Igneous Quill

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God." - 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 NRSV

When I moved to Brazil and began mission work, I felt pretty good about chances for evangelistic success there.  The majority there tends, after all, to accept the authority of the Bible in theory, at least.  There are exceptions, of course.  Students at the local federal university were being spoon-fed post-modern, relativistic pap and thus considered the only absolutes to be those handed down by their fuzzy-minded professors.  There were skeptics and believers of other religions and ideologies in other sectors as well, but by and large it was fairly simple to get a theoretical foothold via trust in the Bible.  The trouble I ran into was with me.  Specifically, my conscience.

In Brazil I could go to someone's home, conduct a Bible study and the only question would often be whether than person wanted to take seriously what they had learned or not.  Once I studied about baptism and even church organization with a very sharp couple in our neighborhood , had them agreeing to everything, and then when I invited them to make a commitment they backed off.  They agreed to what they Bible said and that it was trustworthy.  Their issue was one of follow-through, not intellectual assent.

My problem was that I was uncomfortable with the level of trust people were putting in the Bible.  Does that sound odd for a missionary?  I suppose it should.  If people are already willing to give some credence to what the Scriptures say then this should be considered a perfect opening and an opportunity.  The way my mind works, though, I kept thinking about the questions they weren't asking.  It was as if, by not coming to understand the created world as evidence of God's existence and the moral law as proof of an independent source of what is "right and wrong," they were skipping important steps.

Now, I think I have resolved this internal conflict since those days.  Living and working in the New York metropolitan area I have ample contact with people who do not automatically accept the Bible as authoritative.  However, when I hear about the church growing dramatically in developing nations I both rejoice and am a little worried.  It's good news to know that churches can be established in Africa and elsewhere with far greater facility than in the Western world (parts of which appear to be in the tail-end of the twilight of Christendom).  It's cause for concern as, looking ahead, I can't see these societies progressing into higher levels of prosperity and education without also going the way of their Western counterparts in spiritual matters.

Let me put this in terms that may make more sense:

Imagine there is an apple orchard that's part of an agricultural cooperative.  It's vast, but harvesting resources and the number of workers to pick the apples is limited.  They fan out through the orchard, working more-or-less near one another but always picking only the low-hanging fruit.  Any fruit above an extended hand's reach is left on the tree for lack of ladders.  Eventually, the work crew meets up in the far corner of the orchard.  They've had an incredible harvest, but now they realize there is far, far more to be had higher up in the trees.  Trouble is, left much longer on the tree and either bugs will get to the fruit or the fruit will fall to the ground and rot.  They'll need ladders.  Fortunately, some workers had stayed behind to buy material and build ladders.  Unfortunately, the ladders were insufficient for the number of workers and the task at hand.  Some fruit wouldn't be reached in time.

This is, in a very simplified way, is what I see potentially happening in the future.  The "low-hanging fruit" in the West has been picked over for the most part and the harvesters are having success in the developing world now.  Eventually, all else remaining equal, the developing world will reach a socio-economic level in which people will consider it more beneficial to be in line with the ways of the world and the powers that be than as part of God's radical critique of that system.  The low-hanging fruit will be mostly gone (not that there will be no poverty, but rather than the opportunity will have passed) and now the church will be left to do the hard work it avoided for so long: communicating with and reaching the skeptics.

Please don't think I'm trying to say that Christianity is merely for the poor and uneducated.  I do, however, believe that the Good News of Jesus finds inroads among the marginalized of our world because His Lordship and reign contradicts the swaggering, self-satisfied corruption of the present world system.  The message of Christ, when presented accurately and in its full glory, is deeply subversive to the status quo.  Those on the outside looking in have less trouble accepting teachings that would be cause for alienation for the privileged.

Further, there are indeed talented minds working their apologetic craft, refining arguments and preparing evidences for the truth revealed in Christ.  What troubles me is that there may not be enough of them, or that their work will be hobbled by incorrect or faulty presuppositions.  An apologetic that depends on a literal six-day creation would be about as useful on an Ivy League campus as a 6-inch footstool with uneven legs would be in that orchard.  Not enough to really improve reach, and not the sort of thing in which you'd want to put too much trust.

Looking back, I probably should have just been glad there were those in Brazil willing to accept the Bible as a legitimate starting point in their spiritual investigation.  The experience shows me that, perhaps, my role isn't that of picker of low fruit.  There are places in Brazil where a more "academic" view has a better reach. Maybe I should be building the ladders, and preparing to climb them.