Zach’s Theological Musings

  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.

  The church-growth movement, whether the domestic American version, or the exported, American-based missions version, has a tendency to cheapen beautiful, challenging, life-transforming Scriptural principles into corporate-like methodologies for “success”. A prime example I see of this is when I Cor 9:19-23 is brought down to the level of a mere contextualization strategy. I would propose instead that, in context, this passage at its core is about love, not strategy. Love and strategy at times do indeed overlap. But there is a huge difference between having genuine love at the core of your being versus having a strategic orientation.

  Here is the passage:

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.

Out of love Paul makes choices to sacrifice his own freedoms in order to “win” people to Christ. You might hear in that what sounds like a note of “strategy” as well, and if so I don’t completely disagree. But this passage does not cut down into us deeply enough unless we hear the note of love ringing louder than that of strategy.

  Consider, first, the context. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is largely a question and answer session, dealing with some issues that the Corinthians raised and some that Paul has raised and wants to remind them of. This letter is more topically structured than possibly any other book of the Bible, and there are several very clear transitions from one topic to the next (”now concerning…”). One way to outline the book as a whole would look like this:

  In particular, note that chapters 8-10 form one section. In verse 8:1 Paul takes up the topic, “Now concerning things sacrificed to idols,” and stays on that topic all the way to his summary comments at the end of chapter 10. Indeed, when Paul speaks in I Cor 10:31 of eating and drinking as activities which must be done for glory of God, he is not merely illustrating a general point by picking mundane daily activities at random to serve as an example. He specifically mentions eating and drinking for the glory of God because that is the specific topic he has been talking about. To supplement that specific case, he adds that of course whatever you do you should do for the glory of God.

  It is not hard to see that food sacrificed to idols is the specific topic behind chapters 8 and 10. But what happens in chapter 9? Ignoring the context, we might conjecture all sorts of ideas for what motivated chapter 9. But when we do look at the context, we see that the flow from chapter 8 to chapter 10 is not at all lost in chapter 9.

  The common thread is love. The Corinthians are asking Paul, “Paul, are Christians allowed to eat food sacrificed to idols or not?” As with the way that Jesus often responds to his questioners, Paul doesn’t answer their question directly because the heart attitude behind the question is wrong. A simple “yes” would give the wrong impression, and a simple “no” would give the wrong impression. Rather than give a simple (and misleading) answer to their question, he wants to retrain their thinking so that they learn to ask better questions.

  Paul’s response begins with this,

[W]e know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.

The Corinthians’ question was knowledge-oriented. Paul wanted to turn them to a love focus. He goes on to say that, yes, we know that idols are nothing. Does that mean that Christians can eat food sacrificed to idols? Yes. Does it mean that Christians should eat food sacrificed to idols? Not necessarily. The bigger question is, “Am I behaving lovingly when I eat food sacrificed to idols?” Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.

  Are Christians allowed to eat food sacrificed to idols? Well, yes, all else being equal Christians do have freedom to eat food that was sacrificed to so-called idols. But Christians, unlike Americans, don’t focus on their rights. What I’m “allowed” to do is not my primary concern. The Christian criteria for a good decision is not, “I want it and I have the ability and freedom to get it,” but rather, “This is glorifying to God and loving to my neighbor.” Christians, unlike Americans, gladly sacrifice their rights and give up what they would otherwise be “allowed” to do, because doing something else is more loving to God and man.

  That is Paul’s point in chapters 8 and 10, and he illustrates this point in chapter 9 from his own example. First, Paul expounds the rights and priviledges he could hypothetically claim if he was inclined to:

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord?… Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?… If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?

If he was not walking in the footsteps of His Lord, Paul theoretically could “lord it over” those entrusted to him, and demand his rights. But he doesn’t. He instead makes a powerful counterstatement that strikes against the core of our selfish beings, and against the core of American culture in particular:

But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.

  “But we did not use this right.” Oh how refreshing to hear those words! Yes, I have many rights, but it wouldn’t be beneficial for the kingdom of God for me to exert those rights. So I won’t. Hallelujah, how refreshing to hear!

  Now we reach the passage in question, I Cor 9:19-23, and it is clear that Paul’s heartbeat throughout this letter is love. Paul is tapping into something deeper than what you would find at a cross-cultural business ethics seminar. Yes, take your shoes off at the door, only shake with your right hand, and don’t show the bottom of your foot. Yes, do those things. Be respectable. Even a greedy businesman will show culturally appropriate outward acts of respect so as not to lose business. But he is probably not motivated by love. Likewise, Christians can display certain “social skills” and to outwardly spiritual acts without the motiviation of love. Paul says that such behavior gains us nothing (I Cor 13).

  Consider, now, the application to the modern missions movement. We often hear that much of what happened in the name of (Western) Christians missions in recent centuries came in the form of a colonialism where people were called to conform to Western culture rather than to the image of Christ. True. But here’s the thing. Say that we had a colonialist missionary here in our living room and we had the chance to share with him an exhortation regarding what our generation has learned from I Cor 9:19-23. What would we say?

  The wrong thing to say would be this, “Oh colonialist missionary, don’t you realize that your colonialist approach is not strategic? Your extraction evangelism methodology is removing people from their natural socio-ethno-linguistic networks. Your only chance to trigger a self-propogating church planting movement is if you train people how to follow Jesus while maintaining their culturally-defined religious identities…”.

  No, that would not be helpful. Contextualization as a strategy is not the cure for colonialism. Compassion is. Again, the central problem with colonialism is not that it is unstrategic, but that it is unloving. A better direction for discussion with the colonialist missionary might be to ask whether his demands for the “natives” to take on Western habits is genuinely motivated by love. And if he thinks that imposing Western clothing, music, and architecture is an act of love, then again the central problem is a greatly distorted view of “love” more than anything else.

  Finally, consider Paul’s words, “To the weak I became weak.” Paul didn’t “become weak” by pretending to be weaker than he really was when he was around weak people. Rather, he became weak by loving the weak, not setting himself above them, and by using his strength to bless the weak for their sake rather than to manipulate them for his own sake. And that is the same way he “became” a Jew and “became” a Gentile (one not under the law). The concept of a follower of Christ calling themself a “Muslim” or “Hindu” and acting like a Muslim, Hindu, or pagan was the furthest thing from Paul’s mind in this passage. It doesn’t at all fit the context of this letter, or the context of Paul’s life. Loving the Muslim, Hindu, and pagan by sacrificing one’s own rights and desires in order to build them up in the faith is much more the direction of Paul’s emphasis in the context of I Corinthians and in the example of his entire life and ministry.

  The minute we reduce people to the objects upon whom our methodology is to be implemented we have missed the whole point, whether we do it as a colonialist or as a hyper-contextualist. As we listen to I Corinthians 8-10, and especially 9:19-23, we need to step out of our corporate America strategic-planning mindset, and instead pray that we might absorb a heart of loving self-sacrifice that is ever ready to say, “I have not used any of these rights…. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law… To those not having the law I became like one not having the law… To the weak I became weak….”

  [See Hyper-Contextualization post for some background regarding what concerns me on this subject.] 

  Paul’s sermon in Athens is often cited, especially in missionary contexts, to support the ideas of “building bridges” and “meeting people where they are at.” If anything, though, the kind of “bridge building” that I hear coming out in Paul’s sermon is very different from the kind of “bridge building” that says we should identify as much with our listeners as possible. Note in particular, the contrasting first and second person pronouns in Paul’s opening words:

“Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you…. Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” - Acts 17:22-23, 29-31

  The Greek word for “judge” here (in verse 31) is rooted in the idea of separation. In this sermon we see a chasm of separation. Paul is declaring to the Athenians that they are on the dangerous side of the chasm, the side that is soon to face that righteous judgement of God. He, on the other hand, has found safe ground by God’s grace. If he was still in their position he would be of no help to them. But precisely because he is not where they are at, he is able to plea with them, “Come, cross over from there to here.”

  Yes, there certainly is a bridge in this sermon. But Paul didn’t build it. He pointed people to the Man appointed by God, the One and Only who has ever bridged the gap from death to life.

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” John 5:24

  Galatians is a book about the gospel – the true gospel versus a false gospel. Paul was an apostle, a herald sent to proclaim the gospel. Galatians 2 tells about a meeting between Peter, God’s chosen apostle to the Jews in particular, and Paul — set apart as apostle to the Gentiles. The meeting was about the core of the gospel that each was proclaiming. As they extended the right hand of fellowship to each other and bless each other on their way, something seems to almost come up “out of the blue” in this context:

They only asked us to remember the poor– the very thing I also was eager to do. - Galatians 2:20

  “Go Paul, preach justification by faith, preach the sufficiency of Christ and the cross, establish churches,… and as you go, be sure to remember the poor.”

  “But of course!”, he replies.

  This scene is so much more pleasant than some of the Christian infighting that frequently goes on regarding what form of ministry is most important. “Evangelism is more important than social action.” “No! Social action is more important than evangelism.” Whoa, brothers, hold on! It’s not a bad thing to be passionate about evangelism and church-planting missions. It is not a bad thing to be passionate about social action and domestic ministry. We’re not each other’s enemy.

  I really like this quote found on a particular page of the Desiring God website:

We do not want to compete for funding with churches, mission agencies, and organizations focusing on the poor and persecuted. We’d rather compete with McDonalds, Microsoft, and Miramax.

  Do you have a zeal to see the gospel reach the remote tribes of the world and you get frustrated to hear about a church “throwing away” their money on some domestic ministry project that seems not nearly so desperate? Or is it the opposite, do you have a zeal to help the poor in your community and you get frustrated when church members want to send money to some far off place while there are so many needs back here at home? Hey, don’t bite and devour each other. I dare say Christians will probably never be guilty of too much evangelism, too much social action, too much foreign missions effort, or too much domestic ministry. Too much time and money spent on videos games, vacations, and vehicles is entirely likely, but we can never love God too much, and we can never do too much to love fellow man for His sake.

  Oh sure, imbalances do exist. And they do need to be addressed at times. But in general, if you are passionate about something (anything!) that brings glory to God and is for the genuine well-being of man, then great! I want to be one who encourages you. Even if the area of service on your heart is not the same direction that I want to invest my limited time, talent, and treasure, if you are doing something more valuable that watching TV, then I salute you! (And if someone out there is truly watching TV for the glory of God, well then, um, please explain that one to me for my future reference.)

  I pray that within the church of Jesus Christ missions would not be the enemy of domestic ministry, and social action would not be the enemy of evangelism, but rather that all things which are good and righteous and pure would triumph over the frivolous, the sinful, and the shallow pleasures of this world.

  I think we sometimes do a disservice to the truth by defending it. Statements which are obvious do not need to be defended. Therefore when we defend a statement we are implicitly acknowledging that it is not obvious. Certainly a great many statements DO need to be defended. But some don’t. In particular, it can sometimes be counter-productive to try to “defend” facts like:

1. God is real (i.e. a divine being with eternal power created this world), and
2. The thing growing inside of a human mommy is a baby human-being.

  Now someone will say, “The truth of those statements is not clear to everyone.” But the person who says that is wrong. I’ll get back to the second point above in a subsequent post. Regarding the first point, God says this,

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. (Rom 1:20-21)

An “atheist” or “agnostic” standing before God on Judgment Day cannot defend themselves with, “But God, I just didn’t know. I mean, the ontological argument seemed to have all these philosophical gaps and, and…”. Now, I can’t claim to know what God would say to such things, but He very well could say, “You knew about Me. I made it obvious. Now why did you choose to reject Me?”

  A couple of years ago I realized that by endlessly trying to “defend” the existence of God to an atheist friend, I was not adequately preparing him for that Day. My friend may be able to light-heartedly banter around excuses for ignoring his Creator today, but on that Day there will be no more excuses. “I grew up in a society that doesn’t believe in God. God never revealed Himself to me. How can there be a good God when there is so much evil in the world?” None of these things will allow anyone to slip past the penetrating examination of the Judge of man’s soul. Rather, on that Day every mouth will be silenced, and the whole world held accountable to God for our sin (Rom 3:19-20). So I warned my friend, “God is not going to accept any of your excuses for ignoring Him.”

  Someone has pointed out that the language of the Bible calls Christians to be “witnesses” not “attorneys”. Picture the courtroom analogy; our job is not to defend the truth, but to state what we know. That’s what I Peter 3:16 is talking about, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” I don’t think that I Peter 3:16 is a mandate to be well versed in apologetics. The reason for the hope that is within me is because I have come to know that Jesus Christ the Lord died for my sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring me to God. And that is the hope that I need to be prepared to communicate.

  The Bible begins with, “In the beginning God created…,” not, “In the beginning there was a God and He created…”. Note the difference; God does not cater to the self-delusion of the “atheist/agnostic” by even counting it as necessary to state the fact of His existence. As God has spoken, we also in the spirit of assured faith can speak confidently and authoritatively about what we know to be true. “Since God is Lord of heaven and earth,… therefore you should repent” is an appropriate way to speak, even to unbelieving pagans (Acts 17:24-30).

  Pluralists speak from the perspective of their pluralistic worldview. If we don’t share their worldview then we won’t talk like them. We give in to a pluralistic society if we allow them to train us to speak like them, saying, “Well, my belief is that there is a God…”.

  I can think of only two times in the Bible that God addresses atheism head-on:

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” (Ps 14:1)

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” (Ps 53:1)

We are acting like fools if we even speak in terms like, “If God exists,” or, “If God does not exist”.  Now, there is a time to answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he not be wise in his own eyes (Prov 26:5). But there is also a time to not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him yourself (Prov 26:4). Oftentimes, an adequate response to atheism is simply, “Stop being foolish. You are going to have to answer to God one day.”