The First Gossip

Sonya and our friend Suleymanu are working their way through a Theological Education by Extension (TEE) booklet, which is talking about the Christian life. They are actually editing it for language (dialect) and cultural relativity.

One of the issues regarding the booklet is its references to sin. According to this TEE booklet, the major sins of most people tend to alcoholism and adultery. However, that is not borne out in the lives of the people group we are ministering among. According to Suleymanu, the prevailing sin among them is that of gossip.

That surprised me a little, but not overmuch. Gossip is not mentioned much in modern parlance, and we tend to relegate its importance with lesser sins, but the Bible puts it right up there among the very bad sins. As I was reading about what I would call the very first gossip, it occurred to me why this might be so.

It is maybe an open question of who the very first recorded gossip might be, but personally I think it is Noah’s son Ham. You may remember the story.

After the Flood, the only people are around are Noah, his wife, and his three sons and their wives. Once the ark had settled on terra firma once more, Noah, being “a man of the soil,” planted a vineyard, and drank some of its wine.

Possibly this was the first time Noah had drunk wine, for it got him drunk and he lay naked in his tent. His son Ham came into the tent and accidentally saw his naked father. Instead of covering him up and remaining mute on the subject, he went out and told his brothers. Shem and Japheth, the two brothers, then came in backwards with a sheet and covered their father. (The story can be found in Genesis 9.18-29.[1])

The nature of gossip is itself uncovered in this story.

Noah lays vulnerable before his son; he is unconscious of anything his son might do or say about him. Talking behind someone’s back is the same dynamic; they are unconscious of anything we might say or do to their reputation, and at that point are incapable of defending themselves.

It was not a sin for Ham to seen his father naked. I once by accident saw a man indisposed and uncovered, laid low by strong drink. It was through no fault of my own, and in that act I did nothing wrong. However, neither at that time, nor will I now, disclose the person’s identity.

The honourable thing for Ham to have done would have been to cover his father up and refrain from disclosing his nakedness and shame. In other words, he would have kept it to himself and not gossiped about his father to his brothers.

But gossip, of course, is exactly what Ham did. Who knows why? Possibly he was simply foolish, not thinking about what it was he was doing. Probably he did not consider the harm he was doing to his father, the damage that would be done to his reputation. The two other people whom Noah would most wish to be held in esteem, he was now abased before.

This is the nature of gossip. It takes a person at their most vulnerable – when they have done something less than creditable, and are not in a position to defend themselves – and displays their shame before the world. Often it will take a while before the gossip to find its way back to the object of the talk. In Noah’s case, when he found out he was justly angry, and he cursed his son.

The natural outcome of gossip is a curse; it can really be nothing else. For what good will have come from talk of such a maleficent nature, that seeks only to shame and tear down? Talk that builds up and edifies people when the object of the discussion is are not there is not gossip.

Gossip by its nature is destructive. It is no wonder it makes Paul’s list as being one of “every kind of wickedness” (Rom 1.29). In a culture that thrives on gossip as a titillating intramural sport, let us strive to keep it far from us.

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[1] I am not unaware of the theory that understands that Ham had homosexual relations with his father, and that this was the nature of his sin. I am not convinced, however, that this was actually what was going on. For those interested, they can see NIDOTTE 3.529.

The Parable of the Uncertain Samaritan

I have been reading a few different things lately which suggest that if we do anything as Christians without first consulting God, then we are either “getting ahead of ourselves,” have an agenda that is divorced from God’s, and are proceeding precariously as though we had no connection with him. The thinking is that whenever we come up against an issue, or have a thought about what we’d like to do in the future, we ought to bring that thing to God in prayer to see what he thinks about it. In going against this teaching I know I am swimming upstream against a very strong current, but I have to try.

I have written more about this elsewhere, so here I will try to argue my position using the Parable of the Uncertain Samaritan – taking off from Jesus’ more well-known parable found in Luke 10.

The command is the same – we are to love our neighbours as ourselves. What does this look like?

A man went down to Jericho, where he was attacked, robbed, and left for dead in the ditch. A priest came by, saw the man, and immediately asked God what he should do. Since he heard no clear voice from heaven, he claimed he did not “feel right” about doing anything for the man, so he crossed to the other side of the road and went on his way.

Likewise, a Levite came by and saw the man, and he too prayed and asked God what he should do. As with the priest, the Levite heard no clear word from God, so he assumed that his godly business in town was more important than the man in the ditch. Thus, he too crossed over and went on his way.

A Samaritan then came by the man, and seeing him there his heart went out to him. But before he stooped to help the man, he too stopped to pray. As with the two before him, though, no clear voice sounded from heaven telling him what to do.

Now he was in a quandary. His heart was telling him he ought to help the stricken man in the ditch. Meanwhile his head was saying it would not be wise to go ahead of God’s plan for his life; helping this man would no doubt tax him in terms of time, energy, money, and opportunity cost. What to do, what to do? The Samaritan was uncertain.

What is the way out of the dilemma? A good beginning would be an understanding of the difference between how God worked in the OT and how he wants to work in us today.

Very often in the OT we read of the saints there stopping to ask God what to do in certain instances, quite often by casting lots. When we come to the NT, however, the last time we see anyone casting lots is in Acts 1 (where they were choosing someone to replace Judas). In fact, that is the last time we find anyone asking God about what to do, period.

This is an amazing thing until we recall that in the next chapter (Acts 2), the Spirit of God came and began to indwell each Christian disciple. This more intimate way that God is now present with his people suggests that however we are to make decisions, it will also seem more intimate somehow.

Looking to Paul provides us with some clues as to how this works. Writing to the church in Thessalonica, he says, “we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith” (2 Thess 1.11).

Being Christians, we will have already prayed sometime in the morning that the Father would be glorified in us, that his kingdom would come, and his will be done by us, and so on. Now the Spirit of God in us is going to see that these prayers will be answered. Thus, as we are going about our day, walking by some poor guy in the ditch will cause us no uncertainty at all. The desire for goodness, and the faith that God has implanted in us by his Spirit, will conspire to ensure that we will instantly know what to do about that poor man. As with Jesus’ Samaritan, we will have pity on him and – with no worry about what God’s will might be, because we already know it – we will go ahead and help the man, with God’s power bringing our efforts to fruition.

The scenario of the man in the ditch of just one of several million that can occur on any given day. In each case, it will be our own desires for goodness, and our labour prompted by love (1 Thess 1.3), that gets the job done – God helping and empowering us.

All too often we are told that we should not trust our own feelings about things; that if we do not consult God, then we are bound to run into troubles because we have gone outside his will for us somehow. The priest and Levite found this to be good advice, because it enabled them to stay on schedule, and get the work before them all done. The Samaritan, however, in following his heart, which was filled with pity for the man, found himself in all sorts of hassle and loss. At the end of the day, however, he was the one who became our exemplar.

“Go and do likewise.”

Modern Slavery in Cameroon

Last week we were finishing up with Paul’s epistles in my New Testament Survey class. The last letter of Paul is, of course, his short letter to Philemon.

Philemon was a Christian man whose slave had run away from him. The slave, whose name was Onesimus (which means “Useful”), somehow made his way to where Paul was and became a Christian through Paul’s ministry. Now Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon, and asking Philemon to consider him not as a slave but as a brother in Christ.

 I noted to the class, first, that this little letter was instrumental in the abolishment of slavery in Europe during the Middle Ages. I also noted that the slavery found in the Bible, and through most of history, was not race-based. Rather it came about as a result of economic or political factors. Poor people sold themselves or their children into slavery, or else were conquered and sold into slavery involuntarily. Slavery based on racism, as found in the US, is a more recent phenomenon.

My students, however, were not very interested in slavery as found either in the Bible, or in western history. Instead, they wanted to talk about the slavery they say exists in Cameroon today. Once again, it is based on economic factors, and hides itself under a different name.

What will happen is a rich person will approach a poor family with young children, and will offer to “hire” one of the children as “house-help.” Theoretically, the arrangement will work like a normal work contract.

The rich person will bring the child – usually girls, often as young as 6 – into their homes, with the promise to pay them, and to provide an education for them. Since the poor family cannot afford to send their children to school themselves (since public education is not provided for, but involved paying school fees, and so on), and sometimes can’t even afford to feed them, they will agree to this arrangement.

All too often, however, these young girls will be given chores that begin as early as 4 in the morning, and last until 10 at night. They have no time to go to school, and are run ragged with all the work they are required to do.

One of our students said that one day he was riding a public bus down by Limbe, in the south. All of a sudden, a private car came and made the bus stop. Some men got on and said they were looking for a “babysitter” who had run away from her home. The student said that rich people can easily argue their cases in court, while these young girls share in the plight of exploited poor people the world over. Obviously, he said, if a babysitter had a good life there she would not be running away.

My students asked me if pastors should be standing up to condemn this practise, and help these young children, because there are both rich and poor Christians who are involved in this. I told them, Yes, of course they should be doing that. This is, in fact, one of the “hills they should be willing to die on” (another concept we talked about one day), on behalf of these oppressed children.

This is the first I have heard about this issue, though I doubt it will be the last. I do not know what else to do, but thought I would write about it to make my readers aware of this further consequence of poverty and corruption.

The Parlour Seminary

The past couple of weeks I have been on the road, in a couple different cities, teaching; first Old Testament, and this week New Testament. This week I am living in a rest-house with a colleague named Rev. George. He teaches Spiritual Formation for four hours in the afternoon to the same students that I have taught for four hours in the morning. (Yikes! for the students.) We are teaching as an extension of the Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary in Ndu.

We call our little classroom here “The Parlour Seminary,” since it is situated in the parlour of the rest-house where are staying. It is not a bad arrangement. George and I do not have to go very far to get to our classroom, and the couches are firm enough that no one will fall asleep in them that easily.

The Parlour

I have four students in the morning, while I think George has one or two more in the afternoon. We had ten registered, but along the way lost one to illness, one to a conflict with a trauma class, and the rest to economics. The courses here cost cfa 12,000 per credit hour – just over US $20. In NA this would be considered a pittance, and a very good deal. My own course is three credits, while George’s is two (that is why he has more students), so the total cost of cfa 60,000 (i.e., just over one hundred bucks, US) would be very manageable by almost any student in Canada or the US. Here in Cameroon, however, that is a lot of money, and if you don’t have it, it may as well be $1,000.

Still, the students we have are engaged and engaging, and the class is a lot of fun. I have the advantage of having great course material (the New Testament!), which I have discovered none of my students have ever entirely read (not even the Epistle to the Romans, which we looked at this morning). That means much of what I am teaching is quite new to them – even to my Master’s student. This is both unsettling, and encouraging – as it makes me think that we can make a good difference in the lives of these students and their churches. God helping us.

My Most Important NT Passage

In my OT course, I ask the question, what is the most important passage found in the OT? I answer by claiming that distinction for Genesis 12.1-3, which deals with the command and promise of God to Abram. The command and promise are still relevant for us today, as they live on in the Great Commission.

For the NT, I would answer the question by quoting John 3.16, for several reasons. First, in and of itself it is a significant statement, proclaiming God’s love for humanity and his created world, showing what he has been willing to sacrifice for it, and what humanity is required to do in response. It really is the good news in brief.

Second, John 3.16 is the answer to the longing and waiting of the OT. The OT points to the Messiah, but never sees him. Now, in this passage, the OT draws to a conclusion.

Third, it forms the center of the NT because everything has been written about Jesus, and about the church, because of this fact – that God has loved us so much that he has given us his Son. Were it not for this fact of God’s love, the rest of the NT would not be needed, since there would be nothing to say.

Sadly, the verse itself has become a bit of a punchline due to its overexposure in some settings (think golf tournaments and rainbow hair), but it is still the most powerful single statement that I know of in the NT corpus.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”