This proverb is used when a local is overthinking or anxious about things that are just not that big of a deal. It might also be used for someone perceived to be a bit of a drama queen or troublemaker. There are enough real problems, the local logic goes, so don’t go making a dilemma when one’s not really there. Pretend something is a problem long enough and it just may become one. It’s not far in meaning from another local proverb, “He makes a fly into a bull.”
The practice of tightly tying a strip of cloth or band around the head to treat headaches seems to be quite widespread. I remember elderly villagers doing this when I was a boy in Melanesia. It’s also practiced in our area of Central Asia. Last week we were watching Little Women, a story based in New England in the period of the Civil War, and the mother made mention of this same practice. To be practiced in such diverse contexts it must be effective – as long as there’s a real headache there to treat, that is.
But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try — Ransom has tried a hundred times — to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre.
[W]hat Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex.
Lewis, Perelandra, pp. 171-72
This portion of C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy is quoted in a helpful new article by Colin Smothers on Desiring God, “Was C.S. Lewis an Egalitarian?” Like Smothers, I have found Lewis’ fiction to be very persuasive regarding the goodness of complementarity between men and women – that the equal value of men and women is in fact more beautifully displayed in harmonious difference rather than in flat uniformity. And that this good eternal contrast should be displayed in society, the family, and the church. As I think back to what has made me a convictional complementarian, after God’s word, Lewis’ fiction would be one of my top influences. If you’ve never read his space trilogy, The Great Divorce, or Narnia books with this lens, it’s well worth the effort. The key here is that Lewis is not a man imprisoned by the blindspots of his particular time. But as a self-proclaimed “dinosaur” immersed in ancient mythology and languages, he is one of those gifted to see through his culture and to see things more permanent.
Why would fiction, of all genres, be so convincing? Sometimes that which offends our personal culture-shaped logic still resonates deep down when we see it in narrative. Pay attention to which themes keep showing up in our favorite films and stories. These are the things we really know to be true, regardless of what our editorials and think pieces say. The sacrifice of one hero saves the many. Humanity really is worth saving, in spite of our deep brokenness. Troubled characters can make a fateful choice which irredeemably confirms their nature to be evil, and thus their death is just and cause for celebration. Sin must be atoned for. Men and women are deeply different from one another.
It’s hard to argue logically – or biblically – for complementarity in a way that resonates as beautiful in our current Western cultural moment. But stories and narrative can still very much show it to be beautiful in a way that speaks to our consciences and to the eternity in our hearts. Storytellers are therefore a crucial part of the culture wars, one aspect that we conservatives tend to neglect. This is likely one reason why Lewis and Tolkien are everywhere right now. Though long dead, they are some of our few really effective storytellers.
The point which Lewis communicates through his stories that has lodged so deeply in me is summarized by the line, “Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental one than sex.” In my own words, gender is an eternal reality that must exist in the nature of God himself, because it is displayed throughout all creation. Yes, it shows up – downstream as it were – in human sex and gender, but like Lewis says, it appears in countless languages also – both in their very structure and as they attempt to describe reality.
This point resonated so deeply with me when I came across it in Lewis because we also find this to be true as we survey human cultures throughout history and around the world. The reality of masculinity and femininity are universally recognized by the thousands of diverse human cultures that have colored this planet. There has never been a neuter society. Even allowing for great diversity in its expression, the principle of fundamental difference between manhood and womanhood – and the dance of cooperation and competition between them – is always there. Once again, the book of human culture is telling us something about the nature of the universe and about God himself. The reality of binary gender is bleeding through the pages of human culture absolutely everywhere we look.
This is one reason many of the arguments for egalitarianism feel so shallow to me. They present as overly-dependent on critiquing stereotypes from 1950s America. Forget the 1950s. Why would we need to ground complementarianism in such a narrow slice of time and culture? If it is indeed true, then our questions must go much deeper and broader. Why have the tribal and religious institutions of Melanesia and Central Asia been male-led from time immemorial? Why did the ancient Persians recognize the man as the leader of his home? Why have indigenous societies overwhelmingly structured themselves so that the woman’s primary sphere is the the home and the man’s primary sphere is outside the home? Why did the myth of the Amazons exist for the ancient Greeks, serving as a legendary inverse society? Why do so many writers throughout history find the difference in roles between men and women to be honorable, and we find them so distasteful? Have we honestly wrestled with why are we the global and historical oddballs when it comes to how we feel about this topic, and why we are so proud of that?
In spite of the egalitarian air that we breathe in the West, we shouldn’t settle for simple responses that chalk it up to The Patriarchy or the results of the fall. Differences in role and manhood and womanhood are clearly visible before the fall in Genesis 1 and 2, as they should be if they are indeed reflecting deeper eternal realities of gender. The New Testament continues to affirm the differences in roles even as it deepens our understanding of our spiritual equality. Yes, male domineering leadership over women is very real and very universal since sin and the curse perverted these differences and twisted the dance into a cold war (with periodic open combat). But the answer is not to attempt to be the first neuter society in the history of humanity. Nor to remake the church or the home into the image of a fictional universe where masculinity and femininity are temporary, fading things imposed by culture.
Instead, we need to lean in and listen to writers like Lewis who seek to understand the eternal beauty of masculinity and femininity. This will help us place the biblical commands for male and female roles in their proper context. We need some bigger backdrops for this discussion – the breadth of human history and culture, the universe, even the nature of God himself.
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Money dishonestly gained will either go to the physician or be lost in the end.
Local Oral Tradition
This local proverb speaks of the end result of money gained unjustly. It claims that such money will ultimately be spent on doctor’s bills – implying cursed health – or that it will simply be lost. Either way, it amounts to nothing, or to worse than nothing – to a net loss. The logic is simple: stolen treasure may appeal in the short-term, but in the long-run it is a curse. Don’t go down that road.
In this way this local wisdom tradition echoes Solomon in Proverbs 1:19, “Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.”
A recent situation in our city saw a trusted local believer deceive his mentors, convincing them to give him money to flee the country because his family was forcing him to marry a Muslim girl. Instead, he pocketed the cash, willingly married the girl, and told the group he wouldn’t be coming around anymore. If this brother doesn’t truly repent (if he is indeed a brother), then he will sooner or later find out the truth of these proverbs. The several thousand dollars he swindled will end up costing him dearly, much more than he could have ever predicted.
The first neighborhood my family lived in when we moved to Central Asia had two names, the formal name and the name everyone used. I first came upon the formal name when I learned to read the street signs (which everyone ignored). It was not a word I heard anyone using, nor was it a term every local was familiar with. Eventually, I found a friend who was able to translate it for me. Even then I realized that there was no direct English equivalent. This is true of many individual words when learning a new language – you can translate them with a descriptive phrase but not with an individual equivalent word. In fact, releasing the assumption that every word must have a direct translation is an important step in the language learning process.
The name of the neighborhood translated to something like “harvest collective.” It was a village term, hence some of my city friends not knowing it. The villages in our corner of Central Asia are wise enough to know that no household can handle harvest time all on their own. Or perhaps wise enough to know that even if they can, they really shouldn’t. So, there is a rotation, a harvest collective, when on an appointed day the whole village shows up in a specific household’s field in order to provide them with the needed manpower and motivation to gather in the crops.
I liked the concept as soon as I heard of it. It reminded me of our newborn days when I realized that my young wife and I really couldn’t handle that season of postpartum and exhaustion on our own – and yet the very way society around us was structured encouraged isolation and often prevented receiving help from extended family or community. I remembered when our oldest two were toddlers and the never-ending household work my wife struggled to get to unless another mom in our community group came over to lend a hand. Or more recently, as most of my peers have become home owners, hearing about the difficulty these dads are having in fixing up their homes on their own.
While healthy churches in the West and community group structures are providing an avenue for some of this kind of collective help to happen organically (and praise God for this), my sense is that more robust structure and schedule is needed in order to push back against the overwhelming isolating tendencies of life in the individualistic West. We may have good and godly intentions to help that struggling young mom or that busy working dad, but those intentions may need an actual structure in order to translate into reality. Or to provide the kind of help that is less a one-off and actually serves for the long-term.
The idea would be for healthy church communities to borrow some cultural wisdom and implement “harvest collective” structures, where they recognize the kinds of labor a household can’t or shouldn’t do alone, and seek to regularly share that labor together. For example, a group of six men from the same church agree to become a collective together. One Saturday a month they agree to all show up at one man’s house in order to help him make some solid headway on his repair or renovation projects. That would mean twice a year each man is receiving help from five other brothers. Even if only for one day, that kind of help could go a long way. Young moms struggling with loneliness, fatigue, and the never-ending needs at home could set up a collective where they are regularly showing up to help one another, helping with not only the labor but also with the discouragement so prevalent in that season.
Westerners faced with this idea might feel an internal objection along the lines of “but we’re supposed to be able to handle this stuff on our own.” Yes, that is the overwhelming message communicated by Western culture, one which we have ingested from our youth. And it comes with a quiet side of shame for those who wrestle with why they can’t seem to figure it out – which happens to be the majority. An honest look at the loneliness, overwork, and rates of depression in Western culture just might indicate that we have some structural problems that require creative structural solutions. Non-Westerners might respond with, “But that’s the job of the extended family.” Yes, the extended family has played this role in many parts of the world. Yet the world is rapidly urbanizing, and with that comes the breakdown of the extended family’s ability to provide the same kind help it has in the past. Even more important than this is the fact that the Church is supposed to be the household of God, the new extended family for those kicked out of theirs because of their faith – or for those raised in a culture in which only a shell of the extended family remains. My Central Asian friends are the former. Many of my friends in the West are the latter. I would not be surprised if this kind of a group even lent the church an evangelistic power. “Wow, look at how those Christians take care of each other in the areas I feel so very alone in.”
The expressions may look very different than I have suggested here, but I believe the principle is sound. Like Central Asian villagers, believers would be wise to collectively serve one another in those kinds of labor which a single household can’t or shouldn’t be allowed to handle on its own. In societies that relentlessly drive towards an individualistic life, this will require intentional structures. And some humility to ask for help in ares the culture says we should be able to handle on our own.
After all, it’s not like the harvest collective in Central Asian culture has been there forever. At some point some exhausted farmer was probably sitting around drinking fermented yogurt water with his buddies and blurted out an honest confession that the harvest was simply too much for him and his kids to handle. At which point his fellow villagers must have come up with a wise plan. The kind of plan which just may be due for a revival of sorts.
Some things are truly universal. Like kids that won’t stay in bed when it’s time to sleep, but repeatedly get up for drinks, bathroom breaks, random questions, stomach aches located in their elbows, etc. This aspect of children’s nature seems to be present no matter what culture you are looking at, usually accompanied by the raised eyebrows and sagging hopes of weary parents.
Cultures around the world have developed various strategies for dealing with this problem. Until recent times, it seems like one of the most common strategies has been to use the fear of some kind of monster as a method to keep those relentless kiddos in their beds. A child’s imagination is a powerful thing. And they are dependent on their parents for their primary understanding of reality. So it makes sense that some kind of bogeyman-by-night would be an effective tool to enforce bed times, a sort of evil cousin of the tooth fairy or Santa Klaus. Even more powerful would be if you could tie said creature to some kind of sound in the real world to add some “evidence” backing up this parental ruse.
In our corner of Central Asia, the creature of nightmares in fact turns out to be basically a giant rolling pin. Traditional roofs are made of packed mud and are flat. The way these roofs stay waterproof is by means of a large cylindrical stone, about the size of a big fire extinguisher, with a hole through its middle by which it’s fastened to a long wooden handle. After a rain, a man of the household would go up on the roof and use the Roof Roller to keep the mud roof compact, hence keeping it waterproof for the next rain. The sound of the Roof Roller as it is pushed and dragged across the roof would echo down into the house itself, providing the material needed to strengthen the grown ups’ sleep enforcement method.
“Can you hear the Roof Roller? It is on our roof, very close now. It eats children who do not go to sleep when their parents tell them to!”
The effect on the little ones is not hard to imagine. The crazy thing is that generations of children that grew up traumatized by fear of being eaten by the Roof Roller would go on to eventually be enlightened (“It’s… just a rolling pin?!”), then repeat the same method with their children, finding it quite funny, even. Humans are strange creatures.
It’s only in this generation, the first to be raised mostly with concrete roofs, that children are no longer terrified of the Roof Roller. Unfortunately, parents now have swung so far from the practice of their ancestors that they no longer enforce any bed time at all. They are amazed that our kids mostly obey us when it’s time for bed and only emerge from their blankets a few times for the things they “forgot” during the bedtime process. The most popular method of local child discipline currently is basically a form of anarchy – or you could call it kindergarchy* – where Central Asian toddlers are free to stay up as long as they want, drinking chai, screaming, and watching YouTube, until they eventually fall over, overtaken by sleep at last. At which point their relieved parents pick them up to plop them on their respective floor mattress. Given this philosophy, it’s not surprising that locals are having fewer and fewer children. Most of my peers grew up with large families, often having enough siblings to field a full soccer/football team. Young, shell-shocked families now are stopping at only one or two.
Needless to say, if your kids are having trouble staying in bed, I would not recommend scarring them with tales like those of the Roof Roller. Nor letting them run wild until they collapse from exhaustion at 2 a.m. There are better ways. How about some wise boundaries and kind, but firm enforcement over thousands of consecutive nights? It’s not easy, but in the end it is easier than what comes of children raised with no boundaries, or those raised by fear of bogeys and Roof Rollers.
Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.
Proverbs 29:17
*meaning rule by children, a truly terrifying state of affairs
When the axe handle was a branch of our own, we have come to the destruction of our home.
Local Oral Tradition
This local proverb speaks of betrayal from a group member using the imagery of an axe cutting down a tree, when the handle of the axe is, in a perverse turn, shaped from a branch of that same tree. This is actually pretty good imagery for what betrayal feels like. This saying also acknowledges the great fear and destruction likely to come upon a family when betrayed by one of its own. It is one kind of danger to be attacked by outsiders. It is another thing altogether to have the attack come from within. Anyone in ministry who’s ever dealt with a wolf among the sheep knows this danger, and likely shudders when recalling it.
Tragically, our focus Central Asian people group has quite the history of betrayal and treachery. It is one of the besetting sins of the culture that will need to be weeded out by the new gospel culture established by the Church. In the meantime, it is one of the thorniest factors often preventing churches from taking root. It’s hard to keep a group going when group members are regularly tempted to sell one another out for money, influence, or other personal advantage. The presence of actual spies – regardless of who they are working for – really doesn’t help either.
I’m not a huge fan of the “Why didn’t I learn this in seminary?” complaint. Seminary isn’t designed to cover every specific problem that might crop up in ministry. However, I will say that those heading into ministry could certainly use more training in how to deal with betrayal of the church – a practical theology of wolves, as it were. At least as Westerners, we are so optimistic and believe-the-best in our bearing that we can get caught woefully unprepared when a divider and traitor emerges. Betrayal from within doesn’t have to mean “the destruction of our home” as the proverb says, but if we pretend it won’t happen to us we greatly increase the chances of this indeed being the outcome.
When faced with a traitor, we have the great advantage of having Jesus’ example as he was betrayed by one of his closest followers. The presence of Judas, and Jesus’ interesting toleration of him, helps us know that betrayal is not only to be expected, but can be overcome and even used in God’s glorious plans. The church in Ephesus is also a helpful case study of dealing with wolves (Acts 20, Rev 2). If we let these examples inform our expectations of ministry, that will help. They can steady us in the great fear and disorientation caused if a betrayal occurs. And keep hope alive that no matter the level of destruction caused, treachery will not have the last word. The tree, as it were, may be cut down by the axe, but its downed fruit may just plant an orchard.
When we came to the field we thought that we were already on the slow track when it came to leadership development. Many popular missions methodologies advocate handing over significant authority to new believers very quickly, within a matter of weeks or months. Some even have unbelievers facilitating and leading Bible studies. These methods teach that the upfront direct leadership of the missionaries keep the local church planting work from multiplying and keep it dependent on the expert outsider. So, the direct involvement of the foreigner is kept to an absolute minimum, and leadership responsibility is handed over as quickly as possible. What of the biblical qualifications for elders/overseers/pastors? Often a new title is used to skirt these requirements, such as “house church leader.” It’s true, Paul never explicitly says that a house church leader/facilitator/trainer can’t be a new convert. Alas, play with language enough and you can get around just about any otherwise clear verse of scripture.
In this kind of atmosphere, we knew that we were in the minority with our conviction that we needed to spend three to four years pouring into local men before they would be ready to lead. This conviction came out of the desire to be faithful to leadership standards laid out in 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1. They also came out of ministry experience in our own culture where it really took two to three years to truly know a man’s character. We added on a year or so to account for the difficulty of “seeing” character through a foreign language and culture. Our context in Central Asia had also already experienced several waves of church planting implosions. One dynamic that was present in all of them was local leaders who were given position and authority apparently before their character could handle it. The Central Asian tendency toward domineering leadership combined with a Western missionary culture terrified of being paternalistic and the toxic brew that resulted poisoned many a promising church plant. We came to believe that three to four years would be necessary to push back against this tendency toward domineering leadership and to model instead a humble, servant leadership. If we were viewed as paternalistic by other Westerners, then so be it.
The fascinating thing is that even our slow track was not nearly slow enough. A couple years ago I heard a Central Asian pastor from a nearby country being interviewed. He was speaking of the tendency Western missionaries have of giving a church planter salary to local believers way too quickly, and in a way that sidesteps the local church that might already exist and may have important insight into why that brother is not in a position of leadership yet. This pastor spoke of the slow labor of love it is to see a Central Asian new believer mature to a point where they can handle leadership in the local church.
“In our years of ministry here, we have seen it takes about seven years for a new believer to be ready to lead,” he said.
Then he continued, smiling, “It took Jesus three and a half years with his disciples (and they were still a mess). Why should we in Central Asia be surprised if it takes us twice as long as it took Jesus?”
This pastor’s experience and logic stuck with me and I began interacting with veteran workers and other faithful pastors from Central Asia and the Middle East on this question of timing. What I found was a general agreement among long-term workers (usually those who had experienced a church plant implosion or two) on the wisdom of this kind of seven-year perspective. The response from local pastors was even more vehement.
“Yes! Foreign workers always appoint men as pastors and leaders who are not ready! This is damaging the church severely. Please take the time necessary, perhaps seven years or even longer, to make sure these men are faithful.”
This feedback fits with our own experience in our local church plant. By three to four years in, the men who came to faith out of Islam were indeed growing tremendously in their biblical knowledge and even in their ministry ability. But it was the character piece that kept emerging as a red flag. Tragic immaturity in interpersonal conflict, a willingness to lie when convenient, a buckling under persecution, a tendency to excuse certain cultural sins – these sorts of issues kept putting the pause button on our team discussions about moving these brothers into more leadership.
We could see these things because we were interacting with these brothers in their local language and involved with them in a life-on-life discipleship. Had we taken a more hands-off approach (non-residential, not in the mother tongue, Westerner not leading) advocated by much of missiology, we would have been unable to see these character issues clearly. And we would have appointed these men as pastors or given them pastoral authority, perhaps without the official title. As so often happens, we would have promoted a man in the “potential leader” category to the “qualified leader” category prematurely. And we would have put him in an extremely dangerous position.
Instead, we learned that for the sake of the church, we needed to go twice as slow. Has this been frustrating and discouraging at times? Absolutely. Many of us cross-cultural church planters are more gifted as evangelists and starters and find ourselves now in temporary pastor-shepherd roles that feel a lot like two-to-three-years for a decade. But what else is to be done? Shall we continue to take shortcuts around the biblical requirements for a leader’s character so that we can get back to the ministry we feel more gifted at? Should we continue the pattern of appointing men who are not ready, only to see their lives implode and their churches fall apart? What of the pressing demands of lostness around us? Can this kind of time-consuming investment in the local church be justified?
We must be willing to go as slow as necessary in order to see faithful local leaders raised up. We can only do this by trusting God with the timing, the adjusted expectations, and the weight of the lostness around us. We need to remember that the existence and health of Christ’s church is not in opposition to his plan to reach all peoples. In fact, the healthy local church is God’s means of reaching all peoples. Or are we imposing our own arbitrary timelines on God’s plan to reach a people group? The promise, after all, is for a believing remnant from each people in eternity, not that we will saturate a people group with the good news in our own generation. Should we aim for gospel saturation? By all means, but not as a promise and not at the expense of laying solid foundations for the local church. To do so would be to try to fight a war and to ignore the need for supply lines. As those who study warfare say, amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. An army is not judged by its ability to make a strong initial attack, but by its ability to sustain that attack until victory is achieved. And that involves a lot of less-than-exciting long-term planning, training, and preparation.
It may take a minimum of seven years to see faithful leaders raised up in Central Asia. It may take less, or more, in another unreached region. Are we willing to surrender our own expectations and dreams to see faithful men entrusted with the truth? May we not only be willing to go fast for the kingdom when necessary, but also to go slow, as slow as it takes.
A couple weeks ago the fall rains began. Overnight, the bazaar was transformed. Out came the carts selling cool weather snacks – large reddish beans seasoned with sour spice, turnips boiled in pomegranate molasses, fried flat bread with green onion mixed in. Suddenly, umbrellas, puffy coats, and space heaters appeared everywhere, bursting from shops which only a few weeks ago had been hanging up canvases to protect from the sun’s heat.
The high desert climate of our corner of Central Asia shifts quickly every year from too hot to quite chilly. We joke that we live in a four season climate of sorts – if you can say that an Autumn that lasts three weeks actually counts. It’s the return of the rain and the moisture in the air that accounts for this sudden drop in temperature and change of atmosphere. In the six months of sunny skies you almost forget what a cloudy day feels like. Then suddenly, mid October with its pregnant clouds comes upon you like a friend you had almost forgotten about, but whose reappearance brings with them almost a sense of waking from a dream. In the words of Theoden king of Rohan, delivered from Saruman’s spells, “I know your face…” The smell of the rain on the dusty stones is particularly potent in this regard.
The locals still live much more connected to the rhythms of the seasons and the skies than we do in the West. Thus, it’s the shift in the weather, not a date on the calendar, that seems to create the societal cues that everyone knows how to interpret. The rains have come. So harvest the pomegranates, prune the shade trees, make the cold weather stews, get out the kerosene heaters.
This past week I was driving around the cloudy city with Mr. Talent*, attempting to pay my various bills before we left for our medical leave. I remarked that the roads and the city itself were much calmer than usual, especially for a Thursday, the last work day of the week. I asked Mr. Talent why that might be. He thought for a minute before answering.
“I have five different friends who were unavailable today because their mothers commandeered them to help lay out the carpeting.”
Every year locals lay out a thin tan wall-to-wall carpet in their homes when the weather is cold, putting it away again when it gets hot again so that they can walk on the cooler tile.
“I bet that’s why the city is so quiet,” he continued. “The mothers knew today was the day to lay out the carpet.”
“That is fascinating,” I responded. “Look at the power of mothers. When they want to, they can change the atmosphere of an entire city.”
Mr. Talent laughed, and nodded his head.
If our theory was correct, it’s even more remarkable in that none of these mothers would have coordinated with one another to set a date for this big annual project. They would have independently intuited that it needed to be this Thursday.
“It is time, my son. No going out with your buddies to waste time smoking hookah this Thursday. I feel it in my bones. Time to do the carpets.”
The dutiful Central Asian sons of course comply, knowing the futility of protesting when mom is sensing the seasonal cues.
This proverb appeared last week as Darius* was over at our place, helping me with sermon checking, right around the time where I tried to make a point saying “that doesn’t mean it’s destiny!” and instead said, “That doesn’t mean it’s anut!”
Yes, if you ever preach in another language, I highly recommend checking your sermons beforehand to catch these foot-in-mouth sentences. It just may save your life – or at least your face.
Anyway, around this point Darius offered me some of the cookies my wife had set out for him. Then he started laughing and told me that he was offering me my own oil for my own mustache. As is usually the case when I hear a local proverb for the first time, I responded with a “What?”
This proverb is apparently used when a guest offers the host food or drink that actually belong to the host. Or other similar situations where a person is offered assistance by means of his own resources. It’s the sort of ironic hospitality situation that locals get a kick out of because usually such grandiose and over the top offers of hospitality are made. Another equivalent saying is, “I would like to invite you… for falafel!” Falafel being the very cheapest sandwich you can purchase in the bazaar. Delicious, yes, but costing the host practically nothing. Hence the joke.
Mustaches are a traditional sign of manhood in this culture that carry a respect of their own. And apparently oiling your mustache was/is a thing, though I have not gone deep enough yet into the local facial hair culture – or my Western peers’ for that matter – to know much about mustache oil. I either need to spend some more time with some old men in the tea houses or do more reading on the Art of Manliness website.
Some proverbs are used for tactful rebukes. And this one may be useful in that way, given the right situation. But I anticipate it being much more useful for the art of relationship building and the kind of banter that communicates friendship and trust are indeed growing – growing as surely as a Central Asian man’s mustache.
“You don’t have to point out what’s wrong with our religion. Deep down, we know more than you ever could regarding the dark things in Islam.”
This comment years ago from a Middle Eastern friend has always stuck with me. Over time, it has proven to be sound advice, wisdom that has been borne out in countless relationships with Muslims who are coming from honor-shame cultures.
I’ve never had a personality that naturally goes hard after polemics, which is the practice of highlighting the weaknesses and errors of other religions and worldviews as a method of thereby getting to the gospel. But when locals outright deny, brush under the rug, or just plain don’t know about the the scandalous or dark parts of their holy books or prophet’s life, it is awfully tempting to start attacking these foundations of their belief, even for me.
I am not saying there is never a time to do polemics. After all, Paul says that we “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:5). There will be times when we follow the Spirit’s leading into saying something true that makes our hearers very angry – let’s not forget about the example of Stephen in Acts 7. And sometimes a direct assault will land home and result in further questions. But let’s also remember the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4, where Jesus doesn’t take the bait of entering into religious controversy in order that he might more effectively speak to the heart of his hearer. Many times, arguments about controversies are mere talking points or smokescreens meant to deflect from the real heart issues going on.
The main issue I’ve faced with polemical approaches is that they risk triggering a defensive response, where someone is overtaken by the sense that they are duty-bound to protect their community’s honor from the attacks of an outsider, whether they internally side with their community or not. Westerners might feel this way if the attacks aren’t perceived to be fair and balanced. Those coming from honor-shame cultures often feel this fire to defend simply because there is an attack at all – fair or not. This means that someone who might otherwise listen to the gospel can go into fight mode if I start “dishonoring” the creed and traditions of his people – and then the chance to get to the gospel can be lost.
This is where my friend’s comment has proved to be so helpful. By sharing what he did, he let me know that things in Islam’s sources and history like child brides, slavery, wife-beating, the killing of Jews and infidels, the hypocrisy of the religious establishment, and the jihad-gained wealth of Muhammad and his companions are not only known to many locals, but can even keep them up at night. Many Muslims are already wrestling with these things, albeit quietly.
Since this is the case, I don’t have to go to these risky places of conversation early on in my relationship with my Muslim friend. When I share with him about Jesus or we study the Bible together, often he is automatically comparing what he hears with what Islam has taught him. And our conversation can keep on going since no open attacks on honor have yet taken place. Instead, a thousand indirect attacks are taking place and are mounting through the simple explanation and illustration of gospel truth.
Taking a look at how husbands are called to love their wives in Ephesians 5 or how Jesus calls us to love our enemies in Matthew 5 holds up a powerful contrast for a Muslim friend. He must then wrestle with this contrast that his mind is now faced with, the stark difference between texts like these and his own. In this way, polemics are in a sense happening, but indirectly, as a kind of open secret. We both know what is going on, but without verbally acknowledging it we have room in an honor-shame culture to skip the usually-required defense.
In fact, it’s not uncommon for this kind of beginning to eventually lead to an explicit discussion of Muhammad, the Qur’an, or those seventy virgins promised in the Islamic conception of paradise. But the respectful long approach to these topics and the relational credibility established by that point often mean a very different kind of conversation – one where my friend lets me know he’s ready by asking my thoughts on these topics, where he is free to share his own doubts and questions, and where I can say direct things, knowing that they will be heard in love.
There is also a big difference in this area between ourselves and local believers. We’ve found that local believers are able to engage in helpful polemics much more quickly than we are, because they are not viewed as outsiders. This seems to mean that the honor-shame defense mechanism doesn’t trigger in quite the same way for them as it does for us foreigners. This can go too far as new believers from a Muslim background do tend to go overboard with polemics – and at times forget to talk about Jesus. But it generally holds true that they have more of a chance than we do of having their attacks actually heard.
Now, when we’re on a visit and someone publicly goes after the reliability of the Bible, I want to still be ready to respond back with a defense and questions of my own. The door to a kind of “challenge-riposte” conversation has been opened by a local, and to not defend and counter would be viewed as dishonorable. However, even in this kind of context I will hold back on the most controversial topics, knowing that, unfortunately, those from honor-shame cultures can dish the attacks out, but they struggle to take it back without losing their heads. Alas, every culture has its weaknesses.
However, our usual approach to polemics is to go light and indirect, the equivalent of giving a man some roast lamb before we try to take his poorly-cooked rice away. Once faced with the choice, he will want to choose the lamb. But if rice is all he has, he will fight for that bowl of starch with all that he has. Instead, set the lamb down, let him smell and taste it, and then attempt the rice away. This kind of contrast – and timing – can make all the difference.
Entrusted to the Dirt 