There is tremendous power for unity in a practical theology of the body of Christ. For two years I was able to sit in on elders meetings at my church as part of a leadership development program. Then for two more years I was able to participate in elders meetings as an elder myself, before we left for the mission field. What I observed in those four years of meetings has continued to shape the way I work for team unity among my teammates on the field.
Like many young men with a heart for ministry, there was a time when I thought that my personal set of spiritual gifts was somehow superior to others’. I would not have said this, but I know at times I felt it. Or at least I failed to feel down in my bones an appreciation for gifts that were different than mine, which is almost the same thing. This is where observing the elders meet together was so helpful for me. Here was a group of men, a group very diverse in terms of age, background, personality, and gifting. And yet they worked well together, appreciated their differences, and even celebrated them. The one gifted in preaching would praise the one gifted in systems, who would praise the one gifted in wisdom, who would praise the one gifted in the biblical languages. They would lean on one another in the tasks in which they were weaker. They not only knew that their differences made them a better team of shepherds, they actually believed and felt this, even in the midst of disagreement. And I began to believe and feel it as well.
The diverse gifts given to the body of Christ, the Church, are described in passages like 1st Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, and 1st Peter 4. These and other passages put together give us a robust theology of the body of Christ. Christ has ascended, and in doing so has given gifts to every single believer, though not the same ones. Each believer has gifts with which they are able to uniquely build up the body of Christ in love, and each believer is in need of the gifts of the rest of the body, just as the different members of the human body need one another. All are to be honored, none are to be despised, even though some gifts are more powerful for edification than others. All gifts are spiritual, though some seem to us more supernatural than others. Through these gifts we serve and teach one another, display God’s power to the lost, and we glorify the giver of these gifts, knowing that they come from him and are not of our own making.
Before sitting in on elders meetings, I could have written you a decent theological paper laying out these truths in detail. But in order to really make this theology practical I needed to see it modeled. Here’s a plug for any pastors out there thinking through raising up leaders – make sure there are places where the men you are raising up can observe you modeling leadership, in addition to the good content they are learning. Modeling enables others to learn things practically and intuitively which complements study that is heavy on the abstract and on the knowledge necessary for leadership.
Now that we are on the mission field, we are trying in turn to pass on these biblical principles to our teammates. It has been said that team conflict is the number one reason missionaries leave the field. I believe this. But a lived theology of the body of Christ can not only hold missionary teams together, it can even cause them to flourish and to be powerfully effective, even in the midst of disagreement.
Our previous team was made up of three families, all very different from one another in personality, culture, and giftings. We had our fair share of conflict and times where we drove each other crazy. But God was gracious to us, we ate a lot of good kabob together, and we came to genuinely appreciate one another’s friendship and diverse spiritual gifts. Together we saw a small church planted in the hard soil of Central Asia. We reached an important stage of maturity as a team when we were able to openly affirm one another in the ways we were individually gifted, rather than seeing one another as a challenge or threat. We grew in doing this in team meetings and even in front of the local believers, who were prone to comparing us to one another. By emphasizing my teammate’s gifts, I could not only encourage them and remind myself of how much I need them, I could also model for locals how to honor believers they are very different from. Practically, I could also lean on my teammates’ pastoral and preaching gifts, their energy for life and language, their hospitality and sharp minds for making detailed plans and arguments. And they in turn could lean on me in other areas.
Now we have taken on a new leadership role with a different team, even larger and more diverse than our previous one. Our prayer is that this practical theology of the body of Christ will soak deep down into the foundation of who we are as a team. To see a fellow believer a little bit more like Christ sees them, as a saint uniquely gifted by the ascendant king – that is a powerful force for team unity.
When asked what kinds of identity issues missionaries face, the proper response would be, “legion.” As with many other struggles, the mission field tends to amplify and multiply things that already existed in seed form in our hearts back in our passport countries.
Men who come to the mission field tend to be coming from backgrounds where they were highly effective in life and ministry. They might be used to pegging their sense of faithfulness to their productivity and ministry fruit. Then, all of a sudden they are the linguistic equivalent of a toddler, bumbling along in a culture where they do not know how to get things done, a culture that proves to be remarkably non-task-oriented even after the missionary learns the local processes – not to mention also being remarkably resistant to the gospel. For men who were driven high-achiever ministry types back home, this shift to seeming-incompetence can be disorienting and doubt-inducing. Men can also face the erasure of clean work/home boundaries, suddenly finding themselves needing to live family life and do ministry in an extremely integrated way. Where does work end and home life begin? How do I gauge whether or not I have committed enough hours to the work of the ministry this week if I had to spend all day searching the market in a distant town for a part to fix my generator?
Women on the field can face a rapid multiplication of roles. Whereas there was barely enough time back home to be a faithful wife, mom, church member, and part-time employee, now they are asked to also be full-time language learners, home-school teachers, evangelists, disciplers, relief and development workers, and mobilizers, while perhaps carrying other language or prayer-related roles for their team. It is impossible to succeed at all of these roles at any given time, so culture-shocking moms are often loaded down by an additional sense of continual failure. Then there is the constant nagging of the thought, “Am I doing enough for our kids or is our ministry lifestyle going to scar them for life?”
Singles on the field can face intense loneliness and sometimes deal with the sense that they are not viewed as the equals of their married colleagues. The assumption that they have all the time in the world can lead toward guilt when they take some down time or take a vacation. Having learned how to navigate the “Why aren’t you married yet?” question back home, now they must face it again coming in new ways from locals, some of these ways being painfully blunt.
Missionary kids don’t know which culture they belong to – their parents’ or their local friends’. This can lead to an over-identification with one culture and a despising of the other. It can also lead to plain confusion, as things which are appropriate to ask and say in one culture are not appropriate in another. They must carve out their own “third culture,” borrowing from both cultures while never fully belonging to either, hoping not to be embarrassed by missing some important cultural cue. Missionary kids can struggle to answer the question, “Where are you from?” And the idea of home becomes an elusive one which can haunt them for decades to come.
Living in a closed country introduces its own struggles, as missionaries struggle to live with a public identity as a business man, teacher, or NGO worker, while secretly conducting missionary work. This can lead to a nagging sense of uncertainty about how honestly relates to full identity disclosure. Workers on the field train one another to not say “missionary” or “missions,” but then after a day and a half of air travel must embrace these terms and the public identity of a missionary again in order to serve their supporting churches.
Finally, there is the always-present specter of ministry idolatry, where a missionary comes to define his worth primarily in his role as a cross-cultural worker. Other types of work and ministry come to be seen as less valuable than their own and the pedestal they are often placed on becomes too eagerly embraced.
What is to be done with missionaries’ legion of identity issues (Of which the above is a mere sampling)? One of the great secrets of missionary care is that we don’t need anything different than what other believers need. We need Christ. We need the gospel. And that is enough. Missionaries may have unique attacks on their identity, but the needed defense is the same – a relentless reminder of their identity in Christ. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). We are in Christ and that is our primary identity, one which is eternally secure, no matter how productive I’ve been this week, no matter how poorly I speak the language, no matter how many roles I’ve failed in, no matter what. I have value in God’s eyes because of what Christ has done for me, not because I am a failed missionary or the next Adoniram Judson. I am a citizen of heaven (Phil 3:20), a member of God’s household (Eph 2:19) and those are truths that are fixed for all eternity, even if I wrestle mightily with a nagging sense of homelessness in this world.
Yes, missionaries have many struggles with identity. But there is one who can deal with the legion. As we look away from ourselves and remember that our primary identity is found in our calling to him, we will find the grace needed to walk faithfully in our secondary callings.
Missionaries, let us remind ourselves today of our identity in Christ, of our place in the new heavens and the new earth. Friends of missionaries, please remind us also of these things. Let us not forget who we are, for only then will we able to truly serve the nations for God’s glory.
Last week I wrote about learning culture in order to illustrate the truth of God’s word. When it comes to the risky area of illustrating with, or building bridges with, Islam, we should affirm that some bridges do exist in Islamic theology, history, and culture that can help Muslims understand Christian concepts that Islam itself rejects. J. Nelson Jennings proposes that Christians should view other religions as being like a three-legged stool:
“the three legs represent sin, Satan, and searching… one must not view Islam as simply sinful and Satanic. Similarly, one must not view Islam simply as Muslims searching for (and perhaps adhering to) the truth. Islam, like all religious traditions, evidences morally sinful, deceptively Satanic, and genuinely searching (and true) aspects.”
I find this metaphor to be very well-balanced (pun intended). We need to acknowledge the reality that so many Muslims are sincere in their error, zealous for the law as it were, alongside the fact that Islam itself is a Satanic system of deception which empowers the sinful nature. This doesn’t open the door at all to Islam being a way of salvation, but still acknowledges that many Muslims are indeed searching for truth – no surprise given that Islam has inherited so much Judeo-Christian content, albeit by co-opting it for its own narrative.
It is with the aspect of Islam which is genuinely searching that bridges can prove to be helpful, rather than harmful. In building bridges, one seeks to illustrate the truthfulness of a doctrine by demonstrating that the hearer already adheres to an analogous or similar belief to that which they are currently rejecting. Put another way, building bridges is an attempt to seek those truth categories that already exist in a religion or a person’s mind and to link those categories with biblical content in order to show that biblical content’s truthfulness, goodness, and beauty. It is category renovation rather than category creation, an attempt at moving from shadow to substance.
Source Material:
Jennings, “The Deity of Christ for Missions, World Religions, and Pluralism,” p. 270.
Darius* and I were meeting in a cafe to conduct an informal baptism interview. Leaning on things I had learned as a young pastor in the US, I was asking questions to gauge his understanding of the gospel and of baptism, looking for clear evidence of repentance and life change, and also casting a vision for local church commitment – the absence of which is the kryptonite of church planting among our people group.
“Darius, you know that many who come to faith among your people refuse to gather with other believers. They refuse to commit to a church body and instead try to follow Jesus on their own. Because of this choice they can never become mature believers and the church cannot be built up and multiply here. It’s a tragic thing.”
“Yes,” Darius nodded.
I continued, “When you get baptized you are not only proclaiming your commitment to Jesus, but you are also proclaiming your commitment to his people, the Church, Christ’s bride.”
Darius continued nodding in affirmation.
“Darius, I know there are many reasons why other local believers are afraid to gather with others to worship Jesus and to be the church… but in order to obey Jesus, we must be committed to do this, no matter what. If you say you are ready to get baptized, are you also ready to commit to gathering with a body of believers for the rest of your life, even if things get bad?”
Darius looked at me, a little puzzled.
Then he asked, “Why would I stop gathering with other believers? It’s because of the church that I became convinced that the message of the gospel must be true. When I saw your lives, how different all of you are, when I saw your relationships with one another (and here he cycled through the names of our small church plant of locals and foreigners), that’s when I knew the gospel was true.”
Darius was speaking as if what he was saying was the most obvious thing in the world, seemingly unaware of just how rare this stand was among local believers.
“I am a believer because of the church. So of course, I will gather with a church for the rest of my life, no matter what happens.”
There it was, Darius had taken his stand. I wanted to ask him to say it again, or at least to stand up and give him a big bear hug. After three years of pleading with local believing friends to gather with others, and mostly failing to convince them to actually do so, here for the first time was a brother who simply knew it deep down in his spiritual bones – to be a believer means to not forsake the assembly. Here was evidence that if exposed to a gathering of the saints early on, a local could actually have the importance of church as part of his new-believer DNA. Here was a fulfillment of the Bible’s promises about the power of The Church Observed. It was like stumbling onto water while traveling through the desert. It was wonderful.
We were departing soon for the US, and we were asked to plan to move to a new city after our return. But our last time worshiping with Darius and the other believers included a kiddie pool in a kitchen. Darius confessed his faith in Jesus and in the presence of witnesses went under the water and came back out again, his spiritual death and life in Christ now made visible through the waters of baptism.
To this day Darius has kept his commitment to Jesus and also to his bride, the church. May the Lord raise up an army like him.
We reformed-types can sometimes be quite skeptical about the value of studying culture(s). “Why should I study culture? I know Romans one!” This was a response I got some years back from a like-minded friend. We had the same theology, but very different orientations toward the need to learn and study culture. This division among reformed believers persists, and it’s an area where greater clarity is needed in order to serve the Church in her mission.
On a basic level, one could ask a married man if there is value in studying his wife and her unique personality. The response should be in the affirmative! Yes, knowing your wife’s unique personality is an important way to love, cherish, and care for her. Well, one way to think about culture is that it is group personality. Knowing and understanding it equips you to better love your neighbor.
But knowing culture also allows you to powerfully illustrate the truth of God’ word. Notice the orientation here, because it’s vitally important that we don’t get it backward. The truth is coming from and grounded in God’s word, not the culture. The culture is used to powerfully illustrate that truth. This is the concept behind Don Richardson’s writing about redemptive analogies, of which Peace Child is one famous example. Missionary biographies are replete with stories of breakthrough coming when a missionary was able to explain or illustrate biblical truth in a category or legend the culture already had. If you have read Bruchko, you will remember how the legend of the return of the creator God’s “banana stalk” would lead to the opportunity to be reconciled to him again – the pieces clicked when the villagers saw the layered “pages” of the banana stalk as representing the pages of the missionary’s Bible. This is also what Paul is doing in Acts 17, illustrating the truth of God’s word through the Greek poets, such as Epimenides of Crete. We ground our message in the Word of God; we illustrate that message by knowing the culture deeply.
We still have so much to learn about our Central Asian people group’s culture, but there are a few illustrations that we have found that can help when a local objects to a certain biblical idea.
If someone objects to the idea that one can bear another’s sin, I like to bring up the old tribal concept of a woman for blood. If a man kills a man from another tribe, then honor requires the victim’s tribe to kill that man or someone else from his tribe, most likely starting a blood-feud. In order to avoid this, however, the murderer’s tribe can give a bride to the victim’s tribe. When a woman from the guilty tribe marries into the victim’s tribe, the murderer is counted righteous. She has paid the price for his sin. Her life is given in exchange for his.
Or again, if a local insists that Islam refuses the concept of substitutionary atonement, I bring up the accepted Islamic tradition that someone too old or sick to go on Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca can pay for someone to go in their stead. Muslims believe that as that representative is rounding the Ka’aba seven times, the elderly person’s sin back home is being forgiven. One man is paying the sin debt another man could not pay, despite Islam’s insistence that it’s impossible for Jesus to do this on our behalf.
Sometimes locals insist that the idea of a plurality of elders/pastors would never work in their culture. They insist that only strong-man style leadership is effective in the Middle East/Central Asia. But I can bring up the old tradition of tribal elders, whom the chief was obligated to consult for important decisions. My friend may only know about domineering leaders and dictators, but if he talks to his grandpa, he will learn that yes, a plurality of leaders has deep roots in his culture.
One more example. My local friends will sometimes brag about how Islam permits them to have multiple wives. But I can bring up their proverb, that a man with two wives has a liver full of holes. I can emphasize that the wisdom of their ancestors actually agrees with the wisdom of the Bible, against the polygamy of Islam. So who are you with? The Bible and your people? Or Islam and the culture of your conquerors?
These examples show how biblical concepts (substitutionary atonement, plurality of elders, monogamy) can be taught from the word, but illustrated with the culture. It’s not that the culture ever provides perfect categories for these concepts. But the very fact that it provides categories at all means the argument that these ideas are merely foreign or illogical (and therefore to be rejected) can be defeated. These preexisting categories become beachheads from which biblical teaching and content can continue to push more and more into the culture and worldview of our friends. Sometimes a category doesn’t exist and it has to built from zero. But often there is a category there – a legend, a proverb, a tradition – we just need to keep on digging. God’s common grace has left even the most fallen of cultures loaded with hidden bridges to the truth.
In sum, learning the culture never has to be seen as a threat to biblical fidelity, as long as we are grounding our message in the correct place – the Word of God – and using the culture as means of illustration and appeal.
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Sometimes Muslims will seize on Jesus’ favorite title for himself, Son of Man, as evidence that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God or that he didn’t claim to be divine. There is a passage where Jesus uses the title, Son of God, for himself. But here we’ll deal with the claim directly – Does Jesus’ usage of Son of Man mean that he is emphasizing his mere humanity? At first glance, it would indeed seem that this title is emphasizing humanity. Perhaps Jesus knew that people would naturally ascribe divinity to him, given his many miracles, and he wanted to guard against this? However, as with so many other questions, a better answer comes from reading the passage in question in the context of the whole Bible.
Jesus isn’t the only one who is the recipient of the title, Son of Man. Many of you reading this know where I’m going, but the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world have never heard of the book of Daniel, much less the vision of the Son of Man contained in chapter seven. Here is that vision from Daniel 7:13-14.
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed. (ESV)
In this passage, this Son of Man figure is pictured coming on the clouds of heaven. This is not merely a note about the mode of this person’s arrival. This is theophany language, phraseology used to describe when God reveals himself. Only YHWH is pictured coming on the clouds in the Old Testament. If the clouds in Daniel 7 are not meant to imply divinity, then, according to the scholar Peter Gentry, this would be the only time in about seventy Old Testament occurrences.
This Son of Man comes to the throne of the Ancient of Days, apparently possessing the kind of standing and glory necessary to approach the throne of God himself. Then he is given dominion and universal service (another translation could render this term as worship) and an everlasting kingdom. These two things, universal service/worship, and an everlasting kingdom, belong to God alone, as every faithful Old Testament believer would attest. But in this passage, the Son of Man is given both. Furthermore, he is mysteriously presented as distinct from the Ancient of Days, yet also possessing the unique attributes of the Ancient of Days. Sounds a lot like and the word was with God, and the word was God. Somehow distinct, yet somehow the same. The Son of Man is clearly presented here as mysteriously divine.
But how do we know that Jesus is alluding to Daniel 7 when he uses the title, Son of Man, for himself? Couldn’t he be using it to say he’s not God, as is the usage in Numbers 23:19? Maybe it’s just royal language like is used in Psalm 8:4? Or maybe Jesus has a particular affinity for the prophet Ezekiel, who is called Son of Man more than ninety times in his book? I actually find the linkage to the Psalm 8:4 and and Ezekiel helpful, though they are not usually mentioned in talking about the background to Jesus’ usage of this title. Apparently, the title Son of Man has Davidic-Messianic meaning as well as context informed by Ezekiel, the prophet who suffers in exile on behalf of his people. Very appropriate for the Messiah-King-Prophet who would suffer exile from God for the sake of his people.
But Jesus himself lets us know which passage he has in mind as the primary lens through which we are to view the meaning of Son of Man.
Matthew 26:63–65
[63] But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” [64] Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” [65] Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. (ESV)
Apparently the high priest understood Jesus’ allusion to Daniel 7 all too well. We also are to understand Jesus’ choice of the title, Son of Man, primarily through the figure of Daniel 7. This means that the title Son of Man is Jesus claiming to be divine every single time he uses it. And the gospels are absolutely saturated with his usage of this term.
Far from being a title that proves Jesus didn’t claim divinity, Son of Man is instead a radical self-claim by Jesus that he is with God, and that he is God, that he has received an eternal kingdom and is worthy of universal service and worship. So, if you ever encounter the objection that Son of Man is emphasizing Jesus’ mere humanity, take your friend to Daniel 7 and Matthew 26 and draw the connections. They are mysterious, yes, but they are clear.
Source Material:
Hamilton, Jim, With the Clouds of Heaven: The Book of Daniel in Biblical Theology
Disclaimer: My hope in telling this story is not to stoke controversy. Christian freedom exists for the sake of love, not for the sake of freedom itself. The issue of alcohol is one in which many believers will come down on different sides, and that is OK. Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind (Rom 14:5). I currently work for an organization that asks all of us to abstain from alcohol, and I do so willingly for the sake of the gospel. This story, however, tells how my first beer was among my Muslim friends, also for the sake of the gospel (and while with a different org). Theologically, I am bound by my conscience to thread the needle as I am convinced the Scriptures do: alcohol consumption can be done to the glory of God, but drunkenness is a sin. If it can be done for the sake of love and with a heart of gratitude, then it is good. If it becomes a master over us, it should be cut off. Believers, even within the same church, should have different practices based on these principles and their own consciences and struggles. My current abstention still gives me the opportunity to talk about gospel love and freedom, just as my first partaking did. How exactly did having a beer lead to gospel conversation with my Muslim friends? Read on and you will see.
It was late winter/early spring in 2008. I was a few months into my gap year away from college and working in the Middle East/Central Asia. My friendship with Hama*, whom I met in the music shops of the bazaar, was going deeper. We had hung out a number of times, in the bazaar, in the tea houses, and in the old public bathhouse – a cultural remnant in that part of the Middle East passed down from the Turks, who themselves passed it down from the Byzantines, who in turn got it from the Romans.
Hama and his circle of friends were not the kind of crowd I would have anticipated clicking with, myself a not particularly musical college kid who grew up a Baptist in Melanesia. They, on the other hand, were jaded wedding musicians. Wedding musicians, because their work consisted primarily of providing live music at local weddings, where local tradition demanded traditional melodies set to a techno beat by which the wedding guests could perform their hours of circular line dancing. Jaded, because Islam teaches that their work is unclean and forbidden. The mullahs (religious teachers) were not happy about the music itself, the way unmarried men and women held hands while dancing, and the way in which the continuation of this local culture put the people’s tradition in tension with Islam at every single wedding.
Given their reputation as sinners and drinkers, the wedding musicians were regularly denounced publicly by the mullahs in their Friday sermons, while these same teachers secretly approached them after hours to find out how they could contact loose women to sleep with. Surprise, self-righteousness and a system of works salvation always breed secret sin. Hama and his friends had a front-and-center view of this. So they were jaded, jaded by Islam and the hypocrisy of its leaders, and jaded by their destiny to be themselves bad Muslims just so that they could provide for their families. Yet what was to be done about it?
I initially didn’t think that Hama was very interested in spiritual things. He often railed against religious people, which left me unsure of how to share about my faith in Jesus. I had also received training that perhaps over-emphasized the need to earn the right to speak, which meant I felt I had to spend a long time demonstrating that I was different before I should verbally share the gospel. I later understood the importance of leading with the gospel in my relationships, but at this point, I was struggling to know when and how to speak with Hama about Jesus, and hoping and praying for a good opening. And listening, so much listening. Hama had a lot of processing to do after having returned to his homeland a year before, after six years as a refugee in the UK.
I remember the day the invitation came. Hama and his friends were going on a picnic in the mountains. They were going to bring the sunflower seeds and the fruit and the other essentials – and they wanted me to come and, specifically, to have a beer with them. Up to this point, I had dodged this issue as most of our time was spent in contexts where tea was the beverage. And while ungodly amounts of sugar were used in the tea, and it was strong, even addictive, I had been able to partake. But alcohol was a different matter. By this point, I had theologically arrived at the point where I believed that alcohol was permissible for some, but I was going to play it safe. Why take the risk? Why play with fire? That was where I hoped to stay. Before actually living in the Middle East, I had always thought that a life of ministry to Muslims meant abstaining from alcohol forever for the sake of witness. And I was ready to do that. Yet as I mulled over Hama’s invitation, I started to become conflicted.
Many of the normal, working people of our city drank alcohol, in spite of being Muslims. In fact, the majority of the men that I knew were social drinkers. The only ones who seemed to religiously abstain were the mullahs and their devotees – the Pharisees of the society, the whitewashed tombs, the self-righteous hypocrites. Who was I supposed to identify with? Would Jesus have a beer with the jaded wedding musicians? What am I supposed to do with the wedding at Cana and the fact that Jesus had a reputation as a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners? I committed it to prayer and chewed on it. What about my Christian friends in Melanesia, whose churches make this a hard and fast line for Christians? Nevertheless, as I prayed and thought it over, I felt that I should take Hama up on his invitation, that I should attempt to honor him and his friends by accepting their hospitality, even when it came to a beer, for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of love. Perhaps this could be a small way to demonstrate that they were not too far gone for God to still care about them. The savior had not come for the righteous, but for the sinners. I had become convinced that Jesus would indeed share a beer with the jaded Muslim wedding musicians.
So I went with Hama and his friends on their picnic in the mountains. I had my first beer ever while surrounded by Muslims in a country with a reputation for terrorism and Islamic extremism. Providence is not without a sense of irony. I choked it down and lamented the taste, but I didn’t regret the decision. As it turned out, beer would be the very thing that led to breakthrough in talking to Hama about Jesus.
Several weeks later, I was sitting with Hama in some kind of a restaurant-bingo hall. We were eating salty chickpea soup and losing consecutive matches of bingo when Hama held up his beer for us to look at.
“You know, the mullahs say that it’s not just the act of drinking this, it’s the substance itself that is unclean… What do you think about this? I’ve been watching the way you live, and you’re different from my friends in the UK and my friends here. You seem to be very religious, but in a different way. What do you think about alcohol being unclean?”
Here was my opening to share with Hama, the first time he had asked an open-ended question like this about my faith.
“Well, Jesus in the Injil (NT) teaches that it’s not what goes into a man that makes him unclean, it’s what comes out of him. It’s not all this external stuff like food and drink and clothing and beards that are the problem; it’s the evil desires in our hearts that come out of us in evil words and actions. True religion is about the heart, not about all these externals.”
That was it. That was all I got to share. One of Hama’s friends came and interrupted us, and I didn’t have an opportunity to revisit the topic that evening. But the next time we saw each other, two weeks later, Hama leaned over to me, wearing a more serious expression than was typical for him.
“Bro, I’ve been thinking for the past two weeks about what you said that night. About true cleanness and uncleanness. I want to know – can you teach me and my family the Bible? Would you want to do that?”
I tried to keep the surprised joy and excitement in my heart from exploding onto my face.
“Sure, um, I can do that.” Play it cool, man, play it cool. When I remembered that I’m pretty bad at hiding my excitement, I made an exit to the bathroom where I could be by myself, shout for joy, and praise God. One small nugget of truth, one small idea of scripture (about alcohol, no less), that’s all it took for the Holy Spirit to move in my friend’s heart.
When Hama dropped me off that night, I ran inside to get him a New Testament in his language. He gladly accepted it, and we agreed to discuss it the next time we met. Somehow, in the strange providence of God, He had used something I had never expected, beer, to be the breakthrough for studying the Bible with Hama. Hama later came to faith. We went on to use the presence of alcohol at mountain picnics and evening garden gatherings to be a regular springboard for evangelism with his friends. Jesus was faithful to work in Hama in the slow process of sanctification. Years later, he came under conviction that alcohol had too much mastery in his life, and he gave it up entirely.
Hama now lives in another country, and I live in a different city. But I still bring up what Jesus teaches about true cleanness and uncleanness whenever the subject of alcohol comes up among my Muslim friends, many of whom are eager to learn whether I drink or not. And now that I am under an agreement and don’t drink, I still get to proclaim gospel truth to them when I explain why I don’t: If God gives us a clean heart through faith in Jesus, then all foods are clean for us, and we are free to partake or not to partake for the sake of love.
The gospel is utterly different from man-made religion. Instead of working to cleanse ourselves of sin and shame, God gives us a new heart, which transforms everything. We proclaim this message with words, and we strive to model this with our actions and our choices. And that’s why my first beer was among my Muslim friends.
My wife and I are now many years into our journey of learning and using the delightful and difficult language of our Central Asian people group. Along the way, we have made some cringe-worthy and hilarious mistakes. I remember reading in CJ Mahaney’s book, Humility, that being able to laugh at yourself is a good way to grow in being less prideful. So in that vein, I present to you our list of epic language mistakes.
“Then Jesus sat down next to the canary and began to teach about the kingdom of God.” The words for shore and canary are extremely close! I said this while teaching in church.
“The squeegee is our peace!” I meant to say that Christ is our peace… again, squeegee and Christ are painfully close, hinging on a throaty “h” sound that is quite hard for us to pull off.
“Thanks so much for the monkeys!” When we were trying to say thanks so much for your hospitality.
“But where are the monkey’s people from? Where are the monkey’s people?!” I had not yet learned that asking where someone is from literally means asking where their people are, whereas another phrase is used for objects and animals.
“This is so tasteless!” I was trying to tell my friend’s mom how delicious her food was without yet understanding how an”ey” and “ah” prefix vowel reverses the meaning of an adjective.
“You are drunk!” When trying to say, “May your head be blessed!”
“My death.” Instead of “My husband.”
“I’d like the fat chicken, please.” Definitely meant to say the boiled chicken.
“We live behind the frogs of spring.” Actually lived behind Spring Apartments.
“How much Islamic Law should I fry for the rice?” Noodles, little noodles, not Islamic Law…
“Please turn to song sixty sixty.” The local believers never let me live this one down, snickering for the next year every time anyone in our group said sixty six.
(Singing) “I only want you, Tanya!” Who’s Tanya? And isn’t this supposed to be a worship song?
“How old is your donkey? May his years be long.” When trying to ask about the age of a man’s son…
In conclusion, please be merciful to those learning your language. And if you are learning another language, be sure to laugh. A lot.
P.S. If there are other language learners out there, please feel free to leave your own language bloopers in the comments for our mutual edification.
Yesterday was July 4th, our American Independence Day. It was also our family day of rest, so I chose to not write anything, other than posting a song, my usual practice for Saturdays. But I didn’t want to miss the chance today to write about one freedom I am particularly grateful for now that we live in a part of the world where it barely exists. I am speaking of the freedom to change your religion, to convert to another system of faith based on what you believe in the depths of your soul to be true. In old Baptist terms, this is called Freedom of Conscience. In reality, this freedom is universal and God-given, but in many countries of the world, including ours in Central Asia, the government and the populace do their utter best to prevent people from exercising that freedom, from leaving their religion, especially if that religion is Islam.
When my Central Asian friends come to a conviction in their heart and a confession on their lips that Jesus, instead of Islam, is the way, the truth, and the life, persecution inevitably follows. The first time I had a friend become a believer he and his pregnant wife were kicked out of their family home for six months, in the heat of summer. My friend was then ridiculed by his friends, neighbors, and relatives, who had been content to leave him alone when he was a non-religious drunk musician. After his family came to terms with his Christian faith, his wife’s family (upset about her new faith) took them to court, made death threats, trashed their apartment, and eventually ran them out of the country. Another friend had his father and brother pull knives on him when they found out he was baptized. Yet another was beaten by coworkers with metal rods, then after having his legs dislocated put on trial in front of his tribal leadership. This was after his mother and sisters refused to cook him food for years because he had become “an infidel.” Another friend had a gun held to his head by irate neighbors. Others have lost jobs, marriage prospects, and had to go underground for a season until things calmed down. Many have fled the country. None of my local friends have been killed yet for their faith, but it’s only a matter of time. I’m aware of a few local believers in other circles have already paid for their faith with their lives.
If anyone goes to the police or the courts to report this persecution, these institutions simply reply that this is a family matter and that the government won’t get involved. They will often imply that the persecuted really had this coming to them when they chose to leave Islam. While the government doesn’t usually instigate the persecution in our area, they certainly don’t step in to stop it, and sometimes they make it worse by sending the secret police to track down a believer in hiding. While anyone from a minority religion can convert to Islam in our country, conversion out of Islam is forbidden by the constitution. So the full-force of family, tribal, or mosque persecution can be targeted at an individual, knowing that no one will even try to stop them.
Because of this, I talk often about religious liberty with my local unbelieving friends. I regularly get asked what I like about America and about the West, and I gladly respond by talking about the radical freedom that anyone has to believe anything they want. Then I make a beeline to the source of this stunning freedom: the Bible. I’ll share how the West wasn’t always like this, but as the Protestant Reformation spread and people returned to the text of the Bible for themselves, this beautiful idea was recovered: that a person is responsible to God alone for his faith (2 Cor 5:10). No family, no tribe, no government will be able to speak for an individual on the last day. So why do they have a right to constrain someone’s faith in this world? They have no right whatsoever. Thus the principle of religious freedom spread from the text to the West and now to many parts of the world. It has spread so far that many of my local friends will even agree with me, saying that yes, it would be better to live in a society like that. But the relatives…
There are many ways to think about missionaries. Most of my secular peers in America might think not-so-pleasantly about who we are and what we do. “You convert people? How dare you?!” But drop those same Westerners into a monolithic religious society with no freedom for dissent and they will quickly change their tone. Their critique comes from a place of historic privilege, since they have never lived in a society where you could lose your head for disagreeing with the majority religion. If they lived in these oppressed societies, they would find themselves pining for human rights. Freedom of religion, it turns out, is the foundation stone of human rights. Missionaries are then, in one sense, the foot soldiers of religious freedom, and therefore of human rights. We spread this crazy idea that you should not simply believe what your parents and ancestors believed. You should consider the claims of Jesus for yourself, because you will have to answer for yourself on the last day. As individuals believe in Jesus, communities of religious dissent emerge, and it becomes more and more normal for families, neighborhoods, and people groups to tolerate diverse beliefs, and to even hold this kind of diversity as an ideal. Protestants have been doing this all over the world now for 500 years.
We might not see total freedom of conscience in our area of Central Asia in our lifetimes, but then again, it took the West quite a few years to get there also. Baptists were imprisoned and beaten relatively recently in our own good ol’ America. And religious liberty still faces setbacks every time a group of evangelicals blocks a mosque or a temple being built in their neighborhood (not to mention the threats rumbling from places like the Supreme Court). But to the extent that we have religious liberty in the West, I rejoice. This is a glorious thing, something worth celebrating… and exporting.
Still as meaningful as the first time I heard this song. By faith we know that one day we will go out with songs of joy.
Although we are weeping
Lord, help us keep sowing
The seeds of Your Kingdom
For the day You will reap them
Your sheaves we will carry
Lord, please do not tarry
All those who sow weeping will go out with songs of joy
The nations will say, "He has done great things!"
The nations will sing songs of joy
-"Psalm 126" by Sojourn Music
Entrusted to the Dirt 