Not only for missionaries

I've been reading a very informative book called Honor and Shame*, written by Roland Muller, a missionary in Yemen and Jordan for about thirty years. It's about communicating the essence of the gospel in shame-based cultures. The cross of Christ has purchased more than just freedom from the guilt of our sin, but there Christ also bore our shame (Isa 53.3-4; Heb 13.12-13) and has lifted us up into God's honor as a child of his. We no longer need to cower away from him, as if our continuing sin makes us unfit as objects of his love and blessing.

Through this, I'm realizing how even we in the West need this gospel truth. Don't we so often want to run from God in fear and shame at our unworthiness to come into his presence? Yes, we are unworthy, but to still live that way is to make the cross null and void. We are elect in the Elect One, holy (already!) in the Holy One, adopted and joint-heirs in the Son, redeemed in the Redeemer, and loved in the Beloved (Eph 1.3-14). What reason have we to run from God and join in the songs of his people? None! Of course Satan will tempt us to despair and want us to hide from God and feel bad about ourselves--this keeps our eyes off of Jesus and his sufficiency.

"Almost all [Arabs] agree that someone can honor you but you cannot honor yourself. However, people with honor seldom honor others without cause.
"This is where we must be bold in proclaiming the gospel. The gospel that Jesus brought, is simply this: God wants to lift man from a position of shame to a position of honor. When Jesus said, 'I am the way,' this is what he was referring to. Jesus is the only one who can bring us into the presence of God the Father. This is why Jesus had to be God. No one else would do. Only God could reach down to mankind [and lift us from our shame into his honor]" (pp. 98-99). What a beautiful truth! (Muller does write further that what he means is that this is the essence of the gospel for the Eastern world, or a starting point perhaps, from which we can work toward the fuller picture of Christ's redemption from guilt, fear, and shame.)

Muller also writes: "It was not by mere chance that Jesus was born into a stable in Bethlehem, and that his death on the cross took place in the city of Jerusalem. The cross of Christ stands firmly at the crossroads of history. To the west are the guilt-based cultures of the world. To the south are the fear-based cultures, and to the east are the shame-based cultures.** And in the midst of all of them, the cross of Christ stands as a strong, bold message of peace on earth and good will to all mankind" (p. 110).

[And for Ryan: I do not deny in the least that our sanctification is accomplished by the imputed righteousness of Christ. In heaven it is a finished deal, signed, sealed, and delivered. But God in his grace works within us as well even now to lead us into following our Shepherd (Php 2.13; Heb 13.20-21). The good transformation is not from us, but all of God, and therefore inseparable from his graces and redemptive work through the Spirit purchased by the blood of the cross. What a blessing it is that God works to cleanse us even now and purify our faculties so that we can apprehend small glimpses of him even now while on earth!]

*Roland Muller, Honor and Shame: Unlocking the Door (Xlibris Corporation, 2000).
** Keep in mind that many cultures don't operate strictly within one of these worldviews, but often have aspects of two or all three. The Semitic (Abrahamic) peoples of the Near and Middle East have largely been in shame-based cultures since OT times, including first-century Palestine.

A lesson from tree swallows

It's funny how God can take opportunities in which I'm supposed to be ministering to someone else and instead turn them around to minister to my own needs and to teach me. I've been reading a book called Honor and Shame, which is about communicating the gospel message from a shame-based worldview. (In the Western world, which was largely influenced by Roman law and Plato's The Republic, we operate from a strongly guilt-based worldview, which is why we find so much connection to Paul's letter to the Roman believers.) In one chapter the author writes about the greater whole of the gospel beyond merely legal redemption and removal of guilt, including how in Christ God moves us from a state of failure to that of completion.

I've become keenly aware of how strongly my sinful nature is still active, and how I allow myself to dance like an idiot at its every beck and call. To think that I not only will be perfected and made whole, but that it's currently happening within me, is hard for me to see right now. Yet it's true: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Php 1.6 NIV). The healing Breath of God won't merely make us whole at the final day, but he's doing it even now, carrying us on until the day Jesus appears in glory to judge the living and the dead.*

My mind quickly went to Romans 5.12—6.23, telling the glory of how the second Adam brings abundant life beyond all the death that my sin can muster and how it frees me to live in true freedom that honors God, the freedom of living in the way we humans were created to live. In his book Run With the Horses, Eugene Peterson writes about a young bird learning to fly. The bird refuses to take the risk of leaving what he's used to, namely, the nest in which he's spent his whole life so far. But the parent bird persistently pecked at its desperately clinging talons until it was more painful to hang onto the branch than to risk flying. The parent knew what the chick did not: that there was no danger, but only joy, in making its child do what it was designed to do. "Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully" (pp. 42-43).

Baby birds will eventually outgrow their nests and starve without leaving their old, comfortable ways. They will die. So it is with us. "You can readily recall, can't you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as your live in God's freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness? As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything, for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end" (Rom 6.19-21, The Message).

Jesus, our Physician, you will not break a bruised reed or snuff a smoldering wick! Mightily and tenderly heal your people so that we will turn a deaf ear to sin and instead listen for your voice, to obey it and really live. Amen.

*I know that the ESV says "at the day" instead of "until the day", but most translations, including the NIV and NASB, render the latter. While this verse is difficult to interpret and likely a reference to final salvation, with its eschatological focus, earthly sanctification is inseparable from final salvation (cf. 2 Thess 2.13).

Moda gunler iki (Day two in Moda)

Ahh, day two of our apartment adventures in Moda. After sleeping in until 11:00, we got lunch with the girls at a restaurant near the Bosphorus. Et doner pide, a shaved lamb sandwich with potato salad ("American salad") and French fries—not as side dishes, but on the sandwich—was most of our lunch of choice, accompanied by Fanta. Much of the day's remainder was comprised of purchasing items for our apartment. From now on, I will refer to the apartment as our house, because that's what everyone calls them here, because no one owns separate homes in this city.

Some things of note: (1) Because it's not really safe for us as foreigners to drink the local tap water, we have to pay for a water service, where large jugs of water are brought to our house. It's cheap: $3.75 for two 15-gallon jugs plus delivery. (2) Carrefour. This is a like a French version of a Super Walmart here in Kadiköy. It was great because we were able to speak almost no Turkish and yet purchase everything we needed for our apartment. (3) The Rice Man. There is a cheerful elderly gentleman who peddles the most amazing dishes of rice, chicken, and vegetables you'll ever have. Absolutely delicious! We ate our fill tonight for 1.250 YTL—about 90 cents.

Moda hos geldiniz! (Welcome to Moda)

I have surfaced! Yes, folks, I am alive and well and living in Moda, Kadiköy, İstanbul. Well, today was an adventure: we moved out of the Taşlık Hotel this afternoon and into our apartments in Moda, Kadiköy. After taking a bus 45 minutes across the beautiful Bosphorus from Beşiktaş to Kadiköy, the driver refused to take us right to our apartments because he didn't want to block traffic for ten minutes while unloading our mountains of luggage. So we unloaded near a fountain in Moda and had to carry our luggage in waves to the four different apartments.

This brings me not to my first, but certainly my least favorable, experience with the "spirals of death", that is, Turkish staircases. Because of the incredibly space-starved nature of the sprawling megalopolis of İstanbul, staircases must occupy as little space as possible and thus take on a tight corkscrew configuration. The problem this creates is that near the center of the spiral the stairs are as little as two inches deep, leaving absolutely no space for your feet. Enter the five of us guys, carrying multiple fifty-pound suitcases up five flights of such stairs for multiple apartments. Oh, joy—not!

After hauling all our luggage up to our the fifth floor atop our landing-less staircase, we pulled out the keys to our new apartment, Pınar. After five minutes of frustrated attempts, we hit the sad realization that neither of our keys even remotely fit the keyhole. A series of phone calls in broken Turkish informed us that the butcher across the street had a key. What on earth?! But, hey, we got in and were mildly pleased to discover a rather large, Victorian America-themed apartment, replete with smoked-glass table lamps, a large buffet, and lace doilies. (They have all been since hidden or pitched, as they don't complement the 1960s plush yellow couches or our desired décor. See #3 below.) We also were greeted by a cruel experiment of Mother Nature: a deranged jackalope with walrus tusks and black wings.

Other joys of our apartment, which is actually the nicest of all STINT apartments: (1) We have a dishwasher!—but no oven. Can you believe that? And our fridge is little more than a glorified version of what many of us had in our college dorm rooms. (2) None of the lamps work, and there are no sheets or pillows. We had to remedy this at 23:00. (3) We have an inflatable moose head to adorn the walls of our hunting den. (4) Our balcony came with the gift of a four-foot-tall birdcage, which would make a perfect home for the jackalope. However, it instead contains two dead birds. Hmm…I can smell a prank coming on in one of the women's apartments.

Okay, this isn't apartment-related, but I'm really irked that getting change here is next to impossible. I've already been denied the ability to purchase a 2.00 YTL beverage because I only had a 10- or 20 YTL note. For this reason, believe it or not, a 5 YTL note is worth nearly as much as a 20 YTL note, because it's actually usable for most everyday purchases. Oh, well, at least inflation is finally in single digits, and some miracle of economic reform has brought about the Yeni Türk Lirası (YTL), the New Turkish Lira. This eliminated the old pricing system which, thanks to inflation, had an exchange rate of 1.5 million lira to the U.S. dollar!

The long day has finally come to an end. What adventures will tomorrow hold as we inventory what we need for our apartment, which is pretty much everything imaginable? We'll also need to move a full-size bed out of our apartment and move some desks and a bunk bed into it. Keep in mind that we have to carry all of this stuff a ten-minute walk down the packed streets of Kadiköy. But God is with us at every moment, and we're laughing together with him through this all. Remember, "It's not bad; it's just different!"

A revealing Saturday

I am a prideful man. While I was at MSU, the Spirit (the Holy one, not Johnny) showed me this in several ways:

(1) First of all, while I was talking with one Ryan Hover about our summers, somehow we ended up on the topic of regeneration, namely, does it effect faith, or does faith effect it? Naturally, after spending two years reading Piper, Edwards, Owen, Luther, and others, there was no question: rebirth by the Holy Spirit precedes and effects repentance and faith. But after a lengthy conversation about this, I learned that, while I still hold my position, I am (a) very self-assured that I know it all and cannot possibly be wrong, and (b) that I really don't know the Bible as well as I thought I did.

In a similar vein, I found myself quite openly critical of Rob Bell's new book, Velvet Elvis. (No, I don't know where the title comes from, either.) From the little I've read--and that's the problem, I just skimmed it and made some rather incisive remarks--he is fairly wacked in his theology at some points. (Sorry, Rob. You're not Jesus nor a reformer a la Martin Luther, and Jesus is indeed making exclusive statements of himself in John 8.24 and 14.6 that have reference to eternal destinies, not just "unlocking deeper realities.") But once again I saw that I think I know it all and that I can confidently pass judgment on something or someone without actually knowing a whole lot about my own convictions nor those that seemingly stand contrary to mine.

(2) Instead of humbly accepting that I deserved the $30 ticket for parking in a one-hour zone for fourteen hours, I got really ticked off and vowed to never pay the ticket. How could I possibly deserve a ticket? Romans 13.1-7, anyone?

(3) I went back to Riverview, the church I had attended for two years while at MSU. I have openly criticized this church for trying too hard to be catchy and attractive through coffee, rock music, and entertaining sermons. Some of that may hold true. But after hearing Noel, a pastor there, speak on the parable of the shrewd manager recorded in Luke 16.1-13, my views began to change. What I saw as a cowardly, worldly way of enticing people to come to their church is actually their honest efforts at being shrewd and wise in the way they manage the resources entrusted to them. I don't agree with everything they're doing, but what I learned is that they're not out to be catchy; they're out to bring people to Jesus Christ. Just because someone's philosophy isn't mine doesn't automatically make it wrong. I thought I had this church thing all figured out. Guess again.

(4) The night wrapped up with a long talk with some of the men whom I love. In the process, I came to the realization that in this life, the fact is that people are going to come and go in and out of our lives. Mike's in Texas. Cassie's in Washington. Ryan's in Thailand. Greg's married and in seminary. Erin's in GR. I'm in Asia Minor. Things on Earth don't stay the same, so what am I to do? I absolutely dread being lonely; it's one of my greatest fears and tempts me often to pity myself rather than to do something about it. It struck me that because a given person may only be directly in my life for a period of months or years, the question I should ask myself each day is, How can I bless this person so that he will be better off for having had me in his life?

As soon as this clicked in my head, I said this to everyone--and promptly realized that what I said I should be thinking and doing is the furthest thing from what actually happens in my life. Instead, I get upset when people don't make an effort to seek me out and care about me. Then I just get grumpy and spiteful or mopey and despairing, neither of which are honoring to God's omnipresence and call to give myself away. "If anyone is thirsty . . . out of his innermost being will flow . . ."

By the way, after a series of awesome sermons on the "I am" statements of Jesus, it's really cool to see how Jesus uses the Feast of Tabernacles to illustrate that all things Israel celebrated about Yahweh in the feast (Exodus 13 - 17), in actuality, find their truest essence in him.

Of irony and woven carpets

As I knelt last night to pray while listening to musical Sufi prayers* (Sufi is a mystical branch of Islam; you may be familiar with the dancing trance-prayers of the whirling dervishes), I felt burdened by two things: (1) the eerie supernatural aura created by these prayers, giving a very apparent (but not true) sense of the divine presence; (2) the incredible power wielded against the kingdom of God through Islam in the country to which I'll be moving in one week.

The music is stunningly beautiful, but I had to shut it off and remind myself that Jesus Christ is the road, the reality, and the life. He is preeminent, and he alone is God. It was discomforting to realize how even I, a Christian, felt drawn by the music to some false ideal. There are so many things in this world that offer cheap and enticing imitations of the true God but are only husks and ashes. The divine is not found in a trance, in incense, or in beautiful icons; instead it wore sandals and ate dates and was left to hang on a tree on a barren hillside in view of the supposed entrance to Hades, the netherworld. Our flesh will always flee from this.

I recall the haunting eeriness of the first time I heard the confession and call to prayer: "Allah is most great. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet." I got to walk among the "city of a thousand mosques" and stand next to tombs of men who lived and died in opposition to the deity of Jesus Christ. It made me nauseous with that feeling you get when you're all alone in the house and you think someone is watching you. Satan is real, my friends.

Yet I find a comfort in God's omnipresence and complete sovereignty, even in the Near East. As the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper once said, "In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'" Even in the face of a history of God-belittling lies promoted through men named Kemal, Suleyman, and Beyazit, God is at work to redeem and protect his people for the sake of his great name. Take, for example, Mao Ze Dong. He earnestly believed that through communism, man had the power to create a true utopia on earth, free of the aid or necessity of any presumed deity. Patrick Johnstone of Operation World once remarked, "Mao Ze Dong was utterly opposed to all religions, and built a cult around his own personality. What an unlikely man to become the person who, by his actions, has possibly contributed to more people coming into the kingdom [of God] than any other person in all of history!"

Believe it or not, indirectly, without the spread of Islam into northern Africa, we would not have had the Reformation. (For the reason why, e-mail me at drew@aderes.net and I can send you a sermon explaining it.) God, I thank you and am encouraged that even in the Near East, you have set up history, religion, geography, and culture exactly so that men and women can seek you and reach out and find you, though you are not far from anyone (Acts 17.26-27).

*To download some mind-blowing Sufi electronica, check out Mercan Dede (pronounced mair-jon day-day) at www.mercandede.com. Click on "media" and then "music."