Wednesday, November 29, 2006

What is unconventional Wisdom?

The unconventional wisdom I want to claim to have is something like the servants in 2 Chronicles 9:7 must have had. The queen of Sheba commented to King Solomon that:
"How blessed are your men, how blessed are these your servants who stand before you continually and hear your wisdom."
Any wisdom I may have is only because as a servant I have the distinct blessing to sit at the feet of many men and women who have dedicated themselves to the wisdom of God. What I produce in the blog is only a version of what I have learned from those whom I see the love of Christ embodied. I desire to adopt their wisdom and convert it to orthopraxy and not simply be content learning about God, theology, and history. And of course, a substantial percentage of this blog will be dedicated to recording the stories of the lives of people I love.
To begin, I will spend the next 7 blogs creating a background of the most influential and impacting moments in the last three years of my life. Before we go there, I have a story from yesterday.
Yesterday was the best class time I've experienced at Wheaton. We played a cross-cultural worker simulation game in Intercultural-communications. This game is called "Luna." In Luna I was a member of the Eagle culture along with the other 3/5 of the class. 2/5 were part of the Luna culture. As an Eagle I went through missionary training school and then was given a directive followed by the sending of us all into Luna. The people of Luna spoke another language so before we could tell them about "Jesus" we had to master their language. I GOT it right before they sent us back for the school for "burned-out" missionaries. I wasn't burned out and I was frustrated that they made us come back. BUT I learned something. I was still wearing a "pith" helmet that distinguished me from the Lunas and I hadn't considered also learning the Luna culture not just their language before telling them the gospel. Generally I don't agree with the pushy evangelical approach but this was a game so I put aside my skepticism. So when we went back I ran directly to the people who taught me the language, asked them about their culture then had just enough time to process what they had said and delivered a message that really did bring them freedom from the oppression of evil spirits which had overcome these wonderful people. It sounds like a cheesy game I'm sure but the funny thing is was it reminded me so much of similar experiences I've had in China (I never mastered the language or culture obviously), this game brought back to life the passion I've experienced sharing my love of God with people far from the awareness of this love. So I write to you today consciously aware of the passion of hands-on serving God and loving people because He first loved me.
jp