself. And when that happens, Christians will need to know and maintain that this is out of bounds, not a part of our creation mandate, the kind of thing that is sure to get very bad, very fast.

Just to clarify, I’m not speaking here about human efforts to organize time and to seek to redeem and steward it well. That is very much a part of our mandate (Col 4:4). But those efforts are attempts to measure and record and live according to something that is governed by another (see point 2). They are not efforts to take over its governance, to mess with the fabric of time itself. Governance of that fabric belongs to God and to some of his other vice regents, the heavenly lights.

No, to live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars as the primary rulers of time.

Strange as it may seem, and should Christ tarry, we may increasingly face ethical dilemmas that involve invading the rightful domain of the sun, moon, and stars. It seems, therefore, to face this kind of future, we will need to go back to the beginning, back to Genesis 1, to think carefully about what exactly is part of our mandate, and what is not. Yes, we are client kings, vice regents of creation – but so are those shining rulers in the sky.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 27k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash.com

A Song on The Good Life

“Good Life” by Audio Adrenaline

We’ve recently started introducing our kids to some of the Christian bands that we listened to when we were kids and teenagers. In this, I’ve been reminded of just how good some of those ’90s Christian groups really were.

At some point in the late 90s, one of my older brothers came home with an Audio Adrenaline CD from the Christian bookstore, and then played it a lot. Their album, Underdog, will always remind me of that season of life. And this song in particular, “Good Life,” reminds me of the power of good music accompanied by unexpected lyrics. I remember being a 10-year-old and being struck by the surprising turn the lyrics make in the chorus, “This is the good life; I lost everything; I could ever want, ever dream of.”

For a Christian, life is only found by losing it. Our definition of “the good life” is wildly different from that of the world. It involves dying to self and, in that way, finding something so much better in Jesus. This song helped me to chew on that as a 10-year-old and for many years afterward. For that, I’m very grateful.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 28k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Honoring Those We’ve Fallen Out With

A photo of Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov (right)

The same photo, but with Nikolai Yezhov later edited out after a purge

The very human temptation after falling out with other Christians is to attempt to memory hole them. We try to speak and live as if they were not a significant part of our story. This is true even of church leaders and missionaries, who are, sadly, not at all immune to serious conflicts that lead to parting ways with formerly close friends and colleagues.

I have often heard Christian friends describe feeling completely cut off from dear friends after making a difficult and costly departure from their previous church or organization. “It feels as if we’re dead to them now.”

Even when Christians have a falling out with one another and serious conflict, why do we treat one another in this way? Why the attempt to sever the relationship, to memory hole or erase others from our past? Perhaps it’s a strategy of self-protection. It’s painful to open up that hurt part of ourselves again by bringing them up in conversation, or by giving them their proper place in the story of our church or missionary team. It may simply feel too complicated to know how to relate to them or to speak about them, given the fact that the story is no longer a simple, encouraging one with a happy ending. Even worse, perhaps it is the sin of bitterness and unforgiveness that causes us to treat one another this way.

This attempt to erase other Christians from our lives is not, however, what we see modeled by Paul. In the book of Acts, we see Paul and Barnabas have a very serious falling out over whether or not to partner with John Mark again after he had abandoned them on a previous missionary journey. We’re told by Luke, the author of Acts, that the disagreement became so sharp that Paul and Barnabas parted ways, with Paul and Silas heading one direction and Mark and Barnabas heading the other (Acts 15:36-41).

The book of Acts is honest, though careful, in its treatment of this conflict. Luke, the author, is writing this second volume with Paul as one of his primary sources. And there’s no evidence that, at the time of this writing, Paul had reconciled yet with John Mark, something we see hints of in later New Testament books (2 Tim 4:11). No, the book of Acts ends with Paul and his team seemingly still separated from Barnabas and his team. And yet, pay attention to how honorably the book of Acts speaks of Barnabas and his crucial role in the early church and in the early ministry of Paul himself.

Acts 11:24 says of Barnabas, “he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” The awkward conflict between Barnabas and Paul doesn’t cause Paul and Luke in the writing of Acts to retcon Barnabas’ generosity (Acts 4), his key role in defending Paul in Jerusalm (Acts 9), his bringing Paul to Antioch (Acts 12), or how he accompanied Paul on the first missionary journey and stood with him at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 13-15). No, despite their eventual parting of ways, in the book of Acts, Barnabas is honored and given his proper place in the story.

Consider what this kind of truthful and generous telling of the story might have done in the heart of Barnabas were he ever able to read an early manuscript of Acts. How much healthier the cultures of our churches and organizations would be if we were to similarly honor those we’ve fallen out with. How much healthier our own hearts would be.

What do we lose if we speak honestly and respectfully of brothers and sisters who made significant investments in us, in our churches, and in our ministries, even if we must also honestly say that they later left because of conflict? What do we lose if we remember them, not just as individuals, but even corporately as churches or organizations? Doesn’t this better honor God’s mysterious sovereignty and how he writes our stories to include these glorious and messy relationships? Doesn’t this better point forward to the coming resurrection, when each of us will delight in one another once again and every relationship will be reconciled?

Yes, there are a minority of conflicts in which it is right and proper to cut someone off and to avoid speaking of them. This would be for divisive Titus 3 wolf-type figures, those who have proven to be exceptionally dangerous or false brothers. But the vast majority of Christian conflicts are not with these sorts of threats to the church. No, they are with other saints, sinners saved by grace, just like us.

The coming resurrection means that all Christian relationships will, in fact, outlive our local churches and our ministry organizations. Thus, seeking to maintain Christian friendships even with those who have left our particular temporary community is an appropriate pointer to this coming future reality.

The resurrection, the new heavens and new earth, means that every relationship story between genuine believers will have a happy ending. Paul and Barnabas may or may not have reconciled in this life. But I can guarantee that they are reconciled now, in the presence of Christ. And that reconciliation will only grow stronger and more beautiful for all eternity.

This is also true of us, brothers and sisters. So, let us honor one another, even those we’ve fallen out with.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons