3 Stories - but something in common

Here's a quiz question....

What do Chinese Taxi Drivers, a church in Africa, and some Christians in South America have in common?

Answer: some interesting 'conversion' stats!

Here is some more info on the three stories:

This week on Jackson Wu's blog he said the following:

"Have you heard any jokes about the Beijing taxi drivers? Here's one.

Question 1: How many taxi drivers are in Beijing?
Answer: Around 65,000

Question 2: According to missionary reports, how many of them are Christian?
Answer: 150,000

(That last number is totally made up.)

I wonder how many times missionaries have listed the same taxi drivers on their statistical reports as "making a decision for Christ." Any taxi driver will "believe" as long as you pay the meter.

Seriously, if you want to hear a typical gospel presentation, ask a taxi driver to repeat back what his customers tell him everyday. I did that once with a non-believing driver––asking him what other Christians had told him in the past. He beautifully laid out a clear traditional gospel presentation, probably better than many I've heard from a number of missionaries and pastors.

Obviously, there are a lot of false professions. Some simply want Jesus to bless them."

In the book "The Great Omission"(p44) by Steve Saint he tells the story that a friend of his shared with him:

"...entire neighborhoods have gone forward to accept Christ at evangelistic events...one day I happened to be with several of the local people when they had a special meeting to decide who would go forward at the next foreign missionary's alter call. I couldn't believe my ears! They wanted the gifts (often a bag with pencils and bible literature) and wanted the missionaries to come back again.  I asked one of the leaders how many times he had gone forward to receive Christ, and he said 'About a dozen times'. Then he added, 'If we all go up, the missionaries won't believe it. We have learnt that half or two thirds is a good number, to keep them coming back.' "

Some years back we somehow got on the mailing list of an American Pentecostal missionary who was attempting to plant a church not far from where we lived.

The first email we received was a report on how God was 'blessing' in the church - the evidence given was that they had just held a crusade and about 50* people came forward and made decisions for Christ.  A photo was attached of the small group in a relatively small room, and showing almost the entire 'audience' no longer in their seats but 'down at the front'.

A few months later we received another email.  Apparently another crusade had been run and a further 30* people had come to Christ.

Over the next couple of years we received a few more similar emails with similar figures.

The last one we received said much the same thing and showed another photo of the crusade event - they were still meeting in the same small room, there seemed to be about 30 or 40 present and yet again he was giving numbers that would mean that almost all in attendance had given their lives to Christ.

Either his church was losing people faster than they were 'being saved' or else it was the same people over and over again who were 'coming forward to receive Christ'

(* exact figures may have differed a little - these are representative figures from what I recall)

Whether its Asia, Africa or South America, 'mis-placed Shame and Honour' cultural contexts impact the life of the church and the process of evangelism and discipleship. A person can very easily simply be honoring the 'missionary' in order to achieve something entirely different than what the missionary thinks is being achieved. In a desire to sincerely lead people to Christ we can be sincerely  wrong in our approach and understanding....and thus seriously missing the mark when it comes to actually giving these folks the 'true' gospel.  The Significance of this is that if we don't give them the true gospel, we are hindering rather than helping them to true repentance and truly trusting in Christ as their Lord and the Saviour.

Although the taxi driver joke may be funny....this issue is no joke!  The eternal status of lives whom Christ died to save is at stake!

Mis-placed Shame and the New Universal 'wrong'.

Here is an excerpt of a segment of the Australian ABC news email I received today (emphasis mine)...

*Julie Bishop heckled by students at University of Sydney*


Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has been heckled by students unhappy about cuts to higher education while on a visit to the University of Sydney.

......
"[The students were] yelling 'shame' and talking about how terrible these cuts on education are going to be for ordinary students.

"Julie Bishop kind of just like looked bemused, she didn't look shameful at all, she looked proud of what she was doing."

As we (and others around the world) continue to delve into the social and biblical issues of shame and how it relates to the task of 'making disciples' of 'all nations', we continue to be interested to see the rise of 'shame language' in the Western world.  As the Western world insists on 'loosening' itself from what it seems to think is a Judeo-Christian heritage bondage, and in the process loses its foundation of God as 'absolute truth' and therefore God as the determiner of what is right and what is wrong, something interesting happens.  

Every human being (as a result of the Fall) has the capacity to know that the concept of 'right' is the opposite to the concept of 'wrong' - ie that there are such things as 'right' and 'wrong' in our world. However, those who refuse to believe God has the absolute authority to define 'right' and 'wrong' also insist that no-one is allowed to 'impose' their idea of right and wrong on anyone else as absolute truth (ie it is believed that my 'truth' is as valid as your 'truth'). 

What results is that those who share one particular view of what is right or wrong find themselves drawn together.  Subsequently each 'group' establishes what they believe to be 'right' and 'wrong'.  But because there has developed a mind-set that no-one can 'impose' their 'law' of what is right and wrong on someone else, a new 'law' emerges.  It is still a 'law' of right and wrong, even though it is not purported to be such, but it takes on a new form and a new vocabulary.  

It takes on a new form, because the only concept of 'wrong' that remains common across all people is the foundational capacity to feel shame, a capacity we were created to be able to feel if we sinned against God.  People fast realise that if no-one is willing to be pressured to do something just because someone else says they should, according to that person's 'law', the only other way they can put pressure is to make people feel shame.  So by default, 'shame' becomes the new universal 'wrong'.

This then becomes a twisting of the place shame should have in God's world.  God made us to have the ability to feel 'shame' (disconnected, separated, rejected, put low, disgraced etc etc) before Him for when we don't live up to His standard of living to honour Him, as articulated for us in the LAW He has given us.

But in Satan's schemes and our sinful state, shame becomes mis-placed (as John Piper said in his book "Future Grace"), and we become more concerned about shame before people than before God.  And instead of us feeling shame because we did wrong (ie break God's law), the shame itself becomes the wrong.  It becomes a way of saying to someone 'you are wrong in my eyes', 'you don't deserve respect anymore because we believe you have treated us in a way less than what we believe we are worthy of', 'you are disgraceful', 'we don't like you', 'you are not acceptable to us anymore'.  Yes it might still be linked to an act that the person considers to be wrong, but there is a new dimension, because the social dynamic is now preventing a sole emphasis on right or wrong according to God's absolute standard. Even though the person still may feel in themselves that something isn't 'right', they can no longer appeal on the basis of absolute 'right' and 'wrong' actions/behaviour (because they have destroyed any social concept of that, so can no longer draw on it).  However, they still want the other person to 'feel guilty' for doing something 'wrong', so what results is a society that says that if you do something that the 'majority' opinion at the time deems shameful, you are 'guilty' of doing something shameful.

This is exactly what I believe we see playing out in the news clip above.  The crowd of university students, had a reason to say why they weren't happy, but without realising it, they have become victims of what they believe are their freedoms to decide what is right or wrong, for themselves.  They have no (or little) knowledge of what God says is right or wrong and they don't want to acknowledge God's standard of absolute truth, so they do all they know to do, and that is to deem someone as 'guilty' for doing something 'shameful'.

We have seen more and more open use of the form and vocabulary of 'shaming' in Western contexts.  Have you?  We would love to hear your experiences.

Re-reading and Re-preaching through the lens of honour/shame

Recently I was discussing with Kenosi, our Motswana Ministry and Research assistant, about re-reading Scripture with an attitude of looking out for honour/shame type concepts and how they are everywhere.  The Scriptures come alive with new meaning and a massively greater relevance to life.

Kenosi was also sharing in regard to how he is preaching differently now, and how much he realised he was 'missing' in Scripture before.  He said he feels like he almost needs to "re-preach" all his sermons!

One of the passages we were talking about was the book of Job.  

We talked about the fact of emphasising how God shamed Job in the eyes of others - his honour via his wealth, health and status was totally removed.  He ended up scratching himself in an ash-heap! 

The culture around us in Africa often sees sickness as a shameful punishment for some 'wrong' done (ie in some way not doing what the ancestors want and thus they are not happy with you and have brought this 'bad' state of suffering upon you). So the story of Job is one to be reckoned with.  Even more so, when you realise that God didn't send the suffering as a punishment for Job to dishonour him. Rather the reason Job was 'chosen' for this suffering was because he was in fact honouring God very well.... God Himself said Job was "blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil" and that there was no-one else like him on the earth  (Job 1:8)  This was in effect the CV that God gave Satan as Job's qualification to be tested with great suffering.....

But for what and why....???

Among other things maybe it was to show Satan (and everyone else) that ultimately God is still supreme and worthy to be worshipped and honoured.  He knew more than Satan (that Job's faith would not fail), and He had a greater purpose than Satan (Satan wanted to destroy God's name and glory, but God did it to confirm His own name and glory)....and in the process grow Job's faith.  In the end Job said that his growth in worship could be likened to: before his suffering his ears had heard of God, but now his eyes had seen God. (Job 42:5)

This in-depth biography of Job that we have in Scripture is a testimony to the fact that suffering and illness, trial and catastrophe is not necessarily God's punishment and is not something shameful, but something so honourable that God uses it to display His glory and honour and as a tool to demonstrate his supremacy over any of Satan's schemes.

A great blog called honorshame.com recently also looked at the story of Job and the fact that God was also showing Job and others that Job's earthly honour was a gift of God by His sovereign power and not something he achieved by himself by his own righteousness. So it was God's prerogative to grow it, or lessen it, or remove it all together.  I would add that maybe he was also demonstrating that we must be ever mindful that any honour we have, though acclaimed by others, is never to be reliant on others, and that what others may see as dishonourable or shameful in a cultural way, may actually be what God sees as honourable.

Job did question God about the suffering he was under, and like those in the culture around us, he was trying to think of where he 'went wrong' in the eyes of God, and why he was being made to feel 'shame' - not least by his friends and his wife.  (ch 31)  But he came to realise that God's purposes were much bigger than he could understand and that because God is God He can do as He pleases, and to even think that God is doing this to 'punish' him was dishonouring God. We read about this in Chapter 42:6 where he says how he 'despises' himself (ie he is deeply ashamed of himself).  Even in his own eyes now he feels shame.  God has corrected Job's wrong knowledge and understanding about suffering with a new perspective, and now that Job has renewed his mind on this, even his own conscience is now accusing/shaming him - that he is not reacting in a way that equalled who he thought he was before all this suffering - someone who was honouring God.  His shame is not left there however, as he repents and 'shames himself' by putting himself, voluntarily this time, in dust and ashes and thus acknowledges his shame before God for judging God falsely.  Matthew Henry's concise commentary says : " "he abhorred himself as a sinner in heart and life, especially for murmering against God, and took shame to himself"

And then interestingly it is after his repentance in utter humility, that God actually restores his honor, wealth, health etc.  Proverbs tells us that humility comes before honour. (Prov 15:33) But, forever, he would remember the process by which his new wealth was given, and that any blessing or honour that came from it was all of God's graciousness and never of his own making. He was knowing also, not to assume he should have certain honour just because he obeyed God's law and wasn't doing anything he thought was 'punishable'.

I find this very interesting in the light of many aspects of honour/shame culture traditionally in Africa, but also in the Health, Wealth and Prosperity Gospel which is so prevalent here.  So many people will boast of their 'honour' and say how God is blessing them, but it is said in such a way that it is like they are boasting in the fact that they have been the ones able to make money. That wealth is then interpreted as God's blessing.  While God gives us skills to work and make money we must never forget that what we have is never of our own making, but must be received humbly from God's gracious hand.

I have for many reasons been blessed by the book of Job over the years, and yet again, this book is a blessing and a reminder of the perspective we should have on suffering, and also on the material blessings we are given and how that relates to the 'honour' we have in the eyes of our community and friends because of it.  In all of life, our focus and goal must be of humility in all that God sovereignly brings into our lives be it suffering or health, poverty or wealth, so that all the honour is ultimately His.

I'd love to hear any feedback of other passages you might have read from an honour/shame perspective and the new truths you have found....

Unexpected framed beauty!

One of the very big positives about living in an excessively dry climate is that it is really easy to produce terrific dried herbs and flowers - especially roses....those roses saved from the special gifts from my hubby over time.

We hang them upside down and they keep their colour as they dry - unlike the total disaster efforts I made back in very humid Brisbane, Australia!

We have all but run out of space in the normal place of hanging the roses with several bunches already hanging so far since moving to this house a couple of years ago.

So when the most recent bunch of roses started to droop in their vase, we needed to think about where to hang them.

When we moved to this house there were a couple of cup hooks screwed into the ceiling in our bedroom from some previous tenant so my hubby suggested that maybe we could hang the bunch from one of those....so we did.

With the creative touch of my wonderful husband the roses were hung with fishing line and they had a gold ribbon bow tied around them.  They looked sooooo pretty hanging in the corner of the room.

Then a short while later when I lay on the bed and looked across to the small mirror beside the cupboard, I was greeted with a beautiful new piece of art adorning the wall!

You see, by sheer co-incidence, from the angle I look at the mirror, the rich pink roses hanging in the corner of our room, are perfectly reflected in the mirror like a framed photo!!

It's like a double blessing of beauty - the real bunch hanging in the room plus a lovely new 'picture' on the wall to enjoy!

Thank you Lord for two opportunities to continue to enjoy the beauty of your creation of roses - even as they dry out!

'Been thinking about.....Tears

Over the last few years I think I have cried more tears than all the years prior put together - tears of pain, grief, helplessness, exhaustion, stress, confusion, sadness, hurt and even at times joy.  I was not normally one of those 'teary types', but POTS seems to affect one's stress tolerance levels and emotions in various ways and though still not what some might call 'buckets of tears', its been quite a bit more than 'normal' for me.

Today, while looking for something else in my inbox, I came across an old blogpost by Tim Challies on Challies.com in regard to how society generally regards a Man crying as shameful.....yet Christ wept!  I then recalled that some years back I had come across an article by Answers in Genesis on the Miracle of Tears.

And so it got me thinking a bit more about tears.... "Words from the heart that can't be spoken', as I saw them once described.

1. Tears are one of the very first aspects of life we experience!  And our infant years are filled with crying and tears as it is our sole means of verbal communication at first - a basic response to whatever is not 'right' or 'nice' or 'comfortable' in life whether its hunger, a soiled nappy/diaper or colic pain.

2. We will only be free of tears once we reach heaven, where we are told that God Himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes - they will be gone forever.  (Revelation 21:4)

But between our birth into this world and our promotion to the next, tears are part of life.  But are they bad, or shameful or to be repressed and discouraged?  I believe not.  

So how should I ... you, deal with tears - those of our own and those of others?

Tears are not Shameful....

1. Did you realise that Scripture actually commands us to weep?  We are to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.  We are not told to tell a weeping person to stop or reprimand them or try to cheer them up with laughter, but we are told to join them! Chapter 2 of a book called "Loving Well" by Dr William Smith expands on this. (I'd recommend the whole book actually! ...and until 2pm USA EST Mon 12 May 2014 you can download a PDF of it for free!) If God is instructing us to weep, and to obey Him is to please HIm and therefore honour Him, then weeping with others who weep actually pleases God and honours Him.

2. Jesus wept - he wept over the sad sinful state of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and he wept over the sad loss of his friend Lazarus, and he wept with his friends in their sad loss of their brother Lazarus (John 11:35).  If Jesus who always honoured His Father perfectly, wept, then it is definitely not shameful to weep.  Jesus didn't just tell his friends to 'get over it' and all the reasons why they shouldn't weep, He also wept with them.

3. Even though our society seems to treat Men crying as something 'weak' or 'shameful', men are not excluded from these situations, instead, if Jesus wept, here we are given the most supreme 'ok' for men to cry.

God made tears and the ability to cry

1. God made our voice, and the sounds we make of crying are ones, when emotions are such, that it is too difficult to find words to express them. It is a sound that comes from the depths of our being in times of grief, sadness and stress

2. Humans can cry - Animals cannot ......God made the way our body responds chemically to emotion and tears are part of that process. It seems from Scientific Studies that tears remove toxic substances from the body that build up from stress and that suppressing tears increases stress levels and diseases caused by stress. And so all of us, men as well as women, should not feel ashamed to cry.

3 Texila American University described various benefits of tears and then summarised them as "Tears are God's gift to us.  It's our holy water.  They heal us as they flow."

God notices and values our tears

• He stores them in His bottle (Psalm 56:8) - here is an interesting article about tear bottles and their use down through the ages...(although I don't go along with some of the mystical ideas of the author) I find it interesting Scripture doesn't seem to say God records our 'happy' times on earth, but rather our 'sad' times - those times when the sadness and pain of this sin-filled world overwhelms our soul.  It is a reminder that the effects of sin in this world and the pain that His creation has to endure because of it, is something that is very much constantly on His heart.  His heart is not hard to our suffering, but tender toward it.
• Jesus allowed (and did not rebuke or chasten) the woman to bathe his feet in her tears (Luke 7:38)

But we should not ignore that God's gift of tears can be abused and mis-used

- 

• a child for example may use the 'bursting into tears' to melt the mother's heart and try to avoid needed discipline
• some people (especially some children and some women) seem to have a greater ability to 'turn on tears' than others and can develop a pattern of manipulation or gaining sympathy

(NOTE: having said the above we must also be careful not to assume that a person is 'turning on the tears' just because they cry over something we think shouldn't be cried over.  To ignore or dismiss someone's real pain without properly ascertaining its reason is cruel, unloving and dishonouring to Christ. If there is an ungodly reason, there may still be no reason to totally ignore the person, but rather seek to help them but in a way that doesn't re-inforce the pattern but enables them to see it and overcome it....And it is thought that possibly a substance called prolactin is involved in being more likely to cry and women have much higher levels than men so are more likely to cry than men, with no negative intent.) 

• our tears can be unnecessarily prolonged in self-pity/self-focus or circumstance-focus instead of turning to God in our tears and focusing on Him and allowing Him to minister to us His peace.
• we need to watch our hearts, but also know that God sees our hearts even if others misunderstand
• I read some good advice that if you feel you need to really cry and its just not the time to do it or might be misconstrued, just hold off while you need to, and find a quiet personal place later on....but don't just always hold it in!  Recently Challies.com had a link to a really lovely article for mothers' day about a godly persevering mum who retreated to her bedroom to weep after a particularly stressful day...

If we are to follow, obey and honour Christ, its OK to cry: 

- for the lostness of the lost

- over our own sin

- with others who hurt

- when we feel grief, loss and the pain of that

because : 

We are actually exhibiting God's heart when ....

- we grieve for what grieves Him (sin and its effects of pain, hurt, loss)

- when we come alongside and care for those who are hurting as we weep with them

& We are allowing our bodies to function as God created them to, as we are actually allowing God, through the way He made us, to help heal our emotional pain.

And to conclude......

I was reminded in a devotional book by Joni Eareckson Tada recently (More Precious than Silver) that when at last we will experience freedom from the effects of sin in our world and in our lives and we will have 'no more tears' because of what Christ has done for us, He Himself will actually still bear the scars of our sin - He will be our Lamb but "as though it had been slain" (Rev 5:6)- He will still bear the evidence of what He suffered willingly on our behalf.  He will still bear the reality of the shame of the death-price that He paid, yet it will be those same scars that will be our reason to give Him the greatest praise and honour for all eternity!

May my, your, our tears not be something to inhibit or submerge or harden ourselves against, but something to experience as part of God's plan for our well-being and a reminder of His love for us, and a cause to praise Him for all eternity when while he still bears the scars of sin, we will enter the fulness of 'no more tears'!

- 

The Sheep Psalm

Here is another picture of me with my 'sheep' - gives you some idea of the size of it!  Imagine threading all those beads! - How many beads approximately do you think have gone into making this sheep? Post your answer as a comment and I'll post the answer at a later date. I might even send you a prize if you are the closest guess!

Anyhow, this post is not really about my beaded sheep, but the 'Sheep' Psalm......

As I recently once again read Psalm 23, something different 'hit' me, even though I have read it innumerable times before.

The Psalm begins with:

The Lord is my Shepherd

I shall not want

He makes me to lie down in green pastures

He leads me beside still waters

He restores my soul

He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

Actually 2 'new' things 'hit' me!

(Does that ever happen to you?.....you read a passage of scripture and somehow the same words seem to jump out at you, saying something you never really realised was there before!)

So I thought I would share what I discovered - maybe it will bless you too !

The first is this:

- apparently another way to translate 'still waters' is 'waters of rest' or of 'repose' where the sheep will not be frightened by the noise and rushing movement of the water but will feel relaxed (though they are not stagnant waters either)

- this isn't just water that is still, but a place that is still - a restful and refreshing, "no-stress" place.....and could we say, not necessarily a 'geographical location' but a place in our hearts and 'being'.

 (I am reminded of the command to 'Be still and know that I am God'. - no rushing - but quiet still restfulness.)

-I was then challenged that: if the Shepherd has promised to restore my soul and lead me in 'still' and restful places, and yet I feel anxious/stressed, I am not 'walking' with the Shepherd in dependance on Him through my circumstances.....I'm not on the path the Shepherd is leading - I am off on some side-track and trying to negotiate rough rocky ground in my own wisdom and strength and knowledge thinking I know the way through this or even worried that I don't, but rather than stopping long enough to see where and how the Shepherd wants to lead me, I struggle on drowning in my own effort. 

As I contemplated this, I was also challenged to the how easily we can also just follow other sheep rather than the Shepherd.  Advice or action from another sheep will only be helpful if that sheep is actually following the Shepherd in that area of their lives.  I am reminded that if another sheep has some 'help' to give or is walking a certain path of choices/priorities, and I think it sounds or seems helpful to me, I still have a very clear obligation to check out if it  matches up with the Truth of the Shepherd and His will for me.  (ie God's Word), and never just assume that because another sheep says something 'works' for them, that it is what the Shepherd wants for me.  There's lots of 'advice' to be got in our world today - through personal interaction or via the internet - even 'Christian' advice, but we still have to check if it matches with what the Shepherd says!  Yes, another sheep may help me see what I hadn't noticed/known before and it causes me to dig into God's word deeper and realise that it is truth that I need to listen to and obey.  But I have a responsibility to examine everything in the light of Scripture.

The Shepherd wants to lead me (even in the midst of rocky ground) on a path that is 'copeable' in HIs strength and peacefully walkable.  He wants to restore my soul in the midst of surrounding pressures that have got my attention and worn me out.  He wants to give me rest. And the reason he wants to lead me on his paths is.....

The second point:

....because they are paths of 'right'(eousness)  the best paths for me, but even more than that,

for His name's sake!

This little phrase "for His name's sake" I have recited umpteen times....but not until reading it in a different translation one day did it dawn on me that this little phrase actually means 'for the purposes of His glory and honour".....ie so that His name will be glorified!

Once again this is a picture of God doing all for our good and His glory....if we let Him!

....the problem is the likeness God gives to His children as 'sheep' is all too true....and its all too easy to wander and just function on 'auto pilot' following the sheep around me or thinking I can just plod on without taking the time to look up to know where and how to follow the Shepherd, and it will sure to be a path that is not 'natural' to me from my near ground level perspective.  But I need to look to the Shepherd, trust Him and His higher perspective on life now and up ahead, and follow where He wants me to be, and to pause when He wants me to pause.  Oh how much time we (I) can waste by not keeping in step with the Shepherd constantly ...and it doesn't take much to get off track..... where I am then prone to make matters worse by worrying about the place I have got myself! But if I stay on track - the track the Shepherd wants to lead me on- it will be the best track for my good and His glory and honour!

How do you relate to this Psalm and the imagery of sheep?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

If you are interested in the metaphor of Christ as the Shepherd of us His sheep, you might want to check out the following books:

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23

The Sheep of His Hand

All we like Sheep

Reflections from the Flock