2 Corinthians 3:1-18 With unveiled Faces Reflecting the Glory of God (+p...

Secret of a successful preacher: Respect for the audience

I surrendered my life to Christ sometime in the spring of 1985. I was staying with a pastor’s family in a town called Dhangadi in far west Nepal, but no one led me to Christ; it was my personal decision. Oblivious to the pastor, two booklets, “Sabaiko Saathi” (collection of gospel stories from Luke) and “God who answers by fire”, had done a remarkable work in my sinful heart. In one afternoon of that spring, I walked to a nearby forest, knelt under a saal tree and asked for the forgiveness of my sins from the savior I had come to know by this time. Came fall that year, and my relationship with my savior had deepened; I could no longer avoid his call to pastoral ministry. But there was a problem. The pastor who I was staying with was certain that I was not going to be a Christian; our relationship had gone sour. At the same time, I came to know that one has to take baptism in order to be a Christian, let alone be a pastor.

When a Missionary Develops Hate Instead of Love

After hearing 8 speakers in three days of special mission conference, the thing that struck me the most was a statement made by a veteran missionary.  He confessed, “I came to a bitter realization that I no longer loved the people I went to save, and I was in love with myself”.  This was I think one of the honest confessions I have ever heard from a missionary.  This person had spent many years in the mission field and has achieved a fair amount of popularity and credibility; his statement had a blanketing effect on 100+ ministers there.

When he uttered those words, my memory flashed back and remembered an incident that took place nearly 15 years ago.  My wife and I were in conversation with a missionary couple.  Having built some kind of trust between us; the missionary wife blurted out the words “I hate Nepalese”, and my wife, also not being a Nepali by birth, with sincere simplicity, replied; “then why are you in Nepal?”  Although the missionary couple overcame their bitterness against the Nepalese and left Nepal only after witnessing God’s work through their humble efforts, there have been many other missionaries who still remain in Nepal with their bitter hatred toward the Nepalese.  In fact, unlike the missionary friends who left Nepal only after making peace in their hearts, some of the existing missionaries in Nepal don’t even mask their hatred.  For them, this hatred is rather a matter of pride in which they boast and claim, “I hate Nepalese, but because of God’s call, I must stay in Nepal; if I had a choice I would never come to Nepal”; they sound very spiritual in hating the people they were supposed to give their lives for. 

The veteran missionary who publicly confessed his failings in loving the people he went to save provided a few reasons as why such hate develops in the hearts of the missionaries.  Two of them stand out.
1) My culture is superior to other cultures:  Such an attitude immediately puts the missionary in direct conflict with the existing culture.  But because the missionary has money-power and an air of superiority, the natives willingly surrender their way of life and living in order to appease the missionary for possible temporary benefits.  The missionary, specially the Asian missionary, takes this appeasement to be his/her true success as s/he fills the laptop with pictures and videos.  While in his/her own land, the missionary may have had never tasted the respect from the public, but the natives begin to call “Sir”, “Madam” “Father”, “Guru” and so on, inflating missionary’s hungry ego.
2) Absolute monopoly over the mission funds:  The missionary’s report is accepted as the infallible document by the sending church/organization (some are freelance missionaries having no accountability at all) while the natives have no clue about how the missionary makes money.  When such unfettered access to large amount of money begins to fall into missionary’s hands; temptation becomes a sanctified word and is replaced with “God’s work”; even if the missionary spends a two weeks holiday in a luxury Riviera, it is credited to “God’s work”.  The missionary may pay handsome salary to his cooks, guards, and drivers, but it will be columned into the "Pastor's salary".  If the missionary buys a luxury car, it will be credited to the vehicle fund for the mission field.  No one can question the missionary’s report. 

The biblical warning, “love of money is the root of all evil” did not come without reason and soon, missionary falls in love with the self and begins to use the natives as products instead of persons deserving love and respect.  When the natives resent the missionary’s marketing strategy, hate is the first child to be born. 

I have earned the wrath of a good many missionary friends and their native collaborators who would rather not talk to me for saying what I have been saying about the corruption in the mission fields.  A particular denomination in my nation (one of many examples) has been establishing churches and constructing church buildings on the foundation of bribery, deception and embezzlement of the money sent by genuine Christians in other nations; all done by the approval of the missionaries who channel the money from their nations to their collaborators.  They have quarrels and lawsuits among themselves; often settled by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars sent by the faithful Christians from the missionary’s nations who think that the money was used for God’s work; of course the missionary knows how to report to his nation!

When a missionary begins to hate the very people s/he went to save; it opens the door for the wave of evil, crippling the Christian witness for generations to come.  The native church becomes the innocent victim and loses all credibility in the eyes of the non-Christian neighbors. 

But on the other hands, when a missionary comes to a foreign land with the love of God in his heart, the foundations of the evil begin to crumble; sooner or later the kingdom of God prevails in those lands.  Carey, Judson, Taylor, Robert Thomas (to Korea, few people know about him) and countless others who laid their lives for the natives with utmost love and respect left their mark for eternity in those lands and their love and respect to lay down their lives have not gone in vain. 

So, my suggestion to our modern missionary friends who cannot love the people they are supposed to save (they think they went to save the natives), it is better that they return to their own lands and save their own soul first.

No One Is Impressed With Your Smooth Talk

In Genesis 27:11-12 Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man while I have smooth skin. 12 What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him and would bring down a curse on myself rather than a blessing"

Just as smooth skin was the liability for Jacob's trickery, the Bible also warns us of the smooth tongue of a wayward woman (Proverbs 6:24), and how God detests the tongues of the false prophets (Jeremiah 23:31). Of the Ten Commandments, false witness against one's neighbor warns of the lies that come out of the wickedness from within the human heart (Matthew 12:34). Among the seven things that God hates in Proverbs 6:16-19, three are related to the wrong use of tongue. The reason God is so concerned with the tongue is because it has the power of life and death (Proverbs 18:20-21); how one uses one's tongue appears to affect everything pertaining to life and death in that person's life.

Don't Settle in Haran

Long before Abraham (Abram) was called by God to leave his country and go to a land he would show him, his father, Terah, had already left his country in the Ur of the Chaldeans and was on his way to Canaan; the land that would eventually become the Promised Land for Abraham. Terah’s desire to move towards Canaan hints us something very interesting. Although there is a legend that speaks of Terah being the idol worshiper, or rather, an idol trader, the Bible speaks the opposite of this legend. A simple reading of the accounts in Genesis 11 and 24, gives us reasons to believe that the legend of Terah being an idol trader could have been the figment of human imagination.

You Will Never Be Able To Marry

I have known Christopher for over a year now.  When he first started to attend our church, I watched him from a distance and occasionally spoke to him either for greeting or for the goodbyes in the church.  But things began to change when I noticed him paying full attention to what I had to say every Sunday; he often came around and made some encouraging comments on my sermons, illustrations and gestures.