Christianity is cheaper.

I laughed inappropriately the other day when I was at the interview of one of the first believers in a Pwo Karen village in the mountains near he border of Thailand and Myanmar. I laughed because they said the main reason why they became Christians was because it was cheaper than being animist. I'd slipped back into a Western mindset and was expecting an answer that revolved somewhere around the guilt/sin paradigm and some deep repentance, so this just caught me off-guard and I giggled.

It makes sense though. Animists have to frequently sacrifice animals to appease the spirits and so when this became too much of a burden for them, they turned to Christianity because it didn't require any animal sacrifices, and instead taught that Jesus was the already completed perfect sacrifice. 

After this, I heard my pastor was recount his experiences in Borneo sharing the gospel with an unreached tribe there. He sat quietly and talked with the headman of the village who was mainly fascinated with the idea that they would no longer have to sacrifice an animal every morning in each corner of the village for protection, as their shamans taught. By the next morning that village had become followers of Jesus. 

So is turning to Jesus out of economic need a bad motivation?

I don't actually think so. In Hebrews 9 the Bible makes a fairly big deal about how Jesus 'offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins' (v14, NLT) and superseded the OT laws of animal sacrifice, where 'the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow could cleanse people's bodies from ritual defilement' (v13, NLT). I think it's just the way the Gospel is preached in the west does not emphasise the sacrifice of Jesus as anything more than a symbol, perhaps dealing with inner conscience, because we don't practice ritual sacrifice as a lifestyle. So we read it as a historical, almost symbolic story and skip over the blood, gore and money that it takes to procure animals. But it was important to people in the time of Jesus who still sacrificed in the temple in Jerusalem. And the Bible is relevant to all people, through all ages, and quite conceivably, God knew there were tribes to whom it was very important to hear that Jesus replaces actual, physical sacrifices even today. 

So can we preach something like this? 

Turn to Jesus, because it will save you all the expense of all those bulls/goats/chickens you sacrifice to spirits who give you lesser protection than the Son of God who died once and for all your sins/curses?

Sure! Why not? As long as we don't leave it just there, I think it's as valid as any other explanation of the Gospel.

The World, the Devil, the Flesh

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath 

Ephesians 2:1-3

Both the Devil and the world, in temptations, attack our flesh, causing us to sin. Interestingly, the pentecostal tradition tends to focus on the Devil, the Fundamentalists focus on the World and the Evangelicals tend to focus on the flesh. A balanced view would be that all of these work on us, since they are mentioned together in this verse.
So then when someone comes to you with a problem, considering all these things is a good perspective. 

Be careful what you study

This semester I am taking a class called the "dynamics of religion". It covers all the experiences of the supernatural in different cultures and world views, including folk religions, witchcraft, ghosts etc.

Since starting it I have been woken twice by hearing a female voice in my room, a strange one in the morning , and in the afternoon a young friend calling my name, but both times no one was there. That same young friend was also staying with me, and she twice heard someone call her name but no one was there. 

My young friend did not know what I was studying till after she heard these voices. I don't know what it is, but talking to Thai people, it seems this is a common experience and they advise to not answer and to not turn your head. In fact at least every second person here in Thailand believes that they've seen a ghost and the amount of stories and evidence here is wild, huge especially compared to my western experience. 

So I was a little unnerved and I was home alone. I got into bed and opened my bible, finishing off my reading on the end of Jeremiah and the beginning of Lamentations. As I was reading, it struck me that I served a God who raised and destroyed empires, like the fall of Jerusalem. A God who could crush a pesky ghost like a gnat. And on that note, I fell soundly asleep.

Compromise

Jeremiah 34:8-16 Zedekiah had proclaimed liberty to the slaves, according to the law of God that sets everyone free every 7 years, but then the people of Israel had turned around and taken them back into slavery. So Jeremiah condemns them for it. I was just thinking about how does God intervene into cultures and I realized that even though his perfect ideal is a world without slavery, he compromised with the economic culture of that time which relied on slavery, to make the best out of a bad situation.He puts laws in place to deal with a sinful culture to drag it out of the worst it could be and at least afford some hope and protection for the oppressed. My study has been a lot lately about how do Christians try to change our world, or intervene in our culture. In America, it basically comes down to you either believe that the US is going into moral decline and Christians need to take over the government (Christian right/republican), that we need to be relevant to the culture and the Christian right has represented Christianity wrongly, (Christian left/democrat) or that the whole system is evil and we should have nothing to do with it (neo-anabaptist). Instead, in the book i am reading by James Davidson Hunter, he proposes a theory of ' faithful presence' which actually sounds an awful lot like basic Christianity. And so I was thinking of how would God react to our culture,and frankly when you look at how he deals with the Hebrews, he makes laws to try to point towards a better way of living, but he doesn't deny their current culture. He recognizes that their current system is based on slavery, and he makes the best of it, with the final view being that in the kingdom of God all men are brothers. In fact, freedom has tended to break out where the gospel is in history because eventually we realize that we can't enslave one another when Jesus has set us all free. And so how do we deal with our cultures? Firstly, stuff may be wrong in our culture, but rather than jumping ship and creating our own Christian bubbles of safety which we're very good at or embracing it without criticism,we need to acknowledge the wrong and then try to make the best of it, alleviate it however we can, with the understanding that it may not change instantly, but it could over time. And we need to protect the oppressed.

You duped me...

In Jeremiah 20:7, the prophet wails,

You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived
you overpowered me and prevailed
I am ridiculed all day long;
everyone mocks me. (NIV) 

Pretty strong words to accuse God of deception. That word used for deceived could also be translated as persuaded, duped or enticed. So other versions will say,

O Lord, you misled me,
    and I allowed myself to be misled.
You are stronger than I am,
    and you overpowered me.
Now I am mocked every day;
    everyone laughs at me. (NLT)

In that chapter, it seems that the prophet is sick of being mocked by the people he's proclaiming destruction towards, yet he can't stop because the message is like a fire in his heart. He's been doing God's work for a while now, and there has been no repentance from the people, no fruit from his ministry.
So he hits this point in his mission where he feels as if the work is so much harder than God had promised, he has been misled, and perhaps like God has hung him out to dry even though he's been faithful. Jeremiah has just been whipped and put in stocks after all.
I know that his accusation could even sound like blasphemy, since it is accusing God of wrong, yet God has recorded it in His Bible, and there is no verses after to say that God punished Jeremiah for saying it.
Now I will reveal a not very well kept secret of the mission field. At a guess, I would have to say that most long term missionaries hit this point, where in their heart they may be disillusioned in their work and wondering if God has given them a vision, promised to go with them and then left them high and dry.
I know there's certainly been times where I have despaired and asked God, 'If you wanted this done, why is it so hard?' As missionaries we already forfeit our comfort zones and normal support networks of having friends and family nearby. Then we do expect that the going will be hard and that this unreached people will not respond quickly - after all, there's a reason why they are still unreached, right? Then on top of that we may deal with financial woes, sudden car breakdowns, deaths or illness in family far away and finally, other Christians or missionaries who do not share the same vision, or perhaps even actively oppose us.
What was the prophet's conclusion? It was looking ahead to see that God is mighty to save.
Jeremiah 20:11 says,

But the Lord stands beside me like a great warrior.
Before him my persecutors will stumble.
They cannot defeat me. (NLT)

So the two things to remember in a time like this are a) God can handle it if you tell him your true feelings and b) He always comes through in the end.

Taking the Lord's name in vain

When I was little, I was never allowed to 'take the Lord's name in vain.' This meant any sort of utterances like 'Oh my God!' when surprised etc. On a sidenote, I realised that it must just a be natural human reaction to do that because Muslims will say 'Oh Allah!' when they're shocked or surprised, it was a funny thing to hear in a different culture.
Today I was reading Jeremiah 12, and I reached verse 16, where it says 'If these nations quickly learn the ways of my people, and if they learn to swear by my name saying "As surely as the Lord lives" (just as they taught my people to swear by the name of Baal) then they will be given a place among my people.' (NLT)

What? They will get rewarded by God for swearing by his name?! What happened to not taking it in vain?!

So I looked up the Strongs Concordance (http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H7650&t=KJV) on the word 'swear' which turns out to be 'shaba' in Hebrew. It seems to mean to promise to do something in God's name. Reading through a couple of commentaries, it seems that to swear oaths in the name of the Lord is a verbal symbol for being totally committed to the worship of the Lord. So it is a good thing to swear in the name of the Lord, and it explains why He gets so angry about swearing to Baal - it's tantamount to expressing worship of Baal.

So how would be take it in vain then if it is a good thing to swear by God's name? Well, it seems that to 'take' is to bear or exalt the 'name' (the identity or reputation) of God in 'vain' (emptiness). To bear the reputation of God in emptiness. To have the form of godliness without substance. My closest understanding of this verse then would be that God does not want us to have the outward semblances of religious worship while our hearts are far from Him. At the very least, He would not want us to make promises in his name, saying 'As surely as the Lord lives I will do it' and then not go through with it.
He only wants us fully committed to taking his name and living it out. The issue was never that we were taking it, that seems to be a good thing to have the Lord constantly on our lips, but the real problem was when it was in vain, only on our lips and not in our heart.

My bowels! My bowels! Jeremiah 4:19

This morning I felt God say that He was giving me time, not just so I can get ready for my next big trip, but also so that I could spend in depth time with Him like I used to when my life was last uncluttered enough to be able to pour out a couple of hours each day (sadly that was in 2003). So instead of just reading my bible and journaling as usual, I looked up some online commentaries (http://bible.cc/jeremiah/4-19.htm). I like these because they almost cheat for you - they cross-reference already and bring up parellel bible versions.
Now, I have been readying through Jeremiah. Frankly, unless I am severely angry or feel oppressed, it's hard for me to connect with the books of the prophets usually. I have been very slowly reading through the bible, so I began at Jeremiah 4:19:

 "My heart, my heart - I writhe in pain! My heart pounds within me! For I have heard the blast of enemy trumpets and the roar of their battle cries." (NLT)

Actually I am feeling rather serene this morning, so I asked God to show me what he wanted to say with this, because I wasn't really feeling it.  Turning to the bible.cc website, I read:

"My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war." (KJV)

My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at the walls of my heart, Make a noise for me doth My heart, I am not silent, For the voice of a trumpet I have heard, O my soul -- a shout of battle! (YLT)

Now I knew that the ancients considered the stomach to be the seat of the emotions but it still sounds funny for Jeremiah to be yelling out "My bowels!"

But then I remembered. A while ago I was told news so bad that when it sunk in, I felt like retching for two days. I was literally 'sick to my stomach'. To protect the people involved, I could not talk to anyone about it, but my grieving came out physically. And when I read this verse of Jeremiah with that experience in mind, I realised that Jeremiah basically detailed a step by step description of the physical stages of grieving.

First, it hits like a punch in the stomach. At first, I wasn't even aware that I was grieving, because I have been hardened by living here in Thailand and hearing terrible things all the time. I actually thought I may have caught a stomach bug and was doubled over in pain.

Secondly, I think when it says the "walls of my heart", that really does describe the way the heart starts beating so hard that it hurts, and I became nervous that it actually might do some permanent damage. The physical pain really does feel like it's the walls, the muscles around the heart straining to contain it. It's similar to the speed of heart rate after really intense exercise, like having run a sprint. You get short of breath. There's also scientific evidence that when your heart beats that fast, it disorientates you and actually throws you into a mental tunnel-vision panic like state, so you are mentally as well as physically suffering.

Lastly, when it says "my heart maketh a noise", the sound of your heartbeat rushing through the blood in your ears does become very loud. 

So I realized that Jeremiah was expressing this most physical form of travailing, grieving over his people. It was a moment of connection to the suffering of a prophet so many thousands of years ago. And recently I have realized that this kind of grieving can only come from love. Stated negatively, if you didn't care you wouldn't grieve. Being able to love so deeply that the pain of another strikes you physically is a strange side-effect of God's gift to the human spirit, but I wouldn't want it otherwise, even though when it is happening I sometimes pray for it to be taken away.

Poor Jeremiah, the weeping prophet who loved his wayward people.