Monthly Archives: August 2017

Social Systems Are Like Tofu.

My thoughts on all things missions related., Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I was having a phone conversation recently with one of our partners overseas. He has been doing some evangelistic work with a very poor tribe of people. He has not been working with this particular group of people for very long, and he was conveying to me the conditions they are living under, and the social structures they’re forced (for now) to live under. It essentially boils down to medieval serfdom. A family will work the fields for the landowner. After they’ve harvested 80 kilograms of cotton, they are paid about $2.50. In addition to the meager wages, they are also in debt to the landowner. They are living in legalized slavery.

Throughout the world, this is not an uncommon thing, much as we’d like to tell ourselves that the world has advanced and moved on from such things. There’s a lot of talk lately about social justice, and particularly about evil governments, and evil corporations, and evil politicians. In all cases we are talking about social systems, from small local systems to national governments.  All are social systems, but the evil part is where people get hung up.

Social systems are not evil in themselves, nor are they good. Social systems are amoral, meaning they have no morality in themselves. Social systems are like tofu. Just as tofu takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it in, so social systems take on the character of whoever is running them. If you have evil people running the social system, the social system will be evil. If you have good people running the social system, you will likely have a good social system, unless the good people lack knowledge or wisdom, or are incompetent, which happens.

Social justice activists are spending an awful lot of time trying to dismantle evil systems, and in many cases this is a good thing. However, if you dismantle an evil system but the hearts of the people are still evil, you are wasting your time.

I have spent a good amount of time this week pouring over video footage I shot last time I was in Africa. (I finally have the time to do so.) We interviewed several pastors, many of whom came from a background where in their younger years, they were part of the evil systems we are talking about in their respective societies. They were persecutors, drug addicts, witch doctors, people who were cruel to their wives and families. The common thread between them was when they had an encounter with the living God, and he changed everything. Now these people are out risking their own lives in a dangerous land to tell others about what changed them and their families, and gave them hope. I hear people say sometimes that their faith is a personal thing. That’s hogwash. If your faith doesn’t make a tangible difference in yourself and the world around you, what good is it? As James says, “Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You say you believe in God. Good! Even the demons believe, and shudder!”

My conversation with our overseas partner was informative for me, but also really got me thinking about how we are to handle these situations. In regards to the social systems already in place, the bible is very clear about it in many places. 1 Timothy 2 says, “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—  for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” First we need to pray for a turning of the landowner’s heart. If his heart is turned toward God, and it’s genuine, his attitude toward the people working his land will change. The second part of this is what praying for unjust leaders does in us. Jesus talks about this in Luke 6. “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

You see, everyone is running around trying to change everyone else, but change starts with us, and with the attitude of our own hearts. We pray for our enemies both because the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, but also because when we pray for our enemies, we cannot simultaneously hate them.

There may be other strategies we need to take to alleviate the slavery these people are living under, but to start them prematurely or to do them in lieu of praying for their enemies undermines the reason Christ came, that being “to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;” (Isaiah 61). Many are under the assumption that if people are oppressed, they are somehow angelic. I can tell you from personal experience from some of the places I’ve worked in that if you release a slave from his oppressor without taking the spirit of the slave out of the man, he will do worse atrocities to both his oppressor and the people around him than his oppressor ever did to him.

In closing, I’d like to relay a story from one of the interviews I did in Africa this year. The man I was interviewing hated Christians when he was younger. He would attack them and throw stones at them. One day, he came across a Christian and started beating him. The man he was beating continued to tell him about Jesus even while he was beating him. It’s this kind of self-sacrifice that changes the world. Not and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but praying for our enemies and telling them the good news even while they are beating us.

On The Road To Bulletproof- The Next Generation.

All things about Travel in Africa, My thoughts on all things missions related., travel, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

A couple years ago, I wrote an article about my wife’s experience as she moved through fears, worry, and difficulty on her first journey to Africa. I wrote about how the first time the gravity of what she was doing hit her was when she went in for her immunizations before going to Kenya. Here is a link to that blog.

https://southsudantraveler.wordpress.com/tag/immunizations/

Now it’s my son’s turn. In less than a month, he will be going with me to Ethiopia. It will be his first time overseas (other than the Caribbean.) Certainly it will be his first time to a developing nation. Whereas my wife had fears of the unknown, I don’t think my son even knows yet what there is to fear. That is a good thing. Fear is usually of the unknown, and when whatever it is you are fearing eventually becomes known, it’s very rarely as bad as you thought it was going to be.

Quite the opposite, I’m excited for my son. He is going to experience new cultures and languages, new foods, new continents. He is probably going to see things that can only be understood through experience. He is still in high school, but this will give him a better education than anything possible in a classroom. He is going to learn about the real world through experience. Being taught in a classroom is one thing, but you never truly gain understanding through second hand knowledge.

I suspect he’ll have a similar experience that I did on my first trip to South Sudan. I remember being on the plane, and suddenly “What on earth am I doing?!” went through my head. He’ll be alright though. I know he’ll come back stronger and wiser. I know he’ll see things perhaps that test his faith, but also he’ll see things that make him realize that God is even bigger than he thought he was.

This is the first of my children to travel with me. I have two more that are younger. My eight year old has already been asking for a couple years if she can go to Africa with me. I always tell her the same thing. “When you’re 16.” I’m excited that the day has come that the first one is going.

Coming full circle, in similar fashion to three years ago, I was in a Passport Health office taking pictures of someone getting a shot who probably didn’t want their picture taken. Fortunately for him, my son only needed three immunizations, and one of them was oral. His road to becoming bulletproof didn’t take as many needles as my wife’s or mine did. Lucky him.

My son getting his hepatitis A shot.

Two Bullets From A Filipino Policeman’s Rifle.

My thoughts on all things missions related., Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

In October 1972, Private Kinshichi Akatsu of the Imperial Japanese Army emerged from the jungle of  Lubang Island in the Philippines and burned the rice collected by Filipino farmers. Shortly afterward, he was killed by two shots from Filipino police. He was probably the last casualty of World War Two. Twenty nine years after the war ended, he was still engaging in guerrilla activity for an empire that no longer existed. Kinshichi had seen the information that the war ended August 15, 1945, but refused to believe that it was true. He and four other soldiers continued to fight, and at the time of his death, only one other holdout survived with him.

Kinshichi was living the epitome of a lost cause. The empire from where he drew his authority no longer existed. Consequently, even if he were to take the entire island hostage, there would be no victory for him. There was no Empire of Japan to hand the island of Lubang over to. He was wasting his life doing nothing more than being a thorn in the side of the islanders.

Now let’s change gears a bit. Romans 8:37-39 says the following. “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I’ve always wondered what exactly it means to be “more than a conqueror.” It seems to me that you are either a conqueror or you are not, but what does it mean to be more than a conqueror? The contrast of Kinshichi Akatsu’s story helps me to understand. You see, no matter how successful Kinshichi was in his activities, he was still a conquered man, whether he knew it or not.

In contrast, Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Jesus also says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” So it stands to reason, that if Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, then by his authority we are conquerors through him also.

This causes a conundrum for Satan. He is already defeated and holds no authority over those who have been redeemed. He does not have the power to create his own kingdom, and holds no authority in the Kingdom of God. His situation is explained beautifully in the book “I See Satan Fall Like Lightning” by Rene Girard. Girard says, “Satan does not create by his own means. Rather he sustains himself as a parasite on what God creates by imitating God in a manner that is jealous, grotesque, perverse, and as contrary as possible to the upright and obedient imitation of Jesus. To repeat, Satan is an imitator in the rivalistic sense of the word. His kingdom is  a caricature of the kingdom of God.”

So what does one do if your enemy has already conquered you and you hold no authority? You try to convince your enemy that he is not in fact a conqueror. If it is impossible for you to create victory, you attempt to limit the damage your enemy does to you by convincing them that they are not conquerors. How many churches refuse to walk in the gifts of the Spirit? How many Christians walk around like they are under the thumb of the enemy? How many Christians refuse to pray for God’s healing for themselves or others? How many refuse to fulfill the Great Commission out of fear? How many let the things of the world distract from eternal things?

We are more than conquerors because there is no doubt who the Winner is. Satan can never pull victory out of a hat. He can only delay his demise, and the longer we are convinced that we are not conquerors, the longer he will last. All he can do right now, metaphorically speaking, is burn the crops of the farmers. Make no mistake though. Just as two bullets from a Filipino policeman dispatched private Akatsu, so will Satan be dispatched in the end. Let’s start living like that.