Once again news is coming out of Plateau State in Nigeria of horrendous inter-ethnic clashes. The simple analysis is that the violence is a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. Certainly, religion plays a huge part in the situation, but the fact that the fighting is between settled, indigenous farmers (who happen to be Christian) and nomadic herdsmen (who happen to be Muslim) should point us to a more complicated reality. From time immemorial, there has been conflict between settled populations and wandering herdsmen. The religious aspect heightens the conflict and makes it easier for the two sides to demonize one another. This video from Al Jazeera gives a balanced report of what is happening.
Ruth Gledhill, has a harrowing report from the local Bishop:
Yesterday I interviewed Archbishop Kwashi by telephone for our report in today’s Times. He said he began to hear about the massacres as he was conducting a confirmation service. A messenger from one of the three predominantly Christian villages attacked ran to the church where he was celebrating, to show him photographs of the massacres on their digital cameras…
Nearly all the photographs received at The Times have dead children in them. They are too distressing for publication here.
…The Archbishop said: ‘It was not a good sight at all. The villagers had no chance whatsoever. They were slaughtered. I could see machete wounds in the necks of children. Kids from age zero to teenagers, all butchered from the back, macheted in their necks, their heads. Deep cuts in the mouths of babies. The stench. People wailing and crying. Some have lost their voices. I could not stand it. From what I saw from a distance, it was over 100 killed in one village. I don’t know what sparked it off. I thought we were making headway after the previous crisis in January.
‘There have been several meetings (between Muslims and Christians). I myself and a Muslim cleric on our own initiative have just started getting together with a couple of senior leaders and thinkers, trying to see if we could bring our own contribution to a peaceful co-existence. This came from somebody else.
‘I think it is all Christians killed. The Muslims who were living with them in the villages I heard had left the village. We are hoping now that the government of Nigeria will see that we have a very, very big problem. The kind of cooperation that came into play – that could violate a curfew – that could take the law into their own hands – it is a very strong organisation. (Read the whole report.)
When you’ve finished reading, please take a minute or two to pray for the situation in Nigeria.
Yesterday I interviewed Archbishop Kwashi by telephone for our report in today’s Times. He said he began to hear about the massacres as he was conducting a confirmation service. A messenger from one of the three predominantly Christian villages attacked ran to the church where he was celebrating, to show him photographs of the massacres on their digital cameras.
As the day went on, he heard about the two others. He went to one of the villages to look for himself but decided to stay on the boundaries and not get too close as he could not cope with the stench and the terrible wounds he saw on babies and children in particular.
He believes the Muslim occupants of the villages were tipped off as they all left before the massacres, he reported. Also, he believes a significant organisation was behind the killings because they happened during curfew with the army in the area, as it has been since the January killings.
Nearly all the photographs received at The Times have dead children in them. They are too distressing for publication here.
The Archbishop said: ‘It was not a good sight at all. The villagers had no chance whatsoever. They were slaughtered. I could see machete wounds in the necks of children. Kids from age zero to teenagers, all butchered from the back, macheted in their necks, their heads. Deep cuts in the mouths of babies. The stench. People wailing and crying. Some have lost their voices. I could not stand it. From what I saw from a distance, it was over 100 killed in one village. I don’t know what sparked it off. I thought we were making headway after the previous crisis in January.
‘There have been several meetings (between Muslims and Christians). I myself and a Muslim cleric on our own initiative have just started getting together with a couple of senior leaders and thinkers, trying to see if we could bring our own contribution to a peaceful co-existence. This came from somebody else.
‘I think it is all Christians killed. The Muslims who were living with them in the villages I heard had left the village. We are hoping now that the government of Nigeria will see that we have a very, very big problem. The kind of cooperation that came into play – that could violate a curfew – that could take the law into their own hands – it is a very strong organisation.
Alan Hirsch, co-author of one of my favourite books The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church gave an excellent seminar on the mission of the church at a recent conference. You can watch it on video here (choose the Hirsch video, when you follow the link) . It takes about forty five minutes, but it is well worth the time.
A couple of good quotes from the video:
Within three to five years of people becoming Christians, they no longer have any significant relationships outside of the church.
We’ve got a darned good product, but our delivery system is stuffed.
At first glance, it seems as though Antioch marks just another step in the process of the Jesus movement becoming more open, but in fact, Antioch marks a paradigm shift: a complete break with the past. In this short passage we see two very significant things happening.
The first is that the Greek believers who started telling other Greeks about Jesus didn’t tell them about Jesus the Messiah, they spoke about the Lord Jesus. This may only seem like a small thing, but it has huge consequences. Messiah was a Jewish term and would mean almost nothing to Greeks, so the disciples found a Greek term: Lord, to use in its place. The miracle at Pentecost told the disciples that any language could be used for the Gospel and now these Greek believers are putting that lesson into practice. In order to explain the message of Jesus they dropped the sacred term Messiah and used the easily understandable word ‘Lord’ instead. They taught about Jesus according to the context in which they found themselves. Because the believers had basically lived in a Jewish context up until now, they had never had to do anything like this before. But this little group of Greek disciples were now starting to use and develop the principles of cross-cultural mission.
There were a couple of unintended consequences of the use of the term Lord. The first is that people started to treat the word Messiah, or Christ in its Greek form as part of Jesus name. Jesus Christ is Lord, really means that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, but we think of Christ as being Jesus family name as in John Smith is my friend. The other consequence is that the confession, Jesus Christ is Lord eventually brought the believers into conflict with the Roman Empire. The Romans proclaimed that Caesar, the Emperor was God and they swore allegiance to him by saying that Caesar is Lord. The disciples refused to say that, for them there was only one Lord: Jesus Christ. Many of them suffered for this simple confession of faith.
Alongside the use of the word Lord, the other significant thing that happened at Antioch was that this is where the disciples were first called Christians. In all probability this was an insult. People who had been crucified were considered the lowest of the low and to name the disciples after a man who had been crucified as a criminal was to brand them with a pretty unpleasant name. But the disciples took it as a badge of honour, and from now on the Jesus movement has a name: Christianity. They were still not completely separated from Judaism, but it was now clear that this was a distinct group, not just a slightly strange Jewish sect.
It is no surprise that the Christians gained a distinct identity in the same place that they got to grips with reaching out to others in mission. As long as they stayed within their Jewish cocoon, they were not able to become the people that God intended them to be. But in Antioch, they broke free of that cocoon, reaching out to their Gentile neighbours with the Good News of Jesus and in the process, they became the Christian Church. It was mission that gave them their sense of separate identity from their Jewish roots. The Church was born in Antioch, not Jerusalem!
The Story of the Bible has an interesting shape. It starts talking about the relationship between God and all of humanity, tracing creation and then the fall. Then for a long, long section The Story only concentrates on one nation, one people group. And then in Acts it starts to broaden out again and by the time we reach the end, all of humanity will be included once more. I tend to visiualise The Story by thinking of it being thick at both ends but thin in the middle.
When you look at The whole Story in this way, something suddenly becomes very clear. At each of the transitions between thick and thin, there is a story about language. In Genesis 11, just before God calls Abraham there is the tower of Babel and then here in Acts we have the story of Pentecost and people miraculously hearing the story of Jesus in their own languages.
I don’t believe this is a coincidence!
Let’s take a trip back to the Tower of Babel. This incident occurred at perhaps the worst point in the history of humanity, when the fall at reached its lowest depths and just before God started his rescue plan through Abraham. Humanity was concentrated in modern day Iraq and they realised that their lives were limited and that no one remembered them when they died. So, they set about building a huge tower to commemorate themselves. God had created humanity to find its eternal significance in relationship to himself, not through bricks and mortar and seeing the tower, God dashed it to the ground and then scattered humanity across the earth at the same time mixing up their languages so that people no longer had a common tongue.
Make no mistake about it, what God did at Babel was a judgement on humanity. But God is remarkable, and that judgement carried with it a huge blessing for mankind. Firstly, in scattering men and women around the earth He helped them fulfil one of His earliest commandments to us. But it is the language issue that I want us to think about. God confused human language so that mankind could never again unite to find a replacement for God, such as the Tower of Babel. But in mixing up the languages God gave to us one of mankind’s most precious gifts, the gift of language and culture.
Language and culture are wonderful. It is hard to separate one from the other, but they bring incredible richness to human existence. Just think about food for a moment. There are the great world cuisines; French, Chinese, Indian and Italian. But what about the humble British Sunday roast? Then there is sushi from Japan, banana foutou from Ivory Coast, hamburgers from the US and so the list goes on… Every country has its own favourite food and they are (mostly) delicious. Likewise each culture has its own type of art; music, literature or sculpture. Every culture brings something unique to the sum total of human existence. One of the great wonders of our modern age is that we have access to so much different culture from around the world.
Of course, not everything about culture is worthwhile. A few years ago, we were returning from holiday in France on a cross channel ferry at the same time as hundreds of England football supporters were returning from a big match. A minority of the supporters drunk colossal quantities of beer on board the ferry, became very aggressive and generally made life unpleasant for the rest of the passengers. Football and large quantities of alcohol are a genuine part of English culture – but not a particularly attractive one.
The bottom line is that culture reflects the human beings who create it. We are created in the image of God and capable of amazing beauty and creativity, but we are fallen and capable of amazing depravity – our culture is just the same.
Just as each culture brings something new to humanity, so does every language. Each language is capable of expressing some things better than all other languages. Why else to coffee shops sell cafe latte rather than milky coffee? On a deeper note, each language has the ability to express itself in ways that other languages can’t quite manage. There are subtleties of meaning and inference that just can’t quite be transferred from one language to another without losing something. And this is really important, because that means that each language can say things about God and is capable of praising God in ways that other languages can’t quite reach. When God multiplied the languages at Babel, He also gave us the possibility of understanding Him and praising Him in new ways. Babel was a judgement, but at the same time God blessed humanity immeasurably and revealed even more of us to himself.
Which brings us to Pentecost. Sometimes people say that at Pentecost, God reversed the Tower of Babel, but that is exactly what He didn’t do. At Pentecost, God underlined the linguistic diversity that He introduced at Babel. Everyone in the crowd was able to understand the disciples speaking in his or her own language. The first miracle that the Holy Spirit did was to make it possible for the story of Jesus to be understood in many languages all at once. The Triune relational God did nor force conformity on his followers by making them all hear his message in one language, He encouraged diversity by allowing them to hear in their own language. From even before the Christian church was called Christian, it was multi-cultural and multi-lingual.
This theme of using different languages was later taken up by the Gospel writers, who wrote the stories of Jesus down in Greek. Jesus almost certainly spoke Aramaic when he taught, but the Gospel writers chose to record his words in Greek so that more people could understand them. Christianity does not have a sacred language, we don’t even have a record of Jesus words in the form in which they were spoken. The implications for this are enormous and reverberate down though history. Just compare Christianity to Islam for a brief moment. Islam has a sacred language, if you want to read the Koran or pray, you have to do so in Arabic. Effectively, all Muslims have to adopt a large slice of Arabic culture from the time of Mohammed. You see this in the way that many Muslims wear Arabic clothing, even if they are not Arabs, adopt Arabic names and so on. Christianity is simply not like that. You can pray in any language and the Bible is the most translated book in the world. There is no Christian equivalent of the pilgrimage to Mecca, where thousands upon thousands of devout Muslims all dress the same and go through the same rituals at the same time. The God of Christianity is a God of variety and the Gospel can be lived and experienced in every culture on the earth. If it couldn’t, then I’d be writing in Aramaic, which would be tough as I don’t speak it and most of you won’t read it.
There is one further important aspect to draw from this diversion into languages and cultures. If Christianity can be expressed in all languages and cultures, then it is also true that it doesn’t belong to any particular language or culture. No one can say that they own the Christian faith.
This is a part of the chapter on Acts in the book which I’m struggling to write. If after this, long post, you still have the energy to read more about Babel, my colleague Mark has published an excellent piece which covers some similar ground.
Lawson Stone has just published four superb, short essays on the hows and whys of Bible translation in the early days of the Christian era. The style is informative and also very entertaining:
So as the world increasingly spoke Latin, the Greek versions of the Bible that had become sacrosanct for most Christians became as obscure as they were sacred! Church leaders instinctively knew that a Bible nobody can understand could not provide a consistent rule for faith and life. So translations into Latin began breeding like cats and soon prestigious and influential Christian leaders began using versions of the Bible in Latin that had, at best, only a tenuous claim to be faithful translations.
If you are at all interested in Bible translation, you should find time to read these articles. I reckon that my Wycliffe colleagues should consider them as being obligatory reading.
This may not be fantastic mathematics, but this is a wonderful new resource for people who want to pray for Bible translation around the world.
The 24×7 Prayer Initiative is an opportunity for people to join an ongoing dialogue with our Heavenly Father about the needs of Bible translation work underway and for the work yet to begin. Our desire is to see that in every moment of every day there are people praying for Bibleless people and for those engaged in the Bible translation movement worldwide.
Approximately 250 million people still need God’s message of love and hope in the language they understand best. Make a difference. Make a commitment.
Go on, visit the site, sign up and commit to praying for this initiative. The amazing thing in all this is that God answers our prayers!
Every now and then, Facebook pops up a suggestion that I should join a Christian group called ‘Lets find a million Christians on Facebook‘ or ‘Jesus has the most fans‘ or words to that effect. The latest spin on this is a Facebook group trying to get ensure that a Christian artist is number one at Easter. Mouse has the story here. But are these groups worth the effort?
The implication is that if lots of people sign up to a Facebook group, or download a single, then it says something positive about the Gospel, but does it?
I think that we have to question whether demonstrating that something is popular makes any comment regarding its value. Pornography, in one form or another, is one of the most popular uses of the Internet, does this mean that pornography is good because millions of people look at it? Of course not. Popularity has never been a good guide to moral issues. Getting a million people to sign up to a Christian group in Facebook proves nothing more than there are a million people signed up to the group.Some will be sincere, others will sign up for a laugh, and most people will sign up and then forget they did!
In case you are interested, Michael Jackson currently has the most fans on Facebook.
There is another issue that I have with these sorts of groups: what happens if they fail in their aim? Currently the group ‘I bet Jesus can break the record for the most fans on Facebook‘ has less than a twentieth of the number of fans that Michael Jackson has. It doesn’t even have 10% of the fan base that Starbucks has. Does this mean that Jesus is less important or influential than a troubled singer and a vendor of caffeine? No it doesn’t. But if the group doesn’t grow substantially, then the founder is going to look rather silly and sadly, this will reflect on Jesus.
To be honest, I’ve got no objections to people buying Christian records or joining Christian Facebook groups; I’ve done both myself. But when we start to invest these things with an eternal significance, I believe we are on dangerous ground. In the wilderness, Satan tempted Jesus with popularity and cultural power without spiritual authority. Jesus resisted that temptation, and today we should resist falling into it on his behalf.
Our call is to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God; we demonstrate the truth of our message through love, obedience, humility, just and truth. If we have those things, we don’t really need Facebook groups to show that the Gospel is real. And if we don’t have them, then all of the Facebook groups or number one singles in the world, won’t convince our generation of the truth of the Gospel.
William at Onesimus Online has come up with another brilliant blog post:
There is a persistent myth among both Christians and Muslims and others that Christianity is a Western religion that is foreign to Africa. And yes, it is true that Western versions of Christianity, such as Roman Catholicism and all forms of Protestantism are all imports from the 15th century onwards (Roman Catholics) and the 18th century onwards (Protestants – Moravians of all people!). And unfortunately it is also true that these imported versions of Christianity were often the vanguard of attempts by European powers to claim, subjugate, exploit and even colonize vast swaths of the African continent. But it is wrong to suggest that, therefore, Christianity is a Western religion (as opposed to Islam or more local traditional religions).Christianity has been ‘African’ since the time of the apostles, with increasing numbers in Egypt and North Africa until majorities in both areas were at least nominally Christian. The same for the ‘upper Nile’ region, present day northern Sudan. And Ethiopia (or more precisely, the Axumite empire) experienced a dramatic Christianization with the conversion of the emperor Ezana in the 4th century, and the subsequent consecration of the former Syrian slave Frumentius as the first bishop in Axum by the hand of none other than Athanasius, patriarch in Alexandria. (Read more.)
Tim Davy has just posted the publisher’s blurb for Chris Wright’s new book, Mission and the People of God which you can read here. It looks as though this new work, due out later this year, will be an excellent companion to the wonderful ‘The Mission of God‘.
I don’t know what your stereotypical view of a cross-cultural missionary is; it almost certainly involves a North American or a European working in some tropical part of the world. However, the reality is often very different; as this story shows.
Since 2000, Deva and Sudha Subir have been working to commit the language of the Bhilodi people in Gujarat, a western India state, to written script for the first time and to translate the Bible into their language. In their early 30s with two young children, the Subirs themselves are from Tamilnadu, the region around Madras in south India, though Sudha grew up in Delhi where her parents live and work. I had opportunity to visit with this lovely young couple when another couple from the Tamil service introduced me to them.
The Subirs spent the first five years of their ministry simply living with the Bhilodi, learning the language and exploring how to commit it to writing. Currently they are working on Bible translation and have made substantial progress. Throughout their work they have had technical assistance from Wycliffe Bible Translators, the world’s premier scripture translation agency, founded in the early 20th century by William Cameron Townsend…
The Subirs readily identify themselves as missionaries, quite properly so since they are bearing witness to the gospel in numerous dimensions of difference – linguistic, ethnic, religious, cultural and geographical. India has 16 major languages, many of which are as different from each other as French and Italian are from German or Russian. Christians offering mission across any of these differences, especially between south and north, encounter not only different languages but very different cultural patterns of music, poetry, dance, architecture, caste boundaries and cuisine.
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