What Faith Can Do

Security warnings were updated this week.  The "red zone" as determined by the US government now looks roughly like this:

That's a lot of red in what has long been known as a welcoming, hospitable country.

At the same time, you may have seen on the news that local Christians in the northern part of the country have come under attack in recent weeks.  In a country where the Muslim-majority has peacefully lived alongside Christian neighbors for decades, it is now reported that the jihadists are changing tactics by trying to instill interreligious conflict. (source) This possibility has been present for a long time.  Back in 2017, at the church nearest our house in the capital, bags were searched and everyone had to go through metal screening upon arrival at Sunday morning service.  Of course, a metal detector would not stop the current mode of attack, but it does highlight that Christians have been aware of the risk for quite some time, yet churches continue to grow and the Gospel continues to spread.

It was with all this on my mind that I hopped in the car to take Daniel to school one morning this week.  What I heard on the Christian radio here in the US brought me to tears.  In a light-hearted morning show, the radio hosts celebrated the local hockey team's play-off run by having listeners call in to dedicate a song to the team.  I listened in disbelief to a string of three listeners describing the season with lyrics meant for Jesus, such as equating this play-off run with the lyrics "That's what faith can do."

Really?!  That's what faith can do? Get you through a sporting season???  You are telling me Jesus got this team to the play-offs when we have brothers and sisters around the world whose faith in Jesus might not get them home from Sunday morning worship?

"There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning....Jesus never called us to a life of safety, nor even to a fair fight. 'Lambs in the midst of wolves' is the way he decries our sending." 

John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God

Which faith is yours?

The Goat Picture

I recently printed this picture to put in a frame beside our bed where I'll see it everyday.
What do you see when you look at this African village scene?  The wandering goat?  The laundry?  The cooking pots in the foreground?  The future harvest in the field? The neighboring mud brick huts?

I know this as Yaya's village.  The place where Daniel got a fish bone trapped in his esophagus.  (I feigned indifference while Philip coached him through that experience.  My internal panicking at the thought of being ten hours from medical care was not helping anybody.  To this day Daniel does not eat anything served with bones in it.) At the time of our visit, it was a 100% Muslim village with incredible hospitality and overt curiosity.  I have an inkling that if I enlarged the picture enough, I could step into it and be back there.

I think what I should have done was print a smaller version, rather than an enlarged one.  When I see this picture, I think, "Why are we hoarding resources?"  There is a great big world out there right now living without the ease of a washing machine or the peace of Christ.  And we could be doing something about it.  I need a wallet size print of this picture that I can keep right beside my credit card because often I forget.  I forget that this African village life is still going on mostly unchanged today.  I forget that there is more fun work to be done.  I forget that what seems like a good spending or saving decision in my new context is only valid to the extent it brings good news to the poor.  Do you forget, too?  How do you keep a biblical perspective in a self-indulgent culture?

"Our emphasis on saving makes sense when we consider that most of us think of our options as either saving or spending. But the biblical witness and Christian tradition suggest that there's another option: sharing." 

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Binders to Better Understand the Bible