LOUDER AND SLOWER DOES NOT WORK

 

It just seems so intuitive.  If they don’t understand you, say it louder and slower; and they will understand. 

For those of us who have gotten off the beaten tourist path or lived in a foreign country, we have learned that louder and slower does not work.  If we don’t share a common language, it is hopeless regardless of how loudly we shout. (By the way: they do not “all speak English.”)

What is true of asking directions to the bus station is also true of talking about our experience of faith.  If they do not share our vocabulary or know anything about our belief structure, they are not going to understand us.  We can learn as much from the Apostle Paul.

A Shared Language

Paul’s practice in the book of Acts was to go to the local synagogue and argue from the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah (Acts 17:2).  The folks Paul found in the synagogue shared with him a common body of sacred texts, vocabulary, religious history, and worldview.

 

In our day many of us, who have been long in the faith, assume that others are familiar with our religious vocabulary and, even if not accepting it, understand the conceptual architecture of our faith. 

 

I lived in rural Arkansas in the early 80’s. In that era if you asked someone you met on the street if they had been “washed in the blood,” they likely would have understood your meaning.  Understanding this language, and even using this language, in no way was assurance that they were followers of the way of Jesus; but at a minimum they understood and could speak the language when they needed to.

 

I suspect this would no longer be true even in rural Arkansas.

 

Learning a New Language

Sometimes life requires us to learn a new language.  Paul finds himself in Athens waiting for Silas and Timothy to arrive (Acts 17).  While he waits, he begins talking with Jews and God-fearing Greeks.  “God Fearers” were Gentiles who accepted the ethical teachings of Judaism but had not converted and did not follow the ceremonial laws.  Both these groups would have been familiar with the language of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and the central precepts of the Jewish faith.  They and Paul spoke a common language and drew upon a shared religious universe.

 

Some of the pagan scholars and philosophers, who liked to hang out in Athens and debate new ideas, overhear Paul and call him a “babbler,” one who proclaims some foreign God.  The problem is clear.  Paul is “preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection [17:18].”  These scholars know nothing about any of that.  They likely had little or no awareness of the beliefs of some tiny religious sect of people—the Hebrews—living in the backwaters of the Roman Empire.  These scholars invite Paul with his strange ideas to speak to them in the Areopagus.  The Areopagus was a rocky hilltop where philosophers gathered to debate and criminal trials were held.

 

Paul begins by complimenting them on their passion for truth, saying they are “very religious” (17:22-23).  His use of the word religious is not pejorative as it is sometimes used in our day, as in “Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship.”  Paul in a winsome way tries to establish some common ground in verse 23 by going on to say, "I am going to declare to you the one you have been seeking.”  Affirming common ground is a constructive way to begin any conversation.

 

Paul then gives an unprecedented sermon.  He quotes no scripture, and he makes only an oblique reference to Jesus in verse 31 by saying judgment will come by a “man whom he (God) has appointed.”  In the place of scripture, he quotes a pagan poet twice (verse 28).  This sermon is quite different from his arguing from the Hebrew scriptures, his normal practice in the Synagogue.

 

He does take a shot at the Athenians' ethnocentric arrogance when he says in verse 26: “He made from one every nation of men to live upon the earth.”  The Athenians believed they were a distinct race, having arisen separately from all the other peoples of the world.  Paul knows of this belief.  He was well versed in the mindset and beliefs of his listeners.  In other words, Paul spoke to them in their own enculturated language of ideas.

 

Paul goes on to talk of resurrection, repentance, and judgment. At this point Paul loses most of his audience.  He does not compromise what he believes to be true as he adopts this new language, of ideas, but he does all he can to build a bridge from his beliefs to their beliefs. Some listeners do believe and join the movement (17:32—34), having heard the message within their own enculturated language.

 

In Our Day

We live in a country where many around us have no awareness of the content of the Bible. They know little or nothing of our faith.  They are clueless about what we do when we gather together.  Sadly, much of what they have heard about us is unattractive to them.  We must learn a new language with new vocabulary and imagery if we want to be heard.  To learn that new language we must be among the people speaking it and listen to what they are saying and how they are saying. 

 

We are spiritual expatriates in our own land; we need to acknowledge this. We must learn the language of our land if we want to be heard. Saying the same old things louder and slower will not work.

 

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State

People Like Us

 

How Can Forgiveness Find a Root in Us?

The Outrages of Life

We read about the Burmese army’s terrorizing of ethnic groups and the tens of thousands of women and children dying in the Holy Land and Ukraine.  We see images of bombed houses and hospitals in war zones and hear the hateful shouts of White Supremacists in Charlottesville.  And we wonder: what do we do with our despair, even outrage?

Then there are the more daily hurts and injustices of our lives, perhaps some coming from decades ago.  We try to leave them behind; but as Timon said in the Lion King: “Just because it’s in the past doesn’t mean it still doesn’t hurt.”

In such a world, we wonder how forgiveness can take root in our hearts.

Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness. Volf points out that Jesus reversed Lamach’s policy for responding to outrage.  Lamach says he will avenge himself seventy-seven fold (Gen. 4:23-24). Yet Jesus turned this dynamic on its head and commanded his fellow Hebrews to forgive seventy-seven fold (Matt 18:21). 

Jesus was talking to people who likely took talk of forgiveness with a grain of salt.  Jesus and his fellow Hebrews lived under an oppressively violent occupying army who acted on behalf of a foreign government who committed daily outrages against the people of Palestine.  Forgiveness was not an academic topic for Jesus or his people. 

Jesus was executed by this occupying force in his homeland.  As he dies, he says “Father forgive them” (Luke 23:34). That is where he stood on the topic.

The Irreversibility of Some Outrages

The problem with many of the outrages of the world is their irreversibility, argues Miroslav Volf (Exclusion & Embrace—A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, pg. 121-23).  The consequences of past wrongs continue to plague us, even passing from generation to generation.  The damage cannot be undone; there is no fixing things.

How can we find the freedom to forgive others in such a world?

People Like Us

Philip Caputo, an American soldier in Vietnam, recounts a day when he and his unit were dropped by helicopter into a swampy jungle southwest of Danang.  They made their way through the difficult terrain encountering Vietnamese fighters, who retreated back into the countryside at the Americans’ advance.  Caputo and his comrades cut their way through the thickets, looking for dead and wounded enemy fighters.  It was a dangerous undertaking.  Wounded soldiers can still fire rifles and toss grenades; ambushes were common as battlefields were “mopped up.”

They came upon a hut that had been used as a base camp by the enemy.  They cautiously made their way up to the structure and finally inside.  Among the military equipment and battle manuals left behind, they found a stack of letters to and from families and girlfriends.  There were photos of mothers and fathers and sweethearts.  Notes were scribbled on the edges of some of the photographs. 

Caputo writes:

I was filled with conflicting emotions.  What we had found gave to the enemy the humanity I wished to deny him. It was comforting to realize that the Viet Cong were flesh and blood instead of the mysterious wraiths I had thought them to be; but this same realization aroused an abiding sense of remorse.  These were men we had helped to kill, men whose deaths would afflict other people with irrevocable loss (A Rumor of War pg. 122). 

Caputo goes on to write that when they were back at their base, a PFC “expressed what may have been a collective emotion. ‘They’re young men,’ he told me.  ‘They are just like us, lieutenant.  It’s always the young men who die.’”

They are just like us.

This the nascent realization that begins the journey to forgiveness. This a taking to heart of Genesis 1:27: “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” We are all created in God’s image. Are not all people, in some way “just like us?”

This is the fertile ground into which the seeds of forgiveness are sown.  It make take years, even a lifetime, for those tender shoots to mature. This may be the work of a lifetime.

A Beginning Place

Jesus will always be an aspirational figure for us.  Few of us are Christ-like enough to bless someone while they are unjustly executing us. A good beginning point in the process is to remember the words of that PFC:  “They are just like us.”  In one way they are all like us.  The criminals and despots, the White Supremacists and the occupying armies—they are all made in the image of God.  In that way they are “just like us.”

The image God lies within each of us.  Sometimes that image is so deeply buried, so marred by the powers and principalities of this world, it is very difficult to see.  We can just assume it is there and act accordingly.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State