Category: Jesus and Bible

I am getting to know a young woman in Bangkok who I am tutoring for English. Some of her choices are risky and she doesn’t know Jesus. She is young, just 16 years old. I notice that part of me might want to jump in with my ideas of what is best, of how she should live her life. But I’ve been thinking more about love, wanting to love her well. 

Paul wrote about many messy things to the Corinthians: church unity, sexual immorality, leadership, and money. Then he stopped and wrote the “love chapter” smack dab in the middle of all the directions. After Paul spent time defining love, talking about it, comparing it to other good stuff, and then wondering at the mystery of everything, he left us with 1 Corinthians 14:1: “Pursue love.” This whole section gives me a sense that love requires growth and work. We have to run after it. Love is a supernatural power that requires skill-building, practice, and discipline.

To love others in God’s way requires practice. We must want to love and then be willing to work for it, to learn how. I recommend service as your training field. When we intentionally live life as servants, we have many opportunities to practice love. We think about how to love and serve, which is helpful. Automatic, unconscious behavior is generally a deterrent to loving behavior because our natural self is mostly focused on our own needs: safety, significance, and security. But when we are intentionally serving, we are more apt to consider the needs of others. Intentionality—that understanding that we are pursuing something—helps the process move along. When we choose to serve, we develop patience, thoughtfulness, and empathy. It’s great practice.

Loving others in God’s way requires prayer.  Love does not end. So if we love someone, we cannot stop. Maybe that is why we are called to pray for our enemies. This kind of love extends past the normal, human kinds of love. This is the God part of love, those impossible requirements of love. It is supernatural. Prayer is where we find this God-level love for others, even the “how to” parts of it. 

Paul also talks about what love is not. Love doesn’t compare, envy, or boast. It doesn’t claim to be right; it is not arrogant, rude, or impolite. It doesn’t have to have its way. It is not irritable or resentful. These ways of relating are human, but service and prayer are two things that can help us move into the supernatural power of God’s love.

This is a lot. It’s a challenge for me. I think of this 16-year-old and her choices, and how parts of me want to be right and have their way. But I will be still, move my fears aside, and prayerfully consider. I will bring God into these questions of how to love her well.   

The more time I spend with others and the more time our team spends in service, the more opportunities we have to mess up. Yet each time is a learning chance. Prayerful service gives us all tremendous opportunities to grow in love. The farther and deeper and wider we are stretched in serving others, the more God reaches in and builds us better. His love for us is careful; He watches over us and gently leads us. His plans for us are clear. His love is perfect. 

Last October, I took Addy to meet my friend and visionary, Jimi Allen. As we spoke, Jimi pointed to a thick paperback titled The Book that Made Your World, by Vishal Mangalwadi. (Amazon | Indiebound). “Everyone needs to read this.” Jimi often recommends books, but never so emphatically. I bought the Kindle version and, within a few chapters, decided he was right. 

Vishal Mangalwadi grew up Hindu in Allahabad, India. He met Jesus as a teen, but when philosophy studies at university prompted him to question the concept of truth, Vishal decided to go on a quest. That search led him to conclude that no single source has done more for the world than the Bible.

“I found some parts of the Bible to be exciting, others boring, some even repulsive. But I discovered far more than I anticipated.”

Vishal’s journey began at a Hindu bookstore, but was told that the content of the Vedas was not considered necessary, only their sounds. He inquired at the Islamic store but discovered he would need to learn Arabic. So he started into the Bible, beginning from page one. At first, he was impressed but soon got bogged down in the books of Kings and Chronicles.

But then: “As I was contemplating closing this boring book once and for all, something intrigued me. Our folk history told us of great and glorious rulers. This Jewish book, in contrast, told me about the wickedness of Jewish rulers. Why?”

This observation piqued my interest. Now more than ever, it would seem, the Bible is being attacked by critics poking holes in the claim of divine inspiration. To these, the Bible is ultimately nothing special. But while they scoff at the Bible’s raw messiness, I see it as a powerful piece of evidence to its divine revelation. Like other ancient writings, the Bible tells fantastic stories and chronicles ancestor heroes, but is astonishingly unique in its self-critical telling of Jewish history. 

Besides this, the Bible has a surprising and extraordinary mission, which Vishal decided to take personally:

“It didn’t take long to realize that God’s desire to bless human beings begins in the very first chapter of Genesis and culminates in the last chapter of the last book with a grand vision of healing for all nations. […] The implication was obvious: The Bible was claiming that I should read it because it was written to bless my nation and me.”

Had the Bible blessed India? Vishal delved into two millennia of Western history and then of modern India. He found evidence that many positive features of modern Western culture have roots in the Bible: equality and human rights, health care, education, science, morality, the elevation of women, and justice. “The Bible is the only force known to history that has freed entire nations from corruption while simultaneously giving them political freedom.”

Vishal found Bible-based blessings right in his hometown. He concluded that its university, democratic government, court and legal system, newspaper, botanical garden, public library, railway lines, and medical system all “came to my city because some people took the Bible seriously.” 

“The Bible is the only force known to history that has freed entire nations from corruption while simultaneously giving them political freedom.”

In his scholarship, Vishal is careful to separate the Bible from Christianity. He highlights the transformative work of specific Christians throughout history but emphasizes how the Bible influenced their worldviews. In fact, “The testimony of history is that Christendom was as corrupt as any other part of the world until it recovered this biblical gospel during the Reformation.” And how did this recovery happen? By getting the Bible into the languages and hands of everyday people.

For me, Vishal’s thesis confirms and adds inspiration to a vital longing I’ve had for some time, to make the Bible more readable for Thai laypeople, especially the working class. Our vision for Thailand has always included social transformation, believing that as Thai people turn to Jesus, they will change their nation. But I never made such a clear connection between transformation and actual Bible reading.

Two related values unique to the Bible have become more evident over my years here: its moral standard and what might be called its “active compassion,” that is, caring for others outside our familiar circles. Jesus teaches this clearly, but the imperative is also very clear in the Old Testament. The lack of both values in this culture that lacks a Bible heritage is striking.  

In other words, Thai people need the Bible. 

They do have it – with several translations freely available via apps such as YouVersion. But unfortunately, most working-class Thai people lack the skills and knowledge to understand the Bible independently. To begin with, lower-educated Thais seldom read, and many have never read a single chapter book. On top of that, but Bible is filled with language, history and concepts that are completely foreign to the millions of folks who have only completed the sixth to ninth grades. There are dozens of Thai Bible teaching videos on YouTube, but these tend to be simple “talking head” recordings geared to a churched audience. The Thai people we serve, especially the lower working class, need explanations that better fit their culture. 

It’s therefore a major burden of mine to somehow encourage the development of more tools to help average Thai people understand the Bible. Vishal mentions the impact of the Geneva Bible, particularly due to its inclusion of extensive notes. We need something similar in Thai–not just a translated English study Bible, but something specific for Thai readers. A phone app would be ideal, but would be a huge project. But necessary. Please pray for God to make it happen.