Unmuzzled Oxen

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Over the years that I’ve worked in mission leadership, I’ve faced some difficult situations. Like any leader, I have to deal with tough decisions, conflict and criticism; they go with the job. Sometimes when faced with a difficult situation I’ll say; “this is what I get paid the big bucks for.”

Of course, the point of the comment is that I don’t get paid big bucks. I have a grandiose title, but Wycliffe don’t actually pay me a salary. (Read more about how we are funded here.)

So, if I don’t get paid a salary for doing my job, what do I get paid for? Well, another slightly cynical saying of mine is that I don’t get paid for doing a job, I get paid for writing letters (or emails and blog posts, to bring it up to date).

Let me unpack this a little.

Those who generously support us in or work very rarely get to see what we actually do. This is just as true here in England as it was when we lived in Africa. Our work is carried out at a distance from those who pray for us and who provide the finances to keep the mortgage paid. The only way that people know what we are doing and what we are accomplishing is by reading the letters, emails and blog posts that we produce.

This means that there is a huge temptation to put a positive spin on things in our communication. We want people to support us and we want them to be encouraged by what is being achieved through their support. It is very easy and very tempting to make things sound just a little more exciting or encouraging than they really are. I picked up on this in a little booklet about praying for missionaries which you can find here (share it with your friends). We try and make our letters as honest as we possibly can – but the temptation to spin is a hard one to avoid.

I was prompted to write this post by reading this from Jamie. It’s funnier, blunter and better written than mine, so you’ll probably want to read it! It will be all over Facebook in the next couple of days, anyway!

It’s kinda scary when you think about it, but Christian Missions is a billion (that’s BILLION, like, with a B!) dollar industry – with virtually no oversight, no standards of practice, and no hiring requirements. To top it off, it’s shrouded in a cloud of overly spiritualized language, easily manipulated to allow people to believe that more good is coming from their missions dollars than is necessarily true.

By the way, if you would like to test the accuracy of our newsletters, you can sign up to read them on the sidebar of this blog.

Oh, and if the title of the post makes no sense to you, then take a look here.

Cross Cultural Mission: Come On, If You Think You Are Hard Enough

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A few weeks ago I was chatting to a friend on skype when they mentioned that they could hear the sound of gunfire and looting in the street outside while they were typing.

When I was a student, one of my friends had a poster on her wall that said “every day with Jesus is a happy day!”. I sometimes wonder where me and my colleagues have gone wrong!

As I mentioned yesterday, at one time or another every member of our family suffered from malaria during our time in Ivory Coast. I defy anyone to feel happy when they have a malaria headache, a raging fever and a severe bout of d&v; it’s even worse, when you have to watch your kids suffer from the same thing.

Mind you, other friends and colleagues have had tougher times. I know people who have been (unfairly) dragged through the courts in a foreign country, mugged in the street, robbed with violence in their own homes and the list goes on. Some friends have lost children to tropical diseases and others have lost their own lives to disease, violence or accident. In all of these cases it was because people had put themselves in harm’s way because they were following Jesus.

Yes, Jesus has promised to be with us in all circumstances and he is; but it’s tough. We grow through experiencing hardship; but it’s tough. God blesses us as we are obedient to him; but it’s tough. God promises us peace and contentment; but it’s tough. We have to learn to rejoice in all circumstances – and we do; but it’s tough.

Every day a happy day? Not quite.

Of course, not all cross-cultural missionaries face disease, violence and death; some live relatively peaceful lives, often in idyllic situations. Even so, living far from home and having to operate in a different language and culture is far more stressful than most people at home realise.

If you are looking for excitement and variety; them cross-cultural mission work might be for you. If you love the idea of making amazing friends from around the world, then give it a thought. If you are excited about seeing God at work and joining him on his mission, then go for it.

But…

If you aren’t prepared to take the tough stuff: find another career.

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

Doing Risky Things for Jesus

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Yesterday on Twitter, lots of people were tweeting from a conference where one of the speakers said that we need to do “risky things for Jesus”. This got me thinking; have I ever  done anything risky?

Well, I took my family to live in an isolated African village without mains electricity or running water. That was tough; physically and emotionally demanding. Perhaps the hardest thing was our family’s constant struggle with malaria. We all went had repeated attacks and we all had to be treated in hospital on at least one occasional. Sue suffered years of chronic malaria and really wasn’t well for years. I reckon that the most difficult few hours of my life were when our two week old baby got malaria and then went into a coma because of the treatment he was given. Tough times.

However, none of that seemed risky at the time. We just followed where God was leading and did what we had to do. It was hard going and at times it got us down, but in the end, you just get on with things.

The real risky bit happened years earlier, when in our early twenties we both gave up jobs and careers and headed off to Bible College. We had no regular income and just enough savings to pay two terms’ tuition fees – that felt risky.

However, once we had taken that step, the rest just flowed from it; moving to France with a six week old baby, heading off to Africa a year or so later, moving to live in the village and then – just when we felt settled and the translation was going well – leaving the village to take up a leadership role in the capital.

It’s been a fun ride. Hard at times, but exhilarating. At times, it has felt very risky, but in truth, there was no risk at all. Joshua 1:9 says:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Disobeying God and staying in comfortable jobs in the UK – that would have been risky!

93David Sam and Gouabafla kids

Life in Gouabafla 1993

Books I Have Read: Where the Hell is Tuvalu?

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There are a large number of mildly amusing books written by Brits who went to live and work an an exotic foreign location. Where The Hell Is Tuvalu?: How I became the law man of the world’s fourth-smallest country is one of them.

If you have plans to visit Tuvalu or even go and live there, then you might want to get hold of a copy. If not, don’t bother.

Genesis and the Human Condition

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Genesis tells the story of the creation from two angles, each one emphasising different aspects of the relationship between God, mankind and creation.

The first story (Genesis 1:26) highlights something about the nature and purpose of human beings. This story says that human beings, all of them, are made in the image of God. On one level, this means that we have the same capacity for freedom of thought, creativity and morals as God himself. Like God we can think for ourselves, we can imagine things that don’t exist and then bring them into existence, and we can make moral and intellectual choices. Being made in God’s image is a real privilege, but that isn’t all there is to it.

Why do people put photographs on Facebook? For most of us the idea isn’t to show off the photograph itself; the point of the photograph is to show off a place or an event. This is what our family reunion looked like; this is me on the beach in Spain and so on. Photographs are images and they exist to demonstrate the reality that lies behind them. God made us in his image, for just that purpose. Our role is to bear God’s image in the world and to demonstrate to the whole of creation how good, wonderful and caring God is. God doesn’t need a Facebook page – his image is all over the earth, every human being shows something about God.

The second creation story, in Genesis chapter 2 adds to our understanding of human beings. In this account, God first creates the man, Adam. He then looks at the man and says ‘it is not good for man to be alone’ before going on to create Eve. In this little story, we see how, at the most basic level, human beings reflect the nature of God. Like God, we are relational beings; we weren’t created to be on our own and God creates a partner for Adam. Like Adam, Eve is human and shares much of his character and form, but there are subtle differences too.

By the way, in writing about Genesis this way, I’m not staking out a position in the endless creation v evolution debate. If that’s something you want to argue about or comment about, there are plenty of blogs to keep you happy!

Books I Have Read: Found In Translation

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One of the great delights in life is reading a book by someone who really loves what they do and who communicates it well. Over the years I’ve read some fascinating books on subjects as far apart as quantum mechanics and molecular virology. Popular science writing is hard to do, but when it is done well, it is wonderful.

Found in Translation by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche is a superb example of a book written by practitioners who have a gift for explaning their subject. It is informative without being heavy, funny without being flippant; and as much as a non-fiction book can be a page-turner, this one manages to be one.

In my line of work, translation tends simply to mean Bible translation, but this book covers a whole gamut of fascinating fields of translation beyond that of Holy Writ. I have sometimes wondered how sports stars manage to ply their trade in a country where they don’t speak the language – now I know. It would be futile to try and list all of the aspects of translation that are covered in this book, so I won’t try. However, if you like words and you are looking for something good to read on the beach this summer; this should be in your bag (especially if you are involved in Bible translation).

Just a couple of remarks in passing. It was gratifying to read a whole book on translation that never once mentioned dynamic or formal equivalence, These terms which are so often debated on Bible translation blogs (including, sometimes, this one) are simply not a part of the everyday translation lexicon.

One sad omission from the section on literary translation were the two finest translators of great literature; Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, the English translators of the Asterix books. Other opinions on great translators are available – they are just wrong!

I should mention that one of the authors of Found in Translation kindly sent me a copy; however, I’d have been just as positive about it if I’d paid for it myself. It really is an excellent book.

Books I Have Read: Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes

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To be honest, I made a big mistake with this book: I read it. Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad book, it’s actually a very good book. But it isn’t a book for reading, it’s a book to pick up and study when you want to look at a particular passage or theme.

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes – Cultural Studies in the Gospels does what it says on the tin. It helps you to look at the Gospel narrative through new eyes and to see things that are not otherwise obvious to someone separated from the story by 2,000 years and several thousand miles. The insights are useful, though not quite as radical as I’d hoped. I didn’t actually find much that was new in here. However, it is very useful to have all of this material in one place and I’m sure I’ll turn to it in future when writing about the Gospels or preparing talks.

However, the downside of having all of this cultural material in one place is that it makes the book tedious to read. It seems that every page or two says something along the lines of ‘you might think the Gospels say this, but actually they say…’. This is fascinating for the first chapter or so, but (to me at least) it became increasingly irritating as the pages turned. It’s a good book, buy it, put it on your shelves and turn to it when you need some good background stuff on the Gospels. But whatever you do, don’t read it.

No Sacred Language: No Sacred Culture.

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Jesus lived in a world where the public reading of the Bible was only in Hebrew and prayers had to be offered in that language. When Jesus took the giant step of endorsing Aramaic as an acceptable language for prayer and worship, he opened the door for the New Testament to be written inGreek (not Hebrew) and then translated into other languages.

It follows that if there is no sacred language there is no sacred culture. All of this is a natural outgrowth of the incarnation. If the Word is translated from the divine to human and becomes flesh, then the door is opened for that Word to again be translated into other languages and cultures… The long term result is a global church of more than two billion people almost all of whom have a Bible in their own language. Believers are thereby able to break into God’s presence using the language of the heart. We are so accustomed to this heritage that we scarcely notice its beginning, which was Jesus’ choice of Aramaic as the language of theLord’s prayer. Jesus affirmed the translatability of the message when he began this prayer with the great word Abba.

From Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey.

Of course, we shouldn’t be complacent that most of the world has a Bible, their are still millions who don’t have a single word of Scripture in their heart language. If you would like to know how you can be involved in rectifying this, take a look here.

Vision and Action

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Do you have a vision for the things you do or the reason you do them? It is a question that all Christians need to ask from time to time.

In Christian ministry, the work can be so absorbing and interesting that we easily get bound up in it and lose sight of why we are doing it. When we focus on what we are doing rather than the goal, we become reluctant to change or to adapt to circumstances: ‘We’ve never done it that way before!

When Sue and I joined Wycliffe in the 1980s, we were excited about what we were going to do. We were going to live in a village, learning the local language, doing language research, teaching literacy and helping to lead a translation project. After many years of work we were able to hold a newly-printed Kouya New Testament in our hands.

That approach was typical of many hundreds of Wycliffe workers all round the world. This was how we did things. But the important thing was not what we did, but why we did it. Today, Kouya people are able to read the New Testament in their language and are drawn into a deeper relationship with God as a result.

Our vision is not to ‘do translation’; it is to see people engaging with God’s word in the language they understand the best. This means that we have to be flexible. We work in new and different ways to help people engage with the Bible.

In some parts of the world, Wycliffe members do something very similar to what Sue and I did: living in a village, learning the language and heading up the translation. For those circumstances, it’s the best approach. There are other places where the day-to-day work of translation goes ahead without a Wycliffe missionary anywhere in sight. Local Christians lead the work, with expatriates serving as advisors and consultants.

Most projects still aim to produce printed Scriptures, just as we did in Kouya. But in some situations, the translated Scriptures aren’t actually printed, but are downloadable from the web and shared on mobile phones; persecuted Christians can’t carry around a big Bible the way that we can!

We worked on a book to be read, but millions of people around the world can’t read. They can gather together and listen to the Scriptures read out on an MP3 player – just as the very first Christians listened to Scripture being read to them.

The vision doesn’t change, but the things we do to accomplish it do.

This is an article I wrote for the latest edition of Words for Life: the Wycliffe Bible Translators magazine.

It’s Not Rocket Science (But it Might Involve Time Travel)

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Bible Translation really isn’t rocket science. OK, there are lots of tricky technical aspects to it which are far from easy, but the basic principles about why translation needs to happen are quite straightforward. To illustrate this, I’m knicking the whole of a post from Archdruid Eileen, which captures the issue pretty well:

Just a thought, really.

Let’s take the words of Jesus and consider that they would have been spoken in Aramaic, in all likelihood.

Somebody translated that into Greek. And then St Matthew (let’s suppose it’s the Beatitudes we’re talking about here) gathered and maybe regularised the Greek interpretations of what Jesus said on the Mount.

Or if it were the Matthew, maybe he did the translation himself, from the Aramaic in his own memory.

Modern Bible translators take that Greek translation and turn it into English.

Now if you’re King James to the bone, then you’ve got to then make the act of translation from KJV to your own thought-forms. Although, to be fair, if you’re that much of a KJV wallah your thought-forms may well be 17th Century anyway.

And after those 2-3 acts of translation, chances are you’ll still end up with the words “hunger and thirst after righteousness”, or something similar. So if you want to explain that to a non-Christian you’ll need to do another translation step.

It strikes me the options to improve the situation are this, in descending order of utility in accurately understanding the words of our Lord:

1) Invent the Tardis and go back to the 1st Century Middle East, taking everybody you might want to share your faith with, with you.

2) Learn Koine Greek. Better, learn it yourself and then teach it to all your friends.

3) Don’t keep shouting at your friends in KJV English.

4) Try and think of a good way of saying “hunger and thirst after righteousness”.

My Little Jog Round London

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My bucket list just got shorter! On Sunday, I did something I’ve wanted to do for thirty odd years – I completed a marathon.

The London marathon is a remarkable event and I would encourage anyone to give it a go. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said to me that they could never run a marathon, but if I can, then just about anyone can!

The day itself was remarkable. We started from Greenwich in bright sunshine, which after months of freezing temperatures was a bit of a surprise. After all of my training, I was fairly confident that I could finish the marathon – if in a rather slow time – but I was rather worried about my joints holding up. True to expectations, my knees became very painful at around 12 miles and I had to alternate five minutes of running with two of walking for a while. Sometime around 23 miles, I’d either worked through the injury or the pain killers were kicking in again and I was able to run once more – finishing with a little bit of a flourish on The Mall.

It hurt a lot, but it was great fun and I’m wondering what I can do to make it possible to run another marathon at some point (losing some weight would be a good start).

Sue and Sam turned up at three points on the course to cheer me on (though I didn’t see them on the third occasion) and the team from Samaritan’s Purse were a great encouragement too. Sue took this picture at around the half way point when I stopped to say hello.

Marathon Mile 13 500By the way, there is still time to sponsor me.

Samaritan’s Purse is an international reliefe and development organisation that works through local churches to proclaim and demonstrate the love of God amongst communities in need in 18 countries across Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Africa.

My aim is to raise £3,000 towards providing drinking water and sanitation for some of the world’s neediest people through theTurn on the Tap campaign. A few basic facts might help you understand why I see this as so important:

  • The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 20kg, the same as the average UK airport luggage allowance.
  • The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day, less than what we use to flush the toilet with just once.
    1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases (including cholera); 90% are children under 5, mostly in developing countries.
    Diarrhoea kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
    In developing nations, approximately 90 percent of sewage systems are being emptied into rivers, lakes, and nearby streams that communities use for drinking water.

    The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day, less than what we use to flush the toilet with just once.

  • 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases (including cholera); 90% are children under 5, mostly in developing countries.
  • Diarrhoea kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
  • In developing nations, approximately 90 percent of sewage systems are being emptied into rivers, lakes, and nearby streams that communities use for drinking water.

Those who know me, know that I’ve spent my adult life working to provide the marginalised people of the world access to the Scriptures and education in their mother tongue. These same people are very often the ones who don’t have clean water or basic sanitation – I hope my pounding the footpaths of High Wycombe and London will inpsire you to help me to help them.

Oh, you want to know how long I took? 5:46 – hardly a great time, but it is faster than Mo Farrah has managed so far!

 

Good Translation: Bad Translation

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I’m currently thoroughly enjoying Found in Translation by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche. It is a fascinating and amusing overview of the world of translation. I’ll give a fuller review when I finish it. Those who are interested in Bible translation will be immediately struck by the fact that the authors never talk about ‘dynamic equivalence’, ‘formal translation’ or any of those other terms which creep in whenever Bible translation is mentioned. These categories, so beloved of Bible translation polemicists, are simply not used in the wider world of translation.

In a recent blog post, Simon Cozens picks up on this theme.

And this is what bothers me about the whole discussion over Bible translation. People have got more concerned about literal versus dynamic, word-for-word versus thought-for-thought, and so on that they forget that when it comes to translation, there’s really only one dimension that matters: is it a good translation or a bad translation? It’s possible to do a literal translation really well, especially in languages that are genetically similar. And this is where I think English speakers are at a disadvantage thinking about translation, because their first experiences of translation tend to be of languages like French or Spanish which have similar modes of expression to English, and therefore they’re tricked into thinking that literal translation is necessarily a good idea. But where a target language has a very different mode of expression from the source, for instance when translating from Japanese to English, or from Hebrew to English, literal translation generally ends up being bad translation.

Make sure you read Simon’s full post, it’s well worth it.