A MISSIONAL REFLECTION | PART 2

It is not hard to ask and do “the right things.” The WHAT of missions produced the thought and action generating out of a question, “What is the right thing to do?” I would like to think that the question needs to shift to “What is the most loving thing to do?” Though the “right things” may be right in our cultures, the “right things” may or may not be right in receiving cultures. In fact, the “right things” may not be the most loving thing. It is a form of judgment that Jesus warned us not to do. I quote from my book, From a Pilgrim to a Pilgrim (순례자가 순례자에게 published by Joy Books in Korean).

As cultural and subjective beings, we operate life with our own unique filtering system that turns reality into reality. No one sees reality as the reality. We all have our own grid for interpretation of life and make decisions based on the interpretations. Jesus does not sugarcoat this tendency and gives some stern warnings in Matthew 7:1-12. In His typical exaggerated fashion, Jesus talks of “the speck” of our neighbor’s eye and “the log” in our eye.

Then there is the strange insertion of Jesus, seemingly completely unrelated, “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” (Matthew 7:6) What is at stake here is not how unworthy dogs and pigs are, but that of helpfulness. Even our best intentions of giving dogs what we consider to be holy and throwing our precious helps (jewels) before pigs are ways of judging what we think others may need from us.

Instead, we are told to “ask, seek, and knock” in the following verses (7-11). Instead of judging and making our own conclusion of things, simply ask, seek, and knock. The act of asking, seeking, and knocking is an act of non-judgment. We are opening ourselves up to listen and listen deeply.

The biblical faith can only exist as translated into a culture. One of the foundational problems in missions is that we make others love God as we do, believe as we do, and behave as we do. Thus, the missional application of this passage is immensely important. Asking and listening, most of the time, are the right and loving things. More than that, the most loving thing always translates into the “right thing.” The asking of what the most loving thing to do is the very heart of HOW of missions, the very incarnational spirit of Jesus. We must go into the world bearing in mind how Jesus came to us.

The prophets of the Old Testament and Jesus confronted the dominant empire mentality harshly. The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God do not and cannot mix with the empire-building and saving. In other words, we must continue to recognize and dismantle our empire mentality, however impressive it is in our own cultures, as we go out into the world. The history of Christianity shows that the gospel usually flows from the bottom, and not from the top. The gospel flows from the periphery, and not from the center. Being at the top and in the center is not wrong and sometimes it requires us to be at the top and at the center, but it certainly requires greater discernment and sacrifice of not holding on.

If we believe the gospel is not limited to the gospel of the cross that saves us from damnation but has the power to transform and continue to save us in our sanctification journey, then the invitation is that we live out the gospel through our lives. There is a difference between preaching the gospel toward salvation and living out the gospel toward transformation. Jesus’ teachings on the Kingdom of God emphasized the latter which requires our lifetime.

Here is an appropriate place to mention a couple of the challenges and thus homework the Korean missions movement will most likely need to pursue. First of all, I submit that Matthew’s Great Commission needs to be understood in light of the Kingdom of God (or Heaven, to use Matthew’s language) that Jesus taught, embodied, and died for. As such, the gospel cannot be understood without the Kingdom of God. When the Korean missions movement embodies more of the Kingdom container and the message over the local church-centric message and the container, its impact will be greater and far-reaching. The bigger and more generous the gospel (which is the Kingdom) is, the more powerful and revolutionary the message will be.

The thought of the late Dr. Ralph Winter’s The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission paper presentation exactly 50 years ago, here in Korea, did not escape me. (I do not need to rehash the concept here. The late Andrew Walls has a wonderful small related book titled, Missionary Societies and The Fortunate Subversion of the Church.) Under the vast and generous Kingdom reign, I believe there are multiple expressions (not just two) of how God’s people organize and operate to expand the Kingdom. Thus, it is natural to have various and unique expressions that read and interpret the signs of the times we are in. Personally, as an outsider, I would be keenly interested in seeing “new wineskins” from and for Korea’s different pockets of missional engagers, be they full-time missionaries and/or “선교인“ (as Chang Nam Son articulated well). One container whatever it is does not and should not fit all. To me, this is an extension of the well-known four-self movement toward self-missiologizing. Self-missiologizing functions as a natural extension of the self-theologizing effort.

On a final note, living out the gospel of the Kingdom through our lives does not mean perfect godly living. Rather it means embracing and living by grace day to day. In this sense, we are on the same journey as pilgrims and as God’s image bearers, not as the ones we are trying to reach. This solidarity levels the ground as all of us are traveling companions toward the union with God. That to me can only be done by “not my might or power” but by the very incarnational “spirit” of Jesus.