‘And the day will come when they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks…’ Is. 2.4
Culture-making comes in many shapes and sizes, and sometimes the positive act of doing it proves to be not merely a diversion from but an alternative to culture destruction. I must tell you that reading the book ‘Three Cups of Tea’ (from the Pakistani/Afghanistani practice that goes as follows.. “We drink three cups of tea to do business. During the first you are a stranger, we are getting acquainted, during the second you become a friend, and during the third, you become family, and for family we will do anything, even die.’) is a game changing and possibly even a life-changing experience. It has made me begin to re-evaluate what it is God primarily wants me to do with the rest of the ministry he has called me to.
It is probably no accident that just this past two weeks while reading this book I got two emails— one from Bejing and one from Hong Kong saying, please come over and teach us. I think I must go. I’ve been to Hong Kong and Singapore on various occasions before, but not Bejing. But it is not as if God has not been preparing me for this for a while.
About six years ago I had a man sitting in my living room named Evans– he asked me if I would be the founding Dean of the school of Christian Studies at Bejing University. He wanted it to happen soon, and I knew not a word of Mandarin. So I told him “I am not your man, but I know the man who is— my friend K.K. Yeo of Garrett Seminary.” Well K.K. has been there the past five or so years, and now they have many students, a good number of graduates wanting to go on and do doctoral work, and they want me to go teach them Romans next July. They are busily translating my The Indelible Image Vol. One into Mandarin as we speak. My friend and former President Maxie Dunnam has said– “the 21rst century will belong to China” and I think he may well be right. If so, it is all the more important that Christian culture-making and influence grow in quantum leaps in that country as the power and influence of China grows worldwide. But I digress.
This post is not about me, as much as this book has been influencing my thinking. It is about Greg Mortensen’s remarkable story of founding schools for girls and boys in the heart of Taliban country in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in part as an answer to the oppression of women by the Taliban. There are now some 80 schools Greg and his Central Asian Institute have started in that rugged mountainous region since the mid-90s. It is an amazing testimony about the power of hard work and culture-making and how it can change lives, and even cultural prejudices and assumptions. I will make a bold statement– it appears to me that Greg Mortensen has done more to undermine the fundamental appeal of the Taliban in that region than all the war efforts we have undertaken in that war-torn region over the last twenty years, and with far less expenditure of money and lives.
The Bible says “We were all created in Christ Jesus for good-works.” Greg Mortensen, the son of two Lutheran missionaries (though himself not a practicing Christian) has shown what a difference good works, culture making works, can make. More Christians need to get involved in these sort of good will educational efforts. As an educator I feel strongly about this. Here is a picture of Greg with some of the children of Pakistan and Afghanistan who have benefited from his hard work building schools in this region.
‘Three Cups of Tea’ is a remarkable story of one man’s journey to find his life calling,and to make a difference for good in this world. You read his story and you realize that all our cynicism about ‘good works’ and whether one person can make a difference, and whether Americans could ever befriend Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan is probably not at all a godly or Christian response to the problems in that troubled part of the world.
There are in addition remarkable lessons about indigenization to be learned from reading Greg’s book. Greg, without giving up his mission to overcome ignorance and intolerance in that region, especially when it comes to the education of girls, learned how to adopt and adapt to their culture and show it respect and understanding, even when he did not necessarily agree with what they did and believed. But along the way, he learned that he had much to learn from them about: 1) what is really important in life; 2) patience and how important things like culture-making take time and a lot of goodwill and a lot of hard work; and 3) about raising money for worthy causes. Though ‘Three Cups of Tea’ is an award winning book, it is surprising to me that Greg Mortensen has not won the Nobel Peace Prize in the last decade. He certainly should have done so before our President, but that is a story for another day.
To me one of the most wonderful aspects of this book is a whole string of ‘remarkable coincidences’ that happened in Greg’s life to bring about the building of these schools. Of course ‘remarkable coincidences’ is only what a secular person would call them. Mr. Wesley would call them ‘singular providences of God’ and I am quite convinced that is what they were. Let’s take an example.
Julia Bergman is the cousin of Jennifer Wilson who in turn was the wife of Jean Hoerni (a eclectic scientist who invented various things and made his fortune in the computer chip etc. revolution). Now Jean Hoerni through a series of ‘singular providences’ became the patron of Greg Mortensen and helped him not only build his first school in Korphe but establish the Centra Asian Institute with a million dollar endowment.
Anyway, in October 1996 Ms. Bergman who like many others had been on many mountain climbing expeditions in the wake of Sir Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Mt. Everest, was flying with friends over K-2 in a huge chartered Russian MI-17 helicopter out of the Pakistani town of Skardu hoping to get a good glimpse of K-2. On the way back from the mountain viewing, the pilot asked if they would like to stop and see a typical remote mountain village. They all said yes, and the helicopter came down in Korphe, right where Greg built his very first school. The local boys quickly figured out Ms. Bergman was American and proudly carted her off to see the new school they and the girls in town had, built by an American. Ms. Bergman looked at the sign on the front of the school which said that the school had been built with money donated by her own cousin’s husband!
Now if you read this book you will realize how unlikely this ‘coincidence’ really is, because Korphe is about the most remote inaccessible mountain village you could imagine. Greg only ended up there in the first place by ‘accident’ when he got lost coming down off a failed mountain climbing expedition up K-2, and was basically rescued and rehabilitated by the town folk of Korphe. Bergman says, even though she is a totally non-religious person “I felt I had been brought there for a reason and I couldn’t stop crying.”
Imagine Greg’s surprise when after giving the eulogy at Jean Hoerni’s funeral Ms. Bergman, whom he had never met, came up and gave him a bear hug, and told Greg “what can I do to help.” Greg replied…”Well I want to collect books and create a library for the Korphe school”. Bergman’s mouth fell open and she said “There’s a message here, this is meant to be…. I am a librarian”. She then was added to the board of directors for Greg’s Institute. There are a bunch of such stories in this remarkable book, and what it reminds us of is indeed the sovereignty of God and how he works all things together for good, even using the lives of non-Christians to accomplish his culture-making projects!!
I do not want to spoil the story of Greg Mortensen and his transformation into a cross-cultural school builder and spreader of light and love, and I will not regale you with the stories of when he was captured by the Taliban and imprisoned for a while, and threatened by various Mullah’s along the way when they learned he wanted to build schools especially for girls, but suffice it to say that God’s hand has been on his life in a mighty way in the last 15 years, and now 80 plus schools have been built and have begun paying dividends in winning good will for Americans in the region, among other by products. When God paves the way, much can be accomplished even by one single life. I hope you will put down other reading projects, and take the time to read this book right through. It may well inspire you to hear God’s call to do something special, remarkable, serendipitous for others, even showing love for those some would see as our enemies….. and Jesus will be pleased. As it turns out. swords have just enough metal in them to make a good plowshare that can cut up the ground and help plant needed crops, instead of cutting down people, and destroying their lives.
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