Sharing the Gospel in Taiwan - Cultural Access Points

Over the past couple of months we've been looking at some of the difficulties, challenges, and potential miscommunications that arise when trying to share the gospel in East Asia, and specifically Taiwan. You can see the deep cultural differences evident in the way people look at the natural/supernatural world, how they approach religion, and even the very different ideas we might have when talking about what we had thought was the exact same basic concept. (a straight line is just a straight line, right? Not always..)
But today I want to share a little about certain aspects of the gospel I've been discovering that are not inherently difficult for people to understand in Taiwan specifically, and in East Asia in general, and in fact may be quite the opposite- aspects of the gospel message that Taiwanese people are often interested in and willing to accept compared to people in the West. The gospel is a stumbling block, but it is also good news, and different parts of the message of the gospel are going to sound like stumbling blocks and good news to different cultures.

1. Breaking Down Generalizations

Let me say first, when we say "X-country's people are like this," or even "Y subculture's rules of scene are that," we're making a generalization. Stereotyping is what we call taking this too far, but generalizing is part of life; not every ripe strawberry is red, but it's useful and not misleading to say that strawberries are red. (Popular culture has taken this to a rather absurd place in the US in recent years, shouting down anyone who calls strawberries red and filling our media with stories about non-red strawberries, but that's a subject for another day...)

Taiwanese culture as of this writing generally lacks a delirious compulsion to deny demonstrably obvious reality, though the problems of the West are all here to some degree along with the local ones. At the same time, Taiwan is a very diverse place. Most mountainous regions are, since the mountains are not an insurmountable obstacle but do make travel inconvenient and pose something of a psychological barrier as well. Add to that Taiwan's rich and multi-layered history, with colonizations and various waves of immigration, and you end up with a population of 23 million people with a vast range of family histories and traditions.

So when I draw contrasts between Taiwan and the West, it must be said that 1) quite a number of Taiwanese people, mostly younger but not necessarily, would look at the world from a fairly Western viewpoint as well. They themselves neither know nor take the trouble to preserve a working understanding of "old-style" traditional Chinese culture or longstanding local traditions, and would consider themselves modern rational people with a scientific outlook on life, and not believe in reincarnation, ancestral spirits, ghosts, or anything like that. (Although what imaginings bring a cold sweat when they hear a weird noise at 1AM are probably rather different from those of a Westerner in the same situation. East or West, we are not so far from our roots as we suppose.)

We should also note that 2) as I mentioned in the earlier post on religion, there is remarkable religious diversity in Taiwan as well, and sharing the gospel is going to be a different prospect depending on who you're talking to. I plan to do a post in the future which suggests some differences in approach based on the worldview/beliefs of each of the major religious traditions in Taiwan, today will just be an overview.

2. General Common Ground

 

In most corners of the world, if you tell someone that there was once a holy man named Jesus, and He taught that we should love each other, they're going to say "yes, what he said is right", not "that's ridiculous, he didn't know what he was talking about." The world has all kinds of people, some incredibly different from each other, but in the end we're all people created in God's image, and there is revealed wisdom which all humanity shares. The gospel is a stumbling block, but it is also good news.

 The gospel is a stumbling block, but if we are speaking the truth in love, can we be content to merely throw out something which people can't understand, tell them to "take it or leave it," and consider ourselves to have "done our job"? Unfortunately I have met those for whom it really did seem like just a job.They knew we had a duty to share the gospel, and so they did, like a vacuum cleaner salesperson who is assigned a certain number of houses to visit.

So my contention is not that we should only share the "nice sounding" or "culturally acceptable" parts of the gospel. For that is called "false teaching," dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in scripture. We must present the whole truth, which does not change. But that doesn't mean our communication methods should reflect the modern age conception of people as cookie cutter products which simply require finding the one perfect method which can then be universally applied with maximum effort and minimal thought.

Paul certainly did not preach a cookie cutter message; we see from numerous verses that he did his best to reach different local cultures and even different churches in ways that were appropriate to their context.
So I submit that if we view it both as a calling and an act of love to share the hope we have, and not just a duty, then we will make every effort to bridge the gap of misunderstanding which varies depending on the culture.

3. Access Points for the Gospel in East Asia 

 

A famous missionary to Taiwan, perhaps the only missionary to Taiwan who became a significant part of the Taiwanese cultural consciousness, was a Canadian missionary named George Mackay. Mackay was the first Presbyterian missionary to northern Taiwan, and is remembered in Taiwan for his long black beard and how he loved Taiwan and its people. It is said that he often began a gospel presentation with the scriptural command for children to respect their parents, which was praised by his audience as true teaching.

Scripture is clear that children should obey and respect their parents, something which has been all but lost in our child-deifying postmodern culture. If you want to reach a Confucian culture, Scripture's teaching about honoring authority and relationships between people are a great place to start. And that's where we'll start:

Cultural access points of Scripture (not in any specific order):

Showing the proper honor to one's father

1. Honoring parents/authority:

For older people, feeling beset by a young generation who was raised mostly without discipline (this seems to happen every generation, but there may be more truth to the accusation now than ever), the Bible's call for children to obey and honor their parents may not only ring true but come as something of a relief. "Ah, we knew that was sound teaching but these young people won't listen." At the same time, younger people who have a well-developed sense of "xiào shùn" ("filial piety," a rare case in which the Chinese looks like the easier term) may connect with Biblical teaching regarding their duty to their parents as well, and furthermore be able to reassure their parents that while becoming a Christian does mean they can't worship deceased parents, it doesn't mean they can't honor them as responsible children.

East vs. West: In terms of attitudes towards authority, in East Asia the deep-rooted desire for personal freedom and the idea of righteous rebellion against tyranny you see in America is not very apparent (Although you can see it increasingly in young people in Taiwan. Setting aside views of domestic politics one way or another, one can't avoid getting chills hearing tens of thousands of Taiwanese youth all singing A Song of Angry Men from Les Mis in Taiwanese at a massive protest against the government). Traditionally, the greatest evil is "disorder" and a disruption of the proper relationships between people and people, perhaps the principle domain of Confucianism, and between people and the natural order of things, the primary focus of the non-animistic Asian religions.So "rebels" are committing the very grave sin of attacking the heaven-ordained natural order, similar to what we saw in Europe prior to the diminishing of monarchies and rise of nationalism.

2. The Genealogies:

Speaking of parents... While they may not speak to Taiwanese as dramatically as to some of the world's tribal peoples (I've heard stories from Bible translators of tribes accepting the gospel because of the genealogies), don't assume you can just skip over them. Depending on how traditionally-minded your listener/s are, the genealogies can provide some weightiness to the gospel by demonstrating that 1) it's not a recent story (The Roman Empire was concurrent with the Han dynasty in China, a long time ago but by no means the depths of time), and 2) the Bible shows honor to ancestors too. One lady we are witnessing to was pleasantly surprised to find that the Bible gives such an important place to ancestors; Taiwanese believers often assume that because Christians are not allowed to worship their ancestors, that it's a religion which does not honor family or especially the memory of departed family members. It's important to demonstrate that, while Western habits and conventions vary, scripturally speaking this is not the case.

East vs. West: Covering the genealogies can be a great way to demonstrate that even if we ourselves find a list of ancestors less than compelling, scripture itself locates them in places of honor. Many Taiwanese mistakenly believe Christianity to be "the American religion"  (I routinely hear kids ask if Jesus is an American), so hearing generation after generation going back into antiquity will provide the authenticity for them that goes over the head of a nation not yet 250 years old and full of immigrants. Note: Some Taiwanese may find them as irrelevant as Americans do, you just have to try and see. It's hard to guess who is thinking in a traditional way behind the surface of their demographic or subculture.

Worshippers at Longshan Temple in Taipei

3. A Polytheistic Context

Taiwanese society is polytheistic, and worshipping idols is a ubiquitous practice even among the younger generations. (High school and college students flock to temples to pray and offer incense to the God of Luck for their exams, for example) Reading the Bible one often has a "a long time ago, far far away" feeling, because it's describing societies and cultures so much unlike our own in the US/the West. Taiwan is what a society like those looks like 2000 years later, without the revolutionary changes and upheavals that occurred in the West during those years and ushered in the modern era. (Or the revolutionary changes in China last century. Taiwan preserves old-style Chinese culture in various ways that are rare or lost on the mainland. It's postmodern technology meets old Asia; really a fascinating place to visit, let alone live.)

Perhaps I should be more bold, but personally I do not evangelize by attacking the idols as false religion. I believe that if anyone should do that, it would be our local Taiwanese brothers and sisters. Coming in as a Western outsider, I ask more questions than I offer criticism or condemnation. I want to bridge cultural divides and discuss the core of their belief system, not stand back and lob cruise missiles at their world view.

But one reason I don't feel it's necessary or appropriate for me to do this, is that scripture already does. The entirety of the Bible was written in the midst of idol-worshipping cultures, nations, and empires, and it has a lot to say about those idols and the people who worship them, much of it not very polite. There are passages like the middle of Isaiah 44, for example, which positively drip with sarcasm at the absurdity of idol worship (Imagine cooking your barbecue on a gas grill then worshiping the other half of the propane, that's something like what verses 16 and 17 are saying). Or Elijah vs. the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, one of my favorite Old Testament stories. That part where the priests get desperate and start cutting themselves until the blood flowed? It's more rare now, but that commonly happened in Taiwan at important temple ceremonies and sometimes still does today. Studying the Bible, Taiwanese people can read these passages and others like them for themselves and decide what they think. I believe my job is to guide them to the scriptures and let the Spirit do this work directly. Of course I am happy to answer any questions they have, but I can only answer as someone who has studied the scripture just as they are now doing, and is merely some years ahead of them in that process.

East vs West: A lot of the Bible makes far more sense when one has lived in Asia. I recall many times, discussing the frequent references to idolatry all throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well, having lessons like: "What are the idols in your life? Do you sacrifice your time to the idol of other people's opinions?" Abstractly speaking, of course we have these kinds of idols in our lives, things that are more important to us than God, so that's not a misuse of the concept. But when one is surrounded by actual gold-veneered statues and people putting food in front of them and carrying them around, so much of the Old (and New) Testament comes alive. That's part of the ironic tragedy of Taiwanese thinking that Christianity is a Western religion irrelevant to them: It was written by people living in cultures far more similar to that of modern Taiwan than to our own in the West.

4. The Trinity and other confusing concepts

The doctrine of God's triune nature is not necessarily a connection point for the gospel in the sense that it leads people to accept the truth of it, but I bring it up because there is a big difference between how it's perceived in the East vs. the West. For example, one day I was talking to a good friend, and the subject of whether Jesus and God meant the same thing came up. I mentioned the Trinity, but said maybe she found the concept too confusing. She wondered why I would think that, so I said people often thought it sounded contradictory. She asked if I meant because Westerners always insisted that things couldn't be different and the same at the same time? God is three, and He's also one. No problem!

I was somewhat surprised by this, but I shouldn't have been. In East Asia religious truths are typically seen as mysteries to be understood (or not), not as propositions to be logically parsed. There is the assumption that some things will be esoteric and confusing, and without those it's not really a religion.

I can't go so far as to say that the presence of "mysteries" in our faith -things we as believers don't fully grasp or understand either- actually serve as proof of the gospel in East Asia, but it's possible. I have heard it suggested that a religion in which everything is nailed down and parsed out precisely simply doesn't fly in the East, where people know better, but further research will be required to see if that's true in a general way in Taiwan. But at least it can be said, you are far less likely to face antagonism in the Western atheist sense, scouring your faith for any contradictions with science or logic, and more likely to face challenges from more surprising directions, like one student hearing me talk about one of Jesus' miracles and claiming his father could call spirits into himself and do the same thing.

The Sermon on the Mount - a painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch

5. The Person and teachings of Jesus Christ

The idea of a "Great Teacher" carries significant weight in Taiwan. We on this side of salvation know Jesus as our Savior and King, but it is not wrong that He was a great and wise teacher as well. Chinese culture has a long list of great teachers, and they are exalted and even worshipped in some cases. (Teacher in this case doesn't mean "math teacher," but could include it; it is someone who has both knowledge and wisdom and from whom if you learn humbly and attentively you can receive the benefit of both.) I have found that the more people hear of Jesus' teaching in Taiwan, the more they tend to like him, and I have begun to wonder if we conservative evangelicals have not found ourselves in the position of overemphasizing doctrine and "concepts" in our evangelism, and underemphasizing the person of Christ Himself. In the end, we are not subscribing to a system but surrendering to and worshipping a man who is the true Servant-Teacher-Prophet-Priest-King-Savior-God. Understanding Jesus in any of the prior roles can be a step towards believing on Him redemptively as the last two, so long as one does take the necessary following steps.

East vs West: People in the U.S., in my experience, typically use the "Great Teacher" label as a polite dodge. No normal person can read what Jesus wrote and accuse Him of being either evil or foolish, yet many balk at His claim to be God, so they want to give Him a respectful title that falls short of that. (C.S.Lewis' trilemma is an attempt to point out the logical inconsistency of doing so. Of course very, very few people come to Christ via demonstrations of logic, so most people simply skirt around the trilemma by saying Jesus never claimed to be God, and it was his followers who inserted those claims into his recorded remarks)

Taiwan is a bit different. This label is a term of great respect, and doesn't preclude worship. A Great Teacher can certainly be divine and a god, and in fact if you are remembered as a historically noteworthy Chinese teacher I'd your chances of being worshipped by at least a few people are reasonably high. Of course recognizing Jesus as the God involves an understanding of the fundamental nature of God as He reveals Himself in Scripture, which is an entirely separate question and difficult hurdle for many Taiwanese to overcome. Therefore you frequently end up with situations where Taiwanese become convinced of Jesus' divinity and begin worshipping Him -alongside- their other gods; in the past I have even seen an icon of Jesus in one of the most famous Taiwanese temples.

6. Chinese-Jewish Cultural Connections

I can and probably will later do a whole post on this; there are fascinating cultural links and connections between ancient Chinese and Jewish cultures. There is an ethnic minority in China that preserves Hebrew words in their local dialect, there is the Chinese custom of putting red paper on their door frames for Chinese New Year, a practice connected with an ancient story regarding a monster which devoured humans, from which the red on their door frames could protect them (strongly reminiscent of the first Passover), and there are Chinese characters themselves which contain some interesting examples of scriptural metaphors. (The most famous example being that the character for "righteousness" is composed of a character which can mean "lamb" placed over the character for "me") While some of these may be "coincidences," other seem to be Hebrew cultural memes that accompanied Jewish travelers along the Silk Road from the Middle East to China.

These connection points demonstrate that Chinese culture already contains some of the ideas and content of the Biblical account and Christian teachings. This is extremely helpful because for people who consider themselves part of the greater Chinese cultural sphere, often the most important question about a new idea is whether it can be considered Chinese or not (Sometimes "Taiwanese," in Taiwan, depending on the individual). If not, it's an "outside idea." These may be readily accepted in business or other spheres, but as in all parts of the world, religion is a deep and identity-level issue. (In the West it's almost the opposite; people would need to tread carefully when suggesting we adopt "foreign business practices" in place of the usual, but many people outside the Church are fascinated by "Asian spirituality" and don't feel threatened by it.)

Having learned about God and believing in Him, we see that He is the God of all creation. For someone in Chinese culture hearing about Him for the first time, and knowing it's a religious question, an instinctive question is "is this something relevant to me?" For people who are interested in history and their own culture, these kinds of ancient cultural connections give some relevance and bring the gospel a little more into their court, as it were.

People tend to go overboard with these, so it's important
to note that the "lamb" character can be used for anything
like a sheep, goat, or gazelle. The point is not how perfect
a gospel analogy it may be, but that it's a useful connection point

4. Summary

We'll stop here, but I hope that as I continue to share the gospel here I will have an increasingly good grasp on cultural access points for the gospel in Taiwan, and can improve on this post in a "Part 2" somewhere down the line. In the mean time I hope this encourages anyone who does ministry here in Taiwan or anywhere nearby, that although at times it feels like the cultural and worldview gap are insurmountable, God has not left us without a cultural legacy of connection points back to the gospel. While the gospel can never not be a stumbling block, we can shine the light of truth in ways that are culturally relevant and more likely to leave people interested to hear more than deciding it's got nothing to do with them.

Triple Peanut Teleology

1. A Perfectly-timed Triple Peanut - Miracle or Statistical Inevitability?

The other night, I was eating some peanuts as a late night snack. They were the kind that comes in the shell, and I was enjoying the process of popping them open one by one as I worked on the computer. I have frequent sleep issues and that night I was starting to worry that my brain wanted to pull an all-nighter, when I realized the little bag of peanuts was empty except for the last one. I got it out, popped it open, and lo and behold it was a triple peanut. Not especially uncommon, but the only one in that bag.

For reasons that are more or less impossible to explain but some of you will immediately understand, the fact that the very last peanut in the bag was a triple peanut, and the only triple peanut in the bag, meant that I wouldn't have insomnia that night. It was that mysterious and elusive sense of conclusion my brain demands to feel before it will sleep, unexpectedly encountered in peanut form. One thought immediately came into my mind: "Thanks, God." The incident had very much the feeling of a little favor you do for someone that you love, a little thing that yet means a lot because it's something only someone who truly understands the recipient would know to give them.

This is one of the uncountable number of incidents, big and small, pebbles and boulders, that provide anchors for my faith in God. Sometimes it's not the big dramatic things, it's the times when something you need is provided in such a random but chronologically charitable way that you know it's not an accident. 
 Now, at this point, your average internet atheist is raising an eyebrow or possibly even formulating a response hee* fancies clever, that involves the flying spaghetti monster and/or invisible unicorns. 

(*- he and only he, if you don't get it see iff)

You fool, he will explain, the peanut was at the bottom because having three nuts inside made it heavier than the other peanuts, and it gradually shifted to the bottom during packing or transit. Since triple peanuts are less common than the other types, and given the variety of sorting and packing machinery out there, there is some reasonable chance that only one would be in the bag, and a very high chance that it would then end up at the bottom. That's why, he will summarize, there was just one triple peanut at the end, and not because of some kind of divine intervention. If he's had some schooling he may invoke Occam's Razor* to suggest this is a much simpler explanation than "coming up with a deity," as if you are the first to propose God exists and are boldly attempting to shoehorn Him into the universe.

(*- With some historical irony, as Saint William of Occam/Ockham would consider this an invalid application of the principle -which he did not call a "razor" but frequently used, so that later it became identified with him- and would himself certainly not be on the atheist side of this kind of argument.)

There are various possible arguments in response to this attempt to explain away the event, for example recalling the fact that when I got down to the last several peanuts I could easily have grabbed that one at any time, or that it's not so much that there was one triple peanut as the fact that it came at exactly the right time to negate my insomnia, or that I bought the peanuts rather randomly that night and hadn't done so in a very long time, so however you look at it, it was a pretty exceptional event, and in the context of a world where we already believe there are no pure coincidences, I could argue that the evidence suggests this wasn't one.

But all that would be missing the point, because 1) likelihood isn't a good argument regarding something that already happened*, and 2) it fails to recognize the deeper difference is one of teleology.


(*- This is why scientists laugh when people invoke the "tornado through a junkyard" analogies popularly used by Christians to cite the improbability of evolution occurring. For most scientists, evolution is taken totally for granted as what did in fact happen and continues to happen, so discussing its improbability is irrelevant as far as they are concerned. It's like arguing the odds are against your tire being popped by a particular piece of metal on the interstate as you are getting the spare out of the trunk. Also in reality the odds of a tornado assembling a [whatever the version you heard is] from a random junkyard are incomputable, as Spock might say. I imagine it was originally meant just as a picturesque analogy of something extremely unlikely, and either way is not suitable for an actual debate or serious discussion about probabilities)

2. Teleology and Causes

Teleology is not a word you hear every day, but it's one of those helpful terms that captures an important and profound concept, so it's helpful to know it. Put simply, teleology is what people are invoking when they ask "why did this happen to me?" It is the "why" that is furthest from "how"; a question about the significance or role events play in the bigger picture. It is also a question of faith: one cannot ask "why did this happen" in the teleological sense without believing there is a(n Extrinsic -I won't really go into that here) Purpose that transcends the meaning you yourself might assign to it, which directly implies the existence of God in some form.

When asking Why in general, one is asking for the cause of something. Invoking Aristotle, we can say there are 4 types of causes. The 2 most relevant for our discussion today are the Efficient Cause and Final Cause.

I was not the efficient cause of this helpful image; thank you to whomever was.

The Efficient Cause would include things like the Laws of Physics, and is typically the only cause a modern materialist would recognize. This is a "why" that draws near to a "how." For example, one sometimes encounters questions like "why do things always fall down?" where the answer might be "because of gravity."

A Christian would (typically, and hopefully) have no problem with this answer, because gravity is indeed an observable part of Creation. Yet recognizing the presence and activity of God, we recognize there are answers on another level as well. So the stereotypically mocked answer of "because God made it fall," is actually no less correct an answer than gravity, the difference is in which kind or level of Cause is being invoked.

But while various debates rage in the Church regarding the extent to which God is the efficient cause, most Christians could certainly agree God is the agent of the Final Cause, (The telos, from whence "teleology"). Why the rock fell is, in light of the Final Cause, connected to the question of why the rock exists in the first place. For Christians, this question has an answer, though one to which our limited knowledge does not extend. "There is a reason for everything," we believe, because the God of scripture is a reasonable God. Even when He is doing things in the Old Testament that distress His own prophets, I can't think of a scriptural example when He does not also explain why the thing is happening; every specific action of God we see in Scripture has a Purpose.

So we believe that the Efficient Cause of the rock falling is gravity, and the Final Cause is known to God as part of His hidden will. Even without going into questions of to what extent God's sovereignty controls what occurs, I think more or less all Christians would agree, and could agree that scripture observably teaches, that a rock does not ever fall for reasons that escape God.

For the atheist/materialist, there is no Final Cause. In fact, there cannot be, or else God. In the words of an atheist on Reddit (Yes random, but he put it well and succinctly): "Final causes are an incoherent concept, and if we accept them, them we accept teleology, and if we accept teleology, then we accept either an infinite regress or a first cause. Not sure how [one] avoids deism with that." (Here deism means admitting the universe implies an initiator God of some kind without going into what that God's attributes might be, so nowhere near Christianity but taking the first step towards Romans 1 and making atheism untenable in the process)

Some subsequent commenters brought up some objections to his claim that final causes are incoherent, and he retorted that purposes are not inherent but must be assigned by a mind. Since he denied God, he considered this a rebuttal (no mind to do it, except humans), but for us it's the other way around; God possesses a mind external to the universe, therefore its purpose can be assigned by Him. The argument requires the assumption of no God to be evidence against God. (This is yet another demonstration of how atheist arguments are ultimately always circular: No God, because No God)

Now to return to my blessing in peanut form, the important thing here is that the atheist's "rebuttal" and my claim are actually distinct; he is trying to impossibly attack my final cause with an efficient cause, like claiming a car does not exist to be driven but because a factory built it. This is an extremely common mistake atheists fall into, and Christians tend to feel instinctively that something is wrong about the argument but aren't sure how to articulate it. (I hope this post is helpful along those lines)


In fact, I can agree with everything my hypothetical antagonist says regarding how I ended up with that particular peanut at that particular time, because I acknowledge both efficient cause and final cause. He is forced to deny the possibility of the final cause, or else God. (Yet, poor soul, he will probably insist that my "religious" mind is the narrow and shackled one.) In any case, the efficient cause is doubtless similar to what he has described. I'm not suggesting there was a flash of glorious light and the peanut was created ex nihilo in the bottom of the bag. God can do that if He wants, and there are mountains of evidence even beyond scriptural accounts (which by faith are enough) that miracles do happen. So sometimes the efficient cause is a testimony to God as well, since it's inexplicable. I think of miraculous healings, for example. In those situations, skeptics will simply speak from their standpoint of unbelief and say they're sure there must be a natural explanation. (Of course... because if there isn't, even once, then God. Do you begin to see where the burden of proof lies now? I believe this is one reason Paul can say they are "without excuse." All roads lead to admitting God's existence except the one whose primary objective is not to lead there. That is called "willing unbelief")

So, although I don't see any evidence for divine intervention in the efficient cause of my peanut blessing, my faith can still be strengthened. How? In that the final cause in this context was the rectification of my insomnia on a particular night, and because none of the humans involved in the process of the peanut reaching me had the knowledge to extrinsically cause this, and it goes without saying that a peanut cannot seriously be argued to have the intrinsic cause of insomnia prevention, therefore God is the only possible agent. An event occurred in which the means were ordinary but conspired to produce a result which could have only been from God. Distinguishing between Causes allows us to articulate more clearly how this can be the case.

I have found that Christians often fight to attribute the efficient cause to Divine intervention when the case is sometimes a little shaky, opening themselves to sometimes (not always) valid criticism from skeptics who demonstrate persuasively the natural means by which the event could have occurred, and feel confirmed in their unbelief. I think that's because the Christians in those situations know, deeply, that something is of God, and want to demonstrate that, but aren't familiar with this tool for seeing that the supernatural element is still there, but is better expressed in terms of teleology.

Teleology is the basis of the Intelligent Design argument,
often introduced rhetorically via the Watchmaker analogy

3. Practical Applications of Final Cause/Teleology for Christians

Some of you may find your eyes glazing over when things turn philosophical, some may not even have made it this far. But I want to point out a few extremely important and relevant issues which stem from this concept.

1. Final Cause means There is a God, and vice versa

One can't logically derive our Triune God, that knowledge comes from the special revelation of scripture. But that the existence of a Final Cause necessitates Divinity in some reasonable and personal-ish form, as I mentioned above, even atheists recognize. They will respond rhetorically various ways to the accusation that they say people have no Purpose, recognizing that sounds bad, but in general they would challenge the very concept of Purpose, because to really admit Purpose is to admit God. (That's one of the various reasons there have never been all that many real atheists... the concept of Purpose is too obviously valid and real for normal people to seriously pretend it doesn't exist)

The flip side, that the existence of God allows a Final Cause, should be encouraging to us as believers. We don't get to know what it is, we may see things we don't understand, but we know that God is, and that He is good. If we see evil and suffering, we should recall that other sentient beings besides God exist and may possibly have played a role in the mess we see every time we take a look at the news. (Yes, this leads directly to arguments about sovereignty... and they are good and necessary arguments to have. It's a worthy topic to ponder and wrestle with, and as long as we're doing so in the love of Christ and not to divide up His body the Church into rival camps, God is glorified in our pursuit of understanding regarding Him. That He is beyond our understanding doesn't mean we can't seek to know Him better.)

2. Christians need to bear in mind that many people avoid Teleological thinking

Christians understand the language of Purpose and we very frequently invoke it and think in terms of teleology, even in the negative sense: after a major disaster, Christian often wonder why God allowed it to happen. "What good purpose could there possibly be in this," we ask ourselves conflictedly, and atheists ask mockingly, suggesting the answer is, "there isn't, because there is no God and nothing has a Purpose." They're attacking the very concept of a Final Cause. (As stated above, they have to, because otherwise, God)

In many cultures and subcultures, teleological concerns are simply perceived as less compelling than pragmatic ones. The ultimate purpose behind things happening is seen as unknowable, so the focus is on dealing with things as they come and their ramifications. In that context, Christians trying to get a conversation about God going through discussing the ultimate purpose behind this or that may not get far. Many people simply aren't interested in thinking teleologically, as subtly demonstrated by the fact that popular media often portrays it happening in conversations between people getting high ("Dude, like, what's it all mean?"), or Eastern-type advice from a guru figure ("Find your Purpose deep within yourself"), or negatively, as those unwelcome thoughts which come on sleepless nights ("What legacy will I leave behind?"). Rarely is it ever portrayed as a necessary aspect of life for ordinary people to consider and factor into their plans and actions. When a scriptural worldview is not actively maintained, that attitude can unconsciously creep into the Church as well.

3. Remembering Teleology prompts us to live according to our Purpose

If there is a Final Cause for all events in our lives, how much more is there a Purpose for each of us? And that purpose is not a trick question on the exam of existence, which we must figure out or be condemned to a fruitless life and God's displeasure, but neither is it a pleasant unspecific thought which can encourage us but carries no responsibility. Scripture does not teach us to be either anxious or agnostic about our purpose. You have one, and it's both a responsibility and a joy, but not a trap.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism famously asks "What is the Chief End of Man?"
The answer is "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." 

One way of glorifying God in this life (not to mention obeying Him) is to actively seek to live in a way that reflects the Great Commission of Christ, the instructions He left the incipient Church, a command which we have inherited. That means, in the words of the Gospel of Matthew, making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything He commanded (which necessarily includes the Great Commission itself).

Believers, then, must think about what responsibility they have regarding this mission. No one outside of the Church can do it; the task was given to us. For many of you, that task may not be packing up and moving to another country and/or culture (Though maybe it is; it was for me), but it must be said, that also doesn't mean living each week considering that you've done your Christian duty by sacrificing a couple hours to attend church. If we have a Purpose, it comes from God. God is real, and that has real implications for your life; faith is attempting to live according to that fact, not merely intellectual assent to it.

If you believe that this God from whom springs forth your purpose for existing is real, you will live that out. Not living it out doesn't necessarily mean you don't believe, but it might mean that, or merely that you are being disobedient and should repent. And as James wrote, that's a dead sort of faith anyway; why should you remain in a situation of arguing that you have faith despite no obvious evidence of living it out? Show your faith by how you live it out. You'll find joy shows up in the process.

Bit by Bit - Spiritual Checkmate

(Bit by Bit is a series expressing gospel
truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

Like many other people, I very much enjoy games of strategy, whether digital or board games. (in a few years there will probably be increasingly no distinction) I preferred them from childhood onward because I had -and still typically have- rotten luck; if it involved dice, I would lose. For games that depended on skill rather than chance, at least I had only my own abilities to blame, and I had a reliable way to improve.

I've only ever been decent at chess, as having a brain that jumps all over the place is not conducive to carefully considering a series of moves. Also my strategic efforts tend to naturally gravitate a place somewhere between Chess and Go- I tend to focus a little too much on local maneuvering and capturing other pieces in Go, where one has to always keep the big picture in mind, and a little too much on "putting pressure" here or there in Chess, where you have so few pieces in a small area that each move has immediate importance as well as being part of a given strategy or "push." (Some game that involved about 6 additional kinds of chess pieces per side on a board about double the size of a chessboard might be perfect)

But I often lose chess for purely tactical reasons. I recently got a chess app for my phone, and have been playing the computer on the hardest difficulty that's still fun (I lose 3/4 of the time). I found that I will nearly always try to wrest initiative away from the other player by making a series of provocative moves that he can't help but react to. Sometimes I can score an early victory in this way, or at least put him on the defensive and get my own pieces out earlier.

However this tendency of mine typically leads to a loss. The main reason is that when I am focusing on seizing the initiative early and putting pressure on the opponent's king, I am forced to concentrate less on building up a strong defensive position. This means as the game progresses, holding on to initiative and keeping up my attack on his king's position begins to mean sacrificing a pawn here and there, and sometimes making gambits which are numerically equal but weaken me positionally. The result is often a premature checkmate, made possible by the enemy taking advantage of my weak defense to pin and fork my pieces drawing near to his king and force them to retreat to try to protect my own king. It's often then too late to stop the checkmate, and even if I do, I'm forced to surrender initiative and begin a defensive game from my now weaker position.

Spiritual Checkmate

When this happened yet again in a quick chess app match this evening, it suddenly struck me that there was a direct analogy to our spiritual lives as well. As a missionary in the 10/40 window I am generally considered more of an offensive than defensive unit when it comes to the Kingdom of God and the domain of the enemy. I'm on the edge, pushing into new territory (which this shrine-and-idol-filled neighborhood I work in certainly is..) for the gospel. But in my personal spiritual life, if I am always focusing on ministry and evangelism, and neglect my own time with God and His word, I'm making exactly the same mistake I have been making in those chess games.

While I'm maintaining forward momentum in my ministries I don't notice it; I can see there's progress being made, and experience spiritual growth of one sort through my efforts and seeing God at work. But when our little team runs up against difficulties, or a ministry fails, or if repeated salvos of insomnia and temptation of various kinds begin to wear down my spiritual armor, my lack of defensive preparation begins to show. The enemy can start "pinning and forking" me, and suddenly I've lost initiative and can only try to react from my weakened position.

Thankfully, the battle belongs to the Lord, so I am never only thrust upon my own devices. But certainly God allows us much freedom in how closely we choose to walk with Him, and my experience is that, like the Father He is, He is typically willing to let us suffer through the object lessons if we don't do what His word taught in the first place. That is not purposeless suffering, it's sanctification the harder way. (There is no easy way, but there are certainly wise and foolish ways to go about it which lead to more or less hardship relatively speaking.)

But "Spiritual Checkmate" by the enemy can certainly happen when we focus our time too entirely on working for God versus being with Him. In our spiritual life, often the best defense is not a good offense; both are necessary, but if anything it's the other way around. It's frequently noted how much time Jesus spent away from the crowds in prayer and solitude, seeking quiet and God's presence. If He did so, it's arrogant of us to assume we can always be in "attack mode," and not need to draw away and rest, not just physically but spiritually. (We are simultaneously spiritual and physical creatures, so the two are inextricably linked for us) Our spiritual immune system, our spiritual defenses, will be strengthened during those times.

Some people explode onto the ministry scene and make a huge impact in a short time through powerful and dynamic effort, but are brought down by scandal, destructive patterns of secret sin, or are simply worn out by the enemy's attacks. I suspect sometimes their private spiritual life was not strong; they were "too busy doing God's work" to maintain the devotional life that would have strengthened their spiritual defense against the enemy's attempts to stop their progress. Others may be hesitant to step up to ministry challenges and have less impact for the Kingdom than they might, but do continue on faithfully for decades unshaken. Their devotional life is steady, their defenses are strong, and they can weather the enemy's attacks. For them it may be their offensive capabilities that they need to work on, so that more people might be blessed through their faithfulness.

I would have lost if not for those two well-placed pawns protecting my king.
You can't win without the major pieces, of course, but sometimes it's the small,
consistent acts of devotion that keep the enemy at bay and help carry the day.

The Devil's (Desperate) Gambit

Since we have the Spirit, we do not need to look at this as a zero-sum game. Offensive capability does not come only at the expense of defensive capability and vice versa; both strengthen, enrich, and reinforce the other. Our private devotion and time in God's presence will directly improve our ability to advance the Kingdom through our ministries, and seeing God at work in the world and in our ministries brings excitement and passion to our devotion as well. That means we don't need to "balance" them, but increase both, focusing on whichever is lagging behind. Prayer (real, focused, time-consuming prayer) is probably the most straightforward way to simultaneously improve both.

I submit that in 2015, the enemy is pressing hard to bring the battle not just against our ministries but against our personal time in God's presence, when our defenses can be strengthened. Typically it's going to be our "defensive" side, private devotion and time with God, that needs to be constantly protected. A war is being fought to distract/entertain us 24/7, and increasingly I find that it's impossible to prevail by default. I have to actively take steps to push back. (It's one of my personal goals for this year.)

So I'd leave you with the same encouragement. Aggressively stake out time for defensive spiritual recuperation. You may find in doing so you've taken the initiative away from the enemy and put him on the defensive. Don't get cocky, the devil is a better chess player than any of us. But praise God that with Christ's total victory on the cross, he's only able to mount a losing battle. That the attacks look more and more vicious in recent months, as our brothers and sisters in the faith are attacked and killed in many parts of the world, is a sign not only of his evil malice but also of his desperation. The ultimate victory has already been won, but here on earth things will get worse before they get better.
Be neither apathetic nor fearful; shore up your defenses and stand firm.

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)