"My Power is made Perfect in Weakness": Christian Antifragility

Dear Readers: I hope you all had a joyful Christmas. (I recognize it has not exactly been a peaceful holiday for many of you, with the crazy weather across the United States).

The New Year now approaches, promising to be even more complicated and chaotic than last year as tense and unstable situations around the world are further destabilized. Plus elections. It is well for followers of Jesus that our hope is not in this world, else it would be a bad time for hope.

(And to top it all off, next year will begin the Chinese Year of the Red Fire Monkey. As a believer I place zero faith in astrology of any kind, but I had a laugh at how humorously ominous that sounds...)

Doesn't start until February, actually

As an INTP, ideas are my currency, and the ever-present task in the back of my mind is to keep figuring out how our world works in all its complexity. A few years ago I was exposed to the idea of "antifragility," explained below, and found it to be a very important new property to look for in any human endeavor (including those of the Church). As we seem to be entering a time in which circumstances grow eerily similar to those that preceded the World Wars of the previous century, we can take heart knowing that the Church which has endured every hardship and trial of history will emerge from whatever societal chaos may come, because she is built on a foundation which cannot be shaken by the world.

The Idea: Antifragility

The concept as currently articulated is the brainchild of Nassim Taleb, a Lebanese-American thinker/author/risk analyst, who has written important work on the impact of "flukes" or "random catastrophes" called Black Swans, with the implication that it's foolish to regard them as unavoidable events, but that they should be expected to come eventually, and can even be profited from accordingly.

This initial work was followed by more research and contemplation of the subject, which he developed further conceptually and for which he eventually coined the term antifragility. The idea is usually explained in a threefold manner:

1. Fragility: We know what fragile means: that something which is fragile must be handled with care, that it cannot receive shocks or stress without sustaining damage or even being destroyed. Fine glassware is fragile, as an obvious example.

2. Resilience: Normally one would say that the opposite of fragility is resilience, or toughness: the ability to handle shocks and stress and not take much damage, or at least to recover quickly. A rubber sole is resilient, a piece of oak is resilient, etc.

3. Antifragility: Taleb's innovative idea is that resilience is not really the opposite of fragility. The true opposite of fragility would not be something which is more able to endure shocks or stress, but which would grow stronger due to them. With no good word to describe this property, Taleb made up a word: Antifragility. If you remember basic Greek mythology, there was a beast called a Hydra, which for every head cut off would grow multiple heads in its place. "Stress," in this case physical damage, was actually helpful to it. Another example would be the bones of a child: if they break, a properly healed bone is actually stronger at the previous breaking point than it was before the fracture.

The three-fold analogy of fragility, resilience, and antifragility is explained in a good summary article on the Art of Manliness. If this blog post interests you in the subject, that's a great place to start.

For now, suffice to say that while resiliency becomes very desirable when facing a time of rapid changes and above average stress, antifragility is the secret to those groups which don't merely weather the storms, but somehow seem to profit from them and come out stronger.

We see examples of this in the news today:

Muslim terror groups are often quite antifragile. The more Western military might tries to pulverize them, the more they melt away into the populace, recruiting more people to their cause due to collateral damage. Soon new cells pop up where none were before. It's the hydra all over again.

The stock market, on the other hand, is fragile. 2008 demonstrated what can happen when an entire economic system becomes fragile and is hit by a shock, in that case the housing lending bubble popping. The US economy is also fragile with regards to oil; any significant jump in the oil price and the whole taut system quivers anxiously.

This explains why somehow the mighty Western powers have found themselves unable to defeat a radical Islamic foe that is positively dwarfed in terms of military power and not really liked by anyone: The West is fragile with regards to dependence on oil, and antifragile radical groups are destabilizing the region where the oil is. We can't ignore them, then, for pragmatic if not moral reasons, but our previous strategies only seem to have made matters worse. Part of the reason we haven't defeated them is not because they are tougher than us, but because they are antifragile. While individual terrorists and radical muslim cells can be killed quickly, on the whole this strengthens their movement.

Fragility and Antifragility cannot be confused with weakness and strength either. Before the War in Iraq, Saddam's dictatorship was much stronger than the subversive elements in his territory, but it was also more fragile than they; once our both stronger and more resilient military wiped Saddam's forces off the map, the regime went down easily. The antifragile radical movements which took advantage of the chaos are not so easily dealt with, however, and will require different strategies.

Antifragility is often found in conjunction with small size, redundancy, decentralization, a willingness to take small risks if the chance of reward is good, and a focus on increasing one's available options.

With all this in mind, antifragility sounds like a great thing to pursue in one's personal life. But can it be related at all to our faith? Should a Christian even try to use this kind of "success" strategy? Let's take a look.

A Case for Christian Antifragility

1. Is it ungodly to strive for something like antifragility?

When talking about making our ministries or churches more robust, the first instinct is that this is of course a good thing. Then, sometimes, a "spiritual" objection arises: shouldn't we be focusing not on our own strength, but on dependency on God? "When we are weak, He is strong," after all.

My answer to this is that "when we are weak, He is strong" is not a command but an observation. Paul makes it in Second Corinthians after "boasting" of his qualifications and his suffering for God in 2 Cor 11 and 12. He then mentions his "thorn in the flesh," an enigmatic term which commentators have enjoyed guessing about for centuries, as a reminder from God that His grace is sufficient, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Paul says, with much grounds for boasting of his "street cred" as a gospel worker, that "to keep me from becoming conceited" (ESV; NET has "so that I would not become arrogant) he was given this thorn in the flesh to remind him of his own weakness. His boasting of his own weakness is therefore both a willing submission to God's reminder and a joyful proclamation of the strength of Christ, of whom Paul lives to preach.

And that is generally my response to this kind of objection. We don't need to strive to be weak, because like Paul, whatever we think we may have to boast about, we are already weak. God's power is made perfect in us when we recognize that weakness, when the illusion of our own tiny ability is seen for what it is, and we humbly rely on strength from God. A crumb on the lens of a telescope can obscure stars larger than our sun. It doesn't mean the crumb might not be big compared to other crumbs, but our perspective tempts us to compare it to the star, which is more ridiculous than we can comprehend.

2. Honoring God in our Ministries

All that is to say, any kind of argument that trying to make our churches and ministries stronger is inherently an attempt to take glory from God and give it to men, or to exalt ourselves and our strength against God's, is simply wrong. Those things might happen if we go about it the wrong way, or with the wrong motives, but it's not wrong to do the best job we can, in fact it's sinful not to attempt to. We are not to strive for weak ministries, but good and effective ones. Our weakness is something to bring before God as an obvious condition, not a property with which we ought to seek to imbue our efforts.

So if we are loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will not be ambivalent about setting up our ministries to function as well as we can, from the human standpoint, while praying always for the work of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the work in people's hearts that we cannot.

3. The Church is already Antifragile

And if we believe we have a responsibility to strengthen our churches and ministries, then, we should take note that God has already established the Church as an Antifragile institution.

In the early days of the faith, once Christianity was no longer viewed as an odd flavor of Judaism but a new, non-sanctioned faith that was rapidly spreading among the Roman populace, Roman emperors undertook campaigns to discourage or eliminate the growing Church.

From a human standpoint, the "stress" on the Church was very great; multitudes lost their property and were imprisoned, and many lost their lives as well.

(Note: I have not linked to the Wikipedia article on Roman Persecutions, as it seems mainly concerned that we understand the Christians were making an overly big deal about it and the Romans were just trying to keep order.. In general I suggest being cautious of Wikipedia these days; many of the editors who oversee page content are self-proclaimed activists who push the pages in the direction of their own views)

However, we have a saying, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." (Tertullian)
The result of all those persecutions is that the Church grew very rapidly, both as the plight of believers drew attention and sympathy to their faith, and as they were often driven from one area to another, spreading the gospel to new areas it would have reached more slowly otherwise.

A similar thing happened in China during the closed years of the Cultural Revolution; when Christians came in from outside later, fearing the Church had been reduced or eliminated entirely, they found it had instead grown greatly during the difficult years.

To say, then, that the Church is antifragile, is not to deny that it was God's power that expanded and protected Her; antifragility is not a cause but a property, and the Church by its nature possesses this property, due to exactly what we discussed above: God's power is made perfect in weakness. This means the more desperate of circumstances we are reduced to, as a church, as the Church, or as individuals, the more we may see God do.

Therefore we see that "God's power is made perfect in weakness" is actually a bold revelation of startling truth. We thought the equation was:

"Do your best, and God will do the rest": 

But what Paul reveals is that in reality we have this:

"My power is made perfect in weakness": 

As you may remember from math class, as the denominator goes to zero, the value of the fraction goes to infinity. As our strength fails, there is no limit to what God can do.
This is not merely antifragility, but ultimate, supernatural antifragility.

Satan is very strong, but he is merely resilient. By the gift of "weakness," together with His power, God has made the Church so that the gates of hell truly may never prevail against it, by its very nature. This is why prosperity and ease are the most effective tools in the arsenal against the Church. Suffering and hardship actually make the Church stronger; of social influence, political power, and comfortable circumstances weaken it by hampering and slowing its development.

Antifragility for the Believer, Ministry, or Church

A. Church

So if the Church (the Body of Christ as a whole) is already antifragile, how about a church? How about your own local church?

Sadly, though the Church only grows stronger through persecution, individual churches may split over any number of issues, mostly strong personalities coming into conflict. This kind of "church multiplication" is not antifragile, it merely takes something fragile and breaks it into two fragile pieces.

A strong and healthy church, however, which reproduces itself, could be antifragile. A church of healthy and developing small groups of whatever form is already very resilient, and is probably antifragile. Any harm befalling the church, be it financial, loss of important people, etc., can not only be made up for by everyone coming together, but it is an opportunity for training and discipleship to be put into action. Someone may need to step into the old role.

A church seeking to be antifragile will have redundancy as well; a church with a human bottleneck (one or more indispensable people) is quite common, and may be quite efficient, but it's very fragile. Should that one or those key personnel be removed, the church might be in serious trouble. Rather than praying for God not to ever let that person be unable to perform in that role, then if they are unable to, putting it down to God's mysterious will that the church suffer all these problems (this is what the Muslims do with "Inshallah"... it's not at all a proper application of the doctrine of God's sovereignty), a church seeking to become less fragile will have that person train others to do what they do.
(That feeling of being indispensable is both pleasant and addicting for very many people, but it's not helpful to the survival of the church. It must be laid at the cross along with everything else)

So, two tips for an antifragile church:
1. Healthy, "real" small groups, with the goal of each being capable of functioning as a microchurch if necessary
2. Anyone with an important role in the church has trained at least one person to do what they do (it doesn't have to be perfect, or even well, they just need to be able to do it) Note that this includes the senior pastor. Most churches' weakest point is the senior pastor, because he's irreplaceable. Some churches never recover from the loss of an especially beloved or capable senior pastor.

B. Ministry

Many ministries are fairly fragile just by their nature, and will dissolve naturally if there is too much disruption. This is not necessarily a bad thing; a ministry should arise from the gifts and calling of individual believers joining together, and there will always be other opportunities to pursue for the Kingdom. But there are certain ministries, say a church plant, where it is highly desirable that the ministry should continue long term, or at least survive until the primary objective has been accomplished.

So one hopes that a long-term ministry would at least be resilient. But it would be even better if it could be antifragile. What if a church plant, upon encountering difficulties, did not fail but spawned off a second, successful ministry? What if the end result was that three cell churches were planted instead of one?

Pursuing antifragility gets trickier for a ministry, but it can be done. The easiest path is to first identify what would cause a ministry to fail if it were absent. This is not always obvious, but once identified, either the crucial elements are replaceable, or they are not. Often, in smaller ministries, they simply aren't. If you have one Evangelist, they can show you how they do what they do, and everyone can practice it, but they can't give you that spiritual gift. In that situation, we are simply back to our weakness and God's strength, and trusting that if He wills the ministry to continue, He will not let that crucial element be removed, or He will give others the ability to carry on that important part of the ministry.

On the other hand, sometimes redundancy is possible. If the ministry depends on one guy who knows how to set up sound equipment, he should teach someone else how to do it. That's an easy step.

Another important part of antifragility is to keep things from expanding out of control. If your ministry is trying to do three fairly different things, perhaps one should be spun off, with your blessing, into its own ministry. If there are people in common, they may be able to invite others to participate in the ministry and it will be a training opportunity.
The attitude is not consolidation, but multiplication.

Three tips for an antifragile ministry:
1. Be aware of what is absolutely crucial for the ministry to continue and make sure that stays in focus
2. Redundancy wherever possible
3. Keep things focused. Preference is on multiplication versus consolidation

C. Personal

This is the one most people talk about, so I'll talk about it the least. However I rarely see it coming from the perspective of one's walk with God, so there are some worthwhile issues to raise.

Once one is aware of the concept, the Bible is actually full of references to antifragility. Grape vines bear more fruit when they are pruned heavily. Jesus says that a seed cannot grow unless it dies (to being a seed), but once grown it can produce many seeds. Romans 5 speaks of the importance of suffering, which produces endurance, endurance character, and character hope. Thus suffering, something we typically try to avoid, produces the hope we are looking for. Avoiding the suffering may, surprisingly, be the reason you feel hopeless.

Therefore an attitude of embracing productive suffering, submitting willingly to the stress that causes an antifragile thing to become stronger, can produce a vital change in one's walk with God. If upon encountering difficulties, rather than asking the very natural questions that spring to mind: "Why is this happening to me? What sin is this punishment for? Does God really love me?" we can try changing the question to: "What is God teaching me through this?" In what way is this making me a better person and more effective servant for the Kingdom?" No one signs up for gym classes and then asks the instructor why he's making you suffer. The difference for Christians is that sometimes we don't realize we signed up to be made into the image of Christ.

If we recognize that letting God walk us through a series of ever-increasing challenges is precisely the process of spiritual growth He intends for us, we might even be willing to voluntarily leave our comfort zones, to ask God to lead us to tasks too big for us to handle as we are now. If comfort is our goal, we cannot grow to be more like Christ; we must embrace a certain level of discomfort in order to develop. I think that's what Paul was getting at with some of his athlete analogies: If we approach the spiritual life like an athlete approaches a marathon, the Christian life suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.

"God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through." - Francis Chan

One could explore antifragility in the Christian life from innumerable other ways. (redundancy in one's personal walk, so that small things don't disrupt it; how we think of risk as believers; keeping our lives simple and flexible to serve God...) We'll save those for a future post. For now, check out the link near the top for the explanation of antifragility (actually here it is again), or find Taleb's book on Amazon if you want the full blown, way-too-much-information version.

"God isn't Fixing This"

Does God Care? 

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

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

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

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

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

Ancient Chinese weaponry: one iron and two bronze swords

A Bit about Bronze

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alloyed with Sin

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

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

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

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

One Day

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

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

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

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

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

Get Moving I - Holding the Line vs. Advancing the Kingdom

"Hold the Line" or "Advance the Kingdom"?

How do we in the Church balance a responsibility to "hold the line"--for doctrinal purity within churches, for resisting the decay in the culture outside of them, etc.-- with the responsibility of following the Great Commission? The first implies a defensive, static position, while the second is outwardly focused and concerned with advancing the spiritual kingdom of God on earth.

It would seem the two are in conflict, and while the idea of "missional"churches, and the ramifications of it, solves some of the problems, in this post I want to suggest a lot could be improved by simply changing the way Christians think about the problem, with a little help from an analysis of tactics strategy then offer a few steps to getting back into the battle where it's actually being fought.
First, a look at some the related issues:

1. Conservatism

The first issue I want to address is Conservatism. Most people identify this with political conservatism, but the cultural phenomenon of conservatism in America is broader than politics. I strongly believe one problem in the American evangelical church (and perhaps others) is that of conservatism, again not politically but as an approach to life and ministry and "being the Church."

A reckless and overly aggressive attitude Church-wide would of course be a problem, but as per Screwtape and the people wielding fire extinguishers in a flood, it does not seem to be the special problem of our time to be primarily guarded against. On the contrary, there seems to be a default tendency to avoid action because of uncertainty, lack of clear direction, and the desire to avoid potentially costly failures. This kind of reflexive conservatism, a fear of moving lest we move wrong, actually hinders the Church's work a great deal. If "don't rock the boat," "be careful," "don't make people uncomfortable," "don't go overboard," "we'll think about it (please go away)," is the default attitude in those churches which most revere and promote careful attention to scriptural truth, it's no wonder that around the world it is not conservative and evangelical but charismatic churches which are seeing most of the rapid growth.

In the US, in this new era which began roughly with 9/11, the cultural situation looks different for millennials. They are not fighting to conserve, but either to carve out stable lives in an increasingly unstable culture, if they're self-motivated, or simply remain in their current situation, if they're not. The system of comparative stability inherited by previous generations has finally begun to break down, and so conservatism is less appropriate than building anew, something which is more suited to weather the dark times that seem to be coming and the instability that is already becoming normal.

So my contention with regard to conservatism and the Church is that we may have found ourselves in the position of making great efforts to keep alive a beloved, mighty oak whose roots are all but dead, but which is still covered in acorns each year. I believe we should be less concerned with keeping the old tree going another year than with planting those acorns as fast as we can. Take pride, if you must, not in the grand old oak, but in fields of new saplings. Some won't grow into strong, healthy trees, but many will.
Now is not exactly the time to be conservative, then; we need to be active, intentional, and busily preparing for the future more than regretting what we've lost or fearing change we can't stop anyway.

2. Zeal vs. Fear

That brings us to the second issue. Continuing the oak tree analogy, despite the need for a new forest, there are those who for various reasons are very ambivalent about the work of planting new trees to begin with. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, instead of accepting the regretful loss of a few healthy wheat sprouts as an acceptable exchange for getting rid of those invasive weeds, his landowner commands that they be allowed to grow up together. The point is not a flawless field, the point is the wheat. I believe we may be in a situation where in many conservative evangelical churches today people are perplexed with a small and shrinking harvest but nevertheless point with pride to our immaculate church fields, where all our time and effort has gone into making sure all the weeds are eradicated before any new seed is put out. (On the other hand, many churches avoid even mentioning what happens to weeds at the harvest, for fear any of them might take offense)

Planting more churches, spreading the gospel actively (while none of these things are illegal yet)... all these things engage us in the harvest work we are called to as a Church. It may even be that we should be giving thanks for this season; not as a fearful time of corrosion of the Church's cultural influence, but as a time when overgrown fields everywhere are waiting to be planted and harvested, and we can simply rise up and do so. (That especially while we can see to the East, smoke rising off burning fields.)

So we should plant with zeal while we can, advancing into new fields and not spending all our energy in "holding the line" against the influence of weeds from the next field over. Maybe one field even gets slightly overrun and in need of serious attention, but in the mean time we have planted four new ones, and can now return and attend to it. If Paul had spent his whole life in Antioch to make sure that church stayed perfect, we wouldn't have a global Church today; our times are more like Acts than we know.

3. There are Two Lines

It's clear, then, that we can neither be apathetic about holding the line of truth with regards to what is taught and preached in our churches, nor lax in our efforts to advance the kingdom by planting more churches and taking the gospel into our communities. Both things must be attended to, and how can we do that, with churches full of "attendees" plus a small core of already over-worked volunteers?
It may be that in this decade, we need to overthrow the 80-20 (or even 90-10) rule; if the church is to survive, thrive and do the work it's called to do, it cannot be primarily composed of Christians who consider showing up regularly on Sunday mornings to be the majority of their Christian duty.
Even a shift to a third of church-goers deciding they weren't content to simply sit and listen, but demanded to be involved in taking what they learned and putting it into practice, and teaching others to do the same, would mean a massive increase in manpower and what the Church was capable of.

This dance of holding the line and advancing the kingdom is not a zero-sum game, however. More of one does not automatically mean less of the other. That is because, in reality, they are of course two different lines.

Think of a war: there is a line of battle, perhaps several, and a line further back which denotes secured territory. The line that protects doctrinal purity, that ensures our foundation remains biblical truth--that line must be held. But the line that expands out into a fallen world in need of light--that line must advance.

To win battles, both things must be happening at the same time. You must take ground, hold it, and keep it secure. You cannot take new ground by holding the line, and you cannot keep it secure by moving your troops away somewhere else.

Aha, you may say, but then they do detract from each other, because you need troops to do either the one or the other. In a physical battle that's true. In a church, it is to be hoped that some of the same people capable of recognizing and defending against false teaching are also capable of taking the gospel out into new territory. In fact, being good in one area hopefully implies one is skilled in the other as well. In a healthy church, there will be priority given to having these experienced warriors training others to walk in the same way.

Hold here or advance?

4. "The Line" vs. "Maneuver Warfare"

I think there's a better picture we can use, however, for this ongoing battle. While within the church there is absolutely a doctrinal line which cannot be compromised, perhaps in terms of engaging our culture, advancing the kingdom into our communities, the appropriate image should not be "a line" at all.

In World War I, the infamous "trenches" were lines held against the enemy, with a no man's land in between into which few could venture and return alive. Early artillery pounded, machine guns rattled, and soldiers fought to hold positions and keep from being overrun, with such horrific casualties and suffering that it shook Europe to its philosophical core.

When we talk about "culture wars," we could extend the analogy to these front lines. (I believe I've actually heard the phrase "on the front lines of the culture wars" used more than once) A lot of American Christians seem to have internalized this idea. If you understand this, it makes more sense why seemingly innocuous things like coffee cups and chicken sandwiches can become massively controversial: small things in and of themselves, they represent a feint or real thrust across the (constantly narrowing) no man's land of cultural neutrality. If not rebuffed, perhaps ground will be lost, and lost ground means a new foothold for the enemy.

A "holding the line" mentality means Christians have 1) blurred the kingdom of God and the cultural footprint of the Church (not the same thing), and 2) tacitly admitted than cultural conditions are too scary, and they are not really thinking of making progress anymore. Enemy trenches in what was, until fairly recently, neutral territory (things like "the Arts," and "the Sciences") and historically constructed largely by the Church itself, are ground so long not occupied that they have become unfamiliar anyway, and possibly dubious. (Maybe that's not ground we even want to hold. We can build our own little versions of them, over here on our side.)

But let's fast-forward to World War II now. The Germans have developed a new theory of tactics, called maneuver warfare. While the initially powerful French army, still thinking in terms of "lines," has spent vast amounts of resources and effort constructing the impressive Maginot Line, the Germans have decided that lines need not be overrun by force, when they can simply be evaded and attacked from an angle of their choosing. You may remember the history: the Germans simply used their tanks to drive around the Maginot Line and through Belgium. France fell within two months.

I have often seen the technological aspect emphasized here (the innovation of armored tanks changing warfare) but in this case the much more important thing is the core idea: "Your lines will not determine where the battle happens; we will determine that."

A Tiger Tank in occupied France.

There is a two-fold lesson here for the Church:

1. Culturally, there is no "line" to hold.
There may once have been; no longer. Forget it. Regardless of what you believe about America being founded as a Christian nation or as a secular nation with Christian influence, right now in 2015, America is "The World" (As in, "The Devil, the Flesh, and...") and we need to stop talking about "taking 'our' culture back."
Like Germany vs. France, the Enemy has not countered the influence of Christianity in the culture by drawing up an entrenched line of battle against it, he's simply driven all over the place and taken over. He owns the battleground, and already does in this world by default, until Christ's spiritual victory is made terrestrially manifest.
(That is what the Church in Europe attempted to do prematurely, by flawed, time-and-culture-bound human effort, therefore creating a "Christendom" at once as glorious as cathedrals and as miserable as serfs. God's eternal version improves on the cathedrals yet elevates His serfs above the angels. Wait for it. Trust me, you don't want a theocracy before the actual Second Coming)

Think of the times recently when the church finds itself in conflict with mainstream culture over an issue, doesn't it usually seem to be behind the times, caught off guard and trying to catch up? That's not because Christians are stupid and backward (of course some people are, inside and outside the Church, but that's always been true), and not because the gospel is irrelevant to today's culture, but because the enemy has been picking the battles, having them occur at the time and place of his choosing. It may also be due to the fact that as the culture increasingly rejected Christian values, the church increasingly retreated from culture as well, losing a sense of what the big issues are outside its protective cloister walls while we argued about worship music styles within.

2. If we sit behind a line of our own imagining, we do so merely to the Church's detriment.
Since the enemy has not confined himself to any sort of line, if we are still thinking in those terms, we are merely restricting our own actions to a failing and outdated conceptualization. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, there are acres and acres of fields, formerly full of wheat, now lying overgrown and dormant, on the other side of that line. We can either languish behind a shrinking area of cultural influence, observing which denominations and cultural institutions seem to still fall on our side, and which have "gone over" to the enemy's side, or we can discard that outdated concept and start thinking of all spirit-filled, scripture-honoring churches as individual outposts in the midst of a dark and darkening culture. The light there, if it is there, will shine more and more brightly as the storm gathers. Our goal is not to control, but illuminate; therefore it should be getting easier, not harder. As the culture increasingly teaches people we are wrong and dangerous, if we are following Christ, we will appear increasingly right and whole. People will be drawn to the Truth even having been taught to shun it.

5. A Path Out of the Trenches

So then, if we want to break out of the trenches in this so-called culture war, both because the important battles are being fought elsewhere now, and also because that's not really the battle the Church is called to fight, what do we do?

Reading this, ideas may already be occurring to you. Not radical ways to reinvent the Church, which seldom take hold widely. But simple things every Christian can begin changing in the way they look at the world, that will help them begin impacting people for Christ in their own context.

Here, I will just list a few steps to get you going.
(Points if you already recognize the reference...)

Step 1. Observe
As I have explained, some churches are still sitting behind the line of a battle which has moved elsewhere. If you're still down there, you need to get out of the trenches and find out where people are right now. Some Christians have non-churched friends and know how they think differently about life and what they do with their time, and are evangelizing over the long term by bringing scriptural truth into their lives and being good witnesses. A lot of Christians spend all their extra time on Church activities and with other Christians, however, and don't have a clear idea about what goes on in the wider culture. They've grown up in an alternate, parallel culture behind the lines. They may not know what unchurched people do, or how they think, and their attempts to reach them may be based on godly intentions but also a fair amount of ignorance.
While I never unspecifically recommend giving up ministry obligations, I can state without equivocation that if you actually don't have any friends outside of church, you are not being obedient to God in this area and need to fix that. God did not give you His love and truth for you to keep them to yourself and among those who already know Him; the Great Commission is quite clear that He intends us to let the entire world know about His offer of reconciliation, love, and life.

So try going to popular places and seeing how the majority of people in your neighborhood, community, or city spend their time. Have conversations with strangers. Do a little research about your area's demographics and neighborhoods. Equip yourself with some knowledge of what things are like in the environment in which God has placed you.

Step 2. Orient
Not a reference to the Far East where I live, but of orienting yourself. In this step, taking what you found in step 1, you combine your observations with what you already know. Pray thoughtfully about how God would have you, and if appropriate, your family too, engage the people around you for His kingdom. What are your talents and your background? Is God giving you a burden for a need that exists in your community? You don't have to strike off on your own with no experience (I don't actually recommend that), so what ministries may already exist that you can join to get more experience in that area?

Step 3. Decide
Make a decision. You may want to ask wise and experienced people you know for advice, ask friends and family to pray for you, etc. What is God leading you to do? Are you already involved in ministry and have no more time? Maybe you are called to stay there. Maybe God is calling you to ask about starting something new at your church, or maybe there's something another church is doing that's in line with what you feel drawn towards, and it's a change for you to introduce a link of cooperation between two churches. You may decide to get more training in a certain area. You may even decide to do nothing for now, and repeat steps 1 and 2.

Step 4. Act
Now the decision has been made, and it's time to get moving. You may be starting something new and need to begin gathering resources and volunteers, or be joining something already in progress. It may be a slow gradual beginning, or you may be off to a running start in a ministry with which you're already familiar. What you do is up to you and God, but I will say this: If it's successful, watch out. Progress in ministry and advancing God's kingdom puts a target on your back. Don't let fear slow you down, but be alert and pray. Old temptations may return, or new ones may arise. People who previously seemed friendly may suddenly seem like they are putting obstacles in your way, or even jealous of your progress. On the other hand, other people will almost certainly appear as unexpected help and blessings.
When something great happens, write it down. (I'm guilty of not doing this enough) When difficult times come later, you can remind yourself of what God has done.

"Going over the top"... out of the trenches and into combat

That's all I've got for now. I'm tired of the nit-picking debates on who exactly said what appropriately and non-offensively, tired of the gloom-and-doom talk of our declining culture; it's time we stopped focusing on what we can't change and begin focusing on what we definitely can, in whatever context God has placed us.

An INTP on the Mission Field: Periods of Low Energy

On the mission field, one is continuously exerting social, mental, and often physical energy, not to mention carrying the spiritual burdens of the ministry. This extra strain, brought on by the non-native cultural context and the stressful, no-such-thing-as-finished nature of the work, can sometimes push our natural highs higher, but more often drags the natural lows lower, or makes it more difficult to rise back out of them. In this post, I want to look at the high/low energy phenomenon that INTPs (and everyone else, to varying extents) experience, and what can be done about those lows which can be so damaging for INTPs.

Highs and Lows

A well-known tendency of INTPs is to move through cycles of high-productivity and creativity, then low-energy and depression. In the "high" periods, we are likely to experience what is called Flow-- that channeled focus which results in works of great skill and/or creativity beyond one's normal performance. In the "low" periods that inevitably follow, however, we may sink into a depressed state or general lethargy, in which there can be a sense that more ground is lost than was gained during the productive streak that preceded it.

If you are not an INTP, think Sherlock Holmes: When he's Up, Sherlock is scintillatingly brilliant, full of restless energy, and everyone else is trying to keep up and being left far behind. But when he's Down, he is irritable, lethargic, and world-weary to the point that in the books (and some screen adaptations) he turns to small doses of cocaine to liven up his unbearable ennui, listlessness, and despondency. (Cocaine was not an illegal controlled substance when the original stories were written, but Watson still advises him to avoid it)

That's a hyperbolic literary example, but a lot of INTPs deal with a similar cycle on a lesser scale. When present, this high-and-lowing is very inconvenient for most adults, with jobs and lives and time that waits for no man's unfortunate tendency to cycle up and down with no real way to predict when the next phase will hit. However, the weaknesses that accompany one's personality are exactly that: weaknesses, which adversely affect our performance, ministry, and even quality of life if left unchecked. For INTPs, it's weakness which can't simply be ignored. (Some have suggested low energy spells are a coping mechanism for draining the excess energy/overstimulation we get from social interaction, but that's more connected to introversion than the up-down cycle which I'm describing)

Sometimes INTPs get stuck here. Hopefully the tips below
will help you get recharged, or stop the draining where it starts

The Downside of being Down

I have observed the up/down tendency in myself repeatedly, and frankly I'm sick of it; I don't see any reason why when normal people are moving along as they generally do, I suddenly go from energetic creativity to blank-brained exhaustion and want to find a rock to hide under and play tower defense games and eat cookies for a few days, avoiding excessive movement and definitely any social interaction.

But I can think whatever I want about it; just as being an INTP comes with unique positives, it also comes with strong downsides, and this is one of them, whether I like it or not. (What I choose to do when confronted with them is another thing; more on that below)

But as a missionary (and as a human being, for that matter), the low energy cycles are not merely inconvenient and undesirable, since they affect my quality of life and ministry as well. In a foreign culture, to be socially engaged always takes more energy. As an introvert, such engagement is already costly in terms of social energy, and doing it in my second language, with only a tenuous grasp of the underlying social mores and structures that lead to the observable behavior, the cost is much higher. This means the efforts I make to get more plugged into the culture, meet more people, expand the scope of our outreach ministries, etc., all begin to slowly lose ground when I can't gather enough social energy to successful continue doing all that. (If that sounds like I'm saying missions is best left to extroverts who will naturally not struggle quite as much with this, I'm not. Both introverts and extroverts have necessary roles to play in global missions, and neither are limited to certain kinds of roles.)

On the other hand, especially as a missionary, social activities are a large part of my ministry. I can't share the gospel with people if I don't meet them. (I've done it online before, but even that was usually preceded by knowing the person through repeated social engagements prior to the conversation) I can't disciple people if I don't spend time with them. I can't practice Chinese effectively if I don't meet with them. The list goes on.

Thus, depleting the energy I draw on for social stuff then leads to a direct diminishing of what I'm able to accomplish in my ministry, which contributes to the feeling that I'm not accomplishing anything (because that's partly true), which feeds back into the depressive thoughts that accompany the low energy state, producing an extended/worsened low which can go on for quite some time, especially if the weather stays gloomy.

Note: If this seems weak or whiny to you, think of it in terms of bench-pressing: if you're already struggling, regardless of what's on the bar, slapping a "harmless little" extra 10lb weight on each side could easily have you dropping it all straight onto your chest. (Especially since INTPs often don't have anyone who "gets it" to spot for them, and are trying to bench on their own, so to speak)
It's the same way when you're already in a low: even a couple days of gloomy weather or the early darkness of the cold months can add to the weight already on one's spirit in a way that wouldn't be a big problem normally.

People are a union of mind, body, and spirit. (I'm not espousing a particular trichotomous or dichotomous view here, just bringing up the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of life) When one these components of our being is having issues, the other two inevitably are affected. This is true of all people (sadly often acknowledged in the theoretical sense, but practically speaking still ignored). But being so aware of our mental state, INTPs are especially equipped to notice how the one affects the others, though we may forget it works the other way around too.

Lows therefore do not merely cause one to "feel" tired and lethargic, but the symptoms are very real in one's body. Weight gain (possibly loss, for those who also lose their appetite during those times), poor sleep (despite feeling tired all the time), lack of any motivation to work out or even leave the house- all these things are not only symptoms of a low, but can prolong it. The converse may also be true; the mental/emotional low may be caused or encouraged by physical deficiencies.

The same is true of our spiritual selves as well; we can't always be "on fire," and will go through dark valleys and quietly restful periods as well, but a prolonged low can lead to listlessness, numbness, and dry periods in our spiritual lives too.

Tactics for Low Energy Periods:

So if these low energy periods are a natural tendency of our personality type, but also very problematic, how best to proceed in mitigating the damage? Can we overcome them entirely?

I suspect we can never overcome the tendency itself, as it's rooted in the strength and liveliness of the world in our minds, but we can go a long way towards shoring up this weakness, to the extent that it becomes a nuisance to be guarded against rather than a continual ongoing problem we're stuck inside.

I can begin with an example from my experience here: In learning Chinese over the longer term, I have found that the best time to understand my progress is not the occasional high points: throwing out a chengyu (4 character idiom) at exactly the right time and getting praise from my local coworkers, but rather, on those days when I didn't sleep well or have caught whatever 24-hour virus is going around the metro system and don't seem to have two brain cells to spare for speaking more than my baseline Chinese. On those days, has my worst Chinese improved over my worst Chinese a month ago? If so, then I have improved. Measuring from the lows gives you a far better sense of how much your baseline has improved than measuring the peaks, which are heavily dependent on circumstances.

So it's the same for low energy days. When I first arrived here long term, just making it through the day and feeling like I was still okay with life in Taiwan and how the ministry was going (as opposed to visions of impending failure--don't laugh, I suspect church planters all have those, and INTPs are especially plagued with them) seemed like a minor victory, as I was going through longer-term culture shock and the more stressful adjustment period. Now, into my second year here, I demand at least some level of productivity from myself even on the lowest days. If I can't run towards a goal I walk towards it, or maybe even trudge, but at least by the end of the day I've gotten closer. A paragraph of my novel is not much compared to the rare days I sit down and crank out a chapter or more, but it's a paragraph closer to being finished that wasn't there before.

Staying Productive

Since church-planting is a 24/7 but not strictly 9-5 occupation (there are mostly-free days and also 18-hours-of-constant-work days, like a lot of other non-desk-job occupations), to-do lists are helpful for me on those days that aren't busy with ministry. Lists are not for everyone, but I have been compiling them more consistently lately and making a goal of getting at least a few boxes checked off each day makes the day not feel wasted if I do rest more than usual. Last year I seemed to need a lot of extra rest as my brain tried to process all the cultural newness at INTP levels of multilayered depth, comparing it to all my previously assimilated information about our world and updating lots of things as necessary. (It's been better this year.)

Regardless of your occupational schedule, Perfectionism and Procrastination are a lethal duo, and both can raise their ugly heads on low energy days, preventing you from starting anything because you don't feel able to finish it "properly." For me, dividing up the responsibilities into chunks that I can tackle is like traction on the wheels of productivity, it gets me started again. It also helps avoid the situation where a day feels busy and productive but by the end of the day you mysteriously don't seem to have accomplished much; keeping track of what you actually did reveals that sometimes restful days are actually more productive.

Sleep

Overall, recognizing the exhaustion, mental and physical, is there, but that at the same time you got some good work done, can pull you right out of a low energy spell and back at least into the normal swing of things. Normal tiredness from work you got done or even a good workout is one of your best friends in this situation, both for shaking off the weary spell and also for healthy sleep.

If you are in a low energy period and therefore took a day to rest, you may not be tired by the time night rolls around either, and will almost certainly have trouble sleeping. (Or you're like me, an inveterate night owl who perks up once the sun sets)

Though it's never a good idea to skip a night's sleep, I would almost recommend doing that if you find yourself stuck in a poor sleeping pattern, in order to reset it. I've done it before and it works for me. It probably doesn't work at all for some people, or your career may be such that missing a night's sleep would make the next day unsafe. I'm certainly not advising that, but a cycle of poor sleep can contribute to getting stuck in a low energy pattern and can certainly prolong it by days, so ending it one way or another should be a priority unless you are one of those cool people who don't need as much sleep as the rest of us. (Or you might think you are, until the long term health effects set in)

Hot > Cold

Sometimes a kind of righteous anger can be helpful in dispelling or even preventing low spells as well. Anger has been treated like an inherent sin by a lot of people lately, but I think we need to look closely at what scripture says about anger. Anger is an emotional reaction just like happiness or sadness. None of those are sinful. What we do with all of them can be sinful, however, and a look at scripture suggests that anger is a more "dangerous" emotion and we don't want to be in the habit of stirring it up in ourselves, or being an "angry person." Happiness may lead to flippancy, sadness can lead to wallowing, but anger leads to rage rather naturally. That's why it's often depicted as a fire; once it catches, it tends to spread.

So the Bible says to avoid anger and malice, Galatians 5 lists "fits of anger" as one of the works of the flesh, and wrath is one of the seven deadly sins. But Jesus is reported as feeling anger on various occasions as well. He did not sin in His anger, and neither should we. His anger was directed towards the proper objects as well, as should ours. I don't want to derail this post on a discussion of anger, but personally I think an anger problem is like a drinking problem. It can be cultivated, encouraged, and become addictive, until the person stirs up anger in themselves just to get that feeling. But if you can be filled with the love of Christ and at the same time feel anger towards sin or wrongness, in yourself or others, and not sin in the way you express that anger, then the anger may in some cases be the only appropriate reaction. We should be angry at the things that anger God. (Remembering that He reserves wrathful judgment for Himself only, that's not ours to dish out on those we personally deem deserving)

So when I feel despair and listlessness seeping in like cold fog, a flare of righteous anger can sometimes dispel it immediately. I know my own tendency to sink into depression well enough that I recognize it coming. Whereas in the past I may have said "well, here we go again," and let the icy tendrils sink in, lately I find myself saying "you know what, not today. Shove off." (This has become increasingly doable the more I focus on eating well and getting into shape, going back to what I mentioned before about the mind-body-spirit connection we can't ignore as rational, spiritual, but physical creatures)

Various

Other suggestions I found around the web were mostly diet/lifestyle related:
1. Eat less carbs, more protein  (I've already been doing this and it does help.)
2. Get in shape (Yes)
3. Focus on sleep consistency more than just how many hours (this is nearly impossible for me)
4. Eat well in general (plentiful nutrients, not junk food)
5. Get in shape (Seriously)
6. Reduce overstimulating factors in your daily environment (This one is interesting. A lot of INTPs have a comparatively low toleration for external stimulation, so if you are getting consistently overstimulated by things around you (loud noises you can't control, etc) this can lead to feeling drained and having low energy as well)
7. Get in shape (No really, do it) This was the most common thing cited by people who overcame their low energy problem. As I mentioned above, it helped me too. If you are an INTP reading this, and you're out of shape, the best thing you can do for your mind and everything else is to get your physical machine in better working order. It will help everything else, even depression, though it won't change overnight. If you don't have friends to work out with, I recommend a workout routine you can do quickly in your own place to start out, because otherwise going out to workout at a gym or somewhere else may be just another social burden which you'll keep talking yourself out of. For INTPs, getting into better shape is probably one of those "just do it" things. Don't overthink it, act on it, and keep acting on it until the results speak for themselves and it becomes only rational to continue.

I hope something in here was helpful for anyone out there struggling with low energy and the guilt that might accompany them. It helps me to remember something I heard a Taiwanese pastor share in a sermon: "To be, is more important than to do." We must do, as well, but if we work on who we are, we'll find the doing comes more naturally. With a healthy mind, body, and spirit, fatigue or exhaustion should pass naturally with adequate rest, and well-earned rest pleases the God who designated a day specifically for it.

Is the Problem Planned Parenthood, or You?

This Topic...

Generally speaking I keep this blog politics free. However I don't consider abortion to be a political issue but a moral and spiritual one which plays out symptomatically on the political field due to its nature. It's a huge problem here in Taiwan as well, where even a higher percentage of babies are aborted than in the U.S.

I'm seeing a lot of disputed figures being thrown around regarding the Planned Parenthood debacle, of which I'm sure most people reading this will be aware. "The facts" in this case seem to differ depending on who is citing them, to an even greater extent than usual, and everyone from Congressmen on the Right to FB friends on the Left seem to stumble as they pick their information based on ideologically friendly sources which are focused on polemic over accuracy.

But while anyone with a functioning conscience rightly recoils in horror at what was going on with what they call "tissue donation" (like calling what the Nazis did "mortality research"), to me the most troubling aspect is that what they are doing is apparently legal. Regardless of whether Planned Parenthood is federally defunded or not, that must change. One of the sickest aspects of the whole affair is that Planned Parenthood defended themselves not by explaining that of course they weren't carving up living babies in the womb for their parts, but by clarifying how they were handling the funds involved in doing so. Yet as obvious as it seems to me and many of you that such things should be considered unspeakable atrocities, let alone very illegal, many people rise up bristling in anger when one suggests it. Why is that?

1. The Underlying Issue

The philosophical flashpoint around which the whole issue revolves is the question of personhood. Even a lot of abortion advocates believe human life begins at conception. They don't consider it murder to end that life, however, because they consider it human life in merely an abstract sense, not a person deserving of rights and protection in our society. To them, tending also to be involved in women's movements, a woman is a person, in fact a person of a social class that has been previously mistreated and deserves special protection, and the "fetus" is not. Therefore subjugating a woman's rights to that of an unborn lump of tissue is wrong in several ways at the same time, in their eyes, and they react to that prospect with rage and indignation which they consider righteous.

Now if you believe living people have souls, as all Christians do, and that life begins at conception, then you must logically believe that either there is a human soul united to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception, or that there is a human life with genetic information already supplied by both parents to which a soul is united at some unknown point in the womb. (Scripture does not offer specifics, though logic suggests conception as the most plausible option)

In either case, there is not some kind of benchmark for the progress of physical and mental formation that can serve as a definitive precursor to personhood. I personally believe the human soul exists from the outset, as the physical person and mind designed to match perfectly with it develop in the womb and beyond (Psalm 139:13-16). And if the soul exists from conception, then we must call it a person from that point, even if the fullness of personhood has not yet manifested itself. It has not yet done so in a toddler or teenager either, for that matter, but is a continual process from conception to death and beyond. We are people from the very beginning, and becoming more human all along. (Indeed, the fullness of our humanity as God intended it will not be known until we taste life after death. Only Jesus is truly, fully human, the Firstborn from among the dead.)

If, however, you do not believe living people have souls, and thus consider personhood to require having attained a certain level of physical development with a certain level of brain function, etc., you will be open to persuasion regarding exactly what point personhood is achieved. Certainly an unaware, tiny mote of tissue is not going to seem like a person yet. Even an embryo which is aware of outside stimuli, has taken on human appearance, and recognizes the voices of its parents might not make the cut. Some people, like the infamous Peter Singer and others, take this even farther and suggest birth should not necessarily confer personhood either, since new babies are not fully sentient, brains still rapidly developing, and aren't really people yet according to their stricter definition. (Since most people think emotionally more than rationally, they consider this "horrible" without ever stopping to realize it's just an extension of their own definition of personhood. Where do you draw the line? If nothing is sacred, why should the mere act of passing through the birth canal be so special that it suddenly confers full personhood that did not exist two minutes earlier? Because we adults can see the baby now? Because the amniotic fluid is now replaced by the thinner fluid of our breathable atmosphere?That seems quite arbitrary with regards to the child itself.)

A soul waits as its body and mind develop

2. The Great Impasse

So we have a conundrum. People who believe in the human soul and people who reject that concept are going to have a deep and fundamental disagreement on abortion, which is exactly what we see. It's easy to point to the more strident and offensive members of both sides (though you'll note the millions of deaths are all on one side), and claim that's who you are fighting against. It's easy to throw out various scientific data as well. But the issue at heart is not of science, but of philosophy and faith, because questions like "When is a human a person?" "Do humans have souls?" cannot be answered by scientific inquiry.

Since people do have souls, abortion in most cases should be outlawed as murder, as the developing embryo is a person. Indeed, if human life begins at conception, as a plurality on both sides of the controversy acknowledge, and if the soul is present from that point, then even emergency contraception, the so-called "morning after pills," etc., may represent the forcible separation of both parents' genetic information from the soul, which counts as ending a life. (It has been pointed out that many fertilized eggs fail to implant on their own. Well yes... in our world today, all souls experience physical death via natural causes at some point. But acting intentionally to ensure that this takes place sooner rather than later is called... murder)

However, you are probably not going to convince many people who believe neither in God nor the human soul that the developing human is a person at such an early stage of development. Not necessarily because it conflicts with their own interests, though this is often the case, but also because the very nature of the question of the existence of a soul makes it a foundational aspect of one's worldview. In other words, both believers in and doubters of the soul would be required to destroy and then rebuild most of their ideas about humanity to admit they are wrong.

So you will have, and do have, the Church grieving an ongoing, legal, mass infanticide while Humanist groups deny anything of the sort is taking place, or that it would be wrong if it were (because if there is no God, human society collectively figures out what is good for humanity).

3. What Can Be Done?

Currently, it appears there are only two options for stopping this generational slaughter:

1) You manage to be loud enough and insistent enough to get it banned despite many people not agreeing with your basic logic behind the ban. We do live in a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease democracy now, for better or worse (mostly worse), so that approach can work if enough people get stirred up. That's exactly what has happened with some Republican congressmen on this issue just recently; enough of their base were fired up enough about the horrible, true revelations regarding some of Planned Parenthood's activities that they felt the pressure to take action on it and vote against the spending bill on that issue alone.

So this approach has been tried, does work to some extent, and as abortion becomes more and more emotionally distasteful with new technology that allows people to see just how human preborn humans look and act (and are), there may be some traction. Also, many political approaches have foolishly taken an "all or nothing" approach in the past. It doesn't make any sense to reject bans that make exceptions for rape, etc., as "compromised" when what you have now is nothing. Saving some babies now would be an excellent first step towards saving the rest.

However, this kind of ban is a shaky victory, which usually doesn't last. It's achieved with the aid of public sentiment, which can just as easily swing back in the other direction years later, and the Church is not nearly as good at being loud and insistent as many secular advocacy groups. We are about Christ's business, or should be, and while the people of any free nation should be concerned with its right governance, that is not the primary responsibility of the Church. Which leads me to the second method...

2) You convince the majority of people, or an influential enough plurality, that people really do have souls. Then, convinced that preborn humans are people too, a ban on killing pre-born people would logically follow. Most people aren't trained to think logically, but they're pretty good at being uncomfortable when something seems morally iffy. If they even strongly suspect an unborn baby is a soul waiting to be born, abortion is going to sound alarmingly like what it actually is.

This talk of the soul would have been more difficult in the age of Modernism, but with Post-Modernism we have found that as our understanding of the universe increases, some things we were sure about before become less certain. We used to "know" there can't be an immortal soul because we couldn't ping it with any scientific instruments and get a measurable response back (actually even that may not be strictly true); now people are much more open to things being out there that are accessible in ways which present difficulties for the scientific method. (not to speak of the current prevailing deterministic materialism in the world of scientific academia which they stubbornly conflate with science itself--an unwitting tribute to philosophy)

So though many gallons of Church ink have been spilled bewailing generations educated to believe there is no absolute truth, at the same time post-modernist ideas have actually removed some significant barriers to evangelism. The Church could be making great headway if we began to engage our culture from our real position of richness in Truth and epistemological strength in Christ and the Scriptures, instead of turning it on its head and trying somehow to be of the world but not in it.

This, as it turns out, is the approach Christ has already commanded us to be working on. Christians should start sharing the gospel and truths of Scripture with their non-believing friends and neighbors (not simply trying to get them to visit the church and then relying on their pastor to explain these things), and with passion and positivity, speaking the clear truth with love, explain our belief in the human soul, of our creation in the Imago Dei, the Image of God, and how every life is precious in His sight, and should be in ours too. And our actions had better line up with our words.

4. Redefining Pro-Choice

Is it difficult to have those kinds of conversations? Usually yes. There is no clear segue from "So did you catch the game last night?..." to "...and that's why human life is intrinsically valuable," but even in the few years I spent as an engineer in the work force before venturing forth on long term cross-cultural missions, we managed to end up having conversations like that around the water cooler quite a few times. (It helps if you pray specifically that God will allow you opportunities to share, and are intentional about it)

But honestly... with our brothers and sisters being martyred in the Middle East and elsewhere (even in this latest Oregon shooting, it looks like), and legal induced abortions in the U.S. having passed the 50,000,000 mark since Roe v. Wade, can you really explain to God that you are too busy, aren't adequately prepared, or are too fearful of other people's opinions to even make the attempt to communicate His truth to a declining culture, one person at a time?

If so, then stop complaining about Planned Parenthood, because the problem is you.

Evil will always be around until final judgment, but being "the good man who did nothing" is your own choice. Don't be that person, choose life, and life abundantly. That's what could turn things around; Christians choosing action over inaction; choosing not to retreat from an increasingly insane culture but to engage the people around them with the love of God and truth of the Word in the context of their own daily lives. Choosing to recognize we are all called to live for God and not to merely fit Him into the reasonable and appropriate crevices in our status-and-comfort-chasing lives.

Planned Parenthood and their advocates believe that with no God, human society determines what is right and wrong, and who is necessary and who is expendable. They provide the services which take this decision and enact it by means of a whole range of options, from smiling early prevention to gruesome live dismemberment.

They are busy acting on those beliefs.
Are you busy acting on yours?

A New Testament World in 2015: To Eat, or Not to Eat

A Bit of Context: Skip if you Hate History

 

Roots in history...

The Old Testament became clearer to me once I had lived in Taiwan. I don't mean that I was enlightened as to the theological significance of certain passages (although that's happened naturally along the way too), but that you simply look at the Old Testament differently when you've lived in a culture that was around in one form or another while it was being written.

For example, around the time Moses was ruling as the Prince of Egypt, the Shang dynasty was succeeding the mysterious Xia dynasty as the precursors to the ancient Chinese empire. Chinese culture had barely begun to develop then, of course, but the important thing is that it's considered the same culture in a sometimes jumpy but unbroken line since then. That line was frayed and all but severed in China by the devastating and culturally suicidal Cultural Revolution, an intentional attempt to break from the past, but in the end China is still China. (Taiwan never experienced the Cultural Revolution, and Chinese visitors are sometimes shocked to see how traditionally Chinese it feels, like an alternate future in which China was never Communist)

In cultures this old, regardless of the great changes experienced along the way, certain ancient things get passed down, even a lot of things of which people inside the culture are unaware, and including some things we see in the cultural setting of both the Old and New Testaments. A lot of the context of Biblical culture applies more easily.

So it is for reasons of history and not of cultural compatibility that America and Christianity have been so closely identified. Historically speaking, America was settled largely by Christians from Europe when Europe was still Christian, and therefore from its earliest days, the faith and ideals associated with it were present.

Culturally, however, it's one of the current existing cultures least like those in the background of scripture. Most Americans today are descendents of those who left the Old World and together created a new one, quite unlike the place they left behind. Even back at America's founding, the post-enlightenment West was teetering at the brink of the Industrial Revolution, and already entering Classical Modernity. The West had been Christian for a while, at least in the official sense. The dark, old fear and ritual appeasement of the spirit world of the pre-Christian West was confined to the remotest areas where the church was least strong, or else carried on in folk traditions. Those kinds of traditions are usually tied closely to the land, and only in the countryside of the earliest-settled parts of the US do you see these kinds of folk traditions having any kind of strength. Mostly they endure in individual family customs, things done because grandparents did them, though the grandparents themselves might not have fully understood why, only that it's nice to keep family traditions alive.

So ironically in the foremost country of the New World, one that had (at the beginning) an appreciation for but the least possible ties to global Antiquity, the ancient books of the Bible were more known, revered, and followed than in most of the Old World where the very cultural legacy of those events could be seen and felt all around. Americans believed the Bible even while they could only guess at what life was like back then, whereas in much of the world life continued much as it had at that time.

Taiwan and the world of the Bible

Traditional worshipers offer incense to a goddess idol

Here in Taiwan it is nearly the opposite. The legacy of those ancient days in which the Bible was written can be seen around one. People perform spirit-channeling or exorcism rituals and occasionally still cut themselves bloody in front of idols to evoke a response. Food is offered to idols before being eaten. Divine lots are cast. Whole pigs are sacrificed to ancestral spirits. The "spreading trees" the Old Testament talks about in connection with idolatry are here and there, called "divine wood" and often marked with red ribbon. Birds and insects are placed alive in the back of some newly-made idols as sacrifices in order to bind their associated spirits to them. The lunar calendar is closely followed, and all religious and traditional events are based on it. (like in Jewish culture)

One can walk through noisy and bustling markets filled with the smell of internal organs, fresh produce, and incense wafting from the central temple (around which most traditional markets are based). Beggars and monks beg, stall owners call out to for you buy their wares, idol processions pass with blaring trumpets and pounding drums, navigating streets which are not always straight; a maze known to locals but confusing to outsiders.

The difference in 2015 is that those monks sometimes have smart phones, and you can get to those temples by taking the subway. But technology is merely a feature of life, and in the East (outside of Japan, perhaps, but to some extent even there) it rests much more lightly on the shoulders of culture.

In terms of Biblical culture, America is like having moved far away from the old family farm to a new house in the city, and your descendents having to look at pictures of old farmhouses and tractors and imagine what it was like for their family to have once lived there. Taiwan is like still living in a family farm, generations later. The old farmhouse has electricity now, and your tractor has GPS, but it's still an old farmhouse and tractor. You "get" that life, because you still live in that context, and the advances of technology are a comparatively minor difference compared to that major point in common.

For a more vivid example, imagine the difference between someone saying "there is a rabid dog loose in the next building," and "there is a rabid dog loose at the end of this hallway." In the former case you recognize the threat, but also that there is an effective separation between you and it. In the latter, you feel the force of the threat directly because there is nothing between you and it but an expanse of empty space. Taiwan feels like that; ancient times are only separated from you by the passing of generations here, and you feel their force.

So while those dwelling in the lands of suburbia or coffeeshopolis can only imagine what it might be like to live in the cultures of the Bible, in Taiwan one has the sense of what it would be like if those cultures were merely updated to the present, without any real breaks from the past. Give Paul a cellphone, Demetrius a megaphone to incite the protestors in Ephesus, stick King Agrippa in a motorcade, and maybe get the lecture hall of Tyrannus some whiteboards and a projector, and you get the idea.

Food Sacrificed to Idols: A Personal Example

If you have spent more than a couple years in church, you are probably familiar with the writings of Paul. One of the things Paul talks about, in one of his brilliant passages about Christian freedom/responsibility, is the question of eating food, in this case meat, which has been sacrificed to idols.

²⁵ Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁶ For “the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.” ²⁷ If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁸ But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— ²⁹ I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? ³⁰ If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? ³¹ So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:23-31, ESV)

I. Application in America:

This and passages like in it Paul's letters are sometimes invoked when one is considering issues like drinking alcohol for Christians. The Bible condemns drunkenness and a drunken lifestyle, but does not call alcoholic consumption itself a sin, yet there are Christians with such a strong tradition of abstinence from all alcohol that their conscience does not permit them to drink at all. In their case, then, abstaining is right and proper, and violating their conscience to drink would be sin. (Though a careful study of scripture might lead them to see that there is nothing inherently sinful about it, and if they changed their mind based not on pressure from other believers but on the testimony of scripture, then drinking would no longer be sinful for them) 

Paul both condemns their placing that rule on others (many pastors seem to totally ignore this passage), and also condemns attempting to persuade someone to violate their conscience. In other words, the one who does not drink alcohol cannot condemn the one who does (though he can exhort him to avoid drunkenness if that danger exists), but the one who drinks can't try to persuade the one who doesn't drink to have a drink with him, in violation of his conscience, and might best avoid drinking in front of him altogether. Paul is happy to give up a freedom out of concern for someone, yet strong in his condemnation of those who would take away the freedom altogether.

Now in America we would less frequently cite 1 Cor 8, and more commonly go to Romans 14 (which mentions both eating and drinking, and drinking wine). This is because the question of things having been sacrificed to idols is not really a pertinent one to us. Those passages can even make the Bible feel further away and less applicable to us today. (As I keep reminding people, that is not because the Bible is weird, but because we are weird, in terms of how all people throughout history and around the world have lived/live now.)

Gotquestions has a good article on the topic of meat/food sacrificed to idols, which in some ways underlines my point:

"One of the struggles in the early church concerned meat which had been sacrificed to idols. Debates over what to eat might seem strange to most of us in modern society, but to the first-century believers, it was a subject of great consequence. As the apostles dealt with the issue, they gave instructions on several broader topics with application for today..."

Americans often feel they have to get pretty abstract when looking for applications of scriptural teaching, because the culture in America is so different. It's hard to imagine a direct application of the passage about meat sacrificed to idols, and any attempt to cleverly figure out a cultural parallel is probably going to be a stretch at best. We can see the general lesson Paul is getting at, however, and that's good enough for us.

In Taiwan today, however, the passage can be applied a little more directly...

II. Application in Taiwan:

Table of food and spirit money laid out for ancestral spirits in my neighborhood a few days ago

In Taiwan, in AD2015 just as much as AD15, there is a direct and immediate application.

Idols are still worshipped, not abstract ones like wealth or popularity, but actual statues and figurines. Part of this worship involves placing food before them, often fruit and bowls of rice, but sometimes chickens, pigs, whole prepared meals and other things as well. (rituals differ in different sects, traditions, and places)

Similar tables, set out last week in front of a nearby Starbucks and bank

An additional form of idolatry is the worship/appeasement of ancestral spirits. Especially right now during Ghost Month in Taiwan, one can see tables loaded with snacks, incense, and spirit money (which gets burned later, in a ritual meant to send it into the spirit world so ancestors will have better status there too), laid out as an offering to spirits, to ask them not to bother the store, business performance, employees, or owners.

No one wants to waste all the snacks, so usually they all get divided up among the employees later, who take them home to their families and eat them.

Now imagine my surprise one day upon returning home to my apartment to find a couple little bags of what look like trash sitting in the hallway outside my door. A closer investigation revealed they were not trash, but actually snacks and a couple of drinks (tea and soda).

Some really Taiwanese snacks, plus Heysong Sarsaparilla and tea

Within a few seconds I guessed what had happened. It is not only businesses, but apartment buildings as well that will put out offering tables. I had in fact noticed a poster several days earlier on our bulletin board downstairs which notified residents that the offering would happen at a certain day and time, for anyone who wanted to attend the ceremony. (Because of the layout of our building and the road downstairs, they can't just leave the tables out all day) Seeing the snacks, I realized that it was in fact the day the bulletin had mentioned, and so it seemed one of my neighbors had thought of me and brought me back some of the snacks from the offering.

My initial reaction was to feel good that they had remembered me. (I moved in recently and have only recently met my neighbors and had one or two elevator conversations with them) Then, I pondered whether to eat the snacks or not.

It was sort of a funny surprise to realize that I had encountered a problem for which I could apply Paul's writings not only conceptually but very literally. Because I now live in a culture that stretches back to biblical times, the examples drawn from that cultural background suddenly were directly relevant to me.

So I looked up what Paul had said about eating offerings to idols, and again felt impressed when I realized I was now living in the world he was talking about. It was like stepping back in time, except I had really just left the West and entered the wider world, where many places haven't broken with the past on their way to the present.


III. To Eat, or Not to Eat?

Now I had to figure out whether I was going to eat the snacks or throw them away. Like the question about eating blood*, it's not something I take lightly or ignore as merely an issue for those times. Because while we may not see it in America, we still live in the world described in the Bible. God's rules don't simply vanish into the aether over the centuries, either He specifically released us from following them or we still have to.

(*- It's a common ingredient in food here, and I do eat it along with my Taiwanese friends, but only after deciding that it was not wrong as a Gentile Christian for me to do so, after a careful study of scripture and conversations/debates with a couple of Messianic Jewish friends) 

But it seems in this case, I had stumbled on a problem that first-century believers also faced, and therefore I had direct guidelines from Paul on how to deal with this:

1. (1 Cor 8:4-6) Paul clearly says that an idol is nothing of itself. While it's easy to see that idolatry is a short road to entanglement in evil spiritual influence (in Taiwan you can literally observe this), the idol itself is not a real god, and believers recognize that it is not a true god, nor participate in idolatry simply because the food has at one point been physically been located in front of it. (or in my case, on a table on display)

2. (Romans 14) Paul says that despite having freedom, we should not harm the spiritual life of fellow believers by causing them to violate their conscience. In this case no Taiwanese believers were present. If they had been, depending on who it was, it would probably be right to refrain from eating, knowing that it was a deep cultural issue for them, because of their former ways. (1 Cor 8:7) On the other hand, they might explain they too had cast off idolatry, demonstrated their allegiance to Christ through baptism, and regarded the food as nothing special, in which case this wouldn't specifically be a reason not to eat it, but an occasion to rejoice in our freedom in Christ and eat with thanks.

3. (1 Cor 10:27-29) Paul says that we can simply eat food that might have been sacrificed to idols without questions of conscience, but if someone informs us it was offered to idols, we should refrain from eating, not for our own sake but for theirs. In this case, it was exactly like verse 27. The food was simply left outside my door, without even a note saying where it came from or who had left it there. They also have no idea what I did with it, merely that it was gone if they ever came back and checked, since one can't leave bags of snacks sitting out in the hallway. On the other hand, had they knocked on my door while I was home and informed me that it had been offered in the "bai bai" (word in Taiwan for traditional rituals), and asked if, since they knew I was a Christian, I was able to eat it, a strong case can be made based on those verses that I would need to politely decline.

4. (1 Cor 10:30-31) Finally, Paul says that if our conscience is not bothered, we can eat (or drink), with thanks and giving glory to God. This is what I decided to do. Finding that, based on the other passages, I was not forbidden to eat in general, did not have the religious/cultural background that made it a matter of conscience for me, and would not be offending the conscience of anyone else, whether believers or nonbelievers, I ate the snacks with thanks, and appreciative that my neighbors had thought about me. My prayer is that one day they will know the true God, and rather than snacks from offering tables eaten separately, we might eat and drink Christ's Communion together and rejoice in the knowledge of the Lord who alone is worthy to receive the praise they had formerly been offering to idols and spirits.