Unhelpful Things People Say in Cross-Cultural Risk #1

This series is based on real statements really heard in risk situations.

"I'm ready to be blown up."

Background:

A young father shares his concerns about the current threat level against the international church. The leader responds with, "I'm ready to be blown up."  This leader fits Risk Myths #7, 8, 13, and 14. This leader did not "feel" the threats, and felt he was ready, as a man who had raised his children, that he was ready to be blown up should the building be attacked one Sunday. The leader truly may be ready, but the young father did not feel cared for, and went to another person to share his fears.

How would you have responded to this father's fears?

If it would have been with a Bible verse, that's called a "conceptual response."  The young, concerned father already knows those verses. If it would have been a statement like the one above, implying that the elder had counted the cost but the young father had not, again, it does not address the situational issue of counting the cost of attending church with little ones who have no choice in the matter.

As a leader or member care personnel, we need to be more discerning of what people are trying to communicate by "reading between the lines." Meaning: the underlying issues of the surface statements.

A situational response is what was called for here. There was a direct threat against the church, thus, a very specific risk situation.  The outcome could have been different if the leader had drawn the young father out, asked him to share more about his fears, addressed what mitigation had been done and was planned for by the church, and what more felt needs the young father was aware he had, then the conversation would not have been passed on.

The father could have felt cared for by the leaders of the church, which would have lowered his anxiety and fear level, thus increasing his resiliency in an increasing risk situation, so that the strategic work could continue to be effective as the father was encouraged and could demonstrate joy in a dangerous situation for his family and those he was leading.


Risk Myth 13 and Risk Myth 14 are available here.
Go to Unhelpful Things People say in Risk #2

My Spouse is Thriving in the Risk Situation, but I Am Not!

This statement is not an uncommon experience typically of women in ongoing risk situations. While both men and women have a much higher susceptibility of burnout in risk, it's more often found that a husband thrives in his responsibilities, even as the physical risks increase. The excitement, adrenaline...these all make his work feel all the more significant and important.

However, often in risk, women and children have a harder time.  There are usually more restrictions on movement, less freedom in decision-making (the security situation does not allow you to go there), and the pressure of threat against them and the possibility of the children being negatively impacted weighs heavily all day long on the wife as she cares for the children. Because she has more restrictions, she may feel less significant than her husband, also decreasing her normal resiliency.  

For those who haven't lived long-term in risk, it may be easy to become judgmental of her lack of thriving.  However, living long term in a place being impacted by terrorism, persecution, government intrusion can be life-draining for many.  Even if someone is thriving in this type of circumstance, it is still exhausting.  It is not uncommon for workers to take a short weekend break from this type of situation (a break in a neighboring country, for example), to sleep the first 15 hours away.  

If she is unequipped to process her emotions, (confusion often surrounds the risk situation), if she lacks clarity on their combined calling, if there is a faith crisis, or simply, she has become exhausted from the ongoing struggle to do well in risk, (risk is exhausting) she often has an increasingly difficult time thriving in the risk situation.  Once mom isn't doing well, children begin having a harder time, and then the work of the husband is detrimentally influenced by the negative spiral in the family home.

Learning to "strengthen oneself in the Lord" as David did is a skill we don't often teach or model well.  Also increasing the skill of discerning spiritual reality - what she does and how she does it in the risk situation has an incredibly deep and long-lasting impact on all the locals and expatriates watching.  While she may "feel" less significant, that is definitely not the reality.  How can a wife learn to these skills of strengthening oneself, discerning spiritual reality, and seeing her impact while thriving joyfully in risk until she is called out?  How to we come along side someone struggling in risk, without sounding judgmental or superficially spiritual?

Often times, it is best simply to listen and empathize, and wait to be asked for input, especially if we are providing pastoral care to someone in this situation but we ourselves haven't lived it.  Affirmation is a significant tool to use, and when the time comes, practical advice on how to have bigger margins of time, energy, cultural capacity, and mental/emotional reserve for risk and crisis.


What I mean by this is we often take either the SYIS (Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills Workshop) or Henry Cloud's material on Boundaries and simply discuss margin in the areas of time, energy, and money. But the risk situation requires even wider boundaries than normal, because the risk and accompanying crisis require their own reserve.  In such places, the culture is not the easiest because of the terrorism abounding. This means workers need to increase their margin for cultural interaction, so that they can be gracious, loving, and wise in time allocation.

Yes, this will mean less "work" will be done, but in reality, workers are often more effective tools in the Father's hands, because they become more focused on what he really wants them to do, and they have less energy for all the extraneous activities. The "excellent" replaces the "good."

A lot of times we tend to be too spiritual and even concerned about theological correctness when caring for someone in risk, when instead, what is needed is a party and a way to relax. In a relaxed atmosphere, when a sense of normalcy is felt, people often naturally refocus and better hear the Holy Spirit speaking inside them or through another in the community.

Having regular periods of relaxation increase resiliency, even though there is more to be done with less people.  We actually increased the number of parties we held as the risks increased, because we needed to spend time with our "sheep" to see how they were doing and help them relax. 

We did something crazy - we chose to pay for an above-ground swimming pool during one difficult time in Afghanistan.  It probably cost us $1000 over a 10-week period for all the chemicals and materials needed to maintain the pool for the children during a long season of restrictions.  However, we reasoned that $1000 was a lot cheaper than years of paying for clinical counseling for our children.  To this day, my children view Afghanistan as FUN and HOME.

I enjoyed sitting by the pool watching the kids - it gave me time to relax and easy entertainment watching their antics.  I invited other moms and children every afternoon from 1-4pm to come and hang out at the pool, so that we could together decrease the sense of isolation we all felt. It helped us to refocus ourselves, be in community, and simply relax and enjoy what was an extremely stress-filled situation. We talked, shared, laughed, and encouraged each other - there wasn't heavy counseling or theological discussion, but a shared sense of significance that we were making it through for His Name Sake.  We were all pretty aware we were not leaving without paying a huge price - many in the community were running a low-grade situational depression, but it didn't mean an absence of joy, it was just HARD.  But it was joyful - and we saw people coming to Christ in numbers never-before seen.

The risk moment is an honor to steward, and it is that - something to steward carefully. Because it is a significant way He pushes His kingdom forward, we need to become men and women more aware of His leading in the risk moment so we can thrive joyfully as circumstances become more challenging. 

The Meaning of This Hour

Wherever fear, uncertainty, terrorism, rage, intolerance, narcissism, and racism are manifested, the gates of hell break forth.1 These entry ways to hell - where terrorism reigns, where people hate because of color, where we kill with our tongue if not our gun when others don't agree exactly with us; these are the places where the elders of the land preach a soothing message of peace and prosperity despite the evil in the land.2

We cherished humanism - the elevation of man in his reason, but in the end, the allurement of our own fading beauty has seized our souls with the chains of despair. Like Narcissist, we our killing ourselves and others when they stand in our way, when we cannot immediately have the object of our desire.

At no time until now has the world been so united in fury, intolerance, and dread. We have not neglected our inner lives, but chosen to nourish our souls with anger, hate, slander, so we reap the fruit of rage, divisiveness, horror and arrogance.  A Jewish rabbi taught, "If man has beheld evil, he may know that it was shown to him in order that he learn his own guilt and repent; for what is shown to him is also within him."3 

If the world was described as one family,4 we are afraid of each other and those who dress and live differently from us. We channel our fear targeting authorities, governments, each other. We fear what the media tells us to fear. Like King Ahaz, we are terrorized by what is a trifle in God's eyes.5  God was crying for our return to the gently flowing waters of Shiloah,6 but we rudely asked him to leave our schools, our sex lives, and our government. “In our everyday life, we worshipped force, despised compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite.”7

We wait for the next terrorist attack, the next school shooting, the next parade bombing, the next police brutality and accompanying populist riot. We’re no longer horrified seeing police and soldiers in riot gear; spraying civilians with tear gas and water hoses has become commonplace on the daily news. We blame the police, racism, and white male privilege, defining ourselves as victims, but take no ownership of our own behavior. What is shocking is not so much the constant violence, but our indifference to the violence. It has become normal, and defines reality for so many.

I am consumed with the thought of what future generations will say about us.  What did we do to show all humankind that God as father and mother over us is compassionate, waiting patiently to be found by us?8  He longs for each of us to come into His presence! How will future generations describe the ways we brought God back into the world? I fear they will they say our life with Christ was inconsequential, respectable but unremarkable, vapid, tyrannical.

Each side claims “the truth.”  We elevate "Truth" as we define the Bible teaches truth, but don't live out communities marked by relationship with a transcendent, personal God. Protestants say they cannot fellowship with Catholics, even though we worship the same God and partake of the same Eucharist, and the world goes to hell. We put more trust in what the Gospel Coalition publishes than in God's justice and demand for righteousness from each man, woman, boy, and girl.  55,000 denominations by 2030, and we continue to divide.9

As Heschel wrote, “some are guilty, all are responsible.” We are all responsible for the millions of refugees freezing in the cold, for the women, boys, and girls being sex trafficked, for the unborn babies being murdered, for our brothers and sisters being killed in the name of Allah, for the African Christians being tortured in hidden camps in the desert. We have allowed these atrocities in our pursuit for pleasure and good coffee.

The strength of His universal Church, our nation and world is not governments, the Republican party, and military. We become strong and blessed by God when we accept Micah’s charge to see justice done, to show mercy to the orphan, the widow, the voiceless, the poor.10   “The gates of hell” will not overcome the remnant of those who are His followers, Rabbi Jesus taught. But his followers do not live life with the prophets, feeling God’s pain and His suffering at the evil we inflict on one another. “We [even us in the Church] have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for diplomas, prayer for sermon, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.”11

This is no time for neutrality or paralysis. Our world has been invaded by demons, and it is our duty to our children and future generations to rise up and confront the gates of hell wherever they appear in our homes, communities, even our churches. Let us rise with courage, for courage is not the absence of fear but it is doing the righteous thing even when we feel fear. Let us choose this day to manifest God’s presence in the face of evil.

1. This article based on Heschel’s “Meaning of This Hour” first written over sixty years ago. 
2. Ezekiel 13
3. The Baal Shem Tov
4. Quote from Steve Sweatman
5. Isaiah 28
6. Isaiah 8:6-8
7. Heschel, “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity"
8. God as father and mother is amply seen in Biblical motifs throughout the Old and New Testament (Exodus 25:18-22; Ruth 2:12; Psalm 17; 36; 63; 131:2; 91; Ezek 16:2; Matt 23:37; Luke 13:34; Luke 15.
9. Pew Research
10. Micah 6:8 
11. Heschel, “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity”