Thursday, February 16, 2017

NO WHERE TO HIDE 2: GOD'S PRESENCE IS INESCAPABLE



But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God! perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” Jonah 1:4-6

Jonah thought he could run away from God’s purpose to preach to the Ninevites so instead of going 850 miles to the eastern bank of the Tigris River to their city, he is fast heading the opposite direction to the farthest city called Tarshish. He hops on a ship and pays his fare (Jonah 1:3). All this just to get away from God’s presence (I can imagine him pumping Bobby Brown’s “I Gotta Get Away”, I’m dating myself already). He is about to find out how serious Jehovah is with His purpose to save all humanity from the curse of sin, death, and sickness.

Jehovah decides He is going to do some wind hurling on this runaway ship and creates a perfect storm. So scary is this storm that each of these hardened sailors – not known for their religious propensities – starts to cry out to his god. Think four-letter word vocabularies bursting forth in rapid prayer to whatever gods they could recall in such a storm. Just think, don’t say. Then the prayers don’t seem to be working because this ship is on the verge of breaking up. That’s when they decide to do their own hurling of the precious cargo overboard. Still, the storm does not seem to be abating and the captain, probably wracking his brains about what else to throw overboard, finds Man of God Jonah sleeping like a baby below deck. In alarm and a very ironic reversal of roles, the sailor admonishes the prophet for not praying to his god in such a calamitous situation.

My point: when you actively refuse and run away from God’s purpose for your life, you set yourself up for God’s disaster because His presence is inescapable. You can’t run from God. Just like Jonah, He will foil your “initiatives” until you fail. Sometimes your failures are not because Satan is attacking you or your enemies, however you conceive of them, are out to get you; no, it’s because God is stopping you and very intent on your not succeeding in your disobedience. You may do the Esther Fast thing (three days without food or water)  or the Jesus Anointing (forty days dry fast) but it ain’t working, baby, because you just made the One who makes things work mad at you. 

Secondly, Jonahs are liabilities to their fellow passengers. All the cargo gets wasted in trying to keep the ship afloat. Jonahs are kind of expensive to hang around because helping Jonahs is like trying to stop God from disciplining them. We all know who wins in the end, right? So you may want to help a Jonah from a far by shouting to them that it’s time they started obeying God. Trust me, you don’t want to be in the same boat with them. Plus, Jonahs are just not sensitive to the chaos they are causing. While you are busy praying yourself hoarse for God to change things for them, Jonahs are peacefully sleeping downstairs. 

Finally, when it is obvious to everyone, even four-letter word spewing sailors, that this is a situation that requires God’s intervention, the backslidden Jonah has no desire at all to call on God. Disobedience always leads one further away from God and desensitizes one to the spiritual realm. Sad. 

You don't have to be a Jonah.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

NO WHERE TO HIDE: GOD'S PURPOSE IS NON-NEGOTIABLE




Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the Son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. – Jonah 1:1-16, English Standard Version

Many of us learn the hard way. We will only obey after we have learned a bitter lesson just like Jonah. He had to learn that disobedience to God brings God’s disaster. I am pretty sure you don’t want to learn that lesson the Jonah way. So what do you need to know and do to avoid such a situation in your life? Jonah 1:1-16 shows us four ways how we can avert such a disaster and over the course of the week I will be discussing them. For this post though, the first thing to know is that God’s purpose for your life is non-negotiable and you disobey it at our own peril.

Jonah (Hebrew - “dove”) the son of Amittai (Hebrew - “faithfulness”) is a tried and tested prophet of Jehovah, God’s covenant name revealed to Israel through Moses and usually translated LORD in many English versions. He prophesied in the prosperous years of King Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23-28). Jehovah sends him to Nineveh, some 850 miles on the eastern bank of the Tigris, with a mission to warn the city of God’s impending judgment because of its evil. But he decides to head the opposite direction, to Tarshish. 

Now, to understand properly what’s going on with Jonah, we need to remember that God’s purpose is to restore His creation after it “fell” because of Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Satan had lied to them through the serpent that if they disobeyed God’s instruction not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, they would be just like God (Genesis 3:5). Talk about ego! Anyways, with their disobedience they shut themselves off from God’s blessing and brought curses upon their lives and the whole of creation (Genesis 3:15-19) that the world has had to deal with ever since. But God, gracious and merciful as He is, was not done with humanity. In the midst of the curses, God proclaimed the first good news of humanity’s restoration when He said that the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent (Satan) and so set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the fulfillment of His restorative purpose (Genesis 3:15b). Throughout the Bible, God chose people with whom He has worked with to bring to fruition His on-going plan of salvation. People like Abraham to who he promised myriads of descendants, a land, and to be a blessing to the nations of the world (Genesis 12:1-3). The last promise is also what Jonah’s mission was about: to preach to Nineveh – one of the nations of the world – that God was going to judge this great city because of their evil. Ultimately, this last promise would climax in the sending of “His only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). So when Jonah decides that he is not going to go east to Nineveh but to the furthest western city that was thought to be the end of the world, Tarshish, he has set himself against God’s very purpose of redeeming humanity and creation to Himself.

Now before you rail accusations against Jonah that he is a traitor and a false prophet, look first at the log in your eye. More than Jonah, you have a very clear mission of what God wants to do in the earth. In fact, you have John 3:16 memorized from childhood. You know the many that surround you that live lives characterized by evil. These are the contemporary Ninevites whose evil has come before God and are in danger of a worse judgement at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ when comes to judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1). You too, believer in Jesus Christ and partner with Him in the salvation of the nations, are in the same, if not worse (because of the greater revelation of God’s purpose in the New Testament) situation as Jonah when you go the opposite direction of not sharing the Good News of Jesus with those destined for God’s wrath.
Many of us are mature enough to know the areas of service that God has called us to. No, it’s not just within the four walls of the church. It’s also in those classrooms, offices, clinics, marketplaces, etc that God has sent us to. If we are not sharing and living the Good News of God’s kingdom in the spheres of influence He has sent us to, we too have ran off to Tarshish and are in danger of God’s disaster coming on us just like Jonah. Sounds scary? It is.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

REFLECTIONS ON MARCH FOR LIFE



On 6th December, 2016, I was part of the Lilongwe March for Life that was organized by the Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM) and the Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM) in all but five of Malawi’s 28 districts. The marches were a culmination of 14-days of prayer for life and family that began on 21st November and ended on 4th December. They were primarily to counter the supposed government plan to table pro-abortion and pro-same-sex legislation during the current sitting of parliament, 21st November to 16th December. The government spokesperson, however, said that there was no such impending legislation in parliament; rather, there was a Law Commission report making recommendations to government to adopt new legislation on abortion. Of course, such sentiments did not stop the march from proceeding. As somebody that was there, I would like to offer my observations about the Lilongwe march’s positivity and orderliness, show of religious unity in the public sphere, maturing ecumenism, and political muscle-flexing. In my next installment, Beyond the March, I will share my thoughts of what should happen after the march. I have already share my thoughts on why I think that Christians should participate in this march in my previous blog.

A Positive and Orderly March
Contrary to many media reports of an “anti-gay and anti-abortion” march, the march was not billed as an anti-gay and anti-abortion march. The march was about being pro-life and pro-family both of which are tenets that the Bible-believing church has held these past two millennia. Certainly in a democracy any group has freedom of association and even the right to demonstrate. Christians and those of other faiths with like-minded values marched in solidarity to affirm their allegiance to their pro-life and pro-family way of life in the context of an increasing imperial imposition of same-sex and liberalized-abortion values from the “developed” countries. Obviously behind such thinking is the felt superiority of those who would want to impose such values on another society hence the label imperial. Apart from a T-shirt that said “real men don’t bend over”, for the most part I did not hear or see any form of derogatory remarks against those that are LGBTI from the crowd, the EAM/ECM speakers, or anyone else. 

The march was orderly unlike most marches that sometimes degenerate into rioting and looting. The peacefulness of the march made the Police to be there ceremonially though they seemed to me to be in full force ready for any eventualities. The mc on the truck carrying the PA system is the one who directed us on where to sit when we came to the parliament building. Though the organizers were accused of forcing primary school pupils to join the march, I heard one of the children saying that they had just finished writing their exams and had been let off early from school. No person was harmed in any way; no property was damaged in any way. This was an exemplary march.

A Show of Religious Unity in the Public Sphere
One of the riveting scenes in my mind is that of platform mc, Rev. Dr Zacc Kawalala of Word Alive Ministries International which is a Neocharismatic church, welcoming Rev. Father Henry Saindi of the Catholic Church to make a speech whilst in the background a Rastarian Lion of Judah flag was blowing in the wind. I stood watching this scene in fascination almost next to two Muslims imams who were intently listening to what Father Saindi was saying. This was a reminder that religious people share many similar values and seek quite similar kinds of societies though they may differ in specifics. Sure, there are those with extremist tendencies in every religion (the likes of Boko Haram and the Lord’s Resistance Army) that would want to dictate every aspect of life totalitarian style but these have no place in democracy. 

Of course, this is not the only platform for religious unity on public matters as there is also the Public Affairs Committee (PAC) which was very instrumental in our transition from a one-party dictatorship to a multiparty democracy between 1992 and 1994. And PAC’s good work continues on to today. My point here though is that the march was a reminder that there can be and should be religious unity in the public sphere to advance matters of justice, peace, and prosperity. In this way, the religious communities can properly play the role of civil society which Ollen Mwalubunju says “is the realm of organized social life which lies between the individual and the state and is the arena of social engagement which is above the individual yet below the state” and, in its active form, “is key for sustained political reform and a viable state-society relationship”.[1] Instead of parroting to the government of the day that they are “partners in development”, religious groups should act as watchdogs for justice, peace, and prosperity in society. This march showed that the churches can properly play the role of an active civil society that bring about political reform.

A Maturing Ecumenism in the Public Sphere
The march was ecumenical, that is, Christians from across the denominations worked together. It is usually hard to get Evangelical/Born-Again Christians to consider most Catholics as true believers and vice versa. To put things in historical perspective, consider that it was only during the Second Vatican Council (October 1962 – December 1965) that Catholics started regarding Protestants – of which Evangelicals/Born-Agains are a subset – as their “estranged brethren”. Before that, and stretching all the way to the Reformation in the 1500s, Catholics pretty much regarded Protestants as heretics.  In the Malawian context, Born-Again churches and Catholics rarely do things together. Take the Way of the Cross Good Friday processions, for example. The Born-Again churches have their more boisterous version while the Catholics have their more solemn one and at times do cross each other’s paths. So it was a pleasant surprise to see the realization on both sides that they need not major on what separates them but rather what unites them in the public sphere. This pragmatism, in my opinion, is a maturity on both sides. As was observed during the march, a church speaking univocally makes for a strong prophetic voice that speaks truth to power. This is what we need in our infant democracy. 

A Necessary Flexing of Political Muscle
Finally, that this was a big political statement was not lost on anyone with political eyes to see. The organizational aspect of it that involved groups in all but five districts, speaks of a formidable movement. The fact that many people took time off their work and businesses to march also speaks of great commitment to this cause. There are no official attendance statistics yet but Makhumbo Munthali, the EAM’s point-person for the march, estimates that there were approximately 5,000 in Lilongwe, about 7,000 in Blantyre, and probably 40,000 nationally. 

This is a very needed statement in the Malawian context where the apathetic ruling elite take the people for granted. It was a reminder that the church will not allow the powers that be to ride rough-shod over the people as they pursue whatever self-serving agenda they may plan. Rev. Dr. Zacc Kawalala, who is also the chairperson of EAM’s Ethics, Peace, and Justice Commission – made an overt threat to the parliamentarians present that day by saying that if the MPs were to vote otherwise concerning legislation to do with abortion and same-sex marriages, they would not be voted back into office come 2019.

Thank you EAM and ECM for awakening our consciences to be the salt and light to a very sick nation. The march is not it. It’s not the place of arrival. It’s just part of the process. The real issue becomes what happens after it.


[1] Ollen Mwalabunju, “Civil Society”, in Nandini Patel and Lars Svasand (editors), Government and Politics in Malawi, Center for Social Research/Chr. Michelsen Institute, 2007, pp. 268-269.