Recently I was asked to make a simple direct statement of my Christian faith. In response to this request I sat down at my desk and wrote out a confession of the common faith of the church, as I understand … Continue reading
There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”( After conversing with him a little while she said) “Sir… I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” John 4:1&19-24
“…what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” John 6:62,63
“He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water”.”…but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 7:38; 4:14
The Transformation of Religion
This winter in the month of January I was again among Hmong from Laos. Three Hmong Christian students soon to become pastors and teachers in their villages, Bao Her, Chinou and Tong, in their final year of studies, lacked one course to complete their B A degree. This course was the Gospel of John. I agreed to get them over this remaining hump so all day everyday for the last two weeks of January 2016 I took them through the 21 chapters of John, pastor Ben McClure translating.
In this posting at random I have chosen to share a piece of one of our discussions taken from John 4 complemented by two verses in John 6. John 4 records the story of Jesus having a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well in Samaria. The conversation builds from a simple request by Jesus for a drink of water, to Jesus’ biggest religious ideas – the messianic transformation of religion. The woman, a Samaritan, and Jesus a Jew, male and female, Jew and non-Jew talking alone mid day at Jacob’s well – this behavior in itself was radical. It was like driving a truck through the cultural barriers of the day. But this behavior was not nearly as radical as the teaching he gave her. Well into the conversation, recognizing a propitious opportunity had arrived in this surprise encounter, she seized the moment and put to Jesus the burning hot religious question of the day. No doubt this question had been smoldering for centuries among her people.
Restated in the vernacular the question went something like the following. “Where is the true religion to be found”? “Where do we go to meet God and where does God meet us?” “Who is on the inside circle with God and where is that circle to be found?” “Do you guys in Jerusalem have a corner on God or do we have the corner on God?” “Is our mountain the holy meeting place with God or is your temple mount the place where God is to be worshipped and prayers heard?” “And before you answer I want to remind you we have history on our side.” Our holy mountain predates your mountain becoming holy”. “This well you are drinking from here in Samaria was dug by Jacob”. This was the gist of her question.
Stated in the vernacular Jesus prefaced his answer with bad news before opening up the good news, which he signaled by the word “but”. “Just to be clear”, Jesus says, “be sure of this Salvation comes by way of the Jews, you guys do not really know what you worship any more but”. “But the time is coming and now is when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”. “Holy mountains and holy places are soon to become redundant”.
In a word Jesus is telling her the nature of true religion, is from thence forth, under going change. In the new religion that is now arriving on the scene, our text implies, the question is not who has the inside circle with God (the Jews or Samaritans), or where is it that the true worshipper goes to meet God (which holy mountain, holy city or temple). Nor is religion about where God hears our prayers and receives our worship thereby returning His blessings. Rather it has to do with the way of worship, wherever and from whomever it is given. Does the worship contains two things – truth and spirit? When it comes to religion (worship) this is all the Father is concerned with from henceforth. This is Jesus’ assertion. Of course truth has form just as it says in Timothy “hold fast the form of sound words”. But quarrying and storing these sound words inside of ecclesial sanctums does not guarantee their life giving soul regenerating power will make into the field of religious play. Sometimes they become the end of religion instead of a means.
No doubt the woman is attracted by this new simplification of religion and worship and so are we. She no doubt liked the sound of this new worship and we too like it even if we are not quite able to get our heads around it. It sounds good and it sounds right to us. But what does it mean? What does John mean by spirit and truth? What is invested in this new formula for true religion, “the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth”?
After reading and thinking about John closely, all day everyday for two weeks, chapter 1 to 21, the following is what I believe he is asserting in this new formulation of religion.This is what lies at the heart of his message. God has resourced grace and life, life eternal, for all human beings in and through the Christ. John’s unique doctrine, not formulated in the other Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), in a word, stated over and over again, is that Zoe Aeon, eternal life, is given to us in and through the Christ-messiah. ‘Truth’ formulates this claim in words so that it is proclaimed as gospel (good news), and Spirit refers to the power and presence of God whereby persons take hold of this gift of Life Eternal, believe and trust in it in the sanctuary of their souls, and commence rejoicing in it ( via the Spirit “out their bellies will flow rivers of living water” he writes). ‘Spirit finds the spirituality in the truth, i.e. that element in the truth that cannot be gained by mere attachment to a religious institution claiming religious prerogative and privilege.This truth is not synonymous with orthodoxy, dogma or doctrines which religions hold as alone right and true. It is not synonymous with displays of charismatic power or emotion, nor is it deductible through cool reason . The truth that John writes of here is embedded in that Gospel word Zoe Aeon that speaks life to the soul so that from thenceforth the soul rests on it. Zoe Aeon can only be spoken to us and believed. Its reality cannot be seen, touched, felt (felt like physical things are felt and known by the 5 senses), or proven by the existence of any external religious authority or power which we attach ourselves to. It enters us as word or truth via Spirit and awakens conviction and belief in our spirit and with this belief one’s being is refreshed and lightened so that gratitude and praise well up within.
Nothing in Jesus physical and miraculous presentation of himself, nor his presentation of himself as rabbinic genius whose withering wit and wisdom humiliated his enemies, concludes these things. Truth (re) packages the historical Jesus as the source and giver of life eternal*. And spirit refers to that phenomenon that occurs when this presentation of truth is carried past the level of a mere information, beyond rational or doctrinal understanding or displays of charismatic power, beyond the forms and foldings of ritual. Spirit takes this truth to the mind and soul where people believe it and in believing come alive in their spirits with joy and hope and freedom.
Like the woman at the well people continue to clamor for religious certainties, denominational and doctrinal orthodoxies where they can set up their camp and look askance at other encampments on the next mountain over. The religious and historical artifacts of these encampments, these ‘holy mountains’ fill the pages of history and protrude into the present. Jesus transformed true religion – a simple word of life eternal, gracious and free, has been spoken by him, through him, to all and when this truth, that transcends and defies all hard proofs, rational or sensual (empirical), comes alive in the human spirit then doxology (worship) occurs. Wherever spirit and truth embrace in the soul, whether on a mountain top, any mountain, on the busy street or a back alley, in the valley of the shadow or on a ridge with far horizons full of promise, there worship irrupts, like a spring of living water it bubbles up and overflows. This I believe is true to John’s Gospel. This is what he tells us Jesus is about. This is the transformation of religion he sets into motion.
Then and there, here and now there is a yearning for thee Holy Mountain, for holy places, holy temples, holy rituals and dogmas, holy men, holy times and holy traditions sanctified by the passing of centuries. All of these give women and men and groups a feeling of certainty and authority, and they mark off boundaries within which they enjoy select privilege with God. Rather than pointing people beyond themselves to spirit and truth, such religions become, not the means to a greater end, but the end. Precisely because these ‘holy spheres can be seen, touched, felt and directly experienced by the senses they sponsor dogmatic religion replete with authority, privilege and security most often at the expense of spirit and truth. All too often humans attach themselves to the power and authority that they can see and cease to take the journey where souls hold onto spirited truth in the embrace of faith, truth that speaks life to their souls. Jesus at the well chatting alone with a Samarian woman at noon day, is re-grounding religion in truth and spirit. Indeed the lesson is not ultimately an anarchic one, not withstanding the impending end of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus is not from henceforth destroying all formal religion and religious institutions. What He is doing, however, is putting religion’s feet to the fire. Do they or do they not serve as pointers and wittnesses to that One who is far and away greater than themselves, the One who alone is the source of grace and life?
* This phrase (found in about the 7th 0r 8th paragraph) “Truth (re) packages the historical Jesus as the source and giver of life eternal” is not meant to suggest that the historical Jesus did not possess and broker Zoe Aeon, the power of eternal life, in his trek around Judea and Galilee. According to the Gospels, especially John, He did. But looking at and experiencing this power the people did not get it. They experienced power but not wedded to truth of the Gospel (cf Chapter 6). They parsed the power from the Zoe Aeon truth it testified to. Without spirit and truth the peoples encounter with the power Jesus was brokering went south and worked against Him. In the Gospel representation John is putting these back together – very explicitly. First and foremost John is an evangelist! He has repackaged Jesus demonstrating that his miracles testify to him as the messiah who possessed within Himself Zoe Aeon and offered it to all people.
Wenzhou Seminary student body with myself after completing the “Keeping Faith With Hope” lecture series.
Harbin Seminary Masters Students – “How long can one listen to this American guy lecture until you must stop everything, turn on the music, and dance!”
Tasty and nutritious grapes, sold on the streets, and grown from the most rare and potent soils on the planet – the famed black earth of Harbin.
The world waits for a new idea – here’s one – portable street coal powered corn roaster … on the streets of Harbin.
Sofia Cathedral marks the Russian Orthodox Church’s presence in Harbin in a bygone era.
My book Existence and Faith (formerly Suffering the Tension Between the See and the Unseen) now revised, expanded, and printed with a new design.
Teaching in Harbin, China
I spent 2 weeks in close quarters with my Harbin students pictured above. The school is inside an industrial complex about 30 minutes outside of the city. Evidently, a wealthy businessman who was operating out of one of the industrial complexes secured an additional building next to his for the seminary, which operates incognito. There are two levels, undergraduates and masters students. The undergrads board at the school over the academic year while the masters students, all missionaries, pastors, and teachers earn their degrees piecemeal coming and going for two-week intensive stints. My interpreter, ‘Tony,’ flown in from Shanghai turned out to be one-third Barnum and Bailey clown, one third used car salesman and one-third evangelist. Zeal he had indeed but I left unsure of the degree he had faithfully attended to the task of translating. Noticing that from time-to-time he was taking too long to translate all the while hamming it up made me suspicious he was up to something. Fortunately, I had one student who understood English told me that my translator’s translations were really his own sermonettes. With this evidence in hand I issued him an ultimatum “wake up and smell the coffee and translate what I am saying or pack your bags”.
Both religious and secular bodies in the modern world are tuned in to human exploitation. Wherever exploitation of peoples is occurring in the world, in whatever form, there is to be found religious and secular ‘missionaries’. They show up like ants to honey and commence to run interference. Wherever human dignity, human rights, are being usurped reporters and missionaries gather in flocks mostly from European and American NGO type organizations and religious denominations. This is especially true in Southeast Asia. The modern world is ostensibly singing in harmony on this front. Human beings must not be used and exploited and stepped on. Their dignity must be protected, especially children, young women but also young boys. Included in this list are the poor as well as refugees. These and other categories of people are very vulnerable to exploitation. All mission endeavors attempting to head off exploitation are well and good to the extent their peoples, methods and motives are insightful and righteous.
Isan Girl Being Consumed by the Bangkok Night By Chris Coles
In a former teaching trek I was invited to a new seminary in Cambodia. I arrived in Phnom Penh a few days before my teaching assignment commenced in order to have a look about the city and also to work through my notes. Finding a Western breakfast spot I began to frequent it each morning and with coffee and food I went through my lessons spending several hours. One morning illustrates my ‘ants to honey’ point well. Twice during my breakfast study Western men showed up harem in tow for their coffee and toast. The first guy had two Cambodian girls about 16 and 18 then a second arrived with three gals following him like a mother duck with her ducklings in tow, the youngest no doubt could not have been older than 14. I am not a religious or secular policeman. No NGO blood courses through my veins. But he spied me off in the corner with my white shirt and black pants and brief case and became unnerved. Abruptly he corralled his teen harem and made a quick exit. Western do gooders have arrived in the bad boys playground and are spoiling the party. There are many playing fields where these skirmishes to protect the vulnerable occur. I have seen these at close range but as a spectator. My job is to think about what’s going on and seed my thoughts into my lessons. Insight and understanding are needed for reform.
In the following I point to one of the forces that I believe is driving a part of the exploitation occurring in the sex for money trade in Thailand. My language and conceptual grid is of course Western, those of whom I write are non-Western and their conceptual cultural grid would not name and explain the same realities I describe in the same way or with the same meaning. The window through which I look at and understand the problem discussed here is Christian and Western. If the reader has no tolerance for a little theology (actually theological anthropology) then there is no need to read further. Theology, as I am using it, allows for a different way of understanding the problem of exploitation of young women involved in a significant segment of the sex for money trade.
At the heart of religion and culture in Southeast Asia (especially Cambodia, Laos, Burma/Myanmar, and Thailand (Vietnam) is an ethic of reverence. Reverence to all authority is linked not merely to the cultural inertia of old traditions but merit. Merit is a, if not thee, engine propelling this ethic. Reverence as I am using it goes beyond respect and here is where my Judeo-Christian meaning grid comes into play.
Reverence in my tradition intersects the problem that the First Commandment in the Ten Commandments addresses. When the invisible but revealed Yahweh/God is not the primary loyalty humans always give their highest loyalty to a visible secondary power and/or person. This visible secondary power or person may be collective or individual, human or natural (nature). Here follows a praxis setting where this problem is discussed. It opens with a true story of a 25-year-old woman named Nittaya. I have taken care to be precise and not bend the details to my thesis.
With purpose in mind, with a friend accompanying me, I went in search of a chat that might clarify some things. Success was easier than I thought. I met a young lady named Nittaya on a street in Bangkok and talked to her at length and then met with her several times again and corresponded with her. She is/was one of a few hundred thousand women working in the lucrative sex for money trade. Like many she did not chose this work it was chosen for her. She was not trafficked but merely obedient.
She is a college graduate. Her parents are middle class. Her father is a senior (i.e. tenured) teacher at the high school level, her brother holds a PhD and teaches in the university. All of her four siblings married and prospered within their middle class socio-economic standing. No economic deprivation existed but her parents picked her and arranged her future in the lucrative sex for money trade and of course they received a weekly dividend. She could leave this work if a suitor/husband rewarded the family accordingly. By her own confession she insisted that she disdained the work and wanted true love and romance and listened to western music which of course elevates romantic love.
Culturally and religiously Southeast Asia elevates the ethic of deference to the highest level, far beyond the western idea of respect to the level of reverence. The roots of this ethic come from the dominant religion, (Buddhism) which continues to inform and shape culture. Children at any age, young or older, will do anything their parents require and because it is for the parent that the deed or action is done, no matter what it is, save outright violence or robbery, the deed or action is not merely justified but becomes an act of righteousness and a maker of merit. Merit promises metaphysical benefits.
I have no mind to pick on Buddhism and ignore the problems inherent in culture and religion in the West. I would rather aim my critique at an opposite problem. If Buddhism in the East seeds an ethic of reverence and deference that can be abused, ‘human’ in the West conceived as an inviolable individual with near absolute rights and freedoms can also be abused. Lions hunt in pairs. No doubt devotees on each side of this divide view the other as the greater social menace. But here my focus is on trying to penetrate the roots of a particular problem in Southeast Asia.
Here in this ethic, benignly called deference or reverence, is a hidden player that I now believe combines with others and drives the exploitation of young women in the region. For good reason the West has elevated the idea of the innate rights of the individual and while this is catching on in Asia it founders when it comes up against traditions rooted deep in religion and culture that form in children an ethic of absolute loyalty to parents (and authority) and require children to advance the welfare of parents no matter how able and prosperous they are. This, I am convinced, is one of the invisible roots that often is a participant in the sex for money industry in Southeast Asian culture. Most often this factor, more precisely this force, behind a young woman’s involvement in this work is subtle and ‘benign’ i.e. not viewed as abusive or exploitative. Nor is it necessarily or predominately physically abusive.Mostly it occurs under a religiously engendered ethic of parental obedience and care and it does not rupture filial bonds. And it is viewed as generating merit.
Understanding this (or grasping this) I believe shines light on the weakness of secular NGO type antidotes to this problem. This is so both because their measurement of exploitation is limited to harsher more obvious transgressions of human dignity and because they often do not grasp the religio-cultural root that is in the mix. If my insight has merit, and I believe it does (not simply because of one encounter but many years living and working here in S E Asia thinking and reflecting about the culture) then simply importing a more robust aggressive human rights ethic with its premise of the inviolability of the individual has limited effectiveness. The Western dogma insists that every person is enfranchised by God and nature with life, liberty, self-determination and dignity that cannot be rightfully violated or trespassed. It is conceived as inviolable. I am suggesting that this doctrine and ethic does not and cannot travel with ease too far into many cultures in the East without coming up against another deeply rooted ethic and doctrine that weakens. if not. derails it within certain contexts. The ethic requiring children to exist in deference, reverence and obedience to their parents and to exist for their parents, because these are rooted deep in tradition, culture and religious metaphysics, easily resists the career of modern Western “values” into Southeast Asian cultures (i.e. inside the family /parent contexts discussed here).
This is why some of the roots of the problem under discussion here are deeper than economic deprivation or greed. To reduce the antidote of this problem simply to improving the economy for the poor, better education and enlightenment about human rights and better law enforcement is not enough. The roots of the problem are deeper. Can we grasp that this problem does not vividly appear unrighteous within the cultures where it is found ? We see this movement of young women into the sex for money trade by parents as blatantly exploitative and unrighteous but many, if not most, people within these cultures see it differently. It is considered to be sort of like ‘taking one for the team’. Or, as one looker observed, the prostituting of a daughter is like an obedient son required to lay down his freedom and become a soldier. But because necessity and deprivation may not be involved these illustrations fall short and we must look deeper into the religio-cultural dimension.
The First Commandment, while explicitly addressing God’s claim on our highest loyalty, implicitly points to the problem inherent in human nature. Where this higher invisible loyalty is missing, visible loyalties gain the highest place. Something in nature abhors a vacuum and this vacuum lies near the nub and root of the problem. The Church knows this and cannot simply merge its mission with the secular NGO type mission work, although the church no doubt should embrace common goals where they exist. The Christian Gospel is the evangelical friend of the First Commandment rooting in humans a higher invisible loyalty, which in doing so subtly makes relative (while not destroying) visible loyalties. In this relativism the real antidote, I believe, is to be found. It supports, empowers and transforms the individual ethic and it saves mission work that is truly Christian from falling into ethical nomism and legalism that is rife in secular endeavors.
I lost contact with this young woman but she told me her story concluding with this phrase “my name is Nittaya and we are many…”
*Here follows a couple rhetorical and theological questions that I think are related to this discussion. Are we Western secular and religious missionaries simply assuming humans exist in Southeast Asia as ‘individuals’ by our definition, or a ‘universal’ definition, of what ‘humans’ are and what humanness is? And / or are we calling them to become ‘human’ by our definition. And if so can that be accomplished or fulfilled merely by an ethical campaign? Both the church and the secular world in the West and those enlightened in the East know that ‘individual’ is an imperfect conceptual construction of the human person. Even when ‘individual’ is balanced by concepts of community it fails to reach the Judeo-Christian Christian understanding of humanness. Secular definitions of human and of human rights and human freedom are not perfect, not without a serious downside. And they are not wholly synonymous with Christian understandings and solutions. I believe it is closer to the truth to state that ‘human’ is not something innate but something that is a project. And this project Christians believe involves us in a dialectic with an invisible higher loyalty. This distinction is not a novel one. Self viewed as complete in itself underpins the Enlightenment birth of this designation – individual. But many Jewish and Christian philosophers and theologians argue that human = human in relation to other/Other. I believe missions for justice, especially those that emerge from the Church must be chastened by this truth if they are not to lose their salt and become overly pedagogical, strident, judgmental and legalistic.
*Another distinction I think that is helpful in looking deeper into this problem and how it is met is to think about the difference between a rebellion and a revolution. All rebellions remain tied to that which they are rebelling against. Revolutions on the other hand discover a new truth that enables them to view the controlling party differently in their imagination. Looking at a controlling party through the lens that new truth provides serves to downsize the oppressor and open up freedom to reconceive the relationship on new terms. To rebel against parental ‘overreach’ (an overreach which I argue is one force behind this problem in Southeast Asia that we in the West call forced prostitution) is one possibility, one that I think is very rare and without a future. Another response would be for society to scold the parents and tell them they must shorten their reach and enfranchise children with more control over their own future. I am not saying this does not have merit. I think it does have some merit but it also possesses limitations and distortions because it would require a sea change in culture. What the church that is true to its Gospel brings to the table is a spiritual revolution that ‘accidentally’ undercuts the absoluteness of the position parents enjoy over their children especially as they mature into young adults.
Dr. Daniel giving the students parting remarks wearing the Karen Shirt made and gifted by the students.
This fall I taught at four different schools two in China nearly 1600 miles apart and two along the Thai – Myanmar (Burma) Border about 80 miles apart. I started out in Harbin a beautiful city of about ten million people in the northeastern corner of China above the Korean Peninsula a stone’s throw from Siberia. From Harbin I went to Wenzhou and then after finishing there I flew to Bangkok and onto Mae Sot, Thailand where I served Hill Light Theological Seminary followed by KKBBSC inside Mae La Refugee Camp. In each setting I taught ethics courses. In this posting I provide my readers with a synopsis of some of the ideas that composed my teaching. In a later post I will explore some of my experiences and reflections on the schools and their cultures.
My thesis was that Christian ethics is a bottom up, inside out phenomenon – the ethic i.e. the way we are to live in the world first has its source in God’s ethic with us. In and through the Gospel of Christ God gives us three things – faith, hope and love nothing more nothing less. Each of these reaches us as a gifts we are freed to receive and enjoy and then once these take spiritual residence, if only a little, within us they are to become our ethical way in the world. Rather than a milquetoast, toothless grandma kind of ethics I set out to show just the opposite.
Dr. Daniel at HLTS preaching during chapel “With Peter Walking on Water Everyday: the Science of Faith.”
Faith in things unseen (“we walk by faith and not by sight” 2 Corinthians 5:7) is the mother of reverence because faith by its nature reverences the ‘hiddeness’ of God and God’s ways and respect for all things that God has clothed in subtly and wrapped with invisibility in this world. Faith does not need to see to believe. More over the reality of things unseen supports, informs and exceeds that of things seen. The sin of this generation especially in the West and in America is that of profanity and arrogance. We walk with a heavy foot and measure everything by the length of our reason and our immediate direct experience. We believe that what we see is what we get and we tend to baptize every pleasure as a simple good and every experience where the brokenness of life impinges on us as a simply bad. All mystery has fled from our eyes.
It is true that Christian faith is nourished not merely by respect for a hidden mystery embedded in life but draws from the Apostolic revelation of the reconciliation of life with Life, with God and good. Standing at the cross roads of history, in time the Apostles saw that Christ reconciled the world to God and connected it to new hope. Drawing from this source faith gathers into itself not only reverence but also joy and expectation and also courage in the face of all that would argue that life is irreconcilably broken and fickle.
Hope in those better things Christ has secured spoken of in the Lord’s Prayer “… our Father who are in heaven.. your kingdom come on earth…” is the mother of restraint. The real power needed to exercise restraint, whether it is in regards to gaining wealth or experiencing pleasure or reigning in anxiety over one’s problems comes not from religious or Biblical imperatives. The law, any law, is long on what we should do and short on the power to do it. The promise of bigger and better things coming extended to us in the Gospel, once we believe in them, downsizes the magnitude of the problems and pleasures of the present. Before a person is connected by faith to hope the problems and pleasures of the present almost always become the be all and end all. After hope they are less significant. Before the coming of hope we free fall into the present good or bad that faces us but after hope we are able to transcend the idolatry endemic in the present. Whenever the present and its experience is everything, whatever face it wears – good, bad or ugly, idolatry is born. But standing in the present in the grip of bigger and better things promised and coming we are able to emancipate ourselves if not in body always in spirit.
Dr. Daniel teaching the senior class – Ten Faces of the Ethic of Love.
Love is often made into an impossible spiritual imperative, something we must do and be. But when love is first understood as something we receive a new freedom and power for love is released in us and in the world if only a little. The wheel that turns every other wheel is in God and God’s way with us in Christ. Love first received from others but ultimately from God empowers the freedom to turn from the preoccupation with self and outward toward others to lift up others.
None of the students had ever thought of Christian ethics as consistently grounded and informed in this way. Nevertheless, they took to it and some of them with great enthusiasm realizing the power and freedom it carried.
PICTURES ARE TAKEN AT HILL LIGHT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY which is located in Huay Nam Khun (Klee Thoo Klo in Karen) a Thai-Karen village about twenty minutes drive south from Mae Sot Thailand, a town ALONG the Thai – Burma (Myanmar) Border.
Spring 2015 Mission Report: Part Four
If a hot shot TV preacher said it, I would reward him with a cynical grin, but it was Huldrych Zwingli in the 1520’s. Zwingli, a German Swiss who was among the finest minds in the Protestant Reformation wrote, “dare to do something great for God”. These words coming from this man provoked in me a rethink about ethics. First when I read Zwingli’s dare I thought about it theologically but several months later by happenstance I thought about someone who took Zwingli’s dare. First here in this report I follow with a few reflections on Zwingli’s assertion then I turn to a story about the transformation of an elephant corral that incarnated ‘Zwingli’s dare’.
In this statement “dare to do something great for God” I believe that Zwingli grasped the intersection between faith and ethics/service. When a person believes and acts from faith one does not view herself so close to God that she is a glove and God the hand and not so far away that its all about human free will and determination. In my reckoning, Zwingli, more than John Calvin, who came to dominate the Reformed branch of the Reformation, recognized the human ‘space’ and freedom that living by faith inserted into our service to God and others. When Ethics/service arise out of faith there is room for the human to be human and dare to do something for God and this daring to do something ‘great’ need not be the door to toxic independence, misguided visions of grandeur, pride, presumption, activism and willfulness but the space needed for a person to recognize and respond to a higher claim on herself to serve the Christ of God in the face of human need and suffering. The uncertainty and blindness that clings to faith (because faith by its very nature cannot exorcise uncertainty and blindness) protects and underwrites human ethical decision and action. In the end the person himself must transit from convictions and feelings of compassion, whether strong or weak and decide and act for a thing if help and change are to occur. This does not mean the hidden God is not before an endeavor preparing the way, in it and and following after it but ethics turns on driving a wedge of distinction between our and the subtle work of the invisible God.
Is it impossible, in some sense, for God to be delighted, even surprised? Is there room in the way of faith for us to irrupt in ecstatic gratitude and zeal and decide to give our best to serve God in the face of human need and suffering.The freedom of the woman befriended and liberated by Christ described in the Gospels comes to mind. In her heart she conceived a costly – great gift, one that mirrored her gratitude to Christ for his grace to her. Overflowing with thankfulness she went in search of very precious perfume and upon finding it she no doubt spent all she had to purchase it only to pour out every drop on Jesus anointing and washing his feet. Touched by human need and suffering, often grasped, like this woman was, by the goodness and gracious of God to her, humans time and again have gone beyond their inhibitions and limitations and beyond their instincts to make the primary focus of their lives taking care of themselves and prospering and dared to do something great for God that cost them their all.
I stumbled on this Zwingli quote late in November (2014) whilst giving lectures on Christian Ethics in China but it wasn’t till this spring that it moved from the realm of idea into form. In May I went on a little trek to discover other mission projects in Thailand and without planning to I happened on Dr. McLean’s work. About the second day of four perusing the grounds where his mission occurred, reading placards and monuments and chatting with people Zwingli’s statement suddenly pushed itself back into my mind. With a rush of emotion I realized that I was seeing an incarnation of Zwingli’s spirited assertion.
Life is so short, for most people it is spent frantically trying to take care of themselves, secure, build and expand their nests on this earth. This of course is not a bad thing because from these settled abodes and livelihoods many sponsor indispensable help to humanitarian and Christian missions. But the following story of Dr. McKean stirs my blood because in a raw and real way, faced with human need he stood in the ethical gap where nothing is forced, required or necessary and dared to do something great for God in Christ’s service. Here follows a synopsis of his story.
It may not be exactly precise to state that Christianity came to Thailand first in Chiang Mai but the mission work that came to Chiang Mai in the 19th century laid an early decisive foundation for Christianity’s future in Thailand and it was holistic from the get go. Not only Gospel teaching and evangelism but education and health were in the mix. Around the turn of the century somewhere between the late 1890’s and 1900 a missionary doctor and a couple nurses working with what is now named The Church of Christ opened an outreach clinic near a bridge at the edge of the city where lepers congregated. From this meeting the great need and suffering of the lepers became vividly apparent. Leprosy was three diseases in one. It created social rejection and isolation because the nearest and dearest of the lepers’ kin cleaved from them. It ended one’s vocational and economic capacity creating desperate poverty and it cruelly deformed and severely handicapped bodies. Demonic loneliness, hopelessness and despair accompanied leprosy. Dr. McKean a Presbyterian doctor from the USA realized that their clinic response was a mere band-aid at best. But it cannot be said his work merely evolved. He faced a need and gave himself to it in a decisive and imaginative way. One moment in time facing this need he made a decision and dared to do something great for God.
Chiang Mai was a kingdom at this time and 16 Kilo out of town there was an island created by the Mae Ping River and a canal which the King owned, once a compound for training and keeping his elephants but now abandoned for fear of a rouge spirit of a great white elephant that reputedly inhabited this sanctum. Dr. McKean went to the king and petitioned him for this land requesting that it be given to his mission as a sanctuary for lepers, where they could live, be treated and rehabilitated and the king granted it to him. Because it was an island and created separation and because it was basically good land that could be built on and developed it was perfect for the mission that Dr. McKean conceived.
In 1908 he commenced his mission “The Chiang Mai Leper Asylum”. From this beginning he began to treat leprosy with the herbs and compounds used at that time progressing with medical science as it unfolded all the while building living facilities, developing a gregarious working culture (leaving the asylum to beg was not allowed), creating enterprises that simultaneously provided vocational training and animal husbandry. Within this setting a lively culture was created that included not only work and treatment but recreational engagements and worship. Under all of Dr McKean’s endeavors the Christian faith was taught whereby hope, meaning, value and dignity could be restored and rebuilt on a new and better foundation.
In time McKean bought more land in out lying ares and organized 22 resettlement villages in Northern Thailand and staffed these with trained assistants once patients who could dispense medicine and maintain a healthy culture and order. In not a few of these settings former patients where returned to ownership of land and complete economic independence.
Albeit small in scale compared to the magnitude of human need and suffering around the world visiting and staying on this island for a few days I recognized that some one had dared to do something great for God with his life and over 100 years later, although change had come with the cure of leprosy, Dr McKean’s courage and labors continues to bear fruit. A fine small hospital thrives on this small island that treats many diseases including leprosy and a live-in center for the care of dementia patients has commenced. People deformed and handicapped from leprosy continue live and work there. Organic crops are grown and sold, fish farming for subsistence has been established and artistic painting and carvings are produced and sold.
I was moved by every facet of this mission project, its compassion and courage, its earthly wisdom, its holistic depth and its solid Christian base. The Christian foundation of Mckean’s work among other things added to his material/physical rehabilitation the metaphysical glue needed for restoring and maintaining human dignity and hope as well as infusing self sacrificing love into all their societies and relations that developed in the asylum. Something great happened on this island and the shadow of it persists. Lepers came from as far away as Laos, Burma and China to live there. Not only bodies were treated but also broken and bruised excluded spirits where lifted to dignity, hope, spirited fellowship with each other and life!
Zwingli’s thought “Dare to do something great for God,” stirred an ethical rethink in my mind but McKean’s work stirred in me the desire to deepen and build my own mission.
Excerpts from Spring ICF Teaching Notes: Part Three
“Three things remain faith, hope and Love but the greatest of these is Love” (I Corinthians 13;13) – why? Paul Apostle to the Gentiles penned these words to believers in the city of Corinth in southeastern Europe about 57 C E. And they are holographic – meaning the whole is contained in the part. The big problem in Corinth can be detected in one little word in this verse. This word is ‘greatest’. The Corinth believers were enamored with greatness and commenced to splinter into competitive enclaves separated one from the other over what constituted greatness in a leader. Some were in absolute awe about leaders who possessed great knowledge. Paul writes that at best our knowledge is partial (I Corinthians 13:9) and ‘if anyone thinks he knows anything he knows nothing as he ought to know it’ (I Corinthians 8:2). Others were enamored with oratory and homiletic skills. Others believed that great faith, the kind of faith that moves mountains, was the true mark of a great leader. To these claims Paul asserted that the spiritual gift to preach with the tongues like an angel or the gift to move mountains by great faith in and of themselves were vain. Even faith is a vain empty thing unless its mixed with a far superior spiritual ingredient he asserted.
Still others were bedazzled by prophetic powers and to these Paul reminds that Prophecies often fail. There is a novelty and openness about the future that defies the predictions of even the most Spirit filled prophet. ‘Now’, he writes ‘we see through a darkened glass’ (window) that is smudged and blurred by our anxieties, pride and simply for the fact that our feet are mired in mortal clay despite whatever spiritual giftedness we may lay claim to (real or imagined). To this litany Paul’s adds an indictment against measuring greatness by heroic acts of piety. Some of the believers were no doubt insisting that greatness is to be found where the rubber meets the road – namely in heroic actions like bodily deprivations and sacrifices. ‘What is a man unless he puts his body on the line?’ But Paul argues, heroic acts of piety, no matter how costly to one’s body, are not in and of themselves truly great. Often behind such acts hides, not a humble self truly acting in courage for another’s good to the glory of God, but a soul desperate for applause thus venturing beyond himself and beyond the sanctuary of God’s blessing and protection.
Over against all these ways and means to greatness Paul asserts only three things really count – faith, hope and love and of these three love is the greatest. In a word Paul challenges the Corinthian believers yardstick of greatness asserting that they had it all wrong. Their measuring stick for greatness was not slightly flawed but dead wrong and needed to be trashed. Love alone is truly great and all measurements of greatness must be judged by the presence or absence of love. But while we hasten to agree ought we not to pause and question ‘why Paul is love the greatest?’
In this teaching I went in search of the greatness of love. I wanted not merely to accept Paul’s assertion that love is the greatest but feel after it and dis cover it. In this teaching I set out on a contemplative and “rational – existential” search to discover the greatness of love and seven reasons (evidences) emerged into the open. Here follows one of these.
Ground Hogs, Pig Weed, Quack Grass, Morning Glory and Black Locust Trees: Reasoning from Nature to Spirit and from Spirit to Love.
In another lifetime, in bygone days I owned ten acres in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. We had a spacious yard, a large garden, a three-acre meadow and four acres of beautiful mature Sugar Maple trees with a mix of wild Cherry trees great in stature, Beech, Pig Nut Hickory along with a smattering of scrubby ‘Iron Wood’ mixed in. It was not heaven but with my four kids, two goats and tractors I was determined to subdue this favored trek of land and suborn it to my aesthetic and practical desires and needs. But very quickly I discovered that there were enemies that were in place, rooted, ready and poised to subvert my determination. Not shy to name them openly, if only in detest I could even now twenty-five years later cast a shadow of shame upon them I list them here in the order of their ignominy. Let their infamy be published far and wide – Pig Weed (proper name Amaranth) Quack Grass, Morning Glory and Black Locust Trees. Add to these horticultural enemies the infamous northeastern United State Ground Hog that grew to the size of a small lumpy swine.
When I first moved to this wind swept hill I was merely mused by their presence along with many other natural wonders like the Baltimore Oriole that came every spring, the Weasel that lived at the edge of the flower garden, the wild currents and shallots near the boundary of the yard and meadow and the Elder Berry Trees near the entrance to the woods. But within two seasons I realized they were not like the other rhymes and rhythms of nature. They were plotting a take over. Inbred in each of these was an inordinate self-interest, a grotesque over reach exceeding all other life forms that shared my stretch of land. Case in point. I set twenty long rows of kale plants in my meadow and commenced to cultivate them with my F 12 geared so low its driver could take a short nap by the time it reached the end of the row or listen to an inning of baseball on the radio. One day I came home and went out to the meadow to inspect my Kale project and spotted a Ground Hog at the far end of the field finishing off row eight. He and his wife had completely and systematically devoured eight complete rows of Kale the length of a football field.
Pig Weed
In the garden I labored to achieve a fine pure tilt of top soil and then having achieved my seed bed I planted my entire garden only to realize that the Pig Weed was lying in wait. As soon as my seeds broke free and commenced their green career toward maturity the Pig Weed pounced. Everywhere I turned the Pig Weed was growing and growing ten times as fast as any of my plants gobbling up all the space, nutrition, sunlight and moisture.
Morning Glory
The Morning Glory got their start on an edge of the meadow that I rarely visited. At first I paid little attention delighted by their happy light blue bell blossoms but soon I realized how aggressive these creepers were. They set about to abscond the land around them in ten foot leaps and bounds. And once they had it in their grip is was no easy task to reclaim it.
The black Locust Tree was sort of like Cassius Clay after he decided he was Mohammed Ali. To all other life forms on my land they boldly said, “we are the greatest”. A meadow left fallow for five years would literally disappear under the their avarice. Each year they would throw shoots out into the meadow 12 feet from the hedgerow and in one year they would grow two maybe three feet up and that far down. Here follows my point and one clue that reveals the greatness of love. The Quack Grass I will leave for another discussion. Here it is sufficient to state that its tactic was to look innocent above ground but underneath the surface spread like a malignant cancer in all directions so that it could not be uprooted.
Black Locust
There is a sturdy self-interest in all life forms in nature including of course human beings and here I am interested in human beings and employing nature to make my point. All to easily this self-interest heats up and becomes too great, too strong, captive to a destructive overreach. Sin as it is depicted in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not self-regard, or, properly understood, self-love, it is inordinate self-concern, inordinate exaggerated self-love. It is self-interest inflamed and expanded beyond its proper boundary such that it takes up too much social, spiritual and psychological space. Sin, as Martin Luther wrote, is self curved in, focused on itself (verses turned out to God and others). Sin is the opposite of love because as Paul writes in this letter to the Corinthians (chapter 13:5) ‘love seeks not her own’.
Here in this ‘does not seeks it’s own’ ( I Corinthians 13:5 KJV) lies the greatness of love. The way of love is great because love means to transcend the clamor of one’s anxieties, desires, needs and wants and turn out to the needs of one’s neighbor and the common good. To myopically focus one’s passion and energy on taking care of oneself, securing one’s place, one’s happiness and security not merely at the material level but at the social level is the opposite of love and the meaning of ‘sin’.
To focus on securing things (material) and one’s standing among others (the social realm of life) where honor, position, prestige, reputation, privilege and esteem have to do – is small and not great, no matter how successful one excels at this pursuit. And to relate to God purely on the level of one’s need and desire (the spiritual realm) is small. And this smallness is born not only from nature and the survival – security – anxiety instinct but driven by spirit, spirit that heats up and expands like the Pig Weed, Quack grass, Black Locust, Morning Glory, like the voracious Ground Hog whose appetite can never be satiated.
Quack Grass
The destiny of Homo sapiens is different. Homo sapiens are called to venture humanness that involves being reshaped and remade beyond nature into the image of God. God and a higher destiny, higher than nature, are calling homo sapiens to break free from their slavish captivity to self interest, to tame, even transcend this propensity and venture humanness in God’s image by turning out to the uplift and needs of others, like God himself in the Christ turned out to lift up humanity.
“Love seeks not her own” here in this seeking not its own is to be discovered the greatness of love and this greatness the Christian Scripture asserts is the greatness of God. ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8) and this assertion made by John the beloved is not merely an assertion of love as a pure seamless idea but the history of God; that God in time and place divests Godself of all divine power and prerogative and shows up on the human scene as a suffering servant to lift us up and set us free no matter the cost to God’s self.
Spring has come to an end in the year of our Lord 2015, albeit with a qualification. Here in SE Asia “spring” is summer the hottest time of the year. Here follows my “Spring” (summer) Mission Report. Over the next two weeks, five or six posting will complete this report. It includes capsules of some of my spring teaching lessons, my explorations with three other mission endeavors in Thailand, reports on my meetings with college/seminary leaders. Here follows the first installment of a volley of postings to occur over the next two weeks.
Excerpts from Spring Teaching Lessons: Even though most of the colleges and seminaries that I serve bring their academic year to a close in March I have continued to work close with ICF (International Christian Fellowship) in Udon Thani, Thailand teaching lessons. ICF is a church and school that serve Thai Christians who want to worship and learn in an English speaking setting, Falang (foreigners) from Australia, Europe and America as well as Laos students who come to Thailand for 6 to 8 weeks at a time to study. ICF gains its funding from many sources including A G churches in the USA. Here follows terse excerpts from several of these lessons.
The Second Question: In the parable of the Samaritan (which we call the Good Samaritan) we hear the lawyer, a scholar of the law, the Torah, attempting to save face by asking a second question. The lawyer had already asked Jesus one question and from this inquiry he came out looking a little suspect in the eyes of the people standing by. This can be deduced from the fact that he ended up answering his own question. This showed he already knew the answer to the question he had asked. Wanting to save face the lawyer ventured a second question. It goes something like this. “okay Jesus if you affirm that loving one’s neighbor as oneself is the gateway into life eternal who is my neighbor?” Without knowing it this question revealed the root of the lawyers spiritual – ethical disease. He had boundaries and limits to his neighborliness. The lawyer’s problem was sort of like the blinders the Amish put on their horses so that they cannot see anything except what is straight in front of them. He could not envision an application of the love your neighbor ethic beyond the horizons of his own kind. His family and kin, his Judean neighbors that lived in his sector, his Jewish people and the Jewish nation were the horizon of his love your neighbor as yourself ethic. In Jesus’ response to this second question he told the Samaritan story and literally burst the seams of the lawyers constricted ethical circumference.
After Jesus’ story neighbor ceased to be parochial. It referred to anybody in need. The horizon of the love ethic was released from the cramped little religious, ethnic, familial, national spaces and places it was habitually caught in. Jesus’ love your neighbor ethic cast a light on the future world, what it will look like and the way of life it will incarnate, namely a true brotherhood and sisterhood where all care for each other and where difference ceases to divide. At first glance Jesus shows up in this story as its teacher – a storyteller calling us into a new kind of future. But reading this tale in light of the New Testament Gospel Jesus pedagogy is wrapped in a riddle. He shows up in the human drama clothed in the Samaritan’s garb and is discovered hoisting our half dead bodies onto his donkey and taking us to a place where our souls are safe with and in God.
Excerpts Taken from Spring 2015 ICF Lessons.
One of the lessons I developed at ICF this spring was taken from the parable of the Pharisee and Publican who went into the same temple at the same time to pray. Here follows one small excerpt about the pharisee from my teaching notes.
Some one recently reminded me that 80% of human communication is nonverbal. The first thing we learn about the Pharisee is non verbal. He positioned himself alone and central in the temple and lifted up his head. Not only did the Pharisees words signal his separation, as will be pointed out next, his physical posture and location sent this message. As soon as he opened his mouth his religious ethic that required him and prided him to separate from others became explicit. Words interpret actions. The Pharisee’s opening words “I thank you God I am not like other men” betray him. He views himself as morally – and religiously separated from “other men”. Indeed this assertion is historically precise – the Pharisees’ religion was fanatically focused on keeping themselves pure and separated from Gentiles and other Jews who they deemed were not careful in their Torah observance lest they be contaminated. The goal was not merely to be righteous by keeping righteous moral standards but to be righteous by being separated from the ‘unrighteous”. Righteousness was a sociological (and ecclesial) category. Separation from took on a life of its own and became the defining signature of the Pharisee religion.
These opening words not only betray his relation to others but to God. He assumes God is on the same page with him on this conclusion that he is fundamentally different – morally. He has not only made himself a stranger to other men but a friend of God. He views himself as on the inside circle with God so much so that he can speak for God. By thanking God that he is not like other men he assumes that God views him as he views himself – embodying the full righteous difference of the Torah, fundamentally cut from a different cloth, in a religious moral league of his own.
Here are a couple of my reflections on this double entendre.
The real struggle in life is to remain connected to others who are different either in their moral sensibilities or absence of moral sensibilities all while being true to the way of truth and right that one understands and believes God requires of him. It is easy to remain true to one’s beliefs about how one is to live in this world if one keeps oneself separate from others who are different and lives safe and secure inside one’s own group (“he that shall save his life will lose it”). But the real struggle is interact with and befriend others who are different or ‘worldly’ while remaining true to oneself and one’s God. Jesus did this as the gospels tells us – eating with publicans and sinners. This is a practical observation but not one Jesus over looked (see Matthew 5:13 -you are the salt of the earth not the salt of the church ). Listening to the Pharisee’s prayer in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the root of the problem becomes evident.
“Jesus Christ” means the end of all elitist familiarity with God based on any and all distinctions that differentiate individuals and groups one from the other. Like the Pharisee, humans often imagine that their special, exceptional parts, whether they be moral, religious, doctrinal, denominational, spiritual, national, ethnic, racial or economic, not only set them apart from other women and men but set them at the table with God and God’s favor and blessing. There is a universal unbridgeable gap between God and humans. “Jesus Christ” is the name of that gap. Jesus Christ is God’s NO to all presumptions of intimacy and familiarity with God based on one’s darling differences no matter their source. “Jesus Christ” is the sword in the hand of God cutting the legs out from under ever person and people who have become intoxicated with the presumption that they are a breed apart, on the inside circle with God because of some distinguishing difference. The beginning of a relation to God founded costly grace is at the same time the end of all attempts to relate to God on the basis of something special within one’s person or people. Soren Kierkegaard somewhere writes that the Publican forgot the danger of God. “Jesus Christ” is the presence of the danger of God toward all who cast about to find something within themselves and their religious, familial or national group that establishes common ground with God. There is no common ground with God there is only the ground of grace incarnated and proffered in the Cross of Christ. The cross is at the same time enunciates a human gap and a divine bridge between heaven and earth
existence and faith 