An INTP on the Mission Field - Wormtongue or Elrond?

Returning to the INTP series...

Back when I set out on my journey to the mission field, I noticed that there were not many people of my personality among my fellow travelers. To be sure, not all were extroverts, and my seminary was known for attracting former engineers. To be an INTP is not merely to be an introvert, however, but to be very interested in certain things few other people find compelling, and find real challenges in certain tasks most people find routine. That's true of every personality in one area or another, but for INTPs that tends to play out in ways that don't mesh naturally with the missionary lifestyle. It doesn't mean incessant navel-gazing or a robotic inability to empathize with others, but it does mean social energy is a resource that must be conserved wisely, and some time away to ponder the theory of everything (preferably in a high-altitude spot with a good view but also shade) is necessary every so often.

While I have written in the past about the specific struggles of being an INTP or my own experiences of working on the mission field as an INTP, today I want to challenge INTPs in a certain way which certainly doesn't only apply to INTPs. (Even you Enneagram people will get something out of it) To do that, we're going to first look at two well-known characters from the Lord of the Rings:

Grima Wormtongue: The Deceitful Hoarder

In the Rohan plotline of the Lord of the Rings hexalogy, we meet the subversive character of Grima Wormtongue. He is a servant of Saruman who is sabotaging Rohan from within while Saruman's forces ravage it from without. Grima is portrayed in a compelling way by Brad Dourrif in the Peter Jackson trilogy, although he's more Tim-Burtonesque than what I saw in my mind's eye reading the books. He wouldn't be a very effective tool of evil if his appearance and wardrobe screamed "tool of evil", and to some extent we've all been falsely trained by Hollywood to think evil looks like that in real life. Here the words of Lewis in his preface to Screwtape ring true:

The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

Whatever his appearance, Grima is a subtle and dangerous opponent, as Gandalf observes. After Gandalf arrives at Edoras and breaks Saruman's spell over Theoden, Grima is (somewhat surprisingly, in the context of the story at that point) spared and given a horse to leave. Even at that point, the soldiers of Rohan seem to view him more with contempt than fear, not comprehending how much damage he has done. Theoden does not order him executed but gives him the option to show loyalty or be exiled. In the end he spits on that offer and runs off to join Saruman.

Grima Wormtongue's story has many interesting parallels to Smeagol/Gollum:
- Both are characters who serve the cause of evil individually for their own reasons, and both are bound to their masters by means other than force (Gollum due to his enslavement to the ring Frodo bears, Grima due to fear and guilt).
- Both also "lose" precious magical artifacts: Gollum literally loses his precious, Sauron's ring of power, and Grima loses a palantir (magical seeing-stone) for Saruman by hurling it out of Orthanc at the protagonists assembled below. 

- Both were originally good or at least neutral, and in choosing evil consistently became twisted into something unlike their original selves. (Gandalf says to Theoden about Grima: "once it was a man, and did you service in its fashion.") 

- In the end, both characters are spared when they could have been executed, and eventually attack their master for more or less the very reason they've been serving them. (Gollum when ring-lust overcomes him, and Grima when his fearful hatred finally tips to the side of hatred). 

- In another odd connection, Grima is actually killed by roused-up Hobbits who are taking the Shire back after he snaps and kills Saruman with a knife. (In the movie version which dispenses with this part of the story and moves Saruman's death to a much earlier scene, Grima is shot by Legolas)

Also similar to Smeagol/Gollum, Grima is a thief (who likes to accuse others to hide his own guilt): His crimes are not only limited to spying for Saruman and functioning as a sort of proxy by which Saruman's corroding influence on Theoden can be locally amplified (whether very obviously in the films, or more subtly in the books); he is actively working for the downfall of Rohan in whatever ways he can, and this extends to pilfering and thieving as well.

Grima apparently acted partly out of greed; Saruman had promised him spoils after what he assumed was his inevitable victory, which possibly included Eowyn as well (I may not be alone in thinking in that case victory would have ended Grima faster than defeat did). Apparently he had begun this spoil-taking preemptively: When Grima is forced to retrieve Theoden's sword, it is remarked that "many things men have missed" are found in the trunk where he had stashed the sword away. This is purposefully not elaborated upon by Tolkien, but one assumes that the various other things are items of real or symbolic strength which have been stolen away by Grima. Ahead of Saruman's assumed victory, he couldn't keep his hands off of the most valuable things he could find when the opportunity to steal them away and hoard them presented itself. 

Elrond of Imladris: The Wise Giver

Let us now consider an extremely different character in LotR: Elrond the Half-elven, Lord of Rivendell (called Imladris by the elves)

It wouldn't be helpful here to spend lots of time on Elrond's backstory, so let's summarize by saying Elrond and his brother Elros were born back in the Elder days, the children of a rare and specific High Elf/Historically Important Human marriage. They were given the option to choose their fate, whether to be Elven or Human (in Tolkien's world the afterlife works differently for the two groups, so being "mixed" wasn't an option), and Elrond chose to be of the elven kind, later becoming Lord of Rivendell, important to the plot of both the Hobbit and LotR, and holding one of the three Elven great rings. (His brother chose to be human and founded Numinor, of which Aragorn is the last descendant of the line of kings.) 

Rivendell/Imladris is an interesting place; in the Hobbit it is treated a bit more lightly, with elves singing in trees and Elrond the sage leader of a "homely house" at the edge of wilderland, who primarily helps the Dwarves figure out a map. In the Lord of the Rings and connected works it is described further as one of the three major strongholds of the Elves in Middle Earth, alongside the Shipyards which protect the elves access to the journey west across the Sundering Seas to the Undying Lands, and Galadriel's woodland stronghold of Lothlorien. Rivendell is important enough that it is mentioned in Tolkien's additional writings that Sauron had been hoping to mobilize Smaug and the goblin armies of the north against it, had Smaug not been taken out by Bard in the events of The Hobbit and Dale subsequently re-established as a stronghold that eventually limited Sauron's northern campaign.

Rivendell is described by Bilbo, who ends up living there long term after his departure from the Shire, as "a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all." It is the only place Aragorn could call home, the place where the shards of Narsil were preserved as revealed in dreams to Boromir and Faramir, along with many other things not to be found anywhere else in Middle Earth.

As the Lord of Rivendell, Elrond is wise and conservative (somewhat unlike the Jackson films' take on his character), but willing to generously provide precious gifts and important advice from the accumulated bounty of his house as appropriate.

Matthew 13:52

Having looked at those two characters, let's take a look at the truth of scripture. Specifically Matthew 13:52, which reads as follows: 

"And [Jesus] said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

Jesus says this in the literary context of a string of parables, including some of the most famous and quickly recognized parables in the gospels (the sower and the seed, the wheat and tares, the mustard seed, etc.). After the disciples ask about the meaning of the wheat and the tares parable, they claim to understand the next three parables Jesus tells (treasure in the field, pearl of great price, fish in the net). At that point Jesus gives the statement above.

He uses an unusual expression here: "The scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven." In Jesus' day, the profession of scribe doubtless had attracted some INTPs; the job was to record and accumulate information. (Though the legal and administrative responsibilities that came with the task might have scared them off again) In the gospels we typically see the scribes at odds with Jesus, but here he speaks of scribes who are trained for the Kingdom.

There is much wisdom densely packed into this statement. The scribe needs to be trained in order to be like the master with treasures to offer. The training needs to be kingdom training, not merely scribal training. Yet a scribe is already trained to handle religious law carefully and correctly. When someone trained to handle important information carefully is then trained for the kingdom, truly he will have old things and new things to offer, from the redeemed "palace of his mind" of which he will be the master if he learns to take every thought captive for Christ.  

Two Paths for an INTP:

The Matthew verse has always reminded me of Elrond, Master of the House of Rivendell, with great treasures from which he brings forth new(er) and old gifts to aid the cause of Good. And his gifts are not always material, but also good counsel and wisdom, like the scribe above can offer. The opposite of Grima, he does not steal from others to hoard away, but accumulates good things to provide help and succor to others. He does not infiltrate and manipulate, he establishes and maintains.

Elrond himself doesn't take the front lines (not by the timeline of Lord of the Rings, except as part of the White Council). His main role is to be master of Rivendell and to maintain that strong place, described in the Silmarillion as a "refuge for the weary and the oppressed, and a treasury of good counsel and wise lore."

Similarly, an INTP is usually not going to be charging into the front lines full of battle fury, and that's not necessarily where you want an INTP. An INTP is not likely to show up with an army behind him either; the gifts of charisma and natural magnetism and strong-willed leadership that's not afraid to break a few eggs to make an omelet or chew out a subordinate when they need it are not the forte of an INTP. (Though it's quite likely this hypothetical leader's strategic war council has an INTP or three)

On the mission field, however, those who charge in furiously are likely to burn out just as furiously, sometimes leaving a mess that longer-term workers must labor to clean up. And those leaders who can inspire natural loyalty and dominate their subordinates may fail at the servant leadership and humility which seeks not to create a personal empire but to serve and build up the local church, to watch less qualified and gifted leaders struggle and encourage them rather than taking charge. 

By contrast, an INTP will be seeking to impose structure on disorder, to accumulate knowledge and wisdom, to determine what is most valuable and focus their limited energy on obtaining that. Above all, to understand, in a cohesive and articulate sense, what is real and true, to further grasp reality through this, and then to pass on this knowledge to others in useful ways. 

So in terms of leadership, an INTP rarely leads by jumping to the front and rallying others to their standard (I'd love to hear real-life examples of what happened in those situations), but they will seek positions of influence and adequate resources to have at their disposal instead, so that their knowledge and understanding and strategic thinking can be seen as strengths.

Having arrived in this kind of situation, the INTP has two paths to take; we'll call them the Wormtongue path and the Rivendell path:

On the Wormtongue path, the INTP is a loner who seeks influence and resources selfishly or anxiously. Protection and influence can be found by joining a strong leader, and resources can be obtained by wit and stratagem at the expense of others if necessary. Grima seemingly had no allies or "team" in Rohan; as an individual he had already attached himself to a strong leader (Theoden) then betrayed him in favor of a more powerful one with more resources (Saruman). It was an intelligent and strategic choice in terms of personal benefit, but it was an alliance with evil. Underestimated by the strength-and-honor warrior culture around him, Grima had an eye for what was most valuable and had already begun to accumulate it for his own purposes. Doubtless he felt pride in strategically steering Rohan to its ruin, in being the unseen puppeteer, a temptation which many INTPs may especially feel, to use their intelligence and strategic thinking skills to manipulate events for their own security and a desirable outcome. In the end, however, forces beyond his control brought all his careful schemes to ruin.

On the Rivendell path, by contrast, the INTP seeks influence and resources as part of a coalition which seeks to bless and build up: not subversive but superversive. Rivendell didn't build itself, and Elrond did not move to Gondor and slowly take over, like Sauron in Numinor, though he could probably have done so in a similar fashion. Elrond did start with resources few others had, but he used those to build up a strong house (both a location, but also a company of people) which was a blessing to any who stayed there or who passed through. Simply by dedicating himself to being the master of that house as a sort of locus for what was good and true, maintaining "the old that was strong and did not wither," yet recognizing a new age was at hand, Elrond was a major influence for the powers of Good in Middle Earth. 

Seek for the Sword that was broken: In Imladris it dwells;
There shall be counsels taken, stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token, that Doom is near at hand;
for Isildur's Bane shall waken, and the Halfling forth shall stand.

The Last Homely House East of the Sea

And Rivendell was not merely a stronghold and refuge, it also stood for something greater than itself. It was not only called a "Homely House," but "The Last Homely House East of the Sea." This meant it was not only a place of refuge, a place of peace and light and truth, but it pointed to the origin of those things, and the place to which they would return: The True West, in Tolkien's mythos, the Undying Lands, where the servants of God lived, and where the elves desired to return. White shores, and a far green country, under a swift sunrise. The world as it ought to be. Aslan's country, beyond the farthest waves that grow sweet. What people got in Rivendell, then, was not merely rest and refuge, and perhaps wise advice, possibly precious gifts, but also a glimmer of that eternal light beyond the Sundering Seas. What they felt there was a taste of heaven on earth.

The world needs Homely Houses. It will need them more in the coming days. Whether an actual home or establishment, a group of like-minded people, or even few close friends who have accumulated resources and wisdom with the desire to bless and give refuge to others, these small strongholds of light will stand against the turmoil of the world as they have done since the beginning. These places of peace where a little taste of heaven on earth can be experienced stand like burning beacons in the dark for peoples who have chosen to forget the legacy of the gospel they once received, or who have never known it. 

I wish that every church could be a Homely House, which points to and communicates the reality of an Undying World beyond the Sundering Seas not only via the truth kept there, and hopefully shared faithfully there, but as fellowships of light and wisdom and richness and refuge and peace which give those who visit a taste of God’s country. Sadly, many are not like that at all. Sadly, some have this appearance (like one ancient and famous example whose strong stone vault endured a devastating fire last week and protected what was within) but the truth itself may be but little heard inside. But by God’s grace the two are not mutually exclusive, and need not remain so.

And while INTPs have their unique struggles, if they are trained for the kingdom, building up a house (a space, and a fellowship) from which may be brought out treasures old and new for the blessing of the saints and advancement of the kingdom is a task for which they are indeed well-equipped. If God has not yet presented a more specific path to you, I believe it's worth pursuing. Be trained in the kingdom, and build up a house. The path must be chosen daily, and the road will be long, but He goes with us, and before us, and follows after.

A Puzzle Piece in the Narrative: Evolution understood in its Context

Hello everyone, it's been a long time, and a crazy yet blessed year. I won't promise to return to regular monthly posts any time soon (that's the kind of thing you read in the most recent post... of a blog that hasn't been updated since 2013) but I have been pondering a lot of things these months and have several posts queued up. 

I had begun to write a post on evangelism, and part of it was going to be on how Christians from more traditional/Bible belt areas often fixate on the creation vs. evolution, and whether that was a critical component for helping more people know God's truth and decide to follow Him, or something that was best left until after people already saw scripture as an authority.

After I'd already written a good deal, I was listening to a podcast describing the development of humanity from the perspective of what we might call an "optimistic atheist." It occurred to me, as it often does here in Taiwan, that to most of the world, the worldview that evangelical believers and those raised in that subculture take for granted, is utterly marginal and not immediately easy to follow. We find ourselves talking at cross-purposes, with utterly different priorities, and not knowing how to get them to the point where they have lots of blanks that we can enthusiastically fill in with the answers we learned at church over the years.

So here I want first to look at evolution and how it forms a critical segment of the weltanschauung, the comprehensive worldview (a person's individual way of looking at the world and life and their place in it) of the modern secular world. I'll then explain why, although there are "theistic evolutionists" who believe God used evolution to get things to the state we see them now, I am not one of them, and I find evolution in the broad sense of the theory to be an impossible explanation of reality, though I also wouldn't introduce that debate as an evangelistic tool except in really specific and limited situations. Here we go!

1. The Tenants vs. the Landlord

Let us think of the modern scientific movement in this way: It is like someone who woke up one day in a huge house with multiple wings and many tenants, suddenly realizing it's a filthy wreck but could be otherwise, and set about putting everything in order and recruiting other people to help. First came the great task of figuring out categories for things and gathering some cleaning supplies, and then once the first few big rooms were swept and sorted (gradually attracting pleased and impressed tenants who didn't know the house could look so nice), there was the adventure of digging into dark closets and going into attics and finding all kinds of interesting bits of furniture and further impressing everyone by getting the lights to turn on and cleaning the moldy vents that were giving everyone the sniffles.

Christians are like people living in that same house who have received notice from the landlord that the foundation is compromised and the whole thing is going to be demolished, and that having violated the original rental agreement we are in fact now all illegal squatters. As the landlord is a generous man, however, he explains that if we are willing to sign an updated contract in good faith, sight unseen, we'll receive rooms in the new development that's taking its place. In the mean time, we don't know how much longer we'll need to live in this old house, so there's some value in keeping it decent until we move. Admittedly too, due to the efforts of the cleaners, it's a much more comfortable place than it had been before the cleaning revolution started. But in the grand scheme of things the house itself is not quite so urgent a priority as securing a spot in the new one that will take its place. The thoughts of these people, then, are much more concerned with the Landlord and the state of their agreement with him than with efforts to renovate new wings of the current house. They frequently neglect the house exploration projects, are lackluster in their praise of new renovation developments, and try to persuade more people to sign the new contract with the landlord.

But if you had found great meaning and joy in taking messy rooms and leaving them well-ordered and clean, had your imagination seized by the adventure of exploring the high attics and mysterious cellars of this house, and yet you found people kept refusing to help you on the basis of this landlord no one has actually seen, in your mind the task in front of you easily takes precedence over this hypothetical landlord, or whether a so-called demolition is impending or not. Increasingly, you will have a vested interest in convincing as many people as possible that there is no landlord, therefore the house must be kept clean and the explorations must continue because we are not illegal squatters but in fact the owners of the house who can make it into a palace if everyone can work together long enough. Perhaps even the foundations, which have shown signs of instability, can one day be repaired, once the deepest basements have been explored and cleared. But that would require everyone's help, and the more people who sign the new contract and give up on the house projects, the less resources they have for their work, the fewer willing hands.

Many residents find this convincing; it's hard to argue against investing more in this increasingly comfortable and impressive living space on the basis of an unseen landlord who apparently wants to tear the place down, and why should the legality of an outdated rental agreement take precedence over the reality of lots of people currently occupying the space? Their belief shifts from the priority of trusting the Landlord to the priority of working on the house as it is. And surely, if there is indeed a Landlord, he could only agree that they've done such a good job with the place that they don't need his promises of a better home to replace it.

(Indeed, some of them argue persuasively, if there is a Landlord, perhaps this was his real goal to begin with? An imaginary threat of demolition and imaginary motivation of a idealistic new home, all to get people to stop slacking, rise up together, and turn this house into a palatial estate that needs no replacement?)

2. Evolution as Narrative

Scientists, and perhaps even more so science groupies, the apologeticists of scientism who tolerate no doubts regarding its salvific power for humankind, don't like it when you use "belief" with regards to theories. Evolution is considered a theory, or a sort of meta-theory, which isn't seriously questioned by most scientists. (that fact is considered the end of the argument for people who think truth is determined by popular vote). For interested parties, problems with evolution as the best explanation of our planet teeming with life (while having not yet found a single alien microbe or bacterium anywhere else) are dismissed as "gaps" which subsequent information will fill. This is not really how science is supposed to work, but so long as it's humans who do science, story will reign supreme.

The idea of Story is important here because evolution is less a theory than a kind of scientific narrative; the story of how the biological world we see came to be, which takes the puzzle pieces obtainable by scientific research and puts them together in a coherent way. From early days (or at least since the days of Cuvier and the French Revolution), the rigor of the scientific endeavor has been accompanied by growing public interest in the "adventure of science" in figuring out the world; exploring the mysterious, beautiful, and dangerous house into which we find ourselves born as tenants. (I mention the French because they caught the science bug early and strongly; French authors Victor Hugo and especially Jules Verne, one of my favorite authors in middle school, wrote enthusiastically about the prospects of science to bring light to darkened humanity. Their well-written sentiments seem beautifully naive after the events of the 20th century)

This public interest which took place alongside the secularization of Europe (for interrelated reasons much too complicated to explore in depth here) came at the right time: the Bible presents a powerful and compelling narrative which explains the existence of the world and people, why people act as they do, and provides hope in suffering grounded in a higher and better reality than that which we see around us. As this narrative was displaced, a new one was needed. In an age where the divine right of kings was viewed with increasing cynicism and the idea of a free citizenry was developing, in opposition to a heavenly monarch who sent out orders via an earthly religious hierarchy arose the idea of man as free from divine fiat as well, self-existent and self-justifying. A new model for human history thus emerged--not a repeating vicious cycle where hope was in God and not temporal pleasures, but of steady advancement and self-ascension, from primitive savagery to enlightened civilization and then out to the stars.

Evolution, the idea that things can go from simple to complicated on their own through accumulated tiny changes, given enough time, and that they have in fact done so, is the absolutely critical component to this narrative. Without evolution, there is no explanation for the existence of life except "God did it," which takes us right back to God as Sovereign and humans as His subjects, a worldview modern people have been programmed to think of as ridiculous and impossible. With evolution, there is an explanation which can dispense with the necessity of God and thus free humanity to be their own saviors, not beholden to a Divine monarch or His laws, or (importantly) the depredations of those humans who claim to speak for him.

In my own discussions with atheists and some debates over evolution, this came out clearly. Ideas put forth by Creationists or Intelligent Design advocates like irreducible complexity (the observation that some biological systems could not have evolved step by step because they are useless until all the parts are working together) are resisted, at the end, because they simply must not be correct, because evolution must be true, because it is the only explanation secular science has come to consensus on that doesn't invoke "God did it." (This is the logical fallacy called "Begging the Question" - when your argument's premise assumes its conclusion. With neither the existence or non-existence of God able to be proved objectively (without requiring faith), both theists and atheists do this all the time)

So the compelling narrative of evolution, with its spoon-spork-fork fossil displays, with its colorful and almost 100% imaginary illustrations of fish crawling up onto land and cavemen getting a clue, all rests on the claim that somehow all the life we see happened by accident, by the slightest chance (in fact an impossibly small chance, except that we can see it did happen, thus it must be possible), but having emerged within it, and woken up to realize we are here, the best we can do is try to live according to the better angels of our natures, a phrase which makes less and less sense the more you think about it.

In this narrative scientists are our new pioneers, the explorers of this strange world where there is no divine revelation to grant truth to us or demand obedience from us, just very complicated chemical reactions suddenly aware that we are clinging to a tiny rock in the vast universe, the authors of our own destiny, or destruction.

Or... rather... they were. That was the prevailing narrative of the 19th and 20th centuries, one so initially impressive and conclusive that much of the Church was carried away by it too. But with the chaotic events of the 21st century, and more rapidly with each passing year, the story of man's self-ascension from primitive savagery to the stars, the narrative of the modern age, is collapsing all around us.

3. Revenge of the Gaps

When the gospel went out into a pre-modern world, people saw evidence for God in everything they did not understand, what is now called the "god of the gaps" argument. Given that there was an existing narrative to explain things which seem impossible or unknowably mysterious ("God did it" was an entirely respectable and mainstream answer at that time), it seemed reasonable, and indeed, appropriately faithful and obedient, to settle for that explanation and not push further. Also, pushing further required time and resources (and curiosity) that most people simply didn't have, and practically speaking there were not many useful ways to share anything you learned with people outside your immediate kinship group (except by popular story and myth, which is exactly how people did it) so the collective body of shared real knowledge about the world accumulated very slowly.

To talk about science or theology or anything else, it's good to first recognize that really ignorance is a central and enduring component of the human condition; not only do we exist in a state of mostly not knowing things (part of how your brain keeps you sane in our modern, information-saturated world is actually by not noticing as much as it can), we never even know how much we don't know. An ignorance-based argument for God, to someone who believes the triumph of humanity will not be found in faith but in the war against ignorance, sounds very similar to saying "Ignorance is God."

This atheist sums up what many atheists think about the god of the gaps idea fairly articulately, and also is a great example of how most secular thinkers feel the extraordinary burden of proof is on anyone who finds God as the answer, instead of the other way around, something I'll briefly address in part 5.

God is not a gap-god. My belief in Him does not hide in those parts of reality not yet explained, but flows out from what I do understand; that "I am a great sinner, and He is a great Savior." (John Newton)

But for those scientists who saw God as getting "smaller and smaller" as the guy in the video said, just as those gaps and potholes seemed all but filled in and smoothed over, as modern man seemed capable of reaching earthly paradise himself, via science--suddenly we had world wars. Massive, globe-spanning conflicts, where science produced weapons more destructive than anyone had ever imagined. Now in the 21st century, after nearly two decades of terror attacks, social media, and the rise of "privilege" and shame mentality, deep fissures are widening in all that smooth, gapless surface.
Post-modernism had eroded the mortar with which modernism had been constructing a new Tower of Babel, and having lost a uniting cultural narrative, science began to fracture as well. Now, with identity politics and neo-tribalism on the rise, those shiny bricks meant for a tower to heaven based on universal scientific principles are being fought over by competing factions who have no concept of the common good; post-modernism took away "the good", and now post-postmodernism is rapidly taking away "the common."

Belief is coming back in a big way; the Church had best be ready for that challenge, and not try to fight yesterday's modernist battles: in 2018, we haven't been back to the moon in over 45 years, but we have Louis Vuitton hiring shamans to keep their shows rain-free. (Yes really)

4. Distinguishing Science from Sciencism

To explain why evolution can be rejected without throwing out science altogether requires our look above at the secular perspective on human existence, because it's important to separate the process of "doing science" and the secular meta-narrative which tries to borrow the legitimacy of the scientific method as a trustworthy authority, just as a Christian narrative of history is based on the legitimacy of the authority of scripture. When the proponents of sciencism want to attack the Church and the societal legitimacy of belief in God, they sometimes do so by trying to sever the link between the Bible and what Christians believe now, usually by citing particularly violent or disturbing passages from the Old Testament out of context, and asking if we believe we're supposed to do that now.

But turnabout is fair play, so we can also sever the link between the scientific method and "hard science" and a narrative which borrows its authority and rigor but relies on imagination, crowd-think, and the insistence of a god-less explanation for reality. Science is a great way of discovering facts about the physical reality of the universe, like new puzzle pieces, but it doesn't follow that a particular narrative, a particular arranging of the puzzle, is right simply due to the discovery of these new pieces.

Sciencism tells you evolution means there is no need for God in explaining reality. When you bring up problems in evolution, they laugh and show you cool pictures of researchers using high tech equipment to measure things, and professional scientific conventions, and the space shuttle, and ream upon ream of peer-reviewed papers citing each other. (And the problems with the peer-review process are an increasingly open topic, though it's best to educate yourself on that before trying to wade into that debate) What you will be told, over and over, is that evolution is the established scientific consensus. There are no competing theories. (And if there ever are later, it won't be "God did it")

What I have tried to explain above in this post, is why that is. The grand secular narrative of how our world came to be, absolutely requires evolution. It fits the puzzle pieces together in a way that can be easily understood, and changes in animals over short-time frames (like the infamous white/black pepper moth example) can be observed as scientific fact. Humans being wired for pattern-recognition, it was inevitable that someone would extrapolate from the small changes we can see into a tree of life from the simplest forms of life up to us.

So I believe in science, in the sense that I accept the legitimacy of all the puzzle pieces discovered when science is done correctly, allowing time for self-corrections. When science says that at no point has water been observed being turned instantaneously into wine in a laboratory setting, it is affirming what we knew all along, that Christ performed a miracle. Science is in fact one of the greatest affirmations of biblical truth, because it objectively proves the world that the Bible describes, one in which things proceed as usual and people are brave and cowardly and generous and selfish, and then sometimes God intervenes and people are appropriately awestruck, which is precisely the world we see around us today. (It is atheists who must close their eyes to every miraculous recovery, every unbelievably-timed coincidence, etc. and insist they are each and every one frauds or simply coincidences, or else construct theories more elaborate than simply admitting God is there and sometimes chooses to intervene in the natural order of things)

What I don't believe, is the prevailing god-less narrative which insists the picture it paints is the only way the pieces fit together. That's simply not true, and when astute but unbelieving scientists try to lend their scientific prestige to the god-less narrative, they tend to wander onto shaky ground almost immediately. (One thinks of the late Stephen Hawking venturing outside astrophysics to make silly philosophical or theological-level pronouncements, as if his black hole theories entitled him to do so)

5. "Extraordinary Claims"

Evolution, from the standpoint of that narrative, cannot be untrue, or else "God did it." That is one reason you probably won't make much progress trying to debate it, and why I'd say its definitely best avoided as part of evangelistic strategy. It's almost impossible to make the argument from the theistic side without begging the question too, and you're trying to argue towards a conclusion they won't accept without first accepting your premise. And that argument isn't going to help them accept your premise. Sharing the love of Christ and inviting people to participate in a life lived joyfully in His presence will go much farther. When people have believed in God and recognized the truth of scripture, that's a good time to look at Genesis 1 again.

All that being said, like Keynesian economy theory, despite everyone granting it prestige status, the theory of evolution really does have some fundamental problems, fundamental enough that it will almost certainly replaced by something more interesting and impressive within the next couple of decades.

I mentioned irreducible complexity above; there is a youtube video of Richard Dawkins attempting to explain how an eye, often cited as an example of a thing that wouldn't be helpful without all its working parts, isn't irreducibly complex if we just think of something that has 1% of a human or hawk eye's capabilities, then the next step is 2%, and so on. The problem with this argument is that it's biologically meaningless. Yes, if the functionality of an eye were abstract, we could use his approach, but an eye is a very concrete thing. That functionality needs certain parts to be there, and they can't disappear in the next generation but need to stay, and have mutations which add to their usefulness and do not detract from it, and the animals with the lucky mutations have to survive, etc. Either that's simply impossible, and the puzzle pieces have been massaged into orientations that don't make any sense, or there is no God and that's the best explanation we can come up with. If it is, I choose to believe in God, who happens to answer some of my prayers too.

There are lots of good resources out there pointing out fatal problems with evolution as an explanation, and even as the scientific community mostly rolls along not troubled by the objections of some theists, evolution theory as traditionally explained is suffering death from a thousand cuts, not only from theists but from within the secular scientific community, and creative new twists on the idea are popping up, as one would expect. What you can be sure of is that as we slowly understand more about our universe, those new puzzle pieces will be fit into the pre-existing secular meta-narrative, whether to expand it or to replace pieces who were too obviously massaged into the wrong positions.

Here I just want to give my own short-cut answer whenever evolution comes up: the bat.

Picture a little tree mouse. Now picture it halfway to this, trying to run around.

You can't get to a bat via evolution. A flying squirrel, sure--the skin flaps for gliding make sense and could be increasingly helpful as they developed. But a bat's wings aren't skin flaps, those are its hands. Imagine countless generations of tree-dwelling mousy creatures, with fingers unhelpfully getting longer and longer. Maybe at first it's not bad, they can cling to bark better or something. But there's a point where flight is still far off, but with ridiculously elongated fingers the poor things can't maneuver around, somehow surviving and still doubling down on that increasingly unhelpful trait, because one day they're going to be wings? Evolution isn't working through unhelpful mutations toward specific goals, unless we go with theistic/guided evolution. (And, are there fossils of these poor creatures? Nope, only tree rats good at running and bats good at flying?)

Again, if you want to insist that I believe mutated mice that can't get around well are going to survive and thrive and reproduce themselves with even more severe mutations that cripple them even further, all to explain how we got bats without God, then I choose God instead of that ridiculous theory. We already have lots of other reasons to believe in God.

The extraordinary claim, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, is not the existence of God, but that something as impossible as that explanation for the world as we see it. (As I saw someone say recently: 'The claim that seawater will eventually give rise to Manhattan seems sufficiently extraordinary to require extraordinary evidence. So far evolution proponents can't demonstrate that ocean water can produce any life at all, let alone the New York Philharmonic.')

6. Secular Saints: The Real Galileo

So evolution may have unanswerable problems, but it's the best explanation secular science has come up with yet, so naturally it's the story they're sticking to. And that god-less narrative, the attempt by humanity to construct a coherent worldview that begins itself without Creation, saves itself without the Cross, and obtains for itself paradise without Heaven, like all good religions must also have its saints and demigods.

Galileo is one of the greatest in that pantheon; a brilliant mind who was "martyred" by recalcitrant, anti-science religious authorities, being forced to recant, but whose views ultimately triumphed and paved the way for the scientific enlightenment we enjoy today, without witch trials or blasphemy laws. (Unless you express certain political opinions in U.S. academia, or want to make public statements against Islam in Britain; then you'll find these are very much still around)

As it turns out, Galileo's story is not quite so simple. His theory challenged not only the non-phenomenological understanding of scripture of his time, but the consensus of most scholars of his day, without answering some legitimate objections (like parallax); after incurring censure he was still permitted to share it as a theory among others but went further to declare it as the only correct one; he jumped into theological debates on the subject and insulted the Pope; after the inevitable religious trial, he received what was a comparatively light punishment for the day, and was treated with respect.

Of course, today we can still look back at the treatment of Galileo as fundamentally wrong. In 2018, it's hard to imagine a time in which religious authorities in the West wielded the sociopolitical power to say which astronomical theories could or couldn't be published. Once we know the facts, however, Galileo comes across as less of a crucified scientific messiah and more of a gadfly genius who had some facts on his side and exercised poor judgment in his promotion of them.

To top it all off, Galileo was both very right and very wrong about the heliocentric model; it's true the earth orbits the sun and not vice versa, but the sun does move too, orbiting the galactic center, whereas Galileo regarded it as the fixed center of the universe. Ironically, then, he was making the same mistake about the sun as most scholars of his day were making about the earth. As the Catholic Church rather cheekily points out in the linked article above, the prevailing views of the day regarding astronomy were incorrect, but had the Church endorsed Galileo's view, they would have been endorsing a different erroneous view which would later be proven scientifically inaccurate. (I don't suggest they don't have their own bias, but how often have you heard their side of the story presented alongside the secular-saint version?)

It is undeniable that he was a central figure of his age, and his astronomical discoveries were of great value. However even the faithful of secular science caution that he is not quite the pivotal figure in the history of science as what we might call "popular sciencism" would have us believe.

That idea of "popular sciencism" is what's emerging in our post-postmodern world; science is a process we'll always need and will never disappear, but a real understanding and valuing of it is diminishing; sciencism is a subculture, a faction, almost a stance. Post-postmodernism, as I wrote last year, means we're no longer good scientific modernists, but they're still around, along with every other group that arises, laid out in parallel in the internet's eternal historical present. Increasingly, however, as political radicalism and societal instability and a scramble to scavenge the bricks of modern science's falling tower ensure, it is science itself that is running afoul of the counter-narrative.

Conclusion:

This is a rather long post, so let's see where we've been by way of summing up:

1. Evolution is the biological component of the secular metanarrative of How Things Came to Be, so in general people who don't already have faith in God aren't going to be persuaded out of it any more than Noah could be persuaded out of his ark. (Where else would he go?)

2. At the same time, evolution has serious problems and we do have a valid alternative explanation (the historically mainstream one, in fact), so believers need not feel compelled to accept that particular component of the world's counternarrative to the biblical explanation.

And now what I hope Christians can do, is recognize that this counternarrative exists, and is the underlying story of the modern world, the mythos which underlies a secular worldview.

Whole generations of Christian schoolchildren swallowed it in its entirety without realizing it, and grew up not recognizing its mutual exclusivity to the biblical account. Then upon reaching college they found that despite having perhaps made professions of faith at a particular point, they had already been standing on the secular boat for years, they just hadn't thrown off the moorings and let the winds of the world fill their sails and take them to places more fun and interesting than their church youth group. Many chose to do so; some repented later in life.

Note that this is not a conspiracy. We know from scripture we have a spiritual enemy who hates the Church, opposes the gospel, and controls the power systems of this world, and he is certainly driving the counter-biblical-narrative in every interesting new form it takes. But from the human standpoint, it's just the story the world has come to believe over the past two centuries, of how the world came to be. We who reject it are now the marginalized minority, but that shouldn't trouble us as long as we recognize the situation for what it is.

What should trouble us is the Church remaining blind to the idea of a parallel narrative, and thus having each generation of believers unconsciously absorbing it, or else hiding from it yet trying to take the gospel into a world without understanding the worldview of those they are trying to reach.

(And exactly how are we supposed to do it, then? I don't have all the answers, but some thoughts are coming in a future post. Thanks for reading, stay tuned!)

Bit by Bit - Language Unlocks (Culture)

(Bit by Bit is a series that seeks to better understand timeless truth through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

Haven't done one of these in months, but I continue to be impressed with how gaming metaphors apply to unchanging truths and principles of life. Today's entry is related to my overseas work. It's not meant to discourage anyone who feels they can't learn languages well, but to encourage everyone to keep going.

The Struggle to Connect 

Language is one of the biggest barriers to ministry in East Asia. The difficulty of languages like Japanese, with three writing systems mixed together and complicated grammar, and Mandarin, with lots of similar-sounding words distinguished tonally and thousands of characters to memorize, is something most people are aware of.

When I say language is a huge barrier to ministry, I don't mean that one must be impressively fluent to do ministry over here. English teaching is always a way to help and meet people, and one can train many local pastors through a translator and accomplish important long-term kingdom work without spending years trying to get fluent in their language.

The problem, rather, is the relational issue: to connect with the average local person who does not speak your language, you need to speak their language well enough to do so, and while there are exceptions, most ministry that will not evaporate fairly quickly after you leave depends on that kind of connection. Without the language, you're also permanently separated from the culture; you can learn about it, but you'll always be missing a huge part of everything, a black box into which you rely on other people to look inside for you.

Language learning is tough, but that difficulty can be over-hyped too; there are some people who do struggle to learn any new language, but for most people with most languages it's a simple question of learning correctly (the right content studied in the right way) and investing enough time and effort to pound it into your brain until you make new neural pathways for it.

That means to learn a new language is to re-wire your own brain, so it only makes sense it would be a challenge. The attitude I condemn is neither the fear that one cannot do a good job in learning a new language due to its difficulty, nor the natural frustration that comes after much effort put into learning with seemingly little result; it's the attitude that says "language learning is hard, how little can I get by with and still serve?"

For me, as a Christian living overseas hoping to share my faith with as many people as possible in my community, language is a constantly present, relevant, and exhausting challenge. Most of my day-to-day communication here is done in Mandarin, and the more used to speaking it I become, the more obvious it becomes that it's not adequate. That doesn't mean I can't do what I do now with the language level I have now, it means I can see opportunities that lie beyond my reach because my language abilities aren't up to them yet. I want the language keys that open those doors.

There are discouraging days, where I feel like I should just give up and use English, and there are encouraging days where I can turn and see that, although the mountain ahead seems ever higher, I'm looking from a vantage point far above the plains below where I started.

But one of the most motivating things about the process of learning a new language, whether you've just started or over the long term, is that with every new useful phrase or word you learn, you are opening up new conversational or even social possibilities. This exciting process of slowly increasing your ability to function effectively in a new place and culture, at the same time greatly expanding your versatility and flexibility in ministry, is very similar to learning the rules and techniques of a new game.

Let's compare that process to an old classic:

Super Mario World

This is one of my favorite old games of all time. I think the designers hit a perfect balance of great art and level design; fresh and varying content and enemies so the levels don't get boring; memorable music themes, sound effects and cues; and secrets hidden everywhere. And yes, nostalgia may play a part; we did not have a SNES growing up, but I spent many hours playing it at friends' or cousins' houses.

One of my favorite parts of Super Mario World was how many secrets there were to unlock if you knew how. Whether flying above the screen in the Ghost House to unlock a secret level that gives you infinite lives (basically the secret to beating the game), or going to Star Road and finding all the different colored Yoshis, even the secret levels sometimes had their own secrets.

Secrets within secrets...

One of the more fun secrets to unlock in SMW are Switch Palaces. Everyone knows Mario games involve jumping under lots of blocks; Super Mario World introduced the innovation of several different colors of "exclamation point blocks" [ ! ], which must be "switched on" at the hidden switch palaces. (Only the first palace, Yellow, is in plain sight, the others must be found by discovering secrets in various levels) Until you find and activate the correspondingly-colored switch palace, these colored blocks are shown only as dotted outlines, showing where the blocks will be.

Early in the game, you had probably switched on the yellow blocks (further levels became fairly ridiculous if you didn't), but not yet the green, red, or blue ones, and every so often you saw a weird little area where you knew there was something going on, but only had the outlines of the potential colored blocks, so you wouldn't be able to reach the secret there without finding the switch palace of that color first.

Our family tradition was to run, jump, then switch directions exactly as he landed

Correct me if I am wrong, dear readers, but if memory serves, it is possible to finish the game with only the yellow blocks switched on. You don't need to unlock the secrets to finish it, you can make your way through and achieve the main goal of beating Bowser in his castle, which after everything it takes to get there is actually not terribly difficult.

However, that is not "really" beating the game. There is a way, by beating secret levels in the right way, to actually permanently change the in-game graphics from Spring/Summer to Autumn. The enemy designs change, the color palette changes, it's a victory which accomplishes much more than simply defeating the last boss and watching the credits.

Again, if memory serves, one cannot beat the final secret level and cause this change without the presence of the different colored blocks which you need to switch on at the hidden switch palaces. In other words, you can beat the final boss 100 times and the game won't change, but by switching on the missing blocks and unlocking the secret levels, you can affect the game itself.

Unlocking a Culture, Block by Block

Language is like that. Living in a new culture, in a new language environment, you start out with few things you can do. "Survival" language skills give you what is necessary to keep living there in the basic sense; you can get done the very basic things that must get done without finding someone that speaks your first language or someone to translate. You could continue in this way for a very long time, and many people do. 

But you won't even know what you don't know. You'll never have the conversations that could have opened up new doors, never get to know that local who can't speak English at all, but who is very influential in their own context, or can encourage you or be encouraged by you. You can set goals, ministry or otherwise, and reach them, and even "beat the game," by accomplishing everything you set out to do in a given time period.

What you set out to do might not be the best or most effective thing you could be doing, however. Missions is fraught with examples of people doing what they thought was a good idea and actually causing serious problems. But on a less extreme level, how many times have I read about and personally witnessed people who worked very hard, yet somehow found the long-term fruit from a given ministry was surprisingly absent?

That's not to denigrate their effort; God rewards our motive, not the outcome, which we are never totally in control of anyway. (sometimes not at all) But if your goal is to be as effective as you can, without enough language to get deeper into the culture, to understand the lives of the people you are ministering to, you won't know whether you're working in ways that make sense for the culture or not. I have been in the situation more than once of being present for someone ministering in English while listening to the attendees speaking Chinese, and realizing the attendees' assumption of what was happening and that of the person leading were wildly different.

I wonder how many times that has happened to me in the past, when I had no way of knowing.

Like the colored block outlines mentioned above, you might become aware that there are opportunities eluding you, but until you unlock the next level of your language abilities, you simply won't have access to them. That's not to say they're automatically open to you at that point. The secret levels are typically especially difficult or confusing, and have their own secrets. But knowing they exist gives you a whole new set of goals to strive for.

The Final Word

So if you are headed towards, or already work/minister in a multi-lingual context, my advice is this: To avoid burning out, make your default language goal whatever is enough to accomplish the goals you or your organization or ministry or team currently have--following our Super Mario World analogy, unlock those Yellow Blocks, then go ahead and set out to defeat your Bowser.

But set another goal too, which is that along the way you will keep trying to find those Switch Palaces and unlock new blocks to help you get into new areas. Then use the opportunities those new language abilities provide to go places and do things you couldn't before. Maybe the Star Road is where you'll find that breakthrough you've been praying for.

"God isn't Fixing This"

Does God Care? 

After yet another grievous shooting, the NY Daily News is releasing a controversial cover, proclaiming in plus-sized font "God isn't fixing this." Clearly this is meant as a rebuke to those who claim "their prayers are with the victims" yet don't do the things the NY Daily News feels they should in order to reduce gun crime. I'm not interested in the politics here, let alone the grandstanding. "He who sits in the heaven laughs," not at the plight of humanity, but at those who would mock Him or set themselves against His authority. More interesting is that scripture clearly both states that the wicked will receive what they deserve, and has the Psalmist crying out asking God why that doesn't seem to be happening.

For the issue at hand, it suffices to say that as Christians we know men are sinful by nature, and are not corrupted by the tools around them. Perhaps we should investigate the breakdown of the family, the increasingly nihilistic worldview poured into the minds of our children, and a society become so antagonistic to human nature that mass percentages of people feel it necessary to be on antidepressants, before we start blaming tubes of metal for magically corrupting humans that secular society supposes are inherently neutral or even inherently good.

But what I'm interested in here is their intentionally provocative claim. Is God really doing nothing? Is He indifferent to humans killing each other, or is He powerless to interfere in our free will? This is often posed as an unanswerable question (Does God lack the will to stop evil, in which case He is not good, or the ability to stop it, in which case He is not great), but actually there is a perfectly good answer, that can be expressed in various ways.

So then, if God does care, and He is powerful enough to act, then...

Why God Doesn't Stop Evil or Fix the World (My personal analogy)

Ancient Chinese weaponry: one iron and two bronze swords

A Bit about Bronze

In Taipei, there is a fascinating museum of Chinese antiquities. Called the "National Palace Museum," some of China's great cultural treasures are stored there, brought by the nationalists both to hang on to them and ostensibly to keep them from being destroyed by the communists, for whom desecrating symbols of class oppression was a popular pastime and sometimes required symbolic act of allegiance.

In this museum you can see everything from very ancient jade wheels to the gold and pearl finial topping an Emperor's crown, to a piece of stone shaped exactly like a piece of pork and the most famous of all, the jade cabbage. (The food culture here goes back a very long way)

Another thing you can see are ancient bronze weaponry: swords, spear points, etc.

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. A game-changing discovery of antiquity, it afforded its users an advantage over those using merely copper weapons, and remained popular even well after iron weapons were developed.

Among the various reasons that iron weapons -initially inferior to their well-developed bronze counterparts- superseded them, was due to cost issues. Once iron-working was developed, the abundant iron ore meant iron weapons were cheaper than bronze, which required the importation of tin.

Why couldn't you just get tin from used bronze weapons? Because it doesn't work that way. To separate metals once they have been alloyed is an expensive and complicated process, and at least to my knowledge there was no way to do this on a large scale (possibly at all).

Even today, with complicated procedures that can do it, it's obvious that to remove the tin from a bronze weapon destroys the weapon for all practical purposes.

Alloyed with Sin

This world was made good. Humans, in choosing to sin and step outside of God's will for them, not only destroyed their own spiritual life, but wrecked up the world too, meant as a beautiful home for people living in harmony with God and each other. Sin is not evil varnish, it is a flaw that goes to the core of people and the world. To remove it, you cannot strip it off, you cannot cut it off like a frostbitten finger; to get rid of the sin, the thing once pure and now an alloy of itself and sin must be unmade.

This is true of both of us and the world. To be made new, as Christ makes all things new, we must first be Unmade. Dying that we shall live; baptism is the earthly acting out of this truth, but then for the rest of our lives we must be melted down, put into the fiery furnace so that God may skim off the dross, and coming out each time more pure. This is sanctification.

While Christians are typically aware of this, I find that many are unaware that the world is in an analogous situation. We aren't fallen people in an unfallen world, we brought the world down with us. It too must be unmade and cleansed from the corruption of sin, but that will be the end.

"Fixing" the alloy of sin. True gold fears no fire; don't be dross.

One Day

When tin is removed from the bronze sword, the sword is no more. When sin is removed from this world, the world will be no more. Suffering and injustice will be judged and come to an end, but so will everything else.

I think what people are really asking is more like: "Why doesn't God take all the bad parts out of the world and leave the good parts?" That question is easy:
1) He made the world without any bad parts, but free will meant we could screw that up, and we did
2) Outside of Christ, you are a bad part that would be taken out.
3) He's giving everyone a chance to choose His side before he does exactly what you are suggesting

The fiery end that Peter speaks of (2 Peter 3) will happen, and a new heaven and new earth will be made including all that was pure from the last one. There's a reason that day is spoken of both with hope and with respectful fear; when it happens, it is final. The beginning spoken of in Genesis has its ending in Revelation, and what happens after that is part of the next book.  Hope your name is in it, or rejoice if you know it is.

Until then, as Peter speaks of in that same passages, that God is delaying in destroying the world to burn the sin out is a mercy to those who still have a chance to choose Him, and neither weakness nor toleration of sin on His part. If the end came now, there would be no more suffering, but no longer any opportunity to repent while there is still time.

So we pray: Come Lord Jesus. But increasingly I find myself saying "but not just yet"--I have too many friends who may yet choose God before the end, and I still hope to see it. Ending the suffering in the world today means denying them of that chance, forever.

Christians: Prisms, and Space Probes

Prisms

Let's start with prisms.
Have you ever seen how a glass prism splits and reflects the light that passes through it? Most of you probably have, in science class or on that Pink Floyd album cover if nowhere else.

That's right. I am using this for an illustration of our life in Christ.
1 Cor 9:22 all the way.

Like a mirror, the prism doesn't generate its own light. It takes the light it receives and reflects/refracts it out into the space around itself.

Actually the Pink Floyd triangular prism example above is about as simple as it gets. Anyone who's seen cut crystal for things like fancy light fixtures knows that the more facets a prism has, the more light it reflects in more directions. There's a reason diamonds are elaborately faceted into what's called a "brilliant" cut.

And if you are truly seeking to follow God, you will not feel like you're being gently sanded into a smooth sphere; you will feel like He is cutting pieces off of you. Smooth spheres might have a certain inner luminescence, but they don't reflect the light like multifaceted gems, don't send it shooting out in rainbow sparks. The gemstone must "suffer," must be cracked and fractured, to assume that kind of final brilliant form.

This is not a diamond commercial. Do your research, some are "blood diamonds" indeed.

The more we are shaped by God, the more we reflect the light of truth from Him to those around us. Yes, we do not merely passively shine; there is effort involved, but if we are not mature in our faith, if we have not sought out God to be in His presence, we are not going to put forth His light as we could, because we are simply not the right shape to do so. We must undergo fruitful suffering, to let the gemcutter grind new facets that will reflect His glory in new ways.


Note: Missionaries

So if believers are like prisms that reflect/refract the light they receive all around them, missionaries are simply prisms that have been placed far away, in places that may be quite dark. Imagine a fine cut gem* in a coal mine. Shine a light on it, and the effect is dramatic in the total darkness. Yet we cannot do anything to the coal, we can only keep reflecting our Lord's light; it is He alone who can exert the infinite Divine pressure to convert the coal into the rough diamonds for whom the cutting and polishing process can begin as it once began for us. (*- You can immediately see a problem with sending immature believers to the mission field...)

Left by itself in the coal mine, however, the jewel's reflective surface will quickly be coated by coal dust and stop reflecting light. In a nutshell, this is why missionaries need your prayer so much. It's not business as usual; we're not only in a darker spiritual environment, but being here tends to slowly dim our reflectiveness too. We need to be covered in prayer so that the coal dust doesn't stick to us and obscure our light, especially when the enemy is slinging it at us.

Space Probes

A prism doesn't only reflect more light by having more facets, of course. It also depends on how it's oriented with respect to the light it is receiving. (If you have ever played with a prism, or a dangling bit of chandelier or light fixture, you will no doubt have noticed that turning it at different angles towards the light changes how the light is reflected)

So orientation to the light is important, especially as we have "not yet been perfected" and are still undergoing sanctification. Our reflection is still partial and unbalanced; we need to stay rightly oriented to God for our light to shine effectively.

When discussing a craft in flight, especially space flight, one can speak of altitude but also attitude. Attitude in this context refers to the orientation of the craft with respect to some other frame of reference. (It could be the orientation of a space probe with respect to the mysterious planet it circles, or to an inertial frame of reference, etc.)

Bad image quality, but you get the idea.

Without the right attitude, an accelerating spacecraft orbiting, say, the Earth, will soon leave its proper orbit. It might dip too low, begin coasting through the Earth's outer atmosphere, and be dragged down, burning up in an unplanned, fiery re-entry. Conversely, it could swing too wide, begin to escape the earth's gravitational field, and head out into deep space.

Believers are no different. Without the right attitude -without the right orientation towards God- our effort will not result in productive progress for the Kingdom. We might sink lower and lower and burn out, or raise our opinion of ourselves higher and higher and grow distant from Him. In fact, with the wrong attitude, the more effort we put in, the faster we move in the wrong direction.

This is why ministry progress is a dangerous and misleading focus for Christians. Our focus must always be God. He is our frame of reference. If we are rightly oriented with Him, our efforts will progress in the right direction, in fact that's all they can do. On the other hand, if we aren't, all our efforts only take us further from where we need to be. It might look good at first; sometimes an orbit decays slowly. But sooner or later, without an attitude adjustment, we stray. God then graciously allows us to be zinged by a mini space rock at thousands of miles per hour, which hurts and confuses us, but has the effect of knocking us closer to our proper orbit around Christ.

Summary

 

So, what's the point of these two little analogies? Just two ways of thinking about our Christian lives.

First, in order to reflect the light of God's truth to those around us, we need to be in the right shape. This involves fruitful suffering, as Paul talks about in 2 Timothy, to chip pieces off until we are like a brilliant gemstone that does not merely receive the light but reflects it back into whatever context God places us in.

Second, if we don't maintain the right attitude to God, our eternal frame of reference, not only will we not reflect Him as strongly as we could, but our "progress" in ministry will, slowly or quickly, be leading us in the wrong direction. We need to constantly reorient ourselves with respect to God, through His word and time seeking out His presence, to make sure our orbit isn't decaying, leading us spinning out into the depths of space or crashing in flames down to earth.

You don't want to be this kind of shooting star...
Actually, biblically speaking, falling stars are pretty
much always bad news in general

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.