Zach’s Theological Musings

  That abortion is a unspeakably horrific act of murder against the most defenseless of human beings is an obvious moral fact which I have addressed, for example, in: Of Course It’s A Baby and Sonography (see also the entire abortion category on this blog, and don’t miss http://menaretheproblem.info while you’re at it). That the staggering scale of such murders for convenience’s sake makes “Holocaust rhetoric”, if anything, too gentle and mild is an obvious numerical fact which I have addressed, for example, in Postman (see also the numbers at the bottom of my abortion quotes page, all from pro-abortionist sources mind you). Thus when we hear that an abortionist/murderer such as Dr. George Tiller has been killed the natural question is, “Is it right or wrong to murder murderers to stop them from murdering?”, to which I am compelled to answer, at least at this point in my life, “Whew… hmm… that is a very important, very heavy, and very difficult question.”

  I must say I certainly don’t resonate with the majority of the American Christian pro-life movement that is so quick to stand up and unequivocally condemn the murder of an abortionist/murderer. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, “hold on”, I want to scream. If we really believe in our own rhetoric, for example that a 9/11-scale slaughter is happening on our own (American) soil every single day, and if we applaud the soliders who go out to engage in bloody warfare following just one single 9/11 tragedy, then isn’t it at least worth considering the possibility that lethal force is justified to stop the actions of a determined, ongoing baby-killer? I think so. I really don’t want to make unfair blanket accusations about people’s motives, but I’ll just say that my impression from the writings of some such Christian leaders is that they are more interested in avoiding a public outcry than they are in grappling with the difficult issues and standing for the truth.

  On the other hand, I’ve read some of the writings of people who have been arrested for anti-abortionist violence (e.g. at the Army of God website) and I certainly don’t resonate with a lot of what they say either. What I hear coming from many of them is a rebellious attitude toward government in general. I really don’t want to make unfair blanket accusations about people’s motives, but I’ll just say that my impression from the writings of some such people is that what they really want most is to vent a lot of pent-up anger and “stick it” to the US government, and that killing an “abortion doctor” (oxymoron) is one way they can feel justified about doing so. But from a Biblical Christian perspective, it seems to me that the governments that Jesus (e.g. Luke 20:19-26), Paul (e.g. Romans 13), and Peter (e.g. 1 Peter 2) commanded submission to were entirely wicked themselves. A submissive attitude toward human authority is not contingent on the worthiness of that authority. We put ourselves under them because in doing so we are directly and indirectly submitting to God (see, e.g., how David treated wicked King Saul with respect as “God’s Anointed” until God saw fit to remove Saul from the throne and from the land of the living).

  Human life. Made in the image of God. The baby, the mother, the father, the abortionist, and the abortionist killer. Whew. To take a human life is a massive thing. For that reason I don’t think you’ll ever find me shouting and waving a banner that says, “Kill the abortionists! Kill the abortionists!” At the same time, and for the very same reason, I don’t think you’ll ever find me affirming James Dobson, Al Mohler, or the many other “pro-life Christians” in their categorical condemnation of those who murder murderers regardless of the thought process and motivations that such a person might have.

  There are just such weighty Biblical issues on both sides of the question: to murder (ongoing, determined) murderers or not to? It seems to me that many doctoral dissertations in Biblical ethics could struggle over the issue for hundreds of pages and not reach definitive resolution. Presently, I can only offer a mere sampling of the issues:

• The idea of an “inalienable right to life” bestowed by the Creator smells more of Jeffersonian-Americo-deist philosopy than it does Biblical theology. Ever since the Fall of our father Adam, man only has a right to death (Gen 3, etc.). Babies have no right to life, nor do abortion doctors have any right to life. But then, just as mere men don’t have the right to life, they neither have the right to kill. Wouldn’t it be nice if everything was so simple and straightforward as to say that no human being should ever be the agent of another human being’s demise. But wait! There is more nuance to the Biblical picture because…
• While the sixth of the ten commandments is, “Thou shalt not kill”, the same Jewish Scriptures command the armies of Israel to slaughter the Canaanites, and command communities to execute certain classes of criminals. While Jesus said, “Love your enemies”, “Turn the other cheek”, and “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword”, the same Christian Scriptures also teach that governing authorities “do not bear the sword for nothing”. It seems that the reconciliation of these various principles is that killing is not an individual prerogative but a responsibility (in the form of war or capital punishment) of societies, and in particular “God’s appointed” leaders of societies (which, to add to the tension, includes a great many very, very evil men—see Daniel 4). So we could be tempted to say that while those guilty of involvement in the abortion process deserve to be executed, it is only the government that has God-given authority to do so. That line of thinking might prompt us to go no further than seeking legal venues to make the consequences of abortion the same as the consequences for involvement in any other murder. Indeed, I am personally convinced that: 1) in a just society abortionists should be executed, yet 2) in a society as unjust as ours it is sinful and wrong for an individual to murder an abortionist/murderer with vigilante motives—that is, as punishment for previous crimes committed, no matter how horrible, that the government has failed to prosecute. But unfortunately the issue at hand is too complicated to stop there because…
• “Professional” abortionists/murderers are almost certainly determined to return to their gory crimes day after day after day. In fact many of them will proudly state their intention to continue providing their “services”. Now, it is one thing to try to take justice for past crimes into your own hands; it is another matter to respond when you see someone walking in a wholesale, brazen, committed, ongoing occupation of baby slaughter. Which brings us to…
• At least in the Old Testament, it seems that “self defense”, including defense of the larger “self” of your family and your people, at least in some cases (e.g. Ex 22:2), is not only a right but in fact the obligation of a godly man. There is nothing honorable about a man who cowers in the closet and calls the police on a cell phone while an intruder hacks at his kids with an axe and rapes his wife. In the urgency of the moment it is his responsiblity to act forcefully. Or take a different scenario. A black boy is being led away to be lynched. There is no point in calling 911 because the Klansmen in white hoods are themselves the local police officers. What do you do? Though the extent of the similarities between the above scenario and the modern abortion scene are debatable, I would argue that the similarities are quite significant. But in any case, the main point is that one must grapple with a passage like:
• “If you are slack in the day of distress,
  Your strength is limited. Deliver those who are being taken away to death,
  And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back.
  If you say, “See, we did not know this,”
  Does He not consider it who weighs the hearts?
  And does He not know it who keeps your soul?
  And will He not render to man according to his work?” (Prov 24:10-12)
• Yes, if you murder you are accountable for the blood on your hands. But (don’t miss the weightiness of this) it also seems, at least in the Jewish theocracy of the Old Testament, that if a community fails to deal properly with a murder then the blood the murderer shed is on their hands (e.g. Deut 21:1-9). Could it be that those of us who merely “sign petitions” and offer up lukewarm, half-hearted prayers while thousands of our defenseless neighbors are being LED TO SLAUGHTER,… that we actually have MORE blood on our hands, in God’s eyes, than those who have killed an abortionist in a desperate attempt to stop him?
• In other words, Biblically, only blood can remove blood stains (compare Rev. 7:14)! Which brings us to a right and fitting Climax, to the Person and the place on whom and on which we must continually fix our eyes: Jesus and His cross. Though more issues could be raised, our picture will only be clearly focused to the extent that Jesus Himself is at the center.

  Personally, I feel, at least for now, I cannot resolve the ethics of murdering murderers to my own satisfaction by attempting a systematic harmonization of the many, many, immensely significant, Biblical principles which must come in to play if one seeks to be faithful to the full counsel of God’s revealed will in Scripture. But on a practical level, looking to the Truth and Life Himself does give me some clarity in how I might move forward.

  Jesus conquered by dying. Any angry pagan can pick up a gun. Mohammed was quite adept at wielding the sword. It takes the Spirit of Christ to pick up a cross.

  On the one hand, perhaps killing abortionists is justified. I for one will certainly be slow to judge someone who is zealous to defend defenseless human life. Though I have yet to see it, I can hypothetically imagine someone fighting the abortion Holocaust in the ethically burdened and heavily constrained-”I don’t know if this is really best but is the best I know how to do”-spirit of Bonhoeffer; and I for one would want to publicly stand in solidarity with such a brother.

  However, even if such actions may be justified, it seems to me that there is a more uniquely Christian way that should be pursued with even more wholehearted zeal than the octane that drives someone to commit homicide. What if we who know abortion to be “murder” refrained from the possibility of murdering an abortionist/murderer and instead murdered our own greedy, gluttonous self and its lifestyle in order to ensure that, at the very least, no person in our country could EVER claim financial motivation for killing a baby? What if the “pro-life” community guaranteed all expenses would be paid for any pregancy in our nation? (I’m not talking about socialized medicine, but in any case I would plead with any self-ascribed Christian Republicans to value life infinitely more than any economic philosophies.) How about if presented abortion clinics with an offer that for every woman they referred away to a crisis pregnancy center, we would pay them TWICE the money they would get for performing an abortion? Essentially the offer is, “Here take ALL of our money, ALL of our property, ALL of our possessions (we don’t need them), and let the babies live. Please!?!” (Again, what I’m talking about isn’t socialism, but it is not Republicanism either. It is about something far more important than the entire political system, which is raw Christ-following without watering down His life-overturning First and Second Greatest Commandments!) Sounds like a fabulous trade to me! Oh yes, I know that such a plan leaves open enormous doors for us to be taken advantage of. Fine. Let your gift be abused and misused. That’s what Jesus has done for us.

Zach Harris
Longmont, CO

  How many cases have you heard of church discipline being exercised in modern times? Now, in contrast how often do you hear “counseling” offered as the solution to Christian “struggles”, and how much psychologizing do you hear taught in Christian circles?

  These days the so-called Christian life isn’t about engaging in full-fledged war against indwelling sin. It is about realizing and actualizing the “wonderful plan” that God has for your life, which gosh-darnit you just need to follow these steps and stop missing out on.

  Perhaps that is one reason why Christ isn’t central either. Even the very name God chose for His Son—Jesus—was given because, “He will save his people from their sins.” Not just from the consequences of their sins, but from their sins! If salvation and the gospel are a thing we accepted in the past and then move on from to searching out the “abundant Christian life” down other paths, then the primacy of ongoing battle against sin, and hence the centrality of Jesus, gets sidelined.

  Ephesians 6:2:

“Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

  Deuteronomy 5:16:

Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

  Deuteronomy 27:16:

‘Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

  Note, in particular, that these promises and threats are issued within the context of the covenant community of God’s people. I find strikingly recurrent “quality of life” patterns in two distinct classes of Christians whom I know well enough to discern such things in.

  Camp A are those who speak with a certain bitterness, resentment, and/or ingratitude towards their parents—that is, if they speak of them at all; you can be friends with someone in this camp for several years and never hear them mention their parents because they prefer not to talk (or think) about them. People I know in “Camp A” generally have most or all of the following traits in their life:

1. Recurring attempts or thoughts of suicide, or at least a general “wish I was dead” mental/emotional state. Ongoing (not just temporary) depression.
2. Often there are “replacement parental figures” who take the place in the person’s affections that rightfully belongs to the parents who bore and raised them. (Yes, issues of adoption and such may complicate things here. But probably the best response, in the spirit of God’s command, is simply that a special, irreplaceable place of honor should be given in your heart to EACH of the people who played a parental role in your life: biological parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, AND spiritual parents, not just one or the other.)
3. Continual, seemingly unresolvable conflict and strife in certain (generally family) relationships. This is significantly more intense than the occasional, resolvable conflicts that those in “Camp B” face.
4. Continual, seemingly unconquerable sin, temptation, and suffering issues. Again, while those in “Camp B” obviously also face sin, temptation, and suffering, there is a marked distinction in the way that these issues seem to dominate the lives of people in “Camp A”.

  Camp B are those from whom you hear a generous, honoring attitude towards parents. Their parents certainly weren’t perfect; people I know in this camp include children from divorced and unbelieving households. Nevertheless, those in “Camp B” long for any faults and sins their parents might have to be made whole in Christ more than they long for “justice” to be served. They don’t make much of any wrongs they may have suffered from their parents, but rather embrace their parents with the unrelenting love and forgiveness that they themselves have received in Christ. As mentioned above, while those in “Camp B” certainly have bouts of depression, conflict and strife, and while they certainly face even prolonged temptation and suffering issues, these things do not dominate their spiritual joy and quality of life in Christ in the way that those in “Camp A” are dominated.

  In summary, the clearest distinction I can make is that the lives of those in “Camp B” exude a certain powerful shalom (peace) that is absent from “Camp A”.

  These distinctions can also be made within different periods of the life of a single individual. I can personally testify to periods of parental-dishonor in my heart during which I suffered the devoid-of-peace curses described above even when times were “good”, and periods of parental-honor in my heart during which I experienced persevering shalom even when times were “bad”.

  Yes, of course I know what pagan pop-psychology would say: “These `Camp A’ people were abused and neglected by their parents, so it is no wonder if they are screwed up and bitter about it.” But far more than even any experiential evidence I could offer, I would remind brothers and sisters in Christ to accept the diagnosis direct from God’s word: You may have suffered the most horrifically unspeakable things at the hands of, or under the closed eyes of, your parents, but the spiritual havoc you wreak in your own life, closing doors to blessing and opening doors to cursedness, by failing to honor your parents from the heart as God wants you to, is worse that what anyone else did do, or could do, to you!

  Thus this post is not merely meant as a descriptive analysis, but rather a plea: Receive the blessing that God has promised! There is a level of peace and joy in life available far beyond what you have experienced even as a professing Christian. I am not saying that there is a state of having something “more than Christ” in the Christian life. Rather, I am saying that “Camp B” is part and parcel of the normal Christian life, but that by choosing to live in violation of God’s command (Camp A) you have blocked yourself from fully experiencing the true blessed life in Christ. Repent! And receive the blessing! From someone who has spent time in both camps, I say PLEASE put away ALL bitterness and seek a heart of genuine honor toward your parents, and see if God isn’t faithful to His promise!!!!

  For more on this, see the very first entry posted to this blog: Honor Your Parents.

  How can Proverbs 12:21 (NASB) say:

No harm befalls the righteous,
         But the wicked are filled with trouble.

Perhaps it is not so hard to accept that the wicked are filled with trouble (though there is some tension to be resolved even there, such as that faced by Asaph in Psalm 73). But doesn’t experience and Scripture itself show that the righteous are too? What about Job? What about Jesus — a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief!?!

  Well, a few things can be said. One is the nature of proverbs and wisdom literature. Proverbs generally don’t give “hard and fast rules or laws” that are never broken without exception. Rigid, logic, math-oriented people like me have to be careful no to let the phraseology fool us. Throughout the Bible, just because qualifiers are not stated within a sentence or paragraph doesn’t mean that there aren’t any intended. This is especially true of Proverbs. Indeed, with proverbs the “qualifiers” often come in the form of other proverbs! The classic example is Proverbs 26 verse 4 and then 5:

4 Answer not a fool according to his folly,
   lest you be like him yourself.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly,
   lest he be wise in his own eyes.

(Although don’t expect the qualifying proverb to always be so close by!)

  Often the role of wisdom sayings is to create and sustain “categories of thought” in our mind. They “pave useful neural pathways” in our brain, if you will. That doesn’t mean that such a pathway paved is always the best one to go down, but it is important to have it there available and be aware of it. Yet another analogy would be that of tools. A proverb gives you a hammer and teaches you how to use it, but it is not always the right tool for the job. Indeed, part of wisdom itself is knowing how to use, or not use, a saying appropriately:

Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless,
   is a proverb in the mouth of fools. - Prov 26:7

  So as to our original proverb, there is truth and wisdom in observing that as a general trend, because of God’s design of this world, a righteous way of living in line with His character does result in favorable consequences and a wicked way of living does result in harmful consequences. Engage in sexual immorality, for example, and you open yourself up to contract diseases which you wouldn’t have if you had abstained. Be a person of generosity rather than selfish stinginess, and when you yourself have needs it is more likely that others will be eager to help you.

  Second, there is also something to be said for these things being ultimately true. As the Psalmist discovered, the wicked may prosper greatly for a time (e.g. greedy, selfish, cutthroat businessmen) but the moment when their foot slips and they lose everything is awaiting, it’s just a matter of time. Likewise the righteous may suffer, but all their sorrows will most certainly turn to joy.

  But there is one more way that I think this saying can be understood which just occurred to me in my latest reading of it. That is, there is a huge difference between the righteous and the wicked on the matter of perspective, not just eternal perspective but even their perspective on the here and now (though the eternal perspective is certainly a key ingredient to fueling a godly perspective on the here and now). What one interprets as vexing, irritating, unbearable trouble and harm, the other can view as an opportunity for sanctification/refinement, as nothing worse than what he is in fact due, indeed as a form of blessing. The righteous “know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, emphasis added).

  Take Job for example, Job in his better days that is, especially before his discouraging “friends” got to him. When he lost his beloved children and all his possessions in this world he said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” - Job 1:21

He had lost nothing that was really “his” to begin with. He was born naked and crying into this world. He had to right no claim anything whatsoever as his own, including “his own” body! Anything he had was truly God’s possession, temporarily entrusted to Job’s stewardship. If the Lord would choose to take it back He had every right to do so.

  Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh. But when the Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weaknesses,” Paul submitted to seeing Christ honored in whatever ills might befall him as a greater worth and a more satisfying treasure than his own temporary earthly comfort:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. - 2 Cor 12:9b-10

  And oh the testimonies of those who have been tortured, imprisoned, and beaten for Christ and found joy in that very thing (not merely despite it!)! See, for example Josef Tson’s testimony of joy through harsh interogation, “Thank you for the beating” (freely available from the Romanian Missionary Society). In doing so they simply fulfill the words of the Master:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. - Matthew 5:11-12

  If we are to rejoice at persecution from the hands of our “enemies” (the command, “love your enemies,” shows that Christians do have enemies but with a very different perspective from how the world views enemies), how then can the righteous grumble and complain over the trials, no matter how grievious, that even the pagans share with us, much less the common minor inconveniences of life? I dare say they can’t; at least, they can’t continue in such a path without facing stern warning and discipline from the Lord:

Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. - 1 Cor 10:10-12

  Do I mean that Christians can never sorrow? That they are always literally bouncing with happiness and gushing over how much “joy in the Lord” they have? No. Jesus wept. But harm and troubles are never the controlling or dominate theme. There is no evil that comes upon us to which we cannot say, “God is working this very thing for my good.” It is not that the good gifts from God outweigh the bad, it is that there is good for us even in the very things that appear bad to the flesh. If we go and learn what this means,

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:7-12),

then we can truly say in all circumstances, “No harm has befallen me.”

  Scripture, hands down!

  As an illustration, consider that most of the Bible’s explicit teaching on marriage, at least in the New Testament, comes from single men: Jesus and Paul. OK, Jesus is the perfectly wise, all-knowing Logos of God through whom everything was created, so of course He has full authority on every subject. So consider Paul with me for a moment.

  There is general consensus from passages such as 1 Cor 9 that the apostle Paul never married. This is the same Paul who wrote such passages as the cornerstone of a Biblical perspective on marriage: Ephesians 5:22-33. If perhaps Paul was married earlier in life, lost his wife to death, and was a widower during his Christian and apostolic years, I’ll still stand by my point. Paul’s teaching on marriage is an illustration of my point, not the proof of it.

  Regardless of personal experience, Paul knew his Lord intimately, he knew the Jewish Scriptures, and he knew the fulfillment of those Scriptures in Christ. Boom, that’s a recipe for being an expert on marriage in my book. Say on the other hand we have a couple that have been married for 80 years, have stayed together, and would even claim a mostly “happy marriage”, but they don’t have a clue what their marriage has to do with Christ. Well, there may be a thing or two worth hearing and considering from their experience, but I’d rather listen to the single guy who knows his Bible deeply any day.

  Experiencial wisdom is valuable if our experiences have forced us to dig harder and deeper into God’s word for answers and direction and understanding on issues we are confronting. But years of experience gained through a pagan, secular, humanistic, godless lens either needs to be redeemed by filtering all of it back through the grid of Scripture, or else thrown out in the rubbish bin.

  The area of application which has prompted me to write this post is that of evangelism and discipleship strategies targeting specific sub-cultures. In particular, I’ve been compiling some articles for missionaries to Muslims lately, and certain ideas and issues repeatedly come up. Now, let me first say that any talk about “targeting” certain groups, about “strategy“, and about “effectiveness” makes me feel edgy at the outset. That aside, the question relevant to us now is: should ministry approaches be guided by insider believers within the “target” sub-culture or by outsiders who have crossed cultural boundaries to reach out to them?

  Well, first I would want to stake a claim that insiders and outsiders both have unique advantages when it comes to understanding a cultural group and their needs. Insiders of course have years of experience, understanding on a deep level many nuances of their culture that outsiders will never fully appreciate. However, what is less often noted is that outsiders bring some crucial advantages of their own. In particular, they see the new culture with fresh eyes and probably in many ways without certain biases that insiders have. Just as each one of us individually finds it easier to see others’ sins while downplaying our own, cultural insiders often have blind spots to their own group’s weakness and faults (or conversely can even be overly critical and not aware of their own strengths).

  On that note, let me mention that I promote much more intercultural accountability in the church. We need not just white evangelical American men holding white evangelical American men accountable to God’s word, and not just mainland Han Chinese holding mainland Han Chinese accountable, etc., etc., but we need Christ’s church in Korea to keep the American church in check, the Americans to keep the Nepalese in check, the Nepalese believers to keep the Syrian church in check, and the church of Syria to hold the Ugandan saints accountable, and the church of Uganda to expose the oversights of the Koreans.

  For example, by and large I’ve seen that most American Christians don’t feel a sense of utter shock and horror to hear about a congregation spending millions of dollars to add an extension on to their already overly spacious under-used building structure, but bring in a visiting pastor from a poor African country where there is one Bible per congregation and people struggle to have enough to eat and the abomination of it all is unmistakable. Or again, by and large I’ve found that ethnic Chinese Singaporean and Malaysian Christians don’t find it utterly unthinkable to hear that a church would actually prohibit distribution of Bibles in the Malay language for fear of being known as a church that is trying to reach Muslims, whereas any outsider can clearly see the appalling hypocrisy.

  So then, if insiders and outsiders both have advantages, who is ultimately more qualified to judge what a people group or sub-culture needs and what is best for them? I would argue that, on any particular given issue, it is the one — insider or out — who has the most Biblically-saturated perspective on that particular issue. The crucial qualifiers here are that it can vary on a case-by-case basis for different issues. An insider can have profound Biblical insight into his own culture in one area and glaring worldly blindspots in another area. An outsider can have penetrating Biblical exhortations for a foreign culture in one area, and shallow, naive, humanistic wisdom in other areas.

  Who’s to decide which is what? In the end we must each make a choice as to what we believe to be right and act on it, and let others do the same. Each one to his own master must stand or fall (Rom 14:4). In the process, at least as for me I will continue to judge the validity of ideas not on the experiences of the one promoting them, but ruthlessly and solely based on fidelity to Scripture. When I’m 80 years old and have been married for 50 of those years (God willing) and a single 20-year old young man comes to me and says, “I’ve got something I think you need to see about marriage from the Bible,” O Lord that I would listen to him carefully. When an Asian believer comes to me and says, “Can I talk to you from the perspective of God’s word about some blindspots in the culture you spent your entire life growing up in?”, I hope that I would genuinely say, “Please do!” And I pray my brothers and sisters would do the same.