Jesus is Still Our Healer

After recently reading Christianity Today's Mixed Review of Hillsong Australia's most recent CD, "This is Our God", I decided to buy a mere two songs off Itunes instead of purchasing the whole CD. No sooner had I clicked the purchase button on the song "Healer", a second search revealed a breaking story on the song's gifted writer. Not only has he this week just confessed to a long-term addiction, but the cancer from which he had supposedly been suffering as he's been singing in recent months also turns out to have also been a complete hoax. 

The response in the blogosphere has been considerable this week. Here's an entry from My Latreia I felt was especially poignant: "I felt saddened by the news but at the same time, the realization of how frail we are really came to me. No one but our Lord, Jesus, has resisted the Great Tempter...How fallible our sinful nature has made us. And yet, we should be encouraged by this incident and be reminded how God truly is graceful and forgiving." I encourage you to read the rest of the post here as well as some of the other posts linked above.

I didn't get around to listening to the song I bought until after I read a few blog responses, press releases, and a youtube video. Having now finally listened to the song a few times, I still have to conclude that, in spite of all the sin and self-deception which ensued, the song was God-inspired. Jesus Christ, our Healer, is truly alive!

I've been an occasional fan of Hillsongs Australia since before I first came to Taiwan back in 1997, and God has used several of their songs to comfort and encourage me in hard times, but this incident is just another reminder that as we come to God in worship, we lean not on fuzzy feelings or a high-charged worship concert atmosphere, but on our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Solid Rock, lived out in a small community of relationships (not necessarily a megachurch) in which one can know and be known by others.

Yes, the writer was suffering from an illness as he penned this God-inspired song. Just not the illness he fabricated later as a cover-up. May God's people deal with him mercifully, and may Jesus heal him as he continues to heal and work in all of us who are broken.

PengHu

 PengHu, along with Orchid Island and Ali Mountain, has for a long time been on my short list of places here that I'd not yet gotten around to visiting. Well, I finally had a chance this past Monday through Wednesday for an initial visit.

I drove my scooter an hour and a half or so down to BuDai in ChiaYi County, and took the 90 minute ferry ride from there. Cost is 900NT for economy; 1286NT for business class.

In PengHu, I met up with 40 some Chinese/Taiwanese/Vietnamese/North American coworkers for our annual get-together. They were mostly from Taipei, but two families traveled from Kaohsiung (4 hour ferry ride from Kaohsiung).

We stayed at the Youth Activity Center. The rooms were clean, cool, and spacious enough for the reasonable price, and included cable TV which was nice because I enjoyed watching the U.S. Olympic Redeem Team crush another of its opponents (this time Australia) in basketball. (No offense, Australian friends. I'm sure I'll enjoy my work visit to your country next month immensely!)

Because there were a number of small kids along for the trip, our planned activities were not ideal for adults travelling alone,  but at least I was able to get a better idea of where I might go next time for skin diving and SCUBA.

I shared a room with our coworker from TuCheng in Taipei County, whose wife didn't come because of their small child. I pitied the poor guy for having to listen to my snoring! The view from the balcony across from my fifth floor room was spectacular. At night, neon lights on the bridge brightened up the sky. 

Both mornings I awoke at 5:30. Ordinarily in Taiwan when you go the park at this hour you find lots of elderly people taking their exercise. But in MaGong, in addition to the park, they hit the water, specifically the man-made "beach" swimming area inside of the bridge above. The second morning from my vantage point on the bridge, I counted 93 swimmers inside the cove and another 24 swimming out several hundred yards outside. Some of the doggy paddle and "freestyle" strokes were so poor I wondered if the elderly folks  would be able to make the considerable distance back, but several of them had floats just in case, I guess. By 6:30 am each day, all but a dozen or so were gone. I admire them for getting out like that each day.

The second day we took a bus around the main islands -- all joined by bridges -- to see some of the main  sights. We started out with a swim off the fine sands of ShanShuei beach on the main island's southern end. The visibility was incredible. 

 

From there, we drove to a place where we learned a little about historical architectural style and building materials. In the past homes were constructed out of coral and other objects from the sea.

 

 

The tour guide also dropped us off by the windmills. Like many other places around the world (as well as Taiwan), PengHu has recently begun harnessing wind power in order to meet electrical needs. 

Also that second day, we drove over to a lighthouse with a pretty vantage point on the southern end of SiYu, the western most island. Finally, we stopped off to see the so-called "Whale Cave". It was blazing hot everywhere we had to walk.

The third day we walked over and caught a boat which first let us down to see some coral. If I remember correctly, the tour guide said that of the 1500 different kinds of coral worldwide, over 500 are represented in Taiwan. The view wasn't all that spectacular though and I regretted again not being able to get away to skin dive this time around. Perhaps I can learn more about coral identification before the next time I go out.

After 10 minutes or so of that, we then went to a unique floating barge/raft with other floats stationed around it in the middle of the inner sea between the main islands. I'll call the place Karaoke Alcatraz. Because of the heat and the fact that I'm not a huge Karaoke fan, from the moment we arrived I couldn't wait to escape from Karaoke Alcatraz. But it really wasn't such a bad place. 

The main events on the barge were BBQing all-you-can-eat oysters (very delicious, although I wasn't very  hungry being as it was only 10:30 when we started), and singing Karaoke.

Off the barge they had different pools with netted squid, cuttlefish, and fish for kids and interested adults to fish in. However, there were no hooks on the lines and it was against the rules to land what you caught. Personally, I would have rather thrown my hook in to the open water outside of the floats as I saw tons of fish out there feeding off the oyster garbage, etc.

There was another very small area for paddleboats. On a lot of the tourist literature you read how PengHu hopes to develops itself into a tourism/recreational area in the future, and it's obvious it's not there yet, but places like these are at least attempts in the right direction to attract families who might like to vacation without having to take additional ferry rides to all the other islands. If the government of Penghu ever gets its casino petition granted, I hope they will be careful enough not to destroy the island chain's natural beauty and resolve to keep crime checked as well.

On the return trip, because of an impending typhoon the 2 evening ferries back to Kaohsiung were canceled and 2 families were forced to travel to ChiaYi instead. But they easily hired a car to take them back down south.

Though this was far from my ideal vacation, in fact it was not intended as a vacation but as an opportunity to catch up with other coworkers and I'm very thankful to God for the opportunity. If you go to PengHu though, better to go in late May after the winds have died down and before the summer heat really starts to pummel you.

Monk and Indian Ringneck Growing Up...

The Monk Parrot I traded in the old unfriendly Indian Ringneck for (Ringneck previously misidentified as a Green Conure since I only knew the Chinese name) and the new baby Indian Ringneck are growing up.... My goal is to teach them each a few English words so I can say to my students, "Look, learning English isn't so hard. Even these birds can do it."

 

Amazing Returning Prodigal Story or Look-Alike Imposter?

  This past Monday morning I received a call from a couple whose kids I tutor on Saturdays and whom I visit from time to time.

The last time I wrote about this family, it was in relation to a so-called Mini-Power Encounter that might have transpired.

This time, the family called to tell me about a bird someone who lives a few hundred yards behind my house had given to them. The person had said the bird had just flown into their yard the day before.

This family knew how my yellow love bird whom they had seen had flown off back in the middle of May, so they got into immediate contact with me.

Same bird or near look-alike? That is the question. This one is very tame. Since several families with kids I've observed appear to poke and torture their birds more than work with them, and since this community is small  to begin with (there are only 2 bird shops within a 40 mile or so radius and only 3,000 people in this town), that would seem to imply it might well be the same bird. 

On the flip side, this bird does not seem to be quite as tame as the one I lost, as that one would fly back to me like a boomerang whenever I tossed it in the air. Simply chalk that change in attitude to having experienced 3 months of freedom? After all, it still sits on my hand, hides behind my shoulder, etc.

This bird also has a deeper fuller shade of red on its neck and head. But might that simply be due to the fact that it is 9 months old rather than just 6 months?

It also seems rather clean. I would think if the original bird had been out in the wild for three months, it might look a little dirtier. Maybe it had a different owner for a while and made another get-away? Or a different (cleaner) bird made its own get-away?

For sentimental reasons, I prefer to assume it's the same creature. Maybe God brought it back specifically to go through the same family as I talked about in the earlier post! SHARE YOUR OPINION ON THE POLL TO THE LOWER RIGHT!

The Missionary Enterprise

A recent post in this blog was parodied and ripped apart in many comments that followed. Having let it die down for a few weeks, for anyone who still happens to be following who posted, I want to share briefly part of my personal experience and perspective on the so-called missionary enterprise.

I still love to follow technology and science, but 6 months after college graduation I decided to opt out on continuing my career in electronic engineering in willing response to a call I felt that a personal God who loves me immensely (with no strings attached), and who earnestly desires to relate with me, had been placing upon my life during my college years. By the early 1990’s I felt I could summarize that call, or mission if you will, in 5 letters—MMMGG: Move Out, Minister, and Multiply the Grace of God.

What, you might ask, is the grace of God? Here’s how Eugene Peterson puts it: “ It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! … Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing….” (Paraphrase of Ephesians 2:1-10; italics added)

As Eric Liddell put it in “Chariots of Fire”, “God made me for a purpose…” In a manner of speaking, I felt God made me for a purpose too: to move out and share the very same treasure He had shared earlier with me-- the same undeserved favor and love which was now mine in Jesus Christ. Though I have my occasional moments of frustration living in a foreign culture (and often write about them in this blog), I feel no sense of being better in any way intrinsically than the people among whom I am living, no more than one might feel superior in sharing with others some incredibly delicious food that someone else cooked. The value is in the goods and the one who cooked them, not the container.

Nor do I have any sort of desire to convert those who respond to a different cultural or governmental system, as was implied in a number of previous comments. I am nobody's secret agent. Quite the contrary: having grown up as a military brat and then having made the sudden move from West Germany following high school graduation to a state university in the southern United States, I was immunized early and re-inoculated often against against the Culture Wars, the “God bless America” mentality, the Christian Right way of looking at things, etc.

As an aside, it’s true, as some commented below, that many wrongs in history have been committed in the name of Christianity. However, to propose that Hitler was a Christian, as was also done below, is no truer than to say Friedrich Nietzsche (“God is dead”) was a Christian because his father was also a Lutheran pastor. That is also not much different than saying those who responded negatively to the earlier post might be Christian simply because they too were exposed earlier in life to Christian traditions and to “Christendom” in general.

It’s also true that historically missionaries have sometimes been used and manipulated quite effectively by the colonial governments behind them. Along these lines, I’m reminded of a picture I took in the Cape Verde Islands while participating in a physical oceanographic expedition way back in 1989 (see below-- a priest toting a cross is  sixth or seventh in line). The missionary, in this case a Catholic priest,  was just a part of the larger colonial entourage disembarking from the ship. Looking at him above, I can almost picture him getting off the ship, bowing down, and claiming the whole place for God while the East India Company or whomever from other countries followed to exploit just behind.

Yes, missionaries have sometimes been used as pawns of governments, duped, etc-- not just western European or U.S. governments, but also sometimes of the very countries where they have taken up residence, such as was the case here earlier in the Henry Luce/Chiang Kai Shek era). In a minority of cases they may even have done so knowingly, going along for the ride. Because of that kind of innuendo and idea association in today’s global society, I prefer the term “international Christian worker” to missionary.

Like many who have gone before me, I see myself as a pawn of no earthly government or king. I am, rather, a willing servant of another King, the Lord Jesus Christ. As I stay close to Him (and whenever I stray I turn back again in response to His gentle coaxing), I’m often reminded of his words: "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting…. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." (John 6)

Like my fellow international workers, I do what I do in an attempt to honor the King and advance His Kingdom. As stated in our organization’s values, “Lost people matter to God. He wants them found.” Now, before the accusation comes again that I’m saying we’re better than anyone else, let me say again: No, we’re all in the same leaking boat. It’s only that Christ has already dropped a line down to rescue me, and I want to pass along that line to others as well.

Yes, I’m an exclusivist. I believe the words of Jesus when he said: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). But before I’m accused again of intolerance, how is having my own opinion any different of a Buddhist, Taoist, or secular atheist who express his or her own way of seeing the world? I’m not trying to forcibly convert anyone. I am as entitled as anybody else to my own perspective, a right that would seemingly be abrogated by some.

As an international Christian worker, I’m not into introducing or enforcing a system. It’s a Person I believe in: Jesus Christ. I bask in the privilege of introducing that warm, loving, living, kind, wise, strong, all-powerful Person, who also happens to be fully-God, to others. You can do with Him as you choose. My passion is simply to make the introduction, to learn how to follow Him closer myself, and to help anyone else who comes alongside in your own journey, as you help me on mine. God is big enough to handle the rest.