The Most Diverse Movement in History I met Senganglu Thaimei (Sengmei to her friends) in New Delhi, India. Born to the Rongmei tribe in the extreme northeast of India, she teaches English literature at Delhi University and writes stories reimaging the tales of her tribe through the eyes of marginalized women. Sengmei is keen to preserve tribal culture, and preservation is necessary. The Naga tribes were reached by Western missionaries in the 19th century. Christianization brought westernization. Today, over 80 percent of the Rongmei are Christian, and tribal traditions are declining. For many, this would be one evidence among many that Christianity is a white, Western religion forcibly exported to other cultures and leaving a trail of cultural destruction in its wake. But the rest of Sengmei’s story complicates the picture. Raised in a nonreligious home, she started following Jesus as a teenager through the witness of a Rongmei friend. Today, she is a passionate Christian and her husband (from a kindred tribe) pastors a multiethnic church. What’s more, as we discussed the history of her tribe, Sengmei warned me not to give Western missionaries too much credit. Westerners saw only a handful of Naga converts, who then effectively evangelized their tribes. And while Sengmei deplores the ways Western culture was illegitimately packaged with Christianity, she is equally clear about the positive effects of Christianization, especially for tribal women. I visited India to meet with 12 Christian academics. Ten came from Naga tribes. Between them, they spoke seven indigenous languages. But they spoke with one voice when it came to Christianity. Cultural anthropologist and Naga tribe member Kanato Chophi stated it most starkly: “We must abandon this absurd idea that Christianity is a Western religion.” Diverse from the Start Centuries of Western art depicting Jesus as fair-skinned may incline some of us to forget that he was a Middle Eastern Jew who lived under oppressive Roman rule and whose followers were first called “Christians” in Antioch—the ruins of which lie in modern-day Turkey. Christianity did not come from the West. But nor was it constrained by its culture of origin. Jesus’ life and teachings scandalized his fellow Jews by tearing through their racial and cultural boundaries. For instance, the hero of the Parable of the Good Samaritan came from a hated ethnic group. Jesus commanded his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). They began at once. In Acts, we see the Spirit enabling the apostles to evangelize people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), including those from modern-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt (Acts 2:5–11). This move of the Spirit to communicate in the heart-language of those listening is one evidence among many that Christianity is a multicultural and multilingual movement. In fact, the Bible itself is multilingual! The Old Testament is in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. But Jesus’ mother tongue was Aramaic, and the Hebrew Scriptures were mostly accessed by first-century Palestinian Jews via Aramaic translations. We see traces of Jesus’ first language in Mark, when he raises a little girl (Mark 5:41), heals a deaf man (7:34), and cries out to his Father on the cross (15:34). The criminal charge posted at the cross (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) was written in three languages—Aramaic, Latin, and Greek—to cover the relevant languages of the time (John 19:20). But there is no single language of Christianity. The Diversity of the Early Church It is a common misconception that Christianity first came to Africa via white missionaries in the colonial era. In the New Testament, we meet a highly educated African man who became a follower of Jesus centuries before Christianity penetrated Britain or America. In Acts 8, God directs the apostle Philip to the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch. The man was “a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure” (Acts 8:27, ESV). Philip hears the Ethiopian reading from the Book of Isaiah and explains that Isaiah was prophesying about Jesus. The Ethiopian immediately embraces Christ and asks to be baptized (Acts 8:26–40). We don’t know how people responded when the Ethiopian eunuch took the gospel home. But we do know that in the fourth century, two slave brothers precipitated the Christianization of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which led to the founding of the second officially Christian state in the world. We also know that Christianity took root in Egypt in the first century and spread by the second century to Tunisia, the Sudan, and other parts of Africa. Furthermore, Africa spawned several of the early church fathers, including one of the most influential theologians in Christian history: the fourth-century scholar Augustine of Hippo. Likewise, until they were all but decimated by persecution, Iraq was home to one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world. And returning to Sengmei’s homeland, far from only being reached in the colonial era, the church in India claims a lineage going back to the first century. While this is impossible to verify, leading scholar Robert Eric Frykenberg concludes, “It seems certain that there were well-established communities of Christians in South India no later than the third and fourth centuries, and perhaps much earlier.” Thus, Christianity likely took root in India centuries before the Christianization of Britain. Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation Many of us associate Christianity with white, Western imperialism. There are reasons for this—some quite ugly, regrettable reasons. But most of the world’s Christians are neither white nor Western, and Christianity is getting less white and less Western by the day. Today, Christianity is the largest and most diverse belief system in the world, representing the most even racial and cultural spread, with roughly equal numbers of self-identifying Christians living in Europe, North America, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Over 60 percent of Christians live in the Global South, and the center of gravity for Christianity in the coming decades will likely be increasingly non-Western. According to Pew Reseach Center, by 2060, sub-Saharan Africa could be home to 40 percent of the world’s self-identifying Christians. And while China is currently the global center of atheism, Christianity is spreading there so quickly that China could have the largest Christian population in the world by 2025 and could be a majority-Christian country by 2050, according to Purdue University sociologist Fenggang Yang. To be clear: The fact that Christianity has been a multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic movement since its inception does not excuse the ways in which Westerners have abused Christian identity to crush other cultures. After the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century, Western Christianity went from being the faith of a persecuted minority to being linked with the political power of an empire—and power is perhaps humanity’s most dangerous drug. But, ironically, our habit of equating Christianity with Western culture is itself an act of Western bias. The last book of the Bible paints a picture of the end of time, when “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” will worship Jesus (Rev. 7:9). This was the multicultural vision of Christianity in the beginning. For all the wrong turns made by Western Christians in the last 2,000 years, when we look at church growth globally today, it is not crazy to think that this vision could ultimately be realized. So let’s attend to biblical theology, church history, and contemporary sociology of religion and, as my friend Kanato Chopi put it, let’s abandon this absurd idea that Christianity is a Western religion. One beautiful title that Jesus calls the Holy Spirit is “the spirit of truth.” Take John 16:13 for example: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will #guide you into all truth. He will *not speak on his *own but will tell you what he has *heard. He will tell you about the future.” What Jesus is telling us here is that when we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, He will guide us in the *direction we need to go. The Holy Spirit will not leave us in confusion but will #reveal the truth to us. He illuminates the dark areas of our lives to give us a clear vision of God’s purpose for us as indicated by Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. The Spirit’s work is essential to the functioning of our Christian life, and his character and attributes are essential to our #understanding of God’s #nature. In order to commune with the Spirit, we must study who the Spirit is and how he works in our life. The Bible is clear that we are all sinful, incapable of our own righteousness and spiritual life. Our minds are hostile to God, and in our flesh, we cannot please him- How could someone who is blind see? Paul explains: “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, *not because of works done by us in righteousness*, but according to -his own- #mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly -through- Jesus Christ our #Savior (Titus 3:3–7). The believer is to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), The righteousness we once hated is now delighted in and longed for, and the desires of the flesh may no longer be gratified (Gal 5:16). He empowers the believer to act in sacrificial service (1 John 4:10; Rom 5:8; Phil 2:5–8) towards their neighbour “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22–23). The Spirit also works by distributing spiritual gifts as he wills (1 Cor 12:11). What we consider to be “spiritual gifts” are different kinds of service to God for the purpose of building up the body of Christ in love (1 Cor 12:5, 12–26). The Spirit works in Us to encourage, uplift, challenge, and edify each other. 🌱
In #Christ, God “creates in himself #one new man in place of the two.” Paul puts this new spiritual #reality and new spiritual #identity in the strongest of terms when he says, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This does -not- mean that there are no more -cultural distinctions or practices- that distinguish members of -different ethnic- groups. What it does mean is that our -union- with Christ produces a -union- with “one another” that #transcends -Any- of our ‘other’ associations in this “fallen” world. As blood is thicker than water in our natural relations, the #Spirit is stronger than both in our Christ union. #Cosmic, #consummative #worldwide #peace is -entirely- dependent on Jesus’ death on the #cross. The -effects- of creaturely reconciliation are felt for all of eternity on account of His #saving #works. The *vertical reconciliation of fallen men to God is #foundational to the *horizontal reconciliation of man to man. The former necessarily accomplishes and secures the latter. Our union with Jesus in His death and resurrection reconciles us to God. And, since we are redeemed by the same Christ, united to the same Christ, and made the beneficiaries of the same benefits of union with the same Christ, we are thereby #united to one another in the #same #body. The disciples had grown up believing that when the Messiah came, He would conquer their enemies, subdue all other nations, and set up a kingdom that would make everything right in the world. But the disciples’ expectations were limited to an earthly understanding of what God’s kingdom really is. The other-worldly kingdom Jesus brought to the earth is a supernatural kingdom that does not receive its -marching orders- from any “worldly source” (Luke 17:21). It’s #powerfully at work in the world, through the lives, and in the hearts of all believers. The Prince of Peace rules and reigns in His kingdom and our peace on earth can be experienced with Him there. This #supernatural #peace is not a worldly brand of peace that ebbs and flows with circumstance. It’s a #perfect #peace powerful enough to serve against the agents and circumstances of ALL unrest. ☺️🌈🕊❤️
The furore about race that has taken the world by storm may have started in a despicable way, but it has opened up conversations that really needed to happen. People are hurting. Injustice has gone on unchecked for too long. Angry responses are devastating lives and businesses. We have to talk about race.
GOD IS NOT COLORBLIND God created each one of us uniquely, intentionally, with a specific destiny in mind. He made us in the skin we’re in – on purpose. Moreover, He sees nations, tribes and ethnicities with unique callings, characteristics and contributions to His greater purposes. Different cultures together create a beautiful mosaic, with each reflecting aspects of God’s glorious nature in different ways, yet each flawed in at the same time. Each people group has its own character, history and journey. When you observe closely how God talks about people groups, He is more than happy to “lump them together” as a singular unit, even though we know very well that He also knows each one of us intimately, as individuals. But God also relates to us in our communities, addresses congregations as one unit (see the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3), and speaks to entire nations as singular entities. You have to be pretty determined to read the Bible through and conclude that He does not see races, people groups and nations. Indeed, we see the glorious climax and evidence of this in Revelation 7:9-12: After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Each people group has its own unique place before the throne of God. All are invited, people will be there from every nation, and all are equal before Him. Our race does indeed matter to God, and is significant to His wider story. He deals with nations as a whole, and our racial heritage and culture will ultimately stand to give glory to the God who created us all. We not only see God dealing with nations in the Scriptures, but even today, we can observe how He seems to pour out His revelation on people groups in remarkable ways. I heard a Cru staff member saying how it seemed wherever they were in the world, Chinese people were coming to faith at that time. Now we see God at work in Iran, which is the fastest growing church in the world (with Afghanistan in second place). The curious thing is that Iranians are coming to faith in great numbers even though they are scattered throughout the nations (something that God spoke about regarding Iran in Jeremiah 49:36 along with several other interesting prophecies). Yes, God sees our ethnicity, wherever we are in the world. GOD IS NOT RACIST When Moses’ sister, Miriam, criticised Moses for his African wife, God punished her with a temporary but terrifying bout of leprosy. Leprosy is a symbol of sin. Not OK, Miriam! When Jonah was reluctant to share the good God of Israel abroad, God insisted that he should go to Nineveh so they could know him too. The first missionary team in Acts was multi-ethnic, and Peter’s ethnocentrism was rebuked. “So Peter opened his mouth and said: “I now truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”” (Acts 10:34-35) However, the sin of racism is most definitely alive and kicking all over the globe. Grievously, people reject and abuse one another on the basis of ethnicity all the time. Injustice, hate and division are rampant, as our hearts so often incline to evil. The ironic thing is that countries most often and most loudly accused of racism – including the US and Israel – don’t even make an appearance on the list in research seeking to determine the most racist countries in the world. According to the findings of a research-based inquiry from 2016, the most racist country on Earth is India, followed by Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, and Egypt. (World Population Review). IT’S NOT JUST THE SKIN, IT’S THE STORY There are reasons why the situation is so explosive in the US. George Floyd’s appalling murder has a wider context. There is such a thing as national trauma, as the people of Israel know all too well. Moreover, that trauma can be literally passed on through the genes, as a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda discovered: Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations. The conclusion stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war. They also analysed the genes of their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders, and compared the results with Jewish families who were living outside of Europe during the war. “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda.2 Similar results appear to occur among descendants of those who went through the horrors of slavery.3 In a phenomenon known as Epigenetic Transmission, signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have even been found in the third generation, and have been detected in the grandchildren of trauma survivors. The science of epigenetics, literally “above the gene,” proposes that we pass along more than DNA in our genes; it suggests that our genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence how we react to trauma and stress… Trauma experienced by earlier generations can influence the structure of our genes, making them more likely to “switch on” negative responses to stress and trauma.4 When looking at people groups, God sees everything they have gone through, and everything they are still going through till this day. And when it comes to the traumas of both the Holocaust and slavery in the US, they are more recent than many seem to think. The pain is still very fresh. We need to look through this lens of history and appreciate the depth of trauma and pain that is continuously and deeply felt, always there, just below the surface. Especially in these tense times of global upheaval, George Floyd’s murder was a match thrown on a petroleum-soaked situation. It’s not the only incident of racial injustice happening today and African slavery isn’t the only incidence of collective trauma, but these are horrors demanding our attention right now. The balm that needs to be applied here needs to be applied to every injustice and racial rift around the globe. GOD OF JUSTICE The God who sees, has seen it all. He has seen the collective suffering and also each individual travesty of justice, whether it was recognized or not. Just as God said that He had been paying close attention to what had been done to the people of Israel during their own 400 years of slavery in Egypt, He hears the cry of all the oppressed: “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their slave masters, for I know their pains.” (Exodus 3:7) The first thing that God’s law addresses after the Ten Commandments is that slaves should go free. God is a God of freedom and slavery goes against all that He is. God rescued Israel out of Egypt, but it took a long time to shake off the shackles even as they journeyed with Him to the Promised Land. Liberation is often a painful process rather than a one off event. God understands and He cares. He is a God of justice and compassion for the oppressed. All who love God and are seeking to be conformed to His image need to fit into this mould too – there is no room for complacency or disinterest when the oppressed cry out. As God’s children, His ambassadors in this world, it is up to us to seek peace and pursue it. We can be vehicles to bring God’s justice and healing, and indeed, that is what we are called to be. Isaiah 58 spells it out very clearly – our religious fasting is no good if we are not prepared to take an active part in loosing the chains of injustice. But what does that look like? HEALING RACIAL RIFTS Closing our ears to the cries of the downtrodden is an offense to God. He is the God who hears our cry and sees our pain, and we need to be willing to be intentional about listening, learning, and deliberately opening our ears to others. We need to get in the habit of getting into another’s shoes and walking around in them for a while, trying to see what they see and feel what they feel. This in itself is an important step in helping to bring comfort and finding the way forward. Being seen and heard really helps. But can deeply entrenched trans-generational trauma ever be healed? Going back to epigenetics, it has also been found that since genetic codes can be changed by trauma, they can also be changed back, breaking the cycle: “There’s a malleability to the system… The die is not cast. For the most part, we are not messed up as a human race, even though trauma abounds in our environment.” At least in some cases, Dias says, healing the effects of trauma in our lifetimes can put a stop to it echoing further down the generations. 5 Healing ultimately comes through repentance and forgiveness. This is the main reason why – even though black lives absolutely do matter – we cannot fully align with the BLM movement. Apart from their pro-choice, anti-Israel / BDS and anti-heteronormative family stance6, there is no goal of forgiveness or reconciliation in the BLM agenda. These things are prerequisites for resolution and healing, and are not optional according to God. Unforgiveness and bitterness will eat us alive and make us pawns in the enemy’s games. Peace, life, and blessing come through repentance and forgiveness. We must make sure we are giving no room whatsoever to the enemy in our hearts, and to give God first place. It’s up to each one of us to examine our lives and make these choices. As God said to His people in Deuteronomy 30, it’s up to us to choose what we want for our own lives and the generations to follow. It’s up to us to choose blessings or curses, God’s way or the way to destruction. THE JEWISH / ARAB CONFLICT AS THE “TOP BUTTON” Dr. Raleigh B. Washington of Promise Keepers once said that the Jewish / Arab conflict was like the top button of a shirt – if you get that one wrong, then all the others will be out of line. As a key advocate for racial reconciliation in America, he could see the spiritual significance of getting things right in the spiritual epicentre of the world. There has been so much tragedy and pain, so much horror and injustice along the paths of Israel and the Palestinian people, but we are seeing the great power of the gospel to change hearts. We have our hope in Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and His ability to heal broken hearts. We are not blind to the trauma of the peoples around us, both in the Middle East and in the nations, but we are witnessing first hand the power of God to restore long-broken relationships. Here at ONE FOR ISRAEL, we can testify to the fact that God can transform, heal, and bring life where there once was death and destruction. We have seen the great blessing that happens when we dwell in unity together. We declare to America and the world that there is hope. Search for and attainment of truth is a virtue that is completely dependent on transparency, free and unobstructed critique and speech, equal platform of ideological representation, and fair and honest elections. Winning elections leads to political power and the incentives to take advantage of security vulnerabilities are great, so it is important that we take reasonable, common-sense steps to make it hard to cheat, while making it easy for legitimate voters to vote. Americans deserve to have an electoral process that they can trust. The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database presents a sampling of recent proven instances of election fraud from across the country. It is important to remember that every fraudulent voter registration could result in a fraudulent vote if it is not detected prior to an election. Or it could affect ballot and candidate qualifying petitions that require voter signatures.
If you’ve ever tried to talk with Muslims about your faith, you’ll find it doesn’t take long before you run into the objection that our Scriptures have been corrupted and are therefore unreliable. But what happens when you have Arabic speakers who were born in Israel where you can see ancient Biblical texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls with your own eyes? In the land in which they were written? Arabs who can read the Hebrew documents fluently, because they grew up speaking Hebrew? This is the unique and privileged position of Israeli Arab believers.
"If the heavens ever did speak, she's the last true mouth piece." 🎶 #ophelia #hoozier #liturgy #40daysoflent The gospel is a universal message of attaining UNDYING hope & Peace. There are many pathways to experience Gods PEACE. In christianity, Yahweh-Christ was the living way and example of service, acceptance, inclusion and unconditional love demonstrated by his teachings and #miracles. God(father)- In the manifested Jesus(son)- died and rose on Easter Sunday(7). The #7Th day represents perfect wholeness, completion, and fulfilled OT messaic prophecy🦋. God Yahweh is manifestation of flesh and spirit. The cross symbolizes #freedom of the Promise🌈land (place of peace 🕊️), the liberation from Metaphorical ⛓️ bondage of human 💔SUFFERAGE (darkness/separation). The Cross symbolizes hope in -New beginings- for everyone through the physical rise resurrection of the spirit. Let the church -spirit of humanity- always be a place of mercy and Hope where EVERYONE is welcomed, Loved and #forgiven. Gods LOVE is unbounded, it has NO limits and exceeds ALL human-understanding. For WE are ALL God’s masterpiece. He has created Us anew in CHRIST, so WE can do the good he planned for us. During #LENT, the Spirit drives us too, like Jesus, into the desert (40) Mk 1:12-15). Here, it is not a physical place but rather an existential dimension -spiritual realm. ..To bring us to the Light, peace, and hope. Christians recognize Christ in each human being, to see him crucified in the sufferings of the abandoned, lost and forgotten of our world, & metaphorically RISEN in Each who makes a New start. Salvation is not an ascent to glory, but a descent in a Reedemable Love that can't be earned, it's BEEN GIVEN and reconciled to ALL -through- the sacraficial saving grace of God #testified through his eyewhitness disciples. (Matt27:62; 28:1; Mark15:42; Luke23:54; John19:31, 42). TRUTH is eternal, everlasting, and for all! #Romans5:8 #Colossians1:12 #ephesians2:8 #Peter4:8 #popefrancis #symbolismrevealed Starting as a small group of Jewish people in Judea, -The “word”- spread quickly throughout the Roman Empire. Despite early persecution of Christians, it later became the state religion. In the Middle Ages it spread into Northern Europe and Russia. During the Age of Exploration, Christianity expanded throughout the world; it is currently the largest religion of the world. Most of the first Christians were ethnically Jewish or Jewish proselytes. An early difficulty came from Within judiasm. There was the question if they had to "become Jewish" before becoming Christian. The decision of St. Peter, was that they DID NOT, and the matter was further addressed with the “Council of Jerusalem.” The doctrines of the apostles brought the Early Church into conflict with some Jewish religious authorities, and this eventually led to the martyrdom of SS, Stephen and James the Great, and “expulsion from the synagogues.” Therefore, there has always been a remenant of native jewish believers throught history.
|
|