5 Years in Taiwan: 5 Personal Lessons Learned

(This is the second post in a 2-part series. The first was primarily about the missions side of things, and this one is more focused on personal lessons that have come with my time on the field)

In today's post I'd like to explore 5 personal lessons I have learned or have been in the process of learning over these past 5 years. Some of these are deeply personal struggles, and I share them not to talk about myself, though self-expression is always part of a personal blog, and not as a form of emotional catharsis, but in hopes that other people can identify with and possibly be helped by some of it.

1. The Effectiveness of Simple Endurance through Time

When we are struggling through challenging times in our lives, one of the fastest ways to succumb to temptation is to start believing the thought "this is never going to end." The preemptive despair that comes with this way of thinking encourages us that current decisions don't matter when weighed against the overwhelming suffering of our mental or emotional anguish continued forward in an erroneous hypothetical straight line for the foreseeable future, like a hockey stick climate graph.

It it sometimes true that grievous or painful situations aren't going to undo themselves. Some tragedies are permanent, at least in this mortal life. However, when we say "this" is never going to end, a big part of that "this" is our mental state at the time. There's the false implication that I'll always feel about this situation the way I do now. But being time-bound creatures, that's not usually true.

It's not true that time heals all wounds. Some wounds fester with time. But when facing pain with an attitude of faithful endurance, even if all the future brings is as inadequate a solution as learning to avoid that painful spot in one's memories, that is still a very different place than the pain being fresh and comprehensive and the mistaken conviction that it's a permanent state of affairs.

Being someone who spends a bit too much time in my own head, mental anguish is particularly hard to deal with, especially being an INTP who tries to "solve" the anguish by thinking it through, leading to unhelpful rumination sometimes punctuated by the painful emotions breaking through regardless.

But one thing that can really only be learned by experience is that as time passes, things change. Although there are certainly more and less healthy ways of dealing with something by letting time pass (it takes wisdom to know when to let change happen passively and when to be proactive), if one can simply endure the storm, taking refuge in God's promises, even the biggest personal typhoons blow past eventually.

2. Internalizing a Mentality of Antifragility

If you've read many of my past posts, I am a fan of Taleb's concept of fragility vs. resilience vs. antifragility. One application of the idea can be seen in comparing glass, rubber, and living bone. A hard shock shatters fragile glass, while rubber simply bounces back and is unaffected. But broken bones can heal back with a denser structure than before at the fracture point; in response to damage the bone didn't simply return to normal, but grew stronger there.

For an even simpler example, consider the dandelion above. If a strong gale blew through a piece of land, a stiff but fragile elm tree might lose a limb or even fall over entirely, while a tough and resilient willow could bend with the wind and come out unharmed. However a patch of dandelions would actually prosper greatly by having their seeds blown across the entire countryside. (Yet a spritz of weedkiller could end them, while not greatly affecting the large trees. Everything is fragile to something)

Things to which the adjective antifragile can be applied, actually need shocks and damage to grow healthier and stronger, and peace and protection aren't helpful for growth, just as dead calm days don't help the dandelions to spread their seeds, and periods of peace and affluence can be dangerous for the Church. (I have written in the past how the Church is an antifragile institution)

There are lots of ways this mentality can be applied (Taleb was initially focused on the stock market). But living on the mission field certainly provides ample opportunities. Consider church planting; a "fragile" ministry approach would be borrowing a lot of money to buy a large and beautiful building for a growing church to meet in. Any damage to that building is your achille's heel, and you are in a financially tenuous position. Our little church plant is more resilient, partly through its small size and relational focus; if the community center we meet in closed, we could meet in my coworker's home, or pack into my smaller apartment if necessary. Some people drop off the radar temporarily, but holiday events or special activities bring them back and can be a chance to reconnect. An antifragile model of church-planting is harder to envision in the strategic sense, though I'm working on it. (Persecution can function in that way, but I believe persecution as a church-planting model is best left to God in His infinite wisdom.)

Antifragility is also a very helpful mentality for a person doing cross-cultural ministry. Every mistake I make in the language that anyone points out is a chance to improve, for example, while no mistakes being pointed out doesn't help me even though it feels good. Likewise, every ministry approach we try and see little to no success in is a learning opportunity. Note that this is not just the ministry equivalent of seeing the silver lining or the opposite of eating bitter grapes: It's not a method of self-consolation, it drives you to try out new ways of saying things and try new ways of doing ministry so that stagnation can be avoided and growth obtained through temporary failures and setbacks.

One example of internalizing that mentality comes in is how to deal with the minor failures. If I act embarrassed or offended whenever Chinese mistakes are pointed out, that's discouraging my friends and others from pointing them out. I may save a little face, but I don't learn or grow. Instead I try to maintain and convey the opposite attitude, of a learner who appreciates being corrected. So instead of a "silver lining" approach where at least through making mistakes I learn something, I want and welcome those corrections.

The same is true for ministry work. If I focus on results and how well the church plant or a particular ministry is going, I may get discouraged and feel I'm not a good enough church planter when things don't go according to plan, spiritual fruit seems scanty, or attendance is low. If on the other hand I remember that I'm learning how to plant a whole new church in Taiwan, a difficult task that a fairly small number of people currently alive have experience in, then it's clear that trial and error is absolutely necessary to grow.

In that context, things that don't work well, or even unpleasant surprises, are helpful in ways that things which go smoothly can't be. Recently I've been increasingly able to recognize when setbacks are not just the way life/ministry goes, but are actually helpful progress or even blessings that I would have missed if I'd not changed my mentality in this way.

3. Progress in the Battle against Procrastination

My list of life achievements reads well, but I've missed out on a lot of potentially fun opportunities and experiences along the way. This is partly because I'm an introvert (and that fun weekend trip sounds great but I have a stack of books and some hot tea on standby to recharge my batteries), but probably more so because I have often been plagued by procrastination. I could always get the important things done, for example an important paper in seminary, but by not arranging my time well early on, and waiting too late to start, it wouldn't be a good representation of my paper writing capabilities because I didn't give myself enough time.

Or so I thought. Actually it was an excellent representation of my paper writing capabilities, because being able to start the writing in a timely fashion counts as part of those capabilities. This is a huge realization I've had in the past few years; there is no hypothetical talent. Thinking that someone who is great at writing but never applies themselves is a tragic waste is only somewhat true; if they can't make themselves write they're not great at writing. Or perhaps one could more accurately say they are great at writing snippets and bits of things, but that's a pretty common talent, actually. Whatever wherewithal great writers possessed to actually get lots of words on paper wasn't the "final step" in their talent but a crucial component of it.

At some point I realized my procrastination, when it kicked in automatically, was largely due to a kind of reflexive perfectionism. I don't want to reply to that work email yet, I want to think about precisely how to craft my response. I don't want to message that person and see about meeting tonight, I didn't sleep well last night and don't want to come across as frazzled or my Chinese to be subpar because my brain is too tired.

It took a combination of patiently using logic with myself and some life experience to recognize that other people's expectations aren't that high. They don't want a precisely phrased email in which I have communicated exactly what I want to say including the right connotations, they just want a basic reply to their query and may not spend any time analyzing it enough to notice the connotations at all (They don't have INTP velociraptors that chew on whatever ideas other people bring up). The way I come across when tired isn't all that different from how I normally come across, and most people don't care that much either way. Etc. Etc.

I also realized that trying to be perfectionistic about certain things meant they consumed time that should be allotted for higher priority tasks, and it also kept certain processes stuck and delayed that I could have been benefiting from all along had I settled for an "adequate" step B and continued on to C and beyond.

I'm still fighting this battle, but this past year especially I've made a lot of progress. Writing this section feels a little vulnerable and is certainly humbling (it seems silly to be like this compared to many other people who just do things and get on with their lives) but I hope it may be helpful to other people who struggle with similar tendencies.

4. Improving Goal-focus with Goal-awareness

Despite dealing with the issues described above, I am a very goal-oriented person and this has helped me do some things that required long-term focus and determination. I have also found along the way that while big, long-term goals tend to stay out in front of us, it's easy to lose focus of smaller goals in the process of daily life.

To use a humorous but perhaps very relevant example, I have always had trouble remembering people's names. I might meet several people at a party or event and come away remembering small details about our conversations and things they mentioned about themselves, but only remembering the names of 2 or 3 of them.

There are lots of tips floating around for getting better at this, and my problem isn't a bad memory. It's that I don't set a little goal of remembering the person's name ahead of time. Whatever little mental prompt that ought to be there doesn't happen automatically. All it takes is a brief self-reminder to register each person's name when they say it, then confirm it at some point later. If I can remember to do that, the names are not a big problem.

This can be true in our spiritual life too. When temptation beckons, or when we're tempted to skip a Bible reading or have a bad attitude about something, sometimes all we need is a moment of awareness--is this my goal? In the story of my life, is this how I'm choosing today's page to read?

5. Stepping through Anxiety into Faith

Being a very goal-oriented person as mentioned above, I have frequently struggled with anxiety. I have found that anxiety has an almost purely physical component which I'm susceptible to (gut health issues, etc. Though that's kind of a chicken-egg problem) but is also connected with the process of setting and reaching difficult future goals.

Anxiety arises in that distance between your good goal or destination and your lack of certainty about your ability to reach it. It's as if stepping from one stone to another across a fast-moving river (with a waterfall immediately downstream), you can only do it in slow motion, and the stone your foot is descending toward keeps wavering in and out of existence.

In that kind of situation, with the anxiety gathering like storm clouds full of electrical potential, any incident, thought, or situation can act like the tall tree or building which brings down the lightning of panicky thoughts and in more serious cases can even activate the fight-or-flight reflex.

For me, setting a big and long-term goal like "I'm going to be a long-term missionary in Taiwan" is easier than it is for some other people. I can take a goal like that and break it down into a strategy for getting there, and feel confident that each step along the way that relies on me can either be accomplished straightforwardly, or I can learn how to. (Having been homeschooled does help with that mentality, I think--I know I can teach myself what I need to know as long as the information is available)

But that very determination to reach a far-off and worthy goal means saying, to that part of you that wants to be tired, that wants to change to a more comfortable or easier goal, that isn't sure you're cut out to live so consistently outside your comfort zone, that wants to remind you of all the things outside your control that could happen to ruin your goal, that it needs to either cooperate or keep silent. It means thrusting down doubts or nervousness and moving forward step by step. But those doubts and nervousness and exhaustion don't always really go away. Sometimes they sink down into your unconscious, and take revenge later in the form of irrational anxiety.

I have learned, then, for someone who struggles with anxiety, your gut is not always to be listened to. That deep feeling of certainty, correctness, or warning, that any intuitively-minded person is familiar with, can be hijacked by anxiety and turn into a false alarm beacon warning that something is deeply wrong when nothing is more wrong than usual. The more you try to use logic and rational thinking to calm yourself down, the more that haywire intuition insists that you wouldn't need to be doing that if something wasn't already wrong.

But your gut is another form of intelligence too. Even for people with strong anxiety, it's not a good rule of thumb to simply always do the opposite of what your gut is saying. Thus there is another kind of wisdom one must cultivate; to know when your gut's alarm bells are giving you an important warning, and when it's just burnt popcorn.

That wisdom can grow, put down roots, and produce fruit, under the bright light of faith. Some people facing anxiety and uncertainty try to have faith "in the universe," that on the whole there's a kind of big goodness out there, or a sort of automatic karma calculator, which will help things work out for you as often as not, especially if you can keep a positive attitude. (New Age thinking, but it's so prevalent now that the adjective is outdated.)

But the universe doesn't have its own consciousness, and it's not your friend. Indeed, an argument often used against Christianity is the painful and seemingly nihilistic experiences many humans endure during their short (and often foreshortened) lives. You can't swerve from this to immediately claiming faith can have "the goodness of humanity" or "the positivity of the universe" as its object.

The perplexing nature of our world that can contain such beauty and such pain simultaneously is one reason I am a Christian. While the Bible does not explain many things we are curious about, it does explain exactly how the world arrived at this paradoxical state of interposed pleasure and suffering, beauty and ugliness, hope and despair. Anxiety comes from living in this kind of world, while maintaining worthy goals you strive to achieve despite uncertainty and recognizing many events are beyond your control.

Anxiety is not necessarily a lack of faith, then, although increasing faith is a good remedy for it. It can sometimes just be an overcharged recognition that the world is not okay, and it doesn't actually have any safety rails, only well-worn tracks and wilder cliffs that are no sure guarantee of security or danger. Yet, we still have to live in it, and with some amount of courage we can live with joy too.

Anxiety-prone people don't really have the choice to suddenly become that kind of person whose happiness partly stems from not contemplating possibilities, though as I mentioned there are physical aspects which can be improved. Perhaps more accurately, I don't want to shift "sideways" from being something who overthinks things, to someone who has figured out how not to think about things as much. I want to progress on, in faith, to being someone who can use overthinking for God's glory, but has the trust and courage to not suffer the side effects of anxiety, etc. These years God has given me some valuable puzzle pieces, which have helped me see the bigger picture, and step out of the back-and-forth struggle of trying to solve anxiety by thinking my way through it.

One step on the path to overcoming anxiety for me was thus a sort of Molon Labe*; yes my life could be uprooted and my goals undone at any point by events beyond my control, but I choose to wait until that happens and let it be a nasty shock that I deservedly experience grief and anger over, and not live in that anxiety ahead of time, as if that will somehow lessen the pain if the shock ever comes.
(* The famous Spartan response to the Persian Emperor's demand to surrender their weapons -- "Take them, if you can succeed in coming to do so")

Do people cling to anxiety for that reason, believing it's somehow paying down the deposit of future pain? I don't know, though at times I felt that was the unspoken lie I was being told. But I do know we can choose instead to climb out of our foxholes and run forward, even though life is like a battlefield where many soldiers don't survive based on their skill at arms but on where the enemy arrows or mortar shells shot into the sky randomly come down or don't. Because God is there, and all shall be well, even if an arrow strikes down into the middle of your goals, or health, or even life.

I am still making my way across that river, and on the mission field the stepping stones are not always clear. Sometimes it feels more like you have to wait for a log to float down the stream to make any forward progress. But each step is a step away from ignorance about the painful reality of life on this earth, not into despair or into comfortable apathy, but toward the firm foundation of faith that "whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul."

It is well.

5 Years in Taiwan: 5 Missionary Lessons Learned

(This is the first post in a 2-part series. This one is focused on missions, and the second post is more focused on personal lessons and realizations that have come with my time on the field)

A couple weeks ago marked the 5th anniversary of my arrival in Taiwan for long-term service. I was so busy I almost forgot about it altogether, and didn't do anything special to celebrate the occasion, but it's still a noteworthy date for me. Each of the 5 years here has been quite different, and come with its share of surprises, disappointments, and small successes. In this entry I'd like to share some things I've learned as a missionary over those years.

1. People in other metacultures think differently from you (in different ways than you think they do)

I spent a lot of time reading and researching the culture of Taiwan before I came to do full-time ministry here. I also had lots of short-term experience, probably quite a bit more than the average missionary coming into a culture long term. All that was only very partial preparation for understanding the different worldviews and ways of thinking that are prevalent in Taiwan, however.

What I found was that understanding a metacultural (metacultures like "Western" "Islamic" "East Asian" overly greatly diverse individual cultures to be sure, yet there are also meta-level commonalities and core values, and deeper differences from each other) level difference in thought is much more complicated than simply taking the way you would think about something and substituting a different cultural priority or core value. That's because the differences are not always parallel. People don't think as you think, just with different habits and priorities; you may run into people of greatly different cultures that you "click" with very naturally due to similarities in the way you think, and you may encounter people whose entire way of thinking seems to be a mystifying black box, with what comes out not seeming to be connected to what goes in.

My girlfriend and I have coined a useful term (useful for us, at least) in Mandarin for this idea, 想法法. (The way of your way of thinking) This differs between different personality types too, which is an added layer of complication beyond cultural differences. Using the Myers-Briggs types, for example, there are scenarios where a German or Korean ISTJ would react in very similar ways and "get" each other's way of thinking, where befriending the Korean ISTJ or a Korean ENFP early on in one's move to Korea might result in wildly different ideas about "how Korean people think."

So it's not as simple as saying "In this situation, I would be prioritizing clear communication to solve the problem but a Chinese businessman might be prioritizing indirect communication to save face." That's not wrong, but it doesn't go deep enough, because you are thinking of it as prioritizing clear communication to solve the problem, but the Chinese businessman, while probably aware of his own desire to save face, does not necessarily think of it as prioritizing indirect communication, just talking as one does in these situations. Furthermore he has his own personality, and in the complicated interaction of cultural worldviews and communication styles with individual personality and past experiences, it's hard to say which is the "head" and which is the "neck."

All that is to say, it's wise to understand cultural core values, and also wise to understand they're just one important piece of the puzzle. You want a fuller picture to navigate by, when at all possible.

2. Sometimes what we call culture fatigue is really environmental fatigue (and sometimes it's just fatigue)

More or less all long-term missionaries go through a stage called culture fatigue, which isn't the "shock" of early arrival but when those troublesome bits of the culture that are especially tiring or problematic for you or in your particular ministry context start to wear you down over time.

I've noticed, though, that the parts of "life here" that I find especially tiring are generally only partially related to the culture. For example, as I write this, New Year's Eve (Dec 31) was last night. There were some scattered fireworks and firecrackers, but the rain mostly kept things down. But if Chinese New Year's Eve this February falls on a good clear night, it will be firecracker armageddon. That one night of noise is cultural, and sleep is more or less impossible before 2 or 3AM.

But that's only the one night. Getting to sleep any night at my old apartment could be tough, because of the cars or motorcycles accelerating over the bridge near my apartment. In the U.S. there might be some rules about mufflers and things which would make a slight difference in noise levels, but not much. Essentially it's not a cultural problem at all, it's because my ministry area is near the edge of a metropolis of 7 million people. Living near a main road in a major U.S. city wouldn't be that different.

Many things we put down to culture shock are like that. It's not the culture, it's that as missionaries we have mostly chosen to live in a different environment than the ones we grew up in, or would choose to live in as adults. There are aspects of that environment that are rewarding and fascinating, and some that are inconvenient or exhausting.

Beyond that, I've noticed that when I'm exhausted, I'm in good company here. It's not as if everyone here has things good and I'm the outsider forced to struggle. Life is hard for many people, and Taipei is full of people working long hours for never-rising wages. The rampant insomnia, seasonal pollution, sometimes overcrowded metro stations, and capriciously steamy hot or clammy cold weather are all things we face together. It is true that I gave up a comparatively comfortable and less exhausting life in the States to live here and do what I do, but I knew that would be the case, and my life here is full of conveniences and comfort unknown to missionaries here decades ago, or in many other parts of the world.

So now when I'm exhausted, I don't think "I need a break from Taiwan," because it's not really about what's different about life here, and everyone else is tired too. What I really enjoy is a break in Taiwan, to do those things that made me fall in love with the place to begin with.

3. The Church may be part of the problem, but it's also the point (and the only lasting progress)

The Church is an easy target sometimes. With 2000 years of history and immeasurable impact on the world, the power and influence that accumulates in the earthly shadow cast by the kingdom of God has attracted many sinful people who did terrible things in the name of Christ, let alone the fact that believers with careers that place them in the public eye often come under heavy spiritual attack and commit grievous sins.

All this is fodder for those who want to commit the genetic fallacy and tar the Church with the sins of her individual saints (plus pretenders and wolves in sheep's clothing), as if middle-schoolers failing or cheating on their math tests should cast some kind of doubt on the legitimacy of number theory.

That being said, the Church in any locale has her problems and dysfunctions, and local churches can abound with them. Taiwanese churches have their share as well, both systemic problems sometimes accidentally introduced by missionaries doing the best they knew to do years ago, and problems in individual churches where people ought to do better, but have other priorities, just like sinful but redeemed people in any part of the world. (If I can name two examples of problems I see in churches here, one is a reliance on materials or programs from outside of Taiwan; plenty of both are available from Korean and Western churches, and little to none of it was developed in Taiwan for the needs of Taiwan. Simply translating it to Chinese doesn't make it locally effective. Another problem is that there are too many very small churches with a pastor or minister who can barely keep things going, and a congregation--often grandparents plus a few dutiful children or grandchildren--that expects all spiritual work to be done by the pastor, while most young people flock to a few large churches with better resources and an effective student ministry. Neither of these problems are anyone's "fault," but they both contribute to gridlock in effective church growth here)

When attempting to make any plan work smoothly, it's typically best to involve as few people as possible. When attempting to make any plan work smoothly when working cross-culturally with churches and church leadership, well, just don't expect that. If it didn't develop organically in the churches themselves, it probably means trying to change church culture and habits. It's not impossible, and there are wonderful success stories, but it can be tough and messy at the best of times. I've even see cultural insiders with good reputations trying to pitch ideas and completely failing because they didn't understand the culture and leadership attitude of that particular group of churches.

Due to all this, there are times when missions organizations find it easiest to work outside the domain of the local church, doing their own thing and answering to their own leadership, and interacting with churches when it's part of the strategy, or when conditions are favorable. Sometimes this happens automatically with apostolic-type church planting, in new areas where there are few or no churches to cooperate with. Perhaps too frequently, church planting is done apostolic-style because of the churches nearby.

While it's true that some churches simply aren't ready, willing, or able to cooperate effectively, we must never lose sight of the fact that the local church is the Body of Christ, incarnated in a particular area. When missionaries leave, whether to another field, retirement, or to permanently cast off the perishable, the local church, however it is, remains. One of our top priorities should be figuring out the best way to leave it healthier than we found it, yet not in ways that introduce dependency on outside resources.

4. Church planting is less about the plan (and more about the planters)

As we've tried different outreaches and activities for evangelism and to grow this little neighborhood church, two things that have become apparent is that 1) there wasn't a strong plan at the outset on how to plant the church, but also 2) that it wouldn't have mattered much because in our context, so much is based on factors we can't control. What rapidly also became apparent is that church planting is a holistic spiritual challenge that requires experience and discipline in a variety of areas. Neither my local coworker nor I had participated in a church plant before, and the past few years have been... highly instructive.

What became glaringly obvious in hindsight, after some experience, was that our team wasn't diverse enough to tackle evangelizing our neighborhood ad hoc. If you're planning an outreach aimed at families (recognizing that that mainly means moms and kids here, with the occasional dad making an appearance), you need female coworkers who can follow up with the moms that show up, and who have at least some spiritual gifting and preferably a little experience in doing so. As a youngish unmarried man, but also a foreigner here, the people I'm able to follow up with are a more selective group, and not one that typically showed up for the kinds of events and outreach strategies we used.

Temporary additions of short term workers have filled in some of the gaps in our "potential discipleship coverage", but their return home generally saw the people they attracted disperse. With a good impression of our ministry and Christians in general, to be sure, but still absent. As my Taiwanese coworker once sagely remarked, "guanxi doesn't transfer": the relationships you build with people over time can't be transferred to a coworker when it's time to leave just because you were working for a common goal.

Some basic lessons for any new community-based evangelistic ministry emerge:

1. The team should look roughly like who you're trying to reach

(Compatibility for follow-up and future discipleship should be built in, not a happy accident that requires special acts of grace to see)

2. The team should be stable, or have a stable supply of shorter term help

(And have a plan for how their period of service fits into the long term ministry goals)

3. There should be ties to the local church, however local that needs to be

(If your church is the local church, it's still a good idea to reach out to others when applicable)

4. The team should determine which things can be experimented with, and which can't be redone

(Example: Your first outreach event in a neighborhood will leave a lasting impression. People who meet you will talk to other people. Those times and events need more planning to make sure they are in line with important ministry goals, or you'll be making things tougher for yourselves at the start.)

5. We can do this (better)

When I went to seminary, I had the sort of idea that after 2000 years of perusing the same scriptures from every possible angle, what theology could be humanly known had been pretty much worked out (with, of course, various schools of thought on certain doctrines and the meaning of certain scripture passages) and we were going to learn it. What I learned instead was that while the dogmas and central doctrines of the faith have been established since the councils, there is in fact much work to be done. For example, efforts are ongoing to find period manuscripts to help decipher the hapax legomena, the words only mentioned once, to bolster our interpretations of them. The internet has provided a way for people to easily access exegetical tools and communicate biblical knowledge (enabling the promulgation of weird and apocryphal ideas to be sure, but also exposing isolated church communities to basic sound doctrine), and furthermore the task of rightly dividing the Word of God is always a new adventure, since new generations with fresh worldviews and priorities are always being born to learn of and experience God and His unchanging truth for the first time.

I had wondered if missions was not similar; if over hundreds of years of taking the gospel into different cultures, and often over a hundred years of experience in different mission boards and sending agencies, some basic effective gospel strategies and organizational wisdom had been accumulated, and the main difficulty would be the doing of it, the on-the-ground work of learning the language, building the relationships, etc.

Not so. What I found instead is that each wave/generation of missionaries comes with their own backgrounds and preconceptions, and the cultures they go to reach are sometimes changing faster even than their home cultures. (Taiwan is one example. The societal change over 3 generations here has been more like the change over 5 generations in the U.S.) What "worked so well" (I don't use quotation marks to question the truth of the statement) when some missionaries arrived seems bafflingly unfruitful when new missionaries arrive decades later, because it's a new generation witnessing to a new generation. The wine needs to be transferred to new wineskins, at times and frequencies and in ways that only wisdom, experience, and careful observation can determine well, and those things don't often line up in the joyful and stressful confusion of cross-cultural life and work. Sometimes highly motivated missionaries do great work for the kingdom, then retire, leaving a hole which cannot really be filled (and too often there was no plan or attempt to do so).

These things can't really be changed, not to mention that much kingdom fruit can only be seen when the Spirit begins to do the work we can't; so many "successful strategies" are merely a case of a mighty wind filling all sails faithfully raised, not that that particular design of sail is the one that should be used everywhere. There is a very frustrating lack of reproducibility for anyone with a business or technical background. It seems common to revert to that mentality, and seek shelter in those kinds of strategies and ministries where results can be reliably obtained through human effort.

But on the other hand, many changes in the world and society are not detrimental to the missionary task, yet missionaries have not yet, or only just, begun to make use of them. To keep up our theme of this post, here are 5 examples:

A. Use the powerful language learning tools that exist

The days of landing in a new country daunted by the prospect of a new language and enduring a stressful and possibly tearful ordeal acquiring the new language, "like drinking from a fire hose" as many vividly describe the process, in many cases can and ought to be over.

I met many exchange students from China while in seminary in Dallas (many of whom found Christ and joined churches while there, praise God). I was surprised at how good some of their English was; it wasn't just a large memorized vocabulary, but they had a strong and natural command of conversational English. I asked them how their English had gotten so good before they came to the U.S., and a few replied matter-of-factly that they'd done video chat classes with teachers in the U.S. for a while before leaving China.

So many tools are now available for widely-spoken languages that once missionaries are officially in the preparation phase for their mission, there's not really any reason not to start learning the languages then. In a new environment and culture, there are so many other challenges to face and lessons to learn that letting the full brunt of new language acquisition hit at that time is best avoided if possible. These days it can be possible.

I recognize there are two major exceptions to this: 1) When you are transferring from one field to another. Learning a language at the outset when highly motivated is one thing; adding another language on top of that one while transitioning from one busy ministry field to a less familiar one is another. 2) When you need to learn a local language, not a global one. That still doesn't stop you from video chatting with locals months before you leave, but it means fewer materials are available, and preparation for distance learning needs to be set up ahead of time.

However what I'm arguing for is more a change in attitude. Build language learning into the process of Going, and decrease its status as a barrier to people wanting to serve. I have been told that, being at least somewhat gifted with languages, I'm underestimating the stress and challenge it is for others. I understand that it's not the same for everyone, since for example as a naturally reserved introvert making new friends cross-culturally is fairly challenging for me, where it's easy for some others. But that just underlines my point; if learning languages doesn't come naturally for many people, why not make full use of the wide range of tools modern technology places at our disposal?

B. A Culture of "discipling Your replacements"

One way to reduce the impact of experienced missionaries leaving big gaps in their wake, would be if a Timothy or a bunch of them were already there when it was time for Paul to go. This is certainly no easy task, and would require a massive time and energy investment. I also know that some missionaries serve in capacities that would make this difficult. However we see both Jesus and Paul using a strategy not of "taking time away from their own ministry to disciple others", but of taking people with them to do what they do.

If a culture of discipling and mentoring (a loaded word, there's probably a better one) as an essential component of ministry was built into our missions mentality, we wouldn't view it as "taking time away from our primary ministry responsibilities" to disciple, but would always be seeking friends to minister alongside us, and discipleship would happen through that, not in spite of or apart from it. 

I believe 5 years in is not too early to be thinking about this, and it's something I want to work on in 2019. If I had to leave in 5 more years, who would step in to continue the work? Or would I simply leave, taking not only the accumulated knowledge and experience of those years with me, but leaving an empty hole in the midst of the relationships I'd invested in during those years?

What if instead I had already been inviting both newer missionaries and younger people to work alongside me for years already, who can build those relationships as I do (and perhaps faster than I do), and step in to lead those ministries when I'm not available? (And be ready to lead their own) It seems worthwhile to make this a priority to a far greater degree than I've personally seen on the field, both in and out of church.

C. Millennials are natural missionaries, but need leadership

My generation, especially its younger cohort, is continually decried as fragile and unmotivated. They have left the Church in droves, and seem to have an inexplicable lack of interest in avidly pursuing the American dream. What does motivate them, to a large degree, are causes they perceive to be worth investing one's time and energy in. It grieves me that the Church missed this. At a time when an idealistic generation was growing up with the connectivity of the internet ingrained in their psyche and a peak of post-WWII resources behind them, the Church said something along the lines of: "Sit tight, we've pretty much got this Church thing figured out smoothly. Just keep showing up for the sake of showing up and some day (very far in the future), all this can be yours."

Meanwhile the World said: "Hey, young, inexperienced idealists who want to make your mark on the world. Have you noticed how unfair the world is? Let's fight injustice together!" Secular ideology provided a cause that seemed worth fighting for. The Church at first reflexively avoided this thrown-down gauntlet, and nowadays seems to be belatedly trying to gain credibility by jumping on the social justice bandwagon. (It's like much of the Church lives in a bubble 5-10 years thick. But I digress.) But it nearly lost a generation in the process, at least for now. (Only time will tell what older millennials will decide to do)

What many Millennials seem quite willing to do at any time, is reject American dream-style materialism in favor of joining causes that seem more important, on becoming the change they want to see. That's one component of a missionary spirit, but so much of it got wasted on whatever internet cause de jour or social marxist movement took the place of the soul-transforming calling that Christ has laid upon every believer. There is no power that can make the world a better place than regenerated souls on their way to another world while focused on His kingdom. Why were we not led by mature believers into that perilously joyful adventure? Is it too late to start now? (I don't think so)

D. Try more field-based recruitment

Missionaries tend to have some pretty good stories. We can also explain exactly what we're up to and how we need help, in ways that are tough for sending organizations or churches to do secondhand. Why leave most of the work of recruiting up to them? I know different organizations have different structures and procedures, but it seems natural for those who have Gone to invite others to join them in the good work that's going on.

A culture of fields or ministry focus areas keeping in better touch with their supporting churches and reaching out to others not merely to meet support requirements, but with the faithful expectation that God will lead some people who hear to come get involved with the work, might change the picture of shrinking numbers of missionaries in many fields.

Some fields in my organization have done this with success, but it took a concentrated effort and it also takes a certain number of missionaries involved to become "self-sustaining" in that sense. I believe in the Church of the 2020's, this will be an increasingly effective strategy, as it's likely that the culture in the West will continue changing in ways that make sending agency's work (and perhaps survival) harder, not easier.

E. Make it less... dramatic (?) at the outset

I am definitely speaking as a computer engineer-turned-missionary at this point, but I feel it's important to point out that the nature of long-work missionary work has a pragmatic quality to it. Yes, we seek to be all things to all people to win some, in cultures very different from our birth cultures, and it's a work only the Spirit can do in the hearts of those we seek to reach. Yes, I was "called" to Taiwan in that traditional sense that I wouldn't say is necessary to come serve God cross-culturally but definitely makes it easier in certain ways. (On the spectrum of "anxiously figuring out if you're heading in the right direction" vs. "gritting your teeth and enduring when it's tough" it pushes things much further toward the latter)

However, while a calling from God or deep conviction that inspires us to service can both push people out of the comfortable ruts of their normal lives and provide motivation when times are tough, emphasizing it so strongly and hyping up (for lack of a more respectful term) that decision to forsake everything and go to the ends of the earth, also throws up a huge barrier, one that may have been more appropriate for ages when missions agencies were focused on weeding out the unqualified from among their many applicants, not trying hard to connect with enough willing hearts and get them on the field to keep whole mission field areas from having to close up shop from lack of missionaries to continue the good work.

My own journey to the mission field certainly involved those moments of deep conviction to make the tough decisions to get here, but it was also partly inspired by visiting Taiwan and hearing missionaries share about very accomplishable tasks and needs, getting a more concrete idea of what actually needed to be done. My thinking before visiting any missionaries abroad was that I wasn't spiritual enough (or extroverted enough) to be a missionary. After visiting Taiwan and learning more, it became more a question of "Oh, there's a lot of good work for God's kingdom that needs to be done over there. It sounds like something I could learn to do... if I dare." The daring part is where some dramatic stories of God's leading and providence come in.

The World we live in provides a variety of well-defined life path options. Maximizing the comfort of your life, achieving noteworthy success, becoming the head of a happy and prosperous family, etc. As with so many things in the Church, it would be much more effective if instead of merely pointing at what the world offers/promotes and saying "missions means sacrificing all that," we actually cast a positive vision too, of what is gained and how deeply meaningful missionary life can be.

Missionary life is almost impossibly difficult at times, but life is like that anyway, even sometimes for people who spend most of their lives trying to avoid those kinds of difficulties. What better way to spend one's transient mortal life than in full-time service to your Creator, taking light into dark places, and sharing the beautiful truths of His word and watching lives be transformed by it?

The only things you can take with you to heaven are the friends God reached through you. If that's not a rational reason to jump in and get started in kingdom work, I don't know what is.

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!)

The Saga of Atonement: Old Testament Edition

[Long ago I read the Kalevala, the mythological epic of Finland and found its special meter (trochic tetrameter) to be one of the most compelling things about it. Last Christmas I wrote a poem recounting the story of Christ in this epic style, and mentioned that I might expand it to include the entire biblical story of redemption. Here is the current condensed version of the Old Testament part of the epic, which will almost certainly become longer in the future.]

(Picture taken in Hualien, Taiwan)

***

Darkness shrouds the formless chaos

Darkness pierced by sudden light

He who dwells in endless glory
Speaking forth His words of might

Days from nights and skies from waters
Days declared to be of worth

Raising land and striking shorelines

Sets He now the realms of earth

Swirling shadows stir the oceans
Swirling wing-work streaks the skies

Creeping things to great behemoth

One more task before Him lies

Dust He gathers, breathes to life now

Dust that knows itself to be

In the image of the Godhead
Male and female, blessed we

*

Gardens verdant, land of richness

Man and nature dwelt in bliss
Wrecked in ruin, all earth poisoned
Broken faith at serpent’s hiss

Words of doom yet grace abounding
Words of pride from fallen men
Blood that cries from soil to heaven
Sin surpassing mortal ken

Faithful yet but one remaining

Faithful floats amid the flood

Cleansed of sin the world yet sinful
Cities rise from recent mud

Called the father sitting sonless
Called to wander arid lands
Water wells and well-met angels
Following his Lord’s commands

*

Younger son a trickster labors
Younger son lost and regained
Finding fame amid the famine
By the Nile they long remained

Now in chains a people crying
Now their masters full of woe
Wonders whelm the pride of Egypt
You shall let my people go

Forth to doubt and wildly-wander

Forth to those whose time has come

Wrath of judgment wreathing Canaan
Now the land shall be their home

Laws of food and guilt and pardon
Laws in stone the Prophet taught

Serving, serfs become a nation
Chosen people dearly bought

*

Judged for folly, oft invaded
Judged by warriors, strong yet stained
Conquerors amid the conquered
Prophets still the truth proclaimed

Knowing He who brought them hither

Knowing yet their faith was weak

Kings they called for, calling tallest
Faithless too, his ending bleak

Now the Son of Jesse rises
Now the sling and harp are raised
Mighty king of mighty heroes
Sea-kings flee and God is praised

 Son of wisdom builds the temple
Son of psalmist gathers gold

Teacher taught his sons too little
 Severed Israel leaves the fold

*

Idols built by Kings and Witch-queens
Idols broken in remorse
Offerings a stench offensive
Sin pursues its bloody course

Back and forth the chosen falter
Back from faith to stray in sin

Empires rise and eye their prizes
North then South at last give in

Death has come with armies distant
Death surrounding Zion’s wall  

Prophets slain in war for warning
Soon there is no voice at all.

Exiled now among the nations
Exiled yet Remembered still
Worldly powers shift their status
Centuries remain, until…

***

A New Year: The Blessed Unknown

Borrowing this pic, since I didn't go to the Taipei 101
fireworks show this year, though we did watch from far away

Resolutions vs. The Future

Happy New Year everyone. It's January 1st, that time when many people make resolutions which will seem increasingly less worth the sacrifice it takes to maintain them as the cold weeks slide past. That's the problem with resolutions; they are goals which can't factor in what might happen in the coming months. Sure, maybe you give up out of simple laziness, but let's say you have better reasons than that. Often it's the same reasons we are all familiar with--by mid-February winter has worn most of us down and we don't have the mental fortitude to keep doing productive but willpower-draining things which aren't an established habit quite yet. (In Taiwan there's a different yearly rhythm; no Christmas holiday and a mad rush to finish everything in January before the long Chinese New Year break in late January or February.)

But let's imagine that your failure to maintain your resolution is entirely due to unforeseen events: you are determined to go to the gym, but then you land a huge work project which requires most of your energy and all of your time. Or you were going to lose weight, but you started learning to bake and have discovered your superpower is making delicious cookies. Neither a valuable work contract or the ability to produce perfectly-crunchy-or-chewy chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven whenever you want are bad things, and maybe if you'd known about their emergence ahead of time you could have planned your resolutions accordingly, or at least been better prepared for the struggle of maintaining your resolutions in spite of them.

This ignorance (not stupidity--ignorance is not knowing something, stupidity is when knowing it wouldn't help you) of what the new year might bring can in some ways be considered a form of mercy. My examples above are positive, but all too often what lies ahead as we face every new year is unforeseen hardship and pain. Perhaps the global geopolitical situation will become more unstable, straining the economy and threatening war. Perhaps sickness or disease will afflict you, your friends, or family members. Perhaps you'll simply find yourself unable to meet your goals through factors seemingly beyond your control, and slowly slip into ennervating ennui.

All these things and many more are possible, and we know that they will all happen at some point in the future, as a matter of statistics. This is the world we live in; we never know when misfortune may strike, and that inability to know can be faced in various ways. (Libraries of books and articles have been written about how to face the unknown without debilitating stress, many of which can be encapsulated in Paul's reminder to "be anxious for nothing".)

Making Impossible Decisions

With the future tantalizingly guessable but also unknown, many decisions must be made without knowing the outcome. As an INTP on the Myers-Briggs personality indicator, I know that I have a tendency to delay making a decision until I have all the relevant information to help me decide, the problem being that a) sometimes you simply can't know all the relevant information, and b) sometimes if you wait long enough to try to know everything, you've missed the decision-making window.
Life is unfair; sometimes the only effective decision is one made before you know how rightly to decide. It's still a little surprising even now when I do that and turn out to have chosen well; it seems like any decision made before you could know enough to make it would be wrong, yet that's often not the case.

People have different ways to make that kind of "stab into the unknown" decision; some like to "go with their gut feeling" (this depends on having a healthy/reliable gut in the literal, physical sense--anxiety and depression can make your gut feeling a bad and unreliable guide, something I have discovered only after many years trapped in the doubt-labyrinth). This is a form of taking personal responsibility for the decision, and for people with strong intuition and the "knack" for making good rapid decisions, the results can seem almost like magic.

By contrast, some prefer to offload the decision-making stress by flipping a coin or using some other "this is random yet maybe fate/divine providence is out there guiding it" method. This is more natural for people with a more external locus of control--they feel they're not really in control of most things to begin with, so every decision is somewhat arbitrary. I am the opposite, with a very internal locus of control--I believe there are very few things in life that you don't have some measure of control over, it's only a question of whether you are willing to really consider all of your options, including those most people aren't willing to consider, and deal with whatever consequences may result. (The upside to this is the capacity to see options and make choices and achieve results which are not even on the radar of many people; the downside is knowing that basically all the bad things that happen to you are your own fault, and not being able to externalize the blame for your problems without knowing you are being hypocritical in doing so. Some degree of self-loathing is the risk of making better use of your gift of free will.)

Other people (very commonly, here in Taiwan) try to get around the unknown future problem at its source, by resorting to a wide variety of fortune-telling methods. There are entire classes of fortune telling here largely unknown in the West, using birds and dangling pendants and the dates of one's birth and characters in one's name, and tossing little red crescent-shaped wooden blocks (jiaobei) at temples to see how they land.

All fortune-telling is forbidden by scripture, of course, as it's random self-deception and ex-post-facto rationalization at best (and real contact with dark spiritual realities at worst), and in every case an attempt to face an unknown future with less or no need for faith or God's presence and guidance (or for learning discernment and wisdom). God wants us not to know the future, because that's how we learn to trust. We want to know the future, because trusting is hard and can hurt. It's more or less the sin of Eden; we want to know what God knows so we can make decisions as we deem best, vs. trust and obedience to someone other than Self.

Hindsight Is Not Invalidation

Another reason knowing the future would be harmful, is because that knowledge is a "collapsed" version of reality compared to experience. You do not live a year instantaneously. The troubles and hardships are spaced out with joys and relief. Looking back with hindsight is different from knowing all the ramifications of a decision ahead of time, because knowing them ahead of time would compress them all together, a giant bundle of future pain, whereas experiencing them in reality takes place over time, where there is solace and recovery and lessons learned. Living in time means you only need to confront and deal with each problem as it comes, whereas the ability to see all the future problems together means mentally confronting all of them at the same time, which would make any decision impossibly daunting.

When I was making the decision to move to Taiwan to do long-term missions work, I had no idea how my life here was going to be. It turned out that I had mostly rational expectations (for those few expectations I dared to have, knowing how dangerous they can be) but I was also wrong about nearly everything: most of what I was looking forward to fell through, didn't work out like it was supposed to, or was taken away rather painfully. Why were my expectations so far off-base? Partly through things I could have known but didn't know to ask about (the "you don't know what you don't know" problem), and partly through things I could never have known or predicted ahead of time (I have a strange talent for getting myself into frustrating situations that no one I know has ever encountered before).

I think if I could have foreseen all the various difficulties and challenges I would encounter as a missionary ahead of time, I would almost certainly never have left the U.S. Yet that would have been the wrong decision, and coming was the right decision, which I could make because I was spared from knowing what would have made deciding correctly impossible for me.

When seeking God's will to come here, I did not foresee all the difficulties and obstacles I would face, but I did receive very clear confirmation to go. It was not wrong for God to decline to inform me of what would happen if I followed His leading, because it would have stopped me from obeying.

In terms of making the decision itself, I was blessed to have the strong confirmation that not every missionary receives. Yet that is not a necessary condition for making the decision, since with the Great Commission given to all followers of Christ, deciding to serve the Kingdom of God in a full-time capacity is never odds with the revealed will of God (who will open and close doors according to His hidden will for the particulars, whether we like and understand it or not).

Though we sometimes act as if the default is to do nothing, and that in special circumstances, some "super Christians" or the "specially called" can work at the Great Commission and spreading the Kingdom, the Bible teaches the opposite; the default is what God already told us all to do. I spent a lot of time worrying that being a missionary to Taiwan might not be God's will, until finally I made the decision to do it, and simply asked Him to close the door if it was not His will, and close it hard enough that I would absolutely not be able to get through it. Then it was simply a matter of crawling over every obstacle until I got here. (At which point the obstacles got taller and thornier. The reward for endurance is more weight on the next set, when strength and not comfort is the goal)

If It's Not Wrong, Pray, And Do It

No amount of hardship encountered after the fact can make a decision wrong purely on the basis that there is hardship (unless it was a comfort-based decision). That is a blessing for we time-bound creatures; we can "swear to our own hurt and not change"--make irrevocable decisions which cause us pain yet still honor them; Psalm 15 calls this a mark of someone who may dwell in God's presence. Because the future is unknown to us, we can make correct decisions which we might not be able to bring ourselves to make if we knew how hard the consequences would be, yet still not give up.

The idea that "God won't give you more than you can handle" is false and a lie; God will absolutely give you more than you can handle, so that you have no other recourse but to take refuge in Him, or reject Him. Those are the only two eternal choices any human has.

But it's one thing to make a godly decision, then need to rely on God to survive the consequences, and another to know how hard it's going to be and still make the decision. Ignorance is a protection for the weak in a sinful world; those who know a lot have to be much stronger to handle that knowledge and still move forward, and that strength often only comes through suffering.

Yet the Bible exists so that we should not be ignorant of those things God considers it necessary for us to know and act on, and it teaches us not to stay willingly ignorant, but to seek wisdom and get understanding. And while scripture is deep and sometimes complex, on the whole the Bible is not that complicated when it comes to what we should and shouldn't do. We no longer live under Old Testament law, but one sin of legalism in any era or church is that it destroys the freedom that God offers us: The idea of "Thou shalt not..." is actually incredibly liberating, because "Thou shalt..." would confine us to only what was mentioned. But we have freedom in Christ to do whatever is not sin, for His glory.

So that is my advice to you as we all face the daunting prospect of the year-which-comes-after-2017: make right decisions, and trust God to walk you through whatever difficulties may arise. And if you are a believer* who wants to do something that scripture does not condemn anywhere (specifically or in principle), if you have asked God to reveal His will to you, and He has not said No, then ask Him to close the door if it is not His will yet you can't know that, and move ahead with confidence that He will direct your paths. As I was told when in the middle of a tough decision once: "You can't steer a parked car."

(*--And if you are not a believer, 2018 is the perfect year to stop holding out against what everyone from astrophysicists to a child in Sunday school knows is true, and begin your path of faith to God. The Gospel of John is a great place to start--the trail of atheists who set out to disprove the Bible and later believed it is rather impressive.) 

The Church stagnates because we make non-action the default, afraid we might accidentally do the wrong good thing. We should be more concerned with not doing the good God has set in front of us. The world needs it in 2018 more than ever.