Dogs and the Gospel

I have loved my time here in Kathmandu, but there is one thing I have hated since the first night I tried to get my beauty sleep and that is the wretched street dogs. One bark sets off a chain reaction that can carry on for five minutes. It is truly one of the most annoying things that has happens on a regular basis in my life. The problem is that there are probably three to five dogs hanging out every one hundred feet or so and these dogs have no owner. They are literally street dogs. In America, this dog problem would simply be eradicated by the dogcatcher coming to my street snatching up the dogs, and a few days or weeks later euthanizing the dogs. This would never happen here though as the Buddhist culture demands that no life is taken and also in the Hindu religion dogs hold a special respect. The dogs then are as free as a lion in the jungle, having no natural predators in the city. The other thing about these dogs is that they are nasty. Many of them have mange. They are fed on scraps and this leads to them constantly being hungry. They also have no home and that can lead to more than a few people being snapped at. This constant list of problems has led a group here to begin a ministry to these dogs. They feed the dogs and try to find them homes. They bath them and following the advice of Bob Barker they have them neutered. There are even people coming from America and throughout Europe to help these dogs. I think overall this it would probably be a good thing if not for another problem found throughout Nepal.

The streets of Nepal while being overtaken by dogs are also full of children that are equally without home and regular supply of food. These children suffer many of the same problems the dogs do. They are without shelter, they are in need of a bath, they need medical help, a place to eat and a source of clean water. While these dogs are a huge problem and they are in need of help who should be helped first. Should we be feeding dogs while children are dying of problems as simple as not having clean water?

When I was in elementary school I had a teacher whose class I really enjoyed. There was something that happened one day that even as I young child I was confused to hear. The subject of physical abuse came up in class. I do not know if this is great subject matter for young children, but nonetheless is was the topic of discussion for the moment. The teacher began to talk about feeling sorry for victims of abuse. The teacher mentioned that while some sympathy was felt for women and children suffering from abuse the greatest sympathy felt was for animals, namely dogs. The reason for this the teacher said was because the dog could not tell anyone, while the child and especially the woman had a voice and could let it be known that abuse was taking place. I do not think this was meant to sound as harsh to my young ears as it did, but at that young age I was still dumbfounded.

There was a commercial that played a few years ago in the States. The commercial featured the beautiful voice of Sarah McLachlan singing the equally beautiful song “Angel.” The song was used to burn images of abused animals into your mind as they slowly flashed onto the screen. The commercial is very powerful. The idea is to make you feel sorry for these abused animals and if you can watch it and not feel such emotions you might need to check your heart rate. Over time this commercial began to have the opposite effect on my wonderful sister-in-law who now despises “Angel,” and also the same effect was had on myself regarding the commercial. Now, before I am exalted as a hater of animals let me clearly say that is not the case, but my allegiances very strongly lay elsewhere. This is a soapbox of mine so get ready.

Can a value be set on the life of a child and can that value be less or equal to the life of a dog? How can money be spent on rescuing animals when every country in the world has children that are malnourished, homeless, abused and forgotten? What is more important the life of a dog or a child? I think this is an easy answer for most, but lets take it farther, is the life of every dog including both those without homes and domesticated, while not forgetting to include even your beautiful full blooded registered dog with papers, of more value that any child’s next breath. While this is a question that may stop and make you think should it even come close to doing so. Lets makes this question simpler for you, is the life of every dog in the world worth the life of your child. Now that it is easily established that your child’s life is more important than that of any and all dogs, I mean could any of us trade our child to save the life of a dog. As a follower of the King that loves His children and also being one that should desire to have the same heart as the Gracious King is there a child in the world that has a life of less the value than the combined life of all the animals in the world. He has knit together every child alive today and desires that all of them are shown His love and He desires that all of them are given the opportunity to hear His truth. He desires that they are fed, bathed and clothed. He burns with rage at their abuse and his hatred is riled at their neglect. More than all of these though His heart is broken for them as many children throughout the world are taught to live in great fear and distress because of false religion instead of being taught that Jesus loves them. Are your hearts and is mine broken as well? The statistics indicate that they might not be as broken as we would like to believe

I am a member of a Southern Baptist Church back home and because of this I will use my own denomination in this case study. 2010 saw 48 billion dollars spent on pets in America, that is right 48 billion. The population is around 300 million people in America, so that comes out to about 160 dollars per person spent on pets. If we take that number and times it by the amount of Southern Baptist as reported by the SBC, which is 16 million, we realize that Southern Baptist give or take a few million or so spent around 2.5 billion on our pets. That is right we spent 2.5 billion on pets. That should already stick out as a staggering number in our minds but did you know that Southern Baptist Churches gave just under 150 million dollars to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering (for you non SB’s this is our convention wide offering to support SB missionaries). Lets review those numbers, 2.5 billion spent on pets and 150 million spent on misisons. 2.5 billion spent to make sure our dogs are fed and 150 million spent on Bibles. 2.5 billion spent grooming animals and 150 million spent to proclaim Truth to the billions of people dying in the world. 2.5 billion spent on vet fees and 150 million spent providing for those called of God to serve in a foreign land.

There is no doubting that God’s heart beats for the lost. We though have hearts that beat for our pets. I have been told many times to put my money where my mouth is on some of the strong statements that I have been known to make. The money in the Southern Baptist Church says that we care about pets more than giving to the cause of missions. I do not know how much you personally spend on your pets but I know without any doubt that you will not stand before the Creator and wish that you had spent more money on your pets or yourself and less on the King’s task, the task that all nations stand in proclamation of the One that desires all come to faith in the One True God who saves.

A Lost Generation

A week ago I got to experience something incredible. My best friend here in Nepal gave birth to his second son. He was a healthy 3.5 kilos and spends most of his days wrapped in a pink hello kitty blanket. I immediately fell in love with his son as he is a gift from the Creator that perfectly knit him together. While I was over flowing with affection for this beautiful child, I was also failing to a heavy weight.

I am often asked how God could send someone that has never heard to hell. I am not going to get into a full explanation of this truth, but I will speak to part of the answer. I believe the Bible teaches about the sins of the father and this can help us to understand lostness as related to those that have never heard. I believe in the great flood and I believe that all life minus those on the ark was destroyed during the flood. I also think it is very evident that from scripture that those on the boat knew of the One True God. They worshiped Him, but something went wrong. Somewhere along way a generation decided that they no longer worshipped the God. They started to worship the created instead of the Creator. The generations that followed were taught to worship the created and before long the truth was lost to many. I know this is not a complete explanation of this idea but it is the fact I want to talk about now.

My friend, Gopal, is a child of his culture. He worships idols as the generations that preceded him have, but what if he chose different. A story that I have heard more than once from a pulpit is the story of Jonathan Edwards’s family. He was a man fully devoted to God and from him a came generations of God fearing men and women that did great things. Edwards choose to stay committed to the Savior and because of that generations of people have found favor when standing before God. There is no way this side of heaven to see the effect the Edwards decision to raise a generation of believers has had, but sadly there is a large gauge of the decision someone made to turn from the One True God to idols. My friend, Gopal, is part of this decision. This does not clear Gopal’s debt, but we can all see how much harder it is for him to call on the Savior. He stand accountable for his sin, but when other are taught to turn to Jesus for the answer he was taught to kill a goat for forgiveness. This lie is now being passed down to his children as they are taught to bow before made man idols and taught little of the Christ.

I desire more than anything for Gopal and his family to know the One True God, but this post is about something else. We are all faced with many decisions that will effect the eternity of those around us. This includes the eternity of our children and grand children as well. Are you starting a legacy of Godly men and women that will raise their children in fear and trembling of the King. I heard David Platt say one time that there is not a single decision that you make that does not have eternal consequences on your children. Wow!!! A man made a bad decision that has lead billions to hell, including all of Gopal’s ancestors. Raise a family that makes it there aim to make the name of the Lord Savior Jesus great. There would be nothing of any greater consequence that you could achieve on this temporary home. Do not stand before the Redeemer with the blood of future generations on your hands and pray that Gopal would chose to raise a generation that fear the Lord God Almighty.

Thru the Clouds

A few months back my supervisor, a national and myself took the bus to a local area to meet with some pastors and to discover any other Christians that might be living in the area. This would be the same trip that a pastor told us the leeches were too big.

Monsoon season is currently coming to an end, but at this time it was just beginning. The bus ride we had to take was about eight hours long so we caught the bus at around seven in the morning. The sky was overcast and dark. This I have learned is how it is every morning during monsoon season. We started with just a few people on the bus but as we made our way out of the city it began to fill up. There were people, luggage, potatoes, goats and many other things and the next thing I knew we had made out way onto the roof rack and were riding on top of the bus. The sky was still a dark shade of gray, but now we were starting to climb. Kathmandu sits in a valley and to get anywhere outside of the valley you start with a nice climb. The bus began to wind it way up the mountain and suddenly the sky began to change. The clouds had not left the sky though; we simply had climbed above them. We were now looking out above the clouds that had moments before blocked out all of our light. The sun was always there, we just could not see it splendor. I was immediately reminded of another time in my life.

Any one that knows very little about me knows that I love the great game of baseball. I wanted to be great and I worked to that end. My freshman year of college, I was playing at a Community College and my baseball castle was beginning to crumble. I had worked hard, but no matter how hard I worked it only seemed to get worse. I could not hit a beach ball with a tennis racquet. I had been relegated to the end of the bench and split time scoring the game with another member of the “never get to play club.” It was a hard time in my life. I asked God to help. I wanted to be great and He was not allowing me too. I was crying out to a God that seemed so far from me. Then it got even worse.

We had a road trip one weekend against one of the better teams in our conference. I was excited about the trip, but when I got ready for practice the day before I heard my last name. I do not completely know why, but the last name is what ball players go by especially when it is the coach talking. He called me into his office and told me flatly without much explanation that I would be staying at home that weekend. I wanted to fight back. I deserved to be on that trip. I had worked hard for that team. I had done all that was asked of me. I wanted to ask why, but honestly I had been defeated weeks ago. I was not even good enough to keep the books. I trudged through another practice and instead of heading back to my apartment I headed towards beautiful Lawrenceburg. I did not think missing one day of class would be a big deal and I did not want to be seen at class when the rest of team had gone. The weather on this day was similar to the weather often experienced during monsoon season. The sky was over cast and seemed to want keep people in state of dreariness. I had been on the road for about thirty minutes and it is very possible that my cheeks had felt the warmth of a few tears. I was coming over one of the rolling hills that beautiful songs are written about and as I topped it I noticed something. There was a rainbow on the horizon and for a moment I felt like my King had returned to me in my moment of doubt. For a moment it was a nice thought but I think deep down I did not really want him to be there. This being the case I did not give it too much of a thought though.

I heading down the hill and after a few minutes looked to see the rainbow again. I was disappointed though as the rainbow had been replaced once again by the grayness of the spring afternoon. I realized that my God had left me. He had become fleeting to me just like the rainbow He had created. I began to climb another of the Promised Land’s beautiful hills and something happened. I once again was given a view of the same rainbow. At that moment I began to cry again but this time not at my failure. I cried ashamedly before the feet of my King. The rainbow had not left nor disappeared. I simply had lost sight of it. The king had not gone anywhere. I simply let things that do not effect eternity get in the way of my view of the Eternal One.

How often this has been the case in my life? There are very few things this world has to offer that effect eternity, but we treat so many of them as if they do. Baseball as cool as it will be to play next to the golden streets, has zero effect on eternity. I was broken hearted about something that will one day follow the fate of the pay phone. Baseball will not last, neither will jobs, degrees, cars, homes, or even church buildings, but so often we treat them as if they will. Why do we lose sight and of a eternal God while worrying about the non eternal. God is there, He will never leave or forsake His, but his concern was not for me to get another hit. His concern was for me to make his eternal name great.

Using Him?

I have done some amazing things since I have been overseas. I have trekked to places that people spend their lifetime saving to see. I have also been to places so far off the beaten path that a white man is seen almost as an alien. They have been some awesome experiences, but there was one thing that was probably my favorite. I had met some guys and had been playing basketball with them on occasion. I heard of a three on three basketball tourney that was coming up. We signed up. I had a blast and it was a great opportunity to make friends. God has used sports many times to open doors of ministry in my life and here he did the same thing, but there was something one of the guys did though that got me thinking.

I had only been here about three months at the time of this tournament and had not started driving the motorcycle that I currently drive. One of the guys on my team had one. He offered to pick me up and I rode with him. I had a general idea on how to get to where we were going. He was not going that way. I was in no position to question him, the motorcycle was a little small and I was using most of my effort to hang on. The guy I was riding with goes by Norbu, and he comes from a strict Buddhist background. While he considers himself Buddhist he loves to eat meat, which is typically a sign that they are not committed as they “should” be. Killing of any life in Buddhism is a sin. This would include something as irritating as a mosquito. So while eating meat is not “a tell all” it usually equates someone being more culturally Buddhist; similar to many of the casual Christians that can be found in church every Sunday. He did something that many casual Christian usually do though.

Like I said we were going a way that I was not familiar with, and I learned why about half way there. The roads here are dotted with small temples that will often have a few people gathered in prayer. The temples can be Buddhist but they are more often Hindu as that is the prevailing religion here. The reason they have to have all the temples is for prayer. You see in Christianity we serve a living God. He is alive and can hear our prayers. We need no special place to pray. We can talk with our God anywhere. The Hindus cannot. They must find a statue to hear their prayer and that is why you see temples scattered in so many places. This is exactly where we were heading. I thought it was odd that this Buddhist guy was going to a Hindu temple, but the idea that all religion is good religion is pretty common here so I was not completely shocked. The thing that bothered me was what his actions made me think of. To get this blessing that we were going for we simply drove around the temple. I would not be surprised if we never hit the brakes. We just cruised around it and headed back to the main road. He treated his gods as a blessing machine. I was originally struck with pride in this moment. Christians would never do such a thing. I would never treat God as if He was only a giver of blessings.

What an ignorant fool I was. I began to think on this throughout the day as our first game was forfeited and we had a while to wait. I have over and over and over treated God as if he was a magic pill. I have asked him to help me win games. I have asked him why I did not win when the game was over and thanked him when I won. I agree there is much to be learned in both winning and losing, but do we really believe God has ordained you to lose or win? I think that would be a little selfish to think such a thing, but there is no doubt that I have literally begged him for another “W.” We have asked him to enrich our own meaningless life over and over as if I should have a great name. I have treated my God the same way my friend treated a rock and so have you. This thought is not the biggest problem; there is a much bigger and devastating truth that is taking place here.

God is being used. We have treated God like a prostitute. We beg him to do our bidding. We think for a little offering or a couple of good prayers he we will submit to our desires. That if we give it will be given back. That because I do a couple of things that God sees as filthy rags God will answer my call. God does not do your or my bidding. He does not allow us to win a game because we pray to him. God is an all sovereign God. He has one plan and one plan alone. The creator of the universe is out to make his name great. If your desires fit into this plan, than they will absolutely be accomplished. God is so much greater than you. His will is much higher, and His plan perfect. This prayer is not God make this happen, but God use me to make your name and your name alone great. God is not a jukebox that with a quarter and a little coaxing plays your song. He plays His song and will continue to play it until eternity closes.

Adoption and Godliness

When people ask me what it is that I love about my current home I typically respond with the people. The people of Nepal are a loving people. They accept me as their own. They invite me to dinner at their homes and more often then not this means that they are giving to me out of not their wealth but their poverty. They greet me as I walk down the street and allow me to play with their children. I do not think there is a much better example of Godliness than what so often times is shown to me by a people that know little to nothing of Christ. They have adopted me as their own.

Since my time working in the foster care system in Tennessee a few years ago, I have been a huge supporter of adopting and fostering children. Then as I began to search scripture on the subject I no longer thought it was a good idea, but it is what Christians must do. I believe we do not have a choice, if children need a home we must provide one. There are many reasons that I believe this fact, but I want to share with you something I learned during my time from a young girl that helped convince me that adoption is what the Godly do.

While working for the state I was blessed to work with a Church of Christ preacher and his family. The original family included the preacher, his wife and their incredible daughter. She was about thirteen or so at the time that they added the first child to the mix. She was another girl a year or two younger, but the older daughter seemed to flourish in her role as older sister. I must admit that I had no idea this family existed at this point, but something tells me that it went as incredibly well as I imagine it in my head. To continue on the actual timeline I started working for the state after this had taken place. One of my first cases was a case of three young siblings. There were two sisters and a young boy. They were all under the age of six when I was first assigned the case. This family began to foster them and these children did not come from what we would call a functional family. There were allegations of sexual abuse that seemed to be verified in the children’s behavior, there had been physical abuse that included being used as ash trays, they were behind educationally, malnourished and most of all they were in dire need of a hug. A group of children like this is not easy work. They are high need children. They require a huge emotional investment. Problems can often times take years to overcome and sometimes the scars are never healed. This family had taken them in though and never looked back. Some foster parents look at the kids as a burden or as some sort of necessary evil. They can seem to be in it for the money or for some sort of emotional high. There are some that have there own kids and the foster children become second-class citizens. Then there are some that do a really good job. Then there a few that love these children as if they are their own. This family did exactly that.

I have no doubts that these high need children caused some stress in this family, but it did not show. It did not show in the mother that now had much more on her plate than before. It did not show that she had to miss school events, sports games and alone time with her only birth daughter that she had once coveted. It did not show on the father that took on this leadership and financial burden with grace and mercy that we could all hope for, and lastly it did not show on this young girl. She was no longer the single devotion of her parents. In the matter of a few years this young teenager had gone from a single child the older sister of four new siblings. I do not know how she did it. My family added a brother when I was in school, but we went from four to five, not one to five. This young lady continually blew me away. She may have complained, but I would stand amazed today if she had. She may have not wanted to have to share her parents after having them to herself for so long, but she did. She probably missed her time with her mother, but she held no grudge. She may not have wanted to be an older sister but she was a flourishing example of what being a big sister is all about. The Bible teaches that all followers must die to their own desires, this family did and this young girl was an example that I have been challenged by to this day. The family finally adopted these children and I was as excited about this as I have been about some of the greatest moments of my life.

This young girl and family is one of the reasons I will one day adopt and/or foster children. When encouraging others to adopt one excuse that often come up is that their kids will be neglected in the process. For a second this makes a sense, but the dam quickly breaks. The job of parents is to raise children that know and fear the God. They are to shepherd their hearts and disciple them to Godliness. Which child would have learned more about Godliness, the only child raised alone, or the one that was taught about sacrifice and how to die to self. I know that adoption is not something that every family can do. I know it is difficult. I know great sacrifices must be made, but are we following the example of Christ. The Father sacrificed His beautiful Son to adopt us as his own, is there really any sacrifice to great that we can make for him. Be challenged by the example of a young girl as I am. You may not be ready to adopt, but if you claim Christ as Lord today is as good a day as any to die to you self serving desires.