A Mekong Meditation

My last day in Phnom Penh was Saturday September 8. That evening I was flying out at midnight to Shanghai in route to Wenzhou China. My class had gone well and the students wanted to celebrate and send me on my way with a special gesture of good will and gratitude. At 6 o’clock in the evening we drove into the city center and parked along the great Mekong River. They had struck a deal with a boatman for a 2-hour cruise. Lugging chests of food and soft drink and a guitar to the upper deck we began to sing, play games and visit. Its was a perfect evening. As twilight cast its shadows the fading sunlight and the city lights began a magic dance with the water. I was feeling really good – so happy I had been invited to Cambodia. And I knew it had gone well. Students had told me. And one student herself a teacher – the young leader of the City Church had prayed at the conclusion of the final class thanking the Lord that to them – a new generation of Christian leaders in Asia the way forward, the way the Gospel could now be taught and preached had made its debut and “Lord please don’t let what we have learned slip from our grasp”. Whilst I was basking in these thoughts enjoying the verve and energy of these beautiful youth a sliver of angst crept into my mind. I was disturbed with a little twitter in my mind that refused to dissipate – I began to realize almost surely I was going to be called on to speak one more time. After all this was not only a going away party but a mission out reach. All of their celebrations and gatherings are! They had invited a few non-Christians – Phnom Penh up and comers.

Little by little more and more young people are distinguishing themselves developing their talents and starting businesses. Cambodia is changing and a middle class is emerging. Phnom Penh is a robust bustling city emerging from the shadows of its dark past. The long hoped for future is entering the present. English is well within their grasp more than in Thailand or Lao and new creative economic opportunities are irrupting left and right.

Sure enough teacher Mackal, leader of the City Church, a Malaysian, herself a wonderful force to be reckoned with, glanced over at me and I new instantly I had to leave the dream moment and if possible deliver words to my new friends one more time. The following are the gist of my thoughts spoken on the deck of our tour boat on great Mekong River around 8:30 pm September 8. I wanted to keep it clear and simple.

Crawling Out From Under the Down Side of Trouble:

Look and Live

The difference between good religion and bad religion is very simple and clear. The former directs the attention to the self  – its plights and pleasures, its short fall and /or its gains.  The latter directs the attention to something bigger than the self, something outside and above the self. David felt the power of good religion slipping out of his grasp and he cried out “lead me to the Rock that is higher than I”.  This prayer is akin to a popular refrain “Love lift us up where we belong, on the mountains high where the eagles fly”.  Its really this simple! The vicissitudes as well as the victories in life mix with a bent lodged deep in our natures and turns our minds inward so that we become self focused. Inside our subjectivity our experience of life whether good, bad or ugly become enchanted and magnified. Bad religion intensifies this proclivity and capitalizes on it. The feats and defeats of life become infused with an emotional weight causing us to lose our balance. The inward preoccupation is like a toxic romance we cannot extricate ourselves from.

Follow me as I play with this idea.  Consider Luther who was caught in the grip of bad religion which wonderfully focused his mind on himself and his failures. Once he turned inward there was no coming back. He went further and further inward searching after not only right action but purity of motive, what Scripture calls ‘the thoughts and intents of the heart” [Hebrews 4:11]. And try as he may he couldn’t get it right, couldn’t wrest any peace from his cycle of confession, absolution and acts of penance. No peace, scarcely a moment –why? Because he was looking in the wrong direction -to the church and to his struggle not only to do right but be right through and through heart and hand, body and spirit. Then something unexpected and ecstatic occurred. Because his job was to be a Biblical Scholar [rare even at that time Luther possessed an earned doctorate degree in Biblical Exegesis – a calling he did not chose but was saddled with by his superiors] he had to study and lecture on the sacred text. In doing so while at the same time caught in this religious quagmire just escribed he bumped into something bigger, something gracious, something outside, above and beyond himself.The name of this something was the “righteousness of God revealed in the Gospel”  Romans 1:16-17. In time he came to realize this righteousness wasn’t in him but for him, wasn’t on earth but in heaven, wasn’t spun from the webs of his goodness nor destroyed by his badness but derived root and branch from God’s passion in Christ.  Nor did the church possess and mediate this saving righteousness requiring poor sinners to look to them. Looking away from himself and the church to this bigger thing set him free – free from the inward gaze and free from the toxic religion that intensified and capitalized on the subordination of his spirit. Later Luther came to describe sin as “man curved in on himself”.

Consider Israel, a band of runaway slaves in the wilderness making that ugly trek from Egypt to Canaan. In one moment they witnessed the power of their new God Yahweh delivering them and were drawn out in praise [Exodus 15:1ff], lost in awe and wonder and in the next moment they turned down ward and inward and focused on the drudgery and scarcity of their journey. Follow me here because the retell you are about to read takes a surprising twist. If you have read the story as its scripted in Exodus you will recall the people fell under the grip of the downward inward gaze.

Loosing sight of the wonder of what had happened in the Exodus deliverance and the sustaining miracles that followed they began to focus on their deprivations.  Self pity overcame them. Everything they didn’t have grew in their minds eye until they became toxic and ugly.  Literally they got right up in Moses’ and God’s face and belly ached about all that was wrong with their lives and all that was lacking and all that was unbearably hard in their journey. Their dark downward and inward gaze heated up and over took them and seduced them into ugly self centered ingrates. At this moment poisonous snakes slithered out from every rock and bush in the valley and faster than grease lightening came on them and latched hold of their fleshy parts sending deadly venom surging through their veins. All this you most likely know full well but here is a fitting irony in this story most often overlooked. Their deadly plight now turned their minds even further inward. If they thought they had problems before now their problems were multiplied thousand fold. If they were focused on their problems before now they were wonderfully obsessed with themselves.

Staggering, eyes blurry, tongue bloated they were brought right to the brink of death. The experience sucked them inward so far that their minds were bursting with fear and trembling. And what was the cure? Mind you it was the same cure they needed an hour earlier swimming in their pity like a deer caught in a swamp. Before they needed to get out of themselves and the negative inward and downward spiral that they were caught but could not break because they would not. Now they were driven a thousand times deeper into themselves where dread and fear fuse into a nightmare. Crying out to Moses for help God instructed the cure.

Mind you the problem indeed was inside them. Poison was coursing through their veins. Surely the medicine would be in kind – a powerful potion cooked up from bitter roots and bark ingested?  If we cannot see the surprise and riddle of true religion in this antidote that God called for what hope is there to help us! God told Moses to put a serpent on a pole and lift it up and instruct the people to “look and live”! They were invited to look away from themselves and their problem (s), look away from their dying bodies. Look away from their diseases no matter their magnitude real or imagined. We are not going to get it right by going inward and a religion that proposes to go inward and clean us up and cure us will founder as well. All that God is to us and all that God does for us revolves on the axis of getting us out of ourselves by turning our attention to something bigger. This something is a gracious loving God that in Christ damned all that damns us releasing blessing and life forever more. “If I be lifted up”, lifted up like the serpent on the poll that Moses raised high above the people Jesus tells Nicodemus “I will draw all men unto me”. When we are drawn to trust something- some one bigger than ourselves – namely the God who has come into view in Christ this is called faith, and faith climaxes in doxology. .

One further consideration is required to bring this meditation to fulfillment. Not only the bad in and around us can subvert us but the good as well. The Pharisee that went into the temple to pray was seduced by the good of his life [ at least what seemed so good to him]. Looking upon and seeing it in his imagination, feeling it, comparing it with other’s paltry righteousness he was seduced – thrown of balance, pulled out of dependence on something higher and out of compassion and brotherhood with his neighbor [the one near by]. “I thank you God I am not like other men especially this degenerate tax fraud across the aisle. The Publican on the other had launched out into the deep in a wonderful attempt to rescue his soul. He was on a rescue mission in search of something bigger, higher and more merciful than anything found within his accusing conscience or his damning fellows. He needed a God size mercy to out reach and trump the damning voices within and around him.

Anything can suck us into the downward inward spiral. It can be the threat of poverty and want which baits anxiety and stirs up frantic all consuming attempts to get our material physical needs secure. It can be our solitude that at one moment we enjoy but then turning a corner in life stirs up feelings of loneliness and tempts us into a spiral of self pity and beyond to desert places where angels themselves fear to tread. It can be our love life gone bad. Life has a thousand tricks up its sleeve to subvert our doxology and turn us into miserable inward looking naves and ingrates oscillating between pride and despair, between anxiety and presumption. Thankfully the Gospel brings into view something bigger – something outside and above us. Without this bigger thing to trust in that has secured and will secure our lives in merciful love our predicament would be hopeless.

Balance a long broom on your index finger whilst looking downward at your navel or the finger on which the butt rests – it is nigh unto impossible but change your focus and look out and up to the broom’s head and its easy. So it is with life and religion. Bad religion takes you on an endless journey inward but good religion draws you out to something bigger where the freedom to trust, worship and serve become possible.

These preceding words are dedicated to my students Cambodian, Chinese and Malaysian:

Kuaxuan Jian (Daniel)

Lim

Nhean Sungi (Pastor John)

Kim Chi

Lun Seng

Loh ming Luan (Michal)

Ir Chhay Hout (Joshua)

Chee siew fen ( Natalie)

Sok Tha

Catherine

Xiao yan ( Ruth)

Yang lei (Mark)

And also to their friends like Anis who I morphed into Natalie, to Judges Joshua’s brother whose name isn’t Judges and other beautiful young people and whose names escape me but also last but not least the young designer who is seeking. [For the anyone seeking to mediate on the above devotion the following are a few verses from scripture to reflect on Hebrews 12:1-3, Philippians 3:17-21 (Especially vs 19&20) John 3:14-16 and 2 Corinthians 4:18]

“Sin is spiritual”. This is Martin Luther’s teaching asserts Gerhard Ebeling.

Reading these words I immediately responded in the affirmative. Luther, Ebeling argues, recognized that what made sin sin is the spiritual element that humans infuse into situations and mix into thoughts and actions. No question there are causal historical reasons propelling evil human actions and attitudes, there are genetic predispositions and predictable psychological patterns that track all human responses but these propensities do not comprehend the definitive center of humanness as a self-conscious body spirit unity. Sin arises from the I and its movements. ‘Spirituality’ used within this historic Judeo Christian view of reality, refers one back to this unified center where the mystery of the self-conscious I emerges and shapes itself in the battle of existence.

The ancient Eastern view of reality is different. It was shaped inside a form – spirit dualism [separation]. In this mindset the answer to human ills had to do with over coming formalism – the base externalism and materialism of existence by awakening inwardness -the native spiritual capacity and resonance that is lodged deep within human nature. In this model form, the corporeal or material, is at least lesser than another realm – the ‘spiritual’ . In its more radical conceptions, form is a mere façade, a veneer obscuring the universal spiritual essence, even trapping it. Here ‘spiritual’ connects to the dimenision within the universe and human nature that is eternally good, righteous and full of light over against that which is evil, dark, corruptible and perishing. The claim that sin is spiritual is a contradiction of this view of reality. Leaving these conceptual polemics aside I make my case for the spirituality of sin by thinking about familiar life struggles.

Consider what could happen and often does happen when we lose something or someone precious near and dear to us. Then and there a spiritual struggle transpires. We are tempted to go beyond basic grief for loss and turn on life, God and others with anger, and hardness of heart and bitterness. As an example these three descriptions represent the realm of the spiritual. Here the magnitude of human being as a self-conscious body – spirit heats up and swells and the soul becomes filled with toxic evil sentiments and feelings out of which flow words, actions and attitudes. And these attitudes often become shaped and formed – constitutional both in individuals and groups. Here the ‘sin’ of hardness of heart, bitterness, anger at God and life is spiritual and involves a spiritual struggle. The I, the self is in tumult and moving back against life with attitude. ‘Spiritual’ in this meaning refers to the great struggle of the I especially at particular junctures.

Consider what could happen and often does happen within human nature when wrong is done to us, perhaps grievous wrong. We are tempted to mix the offense with hatred, thoughts and plots of revenge often far in excess of the injury suffered, enmity, faction [separatism] as well as self-pity. These things are spiritual – that is to say they arise out of the spiritual churning of our being so that the self, that is to say the I, wounded and offended, emerges from the junctures and intersections of harm swollen and filled with toxic elements. From this genesis the self bears itself forward in a new ‘spirited’ way, a new form of being subtly or explicitly toxic. Sin is spiritual!

The ‘spiritual’ reference here indicates the potential spiritual magnitude of humanness as a self-conscious body – spirit unity – the mysterious I. The potential ‘spiritual magnitude’ endemic to the I can either become toxic – life stealing or healthy – life dealing. This view means human responses cannot be simply reduced to logical physical, social and psychological explanations of human nature as useful as these may be – the modern tendency. To do so requires a banal materialistic view of human nature. But neither does spiritual, used within the Judeo – Christian view of reality, refer to the ancient teaching originating in the East about the inner versus the outer dimension of human nature where our better angels are said to dwell, if only they can be unlocked by some spiritual healer, person or modality.*

I urge one more example that I believe exhibits the spirituality of sin before I point to what I believe is the spiritual antidote. That sin is spiritual can also be seen from the repeated predisposition of humans to take those  common things which distinguish them from others and give them undo significance so that they underwrite division from and sometimes destruction of others. Nothing dictates that particular human differences should by any provable standard rupture human community – [love your neighbor as yourself]. Distinctions (differences) prevail in the human family but what dictates that these differences should heat up and be infused with an importance and significance so as to set one group over or apart from another group? The I, or the ‘collective I’, formed in groups, ethnic groups or religious or national groups often mix these differences with pride, malice, hatred and egoism. Yes there maybe and almost always are historical provocations, wounds, and rivalries but the ‘I’, the movement of the I, transforms the experience and the situation  so that it empowers and underwrites evil separations, subjugation and dominance. Sin is spiritual! In the rise of Nazism nothing dictated that the humiliation brought on by the Treaty of Versai, or the collapse of the German Republic which weakened Germany’s historic sense national greatness, or the social ghettoism and usury of the Jews, concluded the birth of toxic Nordic Arian elitism and the correspondent systematic animism and destruction of groups and individuals who did not fit the new fiction of  ethnic  superiority and greatness. These groups included not only Jews but Gypsies, homosexuals, sickly aged people and other unwelcome minorities so called that were judged as weakening or compromising the fiction of the Germans nordic, aryan innate superiority. Sin at the end of the day is spiritual!

In an upcoming addition to this reflection I will take these thoughts one step further urging that this view of spirituality connects with a spiritual antidote in kind. By this I mean to state that just as the ancient eastern view and meaning of ‘spirituality’ connects with the idea of meditation and asceticism calculated to awaken an innate spiritual essence lodged within. These practices along with corollary teaching dis cover it, and activate it from its dormancy, thereby liberating and saving man/woman. On the other hand the historic Judeo Christian idea and meaning of spirituality connects with and to the struggle of the I. Through the Apostolic and Prophetic witness a Being greater than the self emerges from the shadows into view and makes a gracious claim  on the I . This God requires the self to rest on  his/her love, forgiveness and gracious acceptance and ultimate lordship over life, fate, death, evil and good. The struggle to downsize the self, and all the wounds and victories that the self has sustained and claimed, and requite itself in and with the magnitude of the being of  God in his goodness and grace and also in the sure hope of his triumph over all human foes and ills is a spiritual struggle. In this struggle the self, the I, is both weakened, even broken, but also strengthened. Faced with the wrath of Esau Jacob wrestled all night  with the angel and  emerged both stronger and weaker .The self’s encounter with God is similar. In his encounter with God the ‘I’ that has become  heated up and swollen with toxic attitudes in the face of trriumph and tradgey is downsized, weakened if not ‘broken’. When God who makes his debut in the word of the Gospel and Spirit shows himself to a person there a struggle at the center of one’s existence and a regrounding of the I in invisible grace . This movement ocurring time and again is  a spiritual struggle. “He who falls on the rock will be broken but he who the rock falls on will be ground to dust” Gospel of Luke chapter 21.[ “Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I” [Prayer in the Psalms of David]

*Note connecting ‘spiritual’ to the self conscious I does not mean there is no distinction between external and internal, body and spirit, it merely argues that these distinctions rest on an underlying unity and that ultimately the spiritual realm can not be released from the struggle of this self conscious I as it shapes itself in the agony and ecstasy of life. There mysterious depth to nature and human nature. To uncover a measure of this depth and integrate into it is neither a simple good or evil. In freedom everything must be digested or expelled by the self conscious I who lives by faith before God.

When I originally started this website in 2010 my one phrase explanation of my purpose was An Online Magazine Featuring the Thought and Writing of Daniel Age.  I am here and now changing that purpose dramatically.  Up to now I have been focused on communicating my thoughts and insights for the benefit of any reader who came along the cyber highway and discovered me.  Focusing on thought I gave little thought to mission!  Making thought the engine I wanted mission to naturally come along behind clarifying and fulfilling itself. I left it to itself to achieve its own realization. The transformation of my Blog/Magazine Existence and Faith that you are reading here puts my new mission teaching venture in Asia front and center and in that context provides select pieces of my current insights taken from my teaching excursions. Christian truth and Christian mission, thought and action, the ideal and the ‘deal’ cohere and when separated tend to lose their integrity. From here on you will get the former in the posture of the latter.

A month or so before my 20th high school reunion a classmate chosen to organize the event solicited a recent photo from each person. Instead of sending a sitting or standing portrait I passed along a picture taken of me cultivating my strawberry beds. The shot depicted me glancing up while throwing my pick head into a bed of horse manure, soil and straw. My classmates saw me in action and this is what I wanted. And here in this blog/online magazine this is the portrayal I now want to give and the posture I now want to write from and work in. Behind my new romance with mission there is a little epiphany which occurred this last fall – winter 2011 &12.

This Spring 2012 I returned from five teaching hitches in Asia, one in India, one along the Thai – Myanmar border and three serving China’s under ground house church movement [Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai].  In my encounter with students preparing for ministry working and studying toward their Master’s of Divinity degree or Bachelor degree I learned that mission was the primary horizon of their future vision of ministry.  Few if any planned on graduating then going to a church and becoming a pastor. They were in seminary and college to equip themselves to become leaders and venture forth to do mission work. Jesus’ “go out ” (Matthew 28) was the posture of ministry preparation. This included studying the Christian Scripture and theology but within a framework of becoming leaders – action; most often bold daring mission action that possessed very little existing organizational or structural support.

Last summer some one asked me why I was going way off to Asia to teach in some of the poorest seminaries and Bible colleges. I quipped half factiously but half seriously “I am going in hopes of saving my ministry lest I burn out after 25 years”.  We know everything we know by relief – by contrast. And contrast is a gift we get by getting out of our comfort zone! The Christian mission and message is rapidly moving forward in the East, especially the new China and it is being driven by different kinds of engines than those in the west. In a later article I will elaborate on this further but here my point is to draw attention to the new impetus that informs this website and my ministry. China does not get the Western model of apologetic Christianity where the arguments and proofs of its truthfulness and relevance are coolly presented for the reader to coolly and cognitively decide for or against. Truth is being taught, learned, passed on from inside another person who has herself or himself decided for it, believed in it, sacrificed for it, decided to teach it no matter the cost. Understanding for them means not only standing under but taking what you stand under to others. It might be said one does not touch Christian truth from the outside as scripted book idea but inside another who has digested and been nourished by this truth more or less, in one way or another.  Most often we get truth if it is truth we are getting like the baby Robin gets the worm from the bill of the mother already half digested by her.

I think Asia and especially the under ground church in China knows this in a way many in the West fails to comprehend. The historical road that the west has traveled on to reach today’s city called ‘Modernity’ was reason, rationalism, empiricism, romanticism, economic and social liberalism and of course Christianity in the west was thereby extruded into these shapes. The new Christian impetus in the east, especially that coming into play in China’s house church movement, I sense is not and need not be overly encumbered by the late western Christianity formation.

This realization pushed me further in the direction I am taking both in this blog and my ministry. It is not my recent Christian thoughts and insights that I want to communicate perse but these as much as possible within the setting of my current mission work and engagement in the East. This is now the present frame of my website. It is no more an “online magazine” but a mission blog enlisted to report on my teaching engagements and experiences while also providing the reader with a few choice reflections and insights taken from what that I have imparted to or learned from my students; selections that I hope will be of some spiritual benefit.

I end with an antidote taken from my own history. Many years ago I sat in the office of an Oxford professor to explore the possibility of writing a dissertation in hopes of building my understanding of the relation of church to the modern world and being awarded a Ph D. After sorting out my research topic the professor retorted “this sounds more like a mission than a research project”. Later when I was accepted into the University of St Andrews  in Scotland to do my work I told this story to my supervisor Dr George Hall who burst out laughing and then quipped “every doctoral thesis is a missionary project”. We are in this world for something and whether we are subtly aligned with academic protocols or whether we proceed apart from these scholastic cannons, inevitably we are about the business of composing our witnesses to establish our passion and release it into the public square.  This tallies well with one of Post Modernism’s central insights – all ‘truth’ more or less bares the impress of a historical social struggle to script reality in a form that is friendly to a person or group’s interests and biases. This does not require us to pretend to ignore the divine antecedents of truth but it does mean we most often encounter this truth from another and share it with another in the missionary position. It is in this position you will meet pieces of my thought and work week by week in this blog.

Shanghai and Bust China Bible College

Chiang Mai, Thailand

It is the understatement of the year to assert that China is changing! In Shanghai the house church (so called “underground church”) is bold and confident and not afraid of the authorities. In spirit the city of Shanghai is a cousin to Hong Kong, they do not easily bow to Beijing’s cultural restrictions, if at all. Joshua, the adopted name of the founder and head of this missionary training college, China Bible College, is a professor from one of Shanghai’s many universities along with his wife, also a professor. Joshua’s horizons for training missionaries are nothing short of amazing. In America I would view such plans as suspect – seduced by visions of grandeur – but right now in China anything seems possible! If the Chinese decide to build ten high speed rails crisscrossing the nation hundreds if not thousands of miles they just do it! The current speed and breadth of development in China is mind-boggling. This same can do belief has penetrated the house church movement. Joshua is open about their aim to train and send out 10,000 missionaries within a few years and half of these he says will go to the Middle East. At present he has about 450 students after five years of laboring. If the Lord blesses next year the school will likely approach 1000 students.

This teaching opportunity had presented itself in September, after I finished teaching outside of Hangzhou, as I headed for the Shanghai Pudong Airport, my cell rang. It was the head of a new bible college. He introduced himself as Joshua. Through the grapevine he had heard of my work in Hangzhou and Beijing and wanted me to come and teach at his school. I had commitments at the Thai-Burma border and in India but after these were completed I agreed to phone him and try and work something out. After Christmas I flew from Bangkok to Shanghai.

On Sunday, January 2 my contact picked me up and we headed to church. But I was not prepared for what I was to encounter in this church meeting. The ‘church’ was inside a gated high-end condominium located in an upper crust neighborhood in south Shanghai. A spacious room on the lower level of a fine large apartment served as the meeting room for a hundred or so well dressed progressive, mostly thirty something young professionals. And many of these were new Christians or non-Christians seeking spiritual roots.

After my Sunday preach we drove to the ‘school’. I was expecting a school building. There was none! Again we entered a gated condominium. One of the well-to-do the believers, presently traveling abroad, handed Joshua the keys to his condo and his large living room became the classroom. Some students came and went but many brought their quilts and hot water bottles and camped out at the end of each day in the living room and bedrooms upstairs. Hot Chinese fast food was ordered in three times a day. I lectured from morning to night in this beautiful high-rise apartment with cherry wood floors. But there is one catch – the owner turned off the heat before leaving and so we did school in 37° F, bundled in big coats hats and gloves.

The students were young, many 17 and 18 years lacking intellectual experience and development needed to handle simple concepts. They were great at linear knowledge –gathering unambiguous information and memorizing but weak in elementary conceptual thinking. When I realized this I started telling stories. For every abstract theological idea I put out to them I invented a story to open up the meaning. My story telling penchant experienced a renaissance. I became intoxicated with stories but only as instruments to open up conceptual meanings. This made the time more fun and because it was so cold I juiced the stories building the aesthetic detail and pace often creating a little dramas that took considerable time to spin. My translators were pretty good and perhaps because they were so very young they threw all their energy into the task with zeal.

My lecture sessions, 20 in total, all 2 hours each, were all on The Seminal Evangelical Insight of Martin Luther and its Implications for the Reformation of the Church: Then and There, Here and Now. I simplified, simplified, simplified. I attempted to do what Luther himself commanded his ministerial preachers in training in Wittenberg to do “bare your breasts and give them milk” (this a direct quote). My hope and prayer is that many students connected with these evangelical insights of a bygone era in a new simplier, clearer way and this I believe occurred but “the just shall live by faith” in this world we cannot often see or rightly judge the fruit of our labors.

Now my Theologians Without Borders venture is over and I am returning to New York in a couple weeks. In all toll ,in the approximately 6 months doing this teaching I stayed in about 70 hotels and traveled on 30 flights as well as buses and trains. To say the least, this has been a rewarding endeavor and an epic journey. I would like to continue this work year after year if possible, (the Lord willing as James reminds us) but it is very expensive. Again and again I experienced what Thomas Friedman observed – the world is quickly flattening. Plus Asia can smell Yankee dollars a mile away and are astutely prepared upon your arrival to relieve you from the burden of carrying too many around with you. Under my breath I often muttered “if they only knew I was a lowly poor Baptist preacher not a foot loose and fancy free New York businessman I might catch a break”.

Thank you for your prayers and help when and where these were forth coming. Especially I thank my sisters and brother but a few others as well!

In closing I want to share one need with you. I promised a young seminarian named Jenny, that I would try and find some help for her. Jenny Bagh is a senior Masters of Divinity student in Kolkata (Calcutta) at the Calcutta Bible College that resides on the William Carey Church campus.

Jenny, a fine academic spirited cannot graduate this April 9 unless she pays her tuition now – 900 dollars overdue. She has been a brave, hard working student who has refused to let poverty and the absence of family support deter her. Since I left campus she has written to me five times for help confident that because I am from America I am sure to have access to money and can help her. Considering her need she is not much different than many I have encountered and wanted to help but in spirit she is different because she is so tenacious and persistent and she has great faith and courage refusing to consider the thought that she will not graduate even though she has nothing and the school has no way to help her. If anyone reading this is moved to respond on my honor I will expedite your gift to the treasure of CBC -Calcutta Bible College Mary who I know and correspond with regularly. In this appeal send your gift to Daniel Age, 154 Grand St., Suite 5-10, New York, New York 10013 (Mark it Jenny Bagh).

Sincerely,

Dr. Daniel

Under the Shadow of Prayer Mountain: Kawthoolei Karen Baptist Bible School and College 

To the students: “Remember this one thing if you get through Bible College and forget everything else in your journey through life, especially in time when the grit and grind of survival over takes you “religion is grace and ethics is gratitude”.

God’s grace freely given in Christ is the unconditional, invisible, often unfelt foundation of your life – temporal and eternal. Gratitude proceeds from resting on this unseen foundation of grace.”

Along Thailand’s border with Myanmar(formerly Burma), a couple miles or so inside Thailand there are a number of refugee camps for Burmese fleeing the ruling military junta. As is well known, the military regime have inflicted great violence against resident minority peoples in Myanmar. Among these are the Karen – a distinct ethnic group living in sections of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. I was invited to the Mae La camp 37 kilometers outside the border town of Mae Sot in northern Thailand to teach my course in the Kawthoolei Baptist Bible School and College. The camp has been in existence for over twenty years and currently over 50,000 people live there, predominantly Karen all who have fled there from Myanmar. KKBBSC is the vision and work of Dr. Saw Simon who came to the camp shortly after it was opened. In the beginning it was a fledging endeavor. But now 20 years past it is a thriving educational mission serving over 400 students. Even though the school exists without official status or any permanent structures according to the Thai government rules that regulate the camps it has, by all measurements, flourished.

Layered into nature like a great spider web the camp neatly sprawls for several miles. It is literally out in nowhere. No town or village surrounds the camp only a road passes and when visiting one only begins to be aware of Mae La when she comes upon road blocks and armed guards checking all coming and going. The school is built in section C of the camp directly under the shadow of a great mountain – “Prayer Mountain” with a stream flowing through it. It is idyllic and tragic in the same breath. It is the place of sublime beauty but the bosom of great sorrows and tears yet not without even greater hope and praise. And there are children, many children and youth energizing the camp with spirit and play. Hope springs eternal and nowhere more than in the hearts of the young. Each day they emerge from their humble abodes to set about their work and studies brilliant, clean and well-dressed for the day as if they had bathrooms, showers, laundries and all the creature comforts western depend on to groom and beautify themselves. Some, a few live with family and attend the Bible School or College but most of the young people live in group thatch cabins or a dormitory like structure made from the trees and resources nature supplies.

The structures, all of them are far more open to nature and the outdoors than in the West. This means seeing, smelling and hearing the activities of others is normal. Everything and everybody is far more permeable so when morning breaks just before the light dawns one is awakened with song. Seventy orphans gather and begin to sing in low soft tones on the second floor of their dwelling. This is the way the day opens – before the first crack of dawn the scent of praise fills the crisp mountain air. Singing is a big deal in the camp. From my dwelling the upper level of a garage with a meeting room with a curtained off sleeping section I could walk to an open deck and look out over the main hub of the school. At any given time during the day or evening until 9 pm there would be 6 to 8 different groups singing. And the college age youth sung beautifully in four-part harmony. One of the most talented groups among them was a group of handicapped who live and eat together. One day at chapel time nine of these men, blinded and dismembered by land mines, made their way to the front and made the pillars tremble with their chorus – truly a wonder to behold and hear.

My class consisted of about 65 to 70 Junior and Senior college students. I taught without a translator and had to simplify, then simplify even more my language and concepts. The student’s first language is Karen [pronounced Ka(u) Ren], then Burmese and then a little English. I was forced to continually create stories to carry the concepts I wanted to communicate. Where a story was employed to communicate the idea the uptake ratio was ten times greater. Because I refused to sacrifice the sharp edge of the idea I was trying to get across I had to work much harder and become more imaginative. I lectured morning and afternoon preaching at chapel and weekend youth meetings. Like the previous engagements my experience at the camp was very good. Many of the students had a rethink about the foundation of their faith. I said at the end of my class “remember this one thing if you get through Bible College and forget everything else in your journey through life, especially in time when the grit and grind of survival over takes you “religion is grace and ethics is gratitude”. God’s grace freely given in Christ is the unconditional, invisible, often unfelt foundation of your life – temporal and eternal. Gratitude proceeds from resting on this unseen foundation of grace. Above, before and aside from all the business of religion resting on this foundation is the primary thing and if when this occurs, if only a little, one inner wheel is meant to turn if none other – gratitude. Grace and gratitude are linked like a horse and carriage, like the light of the moon to its source in the sun. Beside these two spirited intangibles everything else preached and taught and done in the name of God and religion is extra and often superfluous. This succinct reduction is a direct quote from T.W. Mansion, the great British New Testament Scholar of bygone years. By the time I took my exit not a few students began to get a new understanding and appreciation for this center.

In hindsight I renamed the course – “The Seminal Theological Insight of the Protestant Reformation: Considered Within Its Original Historical Setting, Reflected on and Applied to Contemporary Times and Issues ”.

I was asked by Malaysia Theological Seminary to teach the History of Protestant Thought but the limits of time led me to this redefinition of the course; one which I believe better serves my own passion and interests and the needs of these fledgling students and ministers. Following this approach, the historical curiosity continually gave way to discussions and applications wedded to the present lived situation. I have yet to translate these from my pencil and paper lecture notes onto my hard drive and make them available but this will happen soon for those of you wanting a sample of my work. At the completion of my course I was given a Karen dress shirt and asked to don it before the assembly – a gift signing their acceptance of me and their appreciation of my work.

Even though the plight of the Karen people is submerged in a 200-year struggle, one that precedes and exceeds the present talks and hopes for the revival of human rights in Burma/Myanmar the destiny of this minority is not in doubt. They have attended to their education and to developing their faith and the practice of the Christian way with great order and discipline and enlightened missionary zeal. Their ways and belief are potent and deep. I have now seen and emerged from this short experience in the Mae La Camp to assure all who ask “the Karen People are no helter skelter people driven and dying out. Their customs, language and culture are alive and well. Their spirit is strong and although subjected to great sufferings they are neither hard nor bitter because they are rooted in and fed by those eternal springs of faith, hope and love found in the Gospel. Indeed these people are among the richest in spirit of God’s people on this earth. Their children fulfill the proverb “daughters polished after the similitude of a palace, sons grown up in their youth”.

If any one reading this wants to make a little or big contribution to this venture I can only encourage you to do so [send to Aprile Age, 154 Grand St, Ste 5-10, NY,NY 10013]. This teaching extravaganza has been under taken on a gratuitous basis to the colleges and seminaries served and has been voluntarily under written by family and a very few friends. To say the least crisscrossing Asia eating, sleeping and traveling has not been cheap. But this report is not an appeal, regardless of any financial response I appreciate your taking an interest in my work and I hope you stay tuned. On my part, I will keep you posted of my travels and sooner than later provide you samples of my lectures should you like to read them.

From Grace to Gratitude – from The Gift received to Giving this Advent Season and Beyond

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Daniel