My Pride and Joy

Having lived in Europe for almost three years now, I have to say that one of the most surprising things for me has been seeing the great amount of diversity found within each country.  When I came here to France I had a kind of caricature in my head as to what a French person is--a Red Baron mustache, a striped shirt and beret, pointy nose long enough to look down at the rest of the world, french bread and wine under the arm, and all thrown together with the grace, joy, and sadness of a mime.  All of these traits together, along with the general European look that I have come to easily recognize, and you have a Frenchman.  

Well, it turns out that France is just like America.  In America we have people who claim to be Texan, not American.  Here in France there are the same things.  Each region even has a dialect that other regions can't understand.  In the North, where I live, the people and dialect are called Ch'ti.  Unfortunately, this isn't the most cultured or diverse region of France.  It reminds me of the time I went to Florida to visit a friend.  I told him how surprised I was to see so many huge trucks.  I said, "I thought there were only old people and bikini babes in Florida."  He told me that in fact most of the people in Florida were rednecks.  Shocking.

Same thing here in Ch'ti country.  They are the rednecks of France.  Just two hours south of here, I can find a Parisian who looks a little like my completely politically incorrect generalization of a caricature of a Frenchman, but here in the North the people look like they just walked out of Sunny Meadows Trailer Court.  They are more likely to vote for the fascist, racist political candidates (The National Front) and tell dirty jokes to their priest than they are to smoke Virginia Slims and talk about Existentialism.  So, on Sunday, when my son was being dedicated at the church (a sort of dry infant baptism for anabaptists) and the Pastor held him up and said, "Now you're a Ch'ti, a real Ch'ti!!" my son started crying.

I've never been more proud in my life.

So I was just thinking about how learning a language relates to sharing the gospel with people in another country.  Of course, there are the arguments about learning the heart language of the people you want to reach, and tons of christian language aquisition materials saying that the language is the key to understanding a culture--if you master the language, then you give yourself the greatest opportunity to effectively share the truth of the Gospel.  

And I am in agreement with these statements 100%.  But then there is the objection that the real work of missions is spiritual.  It's isn't learning grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and phrases that we need to be doing, but reading the Bible and praying.  We need to be spending more time "praying people into the kingdom," as it has been said.  I know of some whose practice of missions is basically to set up a community that worships God, and as the people around them see their worship, they will turn from their sin and to Jesus.  I also agree with this objection, but not in the sense that is implied.

Why?  Because of Romans 10:13-17 and 18-21.

In the first set of verses I see a focus on 'hearing,' and that is physical hearing.  It starts with the statement, "for 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'"  Then, it describes, in a way, the reverse of the process that leads to calling on the name of the Lord and being saved.  And at the beginning  of that regression is hearing.  Verse 17, "for Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?'  So faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."  In order for someone to come to a saving knowledge of Christ, they must hear the words of the gospel. 

This is a very physical process that involves hearing certain phrases, propositions, and ideas, and responds to the truth of these statements with faith.  Contrary to St. Francis of Assisi's famous quote--"share the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words"--there is no gospel without words.  That is where missions and language learning converge in obedience to God's word.  A person cannot be saved without hearing the Good News in a language they can understand.  We must 'hear' in order to 'call on the name of the Lord.'

This applies for evangelism within our own culture as well.  I can't use the same words when speaking with a 90 year old as I can with a teenager.  Just this afternoon, Valérie's mother was reading a magazine and she turned to ask, "What does 'bling-bling' mean?"  One way that the church in America needs to grow is in sharing the gospel in a way that the hearer doesn't need to be a Christian to understand.  Words like 'justification' are rich with meaning for a believer (or should be, at least), but to someone who has never read the Bible or been to a church, the word means something different altogether.  We need to be more intentional about learning to share the message in a way that overcomes physical linguistic barriers to the gospel.

So, at least in one sense, missions is very physical.

But in what way is the work of missions spiritual?  Enter verses 18-17.

¹⁸But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for

   "Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
   and their words to the ends of the world."

 ¹⁹But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,

   "I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;
   with a foolish nation I will make you angry."

 ²⁰Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,

   "I have been found by those who did not seek me;
   I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me."

 ²¹But of Israel he says, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people."

Verses 18-20 show that just because people hear the gospel, that doesn't mean they will believe it and, "call upon the name of the Lord."  Paul says of Israel, "have they not heard?  Indeed they have, for '...their words have gone out to the end of the world.'"  The nation of Israel had been hearing God's truth throughout their entire history, yet they were still unbelieving.  Verse 21, "but of Israel he says, 'all day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.'"  They were hearing, but not believing.  We need something to carry us from simple, physical hearing to mysterious, spiritual believing.

That something is the Holy Spirit, and the answer to the question, "in what way is the work of missions spiritual?"

THE SPIRITUAL WORK OF MISSIONS IS FIRST AND FOREMOST GOD'S WORK.  Now, when I say this I don't mean it in a general sense.  I mean that when people hear the gospel and respond to it in belief, it is solely the work of God's spirit in election.  That is the spiritual aspect of missions.  Verse 20, "...I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me."  It is God, and God alone, who can bring a dead soul to life.  We are all rebellious, independent, and uninterested in finding Him, but He shows Himself to those who did not ask for him.

What are the effects of this spirituality on missions?  First, I have made it sound a bit like the practical and spiritual aspects of missions are completely independent of and unrelated to each other, but they are not.  We must do our best to learn the language where we are, but we have to remember that our 'success' does not depend on our level of fluency, but on the work of God's spirit.  Yes, we should have the goal of mastering the language, but the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to speak through the most broken Spanish/French/German/Arabic and change the heart of the most broken sinner.  That brings real freedom to a missionary's work.  

Second, this should bring us to depend more on God when faced with a lack of response to hearing the gospel.  Discouragement is a daily, if not hourly presence in the life of anyone in ministry, so this should drive us to the Lord.  The very things that are mistaken for the 'spiritual' work of missions--reading, praying, studying--should be the response of missionaries whose only hope is for God to work.  There is only one encouraging place to be when you feel like a failure, and that is in God's word and in Prayer.

Third, this frees us to see that our job as missionaries isn't to save people, but to sow the seed of the gospel and watch God save people.  Like Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:10, "I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory."  We can be bold and spread the seed everywhere possible, but without the pressure of trying to make it grow ourselves.  As one friend of mine once said, "I want to cast my net as wide as possible so that I can find the few fish I catch."

Again, I'm not trying to lessen the importance of prayer in ministry, it's just that I'm trying to see it in it's proper place, as best I understand in God's word.  If what I'm saying is true, then it should drive us to pray more and more, not less.  Anyway, I'm tired so I'll have to finish these thoughts another day.  Good night.

Relationships

So I need to clarify something from my last post--my wife is awesome.  And I'm sorry that she doesn't exactly look awesome as portrayed by my previous post.  Know that this is not a confession.  A confession is something you give after doing something wrong.  I don't need to confess, because I've never felt that my wife is anything other than awesome.  The only thing I'm guilty of is bad writing that didn't accurately communicate what I wanted to.  Anyway, I'm sorry.

I'm sure you remember my description of marriage, the words that every good Christian couple read right before feeling a profound nauseous shudder--"It's hard, but it's great."  For most people, the word 'hard' conjures up ideas of suffering and pain and guilt and regret.  The definition that I had in mind was something more like: "Not easy, in the sense of requiring genuine effort."  Actually, I wanted to just write, "Not easy," but I'm pretty sure I would have faced the same fallout as the last post.

In rewriting that section, I would say, "Relationships are hard, but they're great.  And the deeper the relationship, the harder it is.  But the more effort you apply, the greater the reward."  And keep in mind my definition of 'hard.'  

Every interpersonal interaction we have every day is in fact a relationship.  But the shorter the interaction, and the more superficial your knowledge of each other is, the more likely it is to continue without conflict.  For example, my relationship with the cashier at our local supermarket is great.   We've never disagreed about anything.  Ever.  We exchange our obligatory "Bonjour," she checks my food items (usually apples for Valérie and cookies for me), I give her money, and we say our obligatory "Au revoir."  That's it.  

But it's only that easy because of how lame it is.  If I really cared at all about her, I would invite her to eat dinner with Valérie and I, and after she left we would both give a huge sigh of relief and say to each other, "She's got problems," or, "She is SO annoying," or, "Do you think she is on drugs?"

Now, increase the level of intimacy to solid friendship, or even further, to marriage, and you have multiplied the complexity and delicacy of the relationship by a million.  I don't have to do a whole lot to convince the cashier that I'm a nice person, but my wife and my closest friends have seen me be a complete jerk.  The likelihood of hurting the cashier's feelings is a lot lower than that of hurting my friends' feelings.  And I'm a lot more likely to say or do something that upsets my wife than my friends, and it's not as though my wife is overly sensitive.  In all reality, I'm the super sensitive one who takes everything way too seriously.  Anyway, the closer the relationship, the more maintenance it needs.

This is because there is more at stake.  We've got more to lose should this close relationship turn sour.  So I say something stupid to the cashier and she thinks I'm an idiot.  Big deal.  Our entire interpersonal world is built on saying "hello" and "goodbye" to each other, and that's only because we're expected to be polite.  So I'm having a bad day and I'm rude to her even though I know it's wrong.  In the long run, who cares what she thinks about me?  I don't have to prove anything to her.

But the deeper the relationship, the more we've got to prove, or at least that's how it feels.  I guess it is unfortunate that we think of it that way.   We spend all this time and effort to get close to people, earning the right to be comfortable being ourselves around them, and when we get there, we find out that it's not true.  We can't be ourselves, because we are the problem laden annoying drug addict cashiers that we can't stand.  And it is only in these relationships that we come to this hard realization.

The shocking revelation that we are complete losers is accompanied by a call to vulnerability.  It isn't enough that through relationships we come to see our own faults, but God doesn't want us to cover them up.  This goes against everything in our nature.  Everything about our world seems to revolve around saving face or making ourselves look better than we actually are.  When I see pictures of smiling celebrities I think about how much their life must suck.  It must be awful to wake up with a huge zit on your face and know that you can't leave the house without covering it up because millions of teenage girls' hopes and dreams and ideas about beauty depend on your pretending to be perfect.  There really isn't any difference between that and Adam and Eve covering up their mistake with a fig leaf.

But why does God want us to be vulnerable?  First, because only when we're honest and vulnerable with Him does He get all the glory He deserves.  To the extent that we try to make ourselves look good to God, we steal the glory of His victory over sin.  Second, because only when we are vulnerable with God do we begin to realize how truly great our salvation is.  As I begin to understand how terrible a person I really am, the good news that God's mercy and grace are infinitely greater than my sin increasingly looks like "Good News."  Third, God wants all of our human relationships to reflect the first two reasons I gave.  In relationships, this means that when I cover up my sin I'm actually stopping my friend, wife, etc., from seeing the worth of God and the magnitude of His love for them.

Depression and Marriage

Lately I've been feeling pretty depressed.  I don't mean like indie-rocker write songs about how much the world sucks-depressed, but more like a general feeling that God and the world are out to get me and that in response I should stay in bed all day.  I mean, what's the point if I'm just going to be disappointed all day anyway.  Of course, this isn't a possibility because I'm married and my wife would never allow it, but nevertheless that's how I've felt.

Actually, my wife is the one who made me feel guilty about being depressed.  She didn't say anything like, "Get your lazy @$$ out of bed!", in fact, she didn't really say or do anything.  She understands that it is part of life, and especially when you are adjusting to a new country.  What made me feel guilty was that as the days passed and my sulking increased, Valérie started to feel the same way.  The more I became quiet and withdrawn, the more sullen and hopeless she felt.  Of course, she would never use the word hopeless.  It's too extreme for her.  But she started to see everything turning black along with me.  

I just finished a facebook chat with a teenager here in the village.  He asked me what marriage is like and if I had any advice for him.  Online chatting is hardly a medium worthy of such a sacred topic, but I wrote back, saying "It's hard, but it's great."  He was confused by this.  "What do you mean, 'hard'?"  

Only since I've been married have I begun to see the depths of my sin and selfishness.  Everyday there is some small revelation about how I'm failing to die for my wife.  After all, the apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives, giving themselves up for her as Christ did for His church.  I'm part of Christ's bride, the church, and everyday I act like I'm the most important person in the world.  And what does Jesus do?  He pays for my sin.  No matter what.  There is nothing I can do or say that His blood can't cover.  

It's this same selfless love that God teaches us through marriage.  When she doesn't want to go for a walk because "there's a lion in the streets," or leaves the cap off the toothpaste, or seemingly complains about everything (which I'm slowly learning is part of being French), God is giving me an opportunity to love her and give myself up for her--to overlook her sins the way God overlooks mine.  Sadly, I usually hold it against her and grumble about in my mind, but I'm learning.  When you're single, there is a real freedom to sin that isn't there when you're married.  As a single, you can take refuge in the fact that nobody really knows you.  It's pretty easy to keep the facade and portray yourself to the world as you want to be seen.  But when it comes to your husband or wife, you're naked.  Every blemish is visible.

What does this mean for me as a husband?  It means that when I see all of Valérie's imperfections and shortcomings, I have a choice to make.  I can either focus on those blemishes until they are all I can see of her, or I can be like Christ and see her as she should be, as she will be.  This is very difficult.  The more I can criticize her faults the more I can convince myself that I'm good, or at least better than her.  But God designed marriage to show me my utter failure in loving my wife, because that's how we learn about His love.

So, Valérie, I'm sorry that you have to suffer, but I hope you are learning as much as I am.

Valérie is Pregnant, or, I Knocked Up My Wife

Just covering all my bases.  Email, facebook, and now the blog.  Valérie is pregnant, and so by God's grace we will be parents by the end of August.  Words can't really describe the roller-coaster of feelings that I've been riding about all of this.  I've never felt so out of control and preoccupied for someone's health in my life.  And I don't even know the one that is growing in my wife as I write this.  But it is also driving me to seek God.  

My feeling completely out of control is only compounded by the importance of the situation I find myself in.  It's one thing to not understand what the cashier says to you at the grocery store, but to watch a doctor in a medical system that you don't understand hurriedly mumble and point at things in a fuzzy picture that you don't understand, and all of this in a language that you don't understand, is a lot more stressful.  Sometimes my stomach hurts because of it all.

Right before Christmas Valérie had to go to the emergency room for something about the baby.  Here is part of a journal entry I wrote while waiting for her:  "Right now I can only find comfort in God Himself.  In His love, His sovereignty, His character.  I know the God who created the universe, in all his power and majesty, yet here my only resort is begging.  I've got no eloquent prayers or reasons why He should be merciful; just begging.  'Please, God.  Please.'  It's my heart's cry."

It's stressful, and I imagine that won't ever change, no matter where I live, but I'm thankful that it all points to something bigger than myself, and that it's all heading somewhere.  I trust Him.  We humans are a hopeless cause in ourselves, but in Him we have everything.  And that's enough.

Stories Part I

Stories are something that I really enjoy.  I don't know why.  And the closer they get to being unbelievable, the better.  Forget the ones about having to pee in the woods because you were camping.  After all, everyone's done that.  But tell me more tales about my Grandpa evading the police.  Tell me them all, and tell them to me over and over again.  I love 'em.  But why?

Stories scratch the age old itch of communication.  They connect us to other people and other times, and even other worlds.  They give us messages in a way that is both informative and normative.  That is to say, it gives us practical examples of how we should live, and why we should live that way, or how we shouldn't live and why we shouldn't live that way.  When I think about the best books I've read, they have been the ones that made me 'experience' whatever it was that the characters were experiencing.  When the characters were tempted, I felt the temptation, and when they reaped the fruit of their actions, I felt the stinging consequences, and therefore understood the error of their ways and changed my life and made decisions accordingly. 

However, in this current period of human history, stories and myth are shunned for 'facts' and information.  The Enlightenment and the resulting victory of Reason over human experience has left us with few sources of truth and beauty.  We can only believe what dull textbooks and boring geniuses tell us, and our only justification is that they are smarter than us.  The average person can no longer trust his feelings and justifications regarding what is Beautiful, he has to double-check it with the definition of beauty that comes down to us from the ivory towers of the critics.  Even in the Church, especially my beloved Reformed churches, stories have been abandoned for point by point logic, as if the Apostle Paul were a robot and not a man.

This is a mistake because we as humans don't live in a world of abstractions and theories.  We live in the real world--one of flesh and bone and tears and sweat and blood and sin and broken relationships.  For the past 150 years we have heard about the progress of mankind, and how science and knowledge is directing us toward a better life.  But we haven't seen increases in the quality of life, just the quantity.  Sure, we live longer and are more comfortable than ever, but that just means we have more time to hurt each other.  There as many wars today as there were then.  It's obvious that this method of communication isn't sufficient by itself.  Alright, enough science bashing for today.  I'm just a little prejudiced, but trying to remain objective.

That's where stories come in.  They take all the abstractions and theories, and give them hands and feet, flesh and bone.  Instead of just reading the book of Romans in the New Testament, filled as it is with tight arguments, we can see that theory worked out in Paul's life.  They are complementary.  We read a commandment and know that we should obey it, but when we can read stories about what happens to people who disobey, or the pain God feels when we disobey, we have a more human reason and desire to obey.  It's like 3-d morality.

For example, the Hebrews taught their children to say something called the Shema every day.  It was something like, "Hear O Israel, the LORD your God is one."  It was a commandment that they teach it to their children, just it was commanded that they teach the law to the next generation.  But, these mandates were always accompanied by stories.  Why should you believe that the LORD is one, or not worship idols?  Because He is the only God who could send the plagues down on Egypt, lead the Hebrews out of slavery and through the Red Sea as if it were dry land.  Only the true and living God, the God of the Bible, could lead his people through the desert forty years and provide for them miraculously.  Only He could drive out the nations before them as they headed toward Canaan.  

And so it was these commandments, coupled with the stories that reinforced why they were trustworthy commandments, that have given all of us a reason to keep believing, even in the face of trials and persecution.  So don't be like so many Christians today who say, "the Old Testament was for the Jews and the New Testament is for us."  Learn about who your God is and how His power, mercy, correction, and love have guided His people since the beginning of time.  Read the Old Testament and remember that God still moves teenage boys to slay giants, and closes the mouths of lions--be they physical, spiritual, or emotional.

Hear, O Christians!  You who are the children of Abraham by faith: The LORD your God is one.  He wants to do great things with your life, and he wants you to tell His stories and give hope to the world.

Just in case...

...you were wondering where the title for my "Books! Check 'em out!" post came from.  It sounds a lot like Sir Mixalot's voice.  I guess "Baby Got Back" wasn't his only contribution to society.

"Fellas, Fellas, has your girlfriend the books?"