There are (almost) no poor people in America.

My apologies for not writing for the past 3 Sundays.  I emerged from several hard work weeks without any writing ideas or much desire to write.  I was going through a spiritual dry season as winter wound down here.  It is good that I do not live in northern Canada, where it snows every month but July. :-)  For the past several years, winter has been a very hard season for me.  Two winters in a row, I went through layoffs at work.  In winter of last year, I was going through the end of a courtship - recurring despondency that was only starting  to heal in the fall, but by then the despondency merely shifted focus toward my poor performance at work, where it stayed through this winter.  Also, due to health reasons, I could not hike or fast during the winter this year.  Yesterday was the first day that I could fast in 3 months.  And how good it was to be back on the trail!

Over time, I'll write more about my trip to the Philippines.  For now, I want to zero in on one recurring thought that I have had since before I went.  It has only gotten stronger since I came back.

There are no poor people in America.  Or, at least, there are very, very few of them.

I pay little attention to politics.  People all over this country get very riled up listening to talk show hosts, whose job is merely to make people mad at the government when they have only an infinitesimal capacity to change anything about it.  So I don't really know much about the Occupy protests except that they are "the 99%" - the "poor" people in America - protesting against "the 1%" - the richest people in America.

This is where it helps to have a worldview that includes as much of the world as possible - not just your own country or your own friends.

In the Philippines, I got to meet both of my current sponsored children and my past sponsored child, who had left the program because his family's financial situation improved.  The two youngest kids met me in the Mall of Asia.  This was like bringing them into my world.  With my oldest sponsored child, who is now college-age, I went into his world and visited his home.  Compassion/World Vision sponsors, this is a significant experience.  Do it if you have the chance.

The only way to get to this young man's house is on foot.  My driver, his assistant pastor, parked his van outside the neighborhood after he had driven it as close as he could.  We walked back down a road that could barely accommodate the van - really more like an alley.  And then we found his house.

Many houses here in the States have decorative front doors with windows that let in light but are not designed to be seen out of or into.  My sponsored young man's house doesn't even have a door.  He has a gun that he uses to shoot stray animals that walk into the house, as well as a mosquito zapper.  A makeshift door separates their bathroom from the rest of their house.  The rest of the house is one room with a dirt floor.  The roof is made of tarps.  Where the tarps have failed, many buckets are tied up to collect rainwater.  One of the few things they have going for them is that they live at a higher altitude than the surrounding area, so they weren't flooded out by Typhoon Ondoy a few years ago.

The house has two wooden beds in it with no mattresses.  Eight people live there: the father and mother, plus their six sons.  All the clothes they seem to have remain on two clotheslines outside the house.  When his father's company closed last year, my sponsored young man had to stop going to college to take a five-month temp job to support his whole family, because two of his older brothers are also in college and closer to graduating.  His mother works at a canteen in a school in their neighborhood, selling refreshments.  She makes 100 pesos a day, which is about $2.50.  This is only enough to pay their light bill in a small house with a minimal amount of electricity.  I spend three or four times her daily wage to go out to dinner - several times a week.

Even more staggering to me is that $2.50 is actually two times the World Bank's most recent figure for the international poverty line: $1.25 a day. If my sponsored young man and his family of eight have to only live on this, how can so many people in the world live on less?  They'd practically have to be starving.  Over 20% of Filipinos and over 60% of people in many countries in Africa live on less than $1.25 a day.  And most Americans think "poverty" means that they can't afford an Xbox 360 or the best TV on the market.

Also surprising is the high level of division between the haves and the have-nots in Philippine society.  It's true in American society too, but we notice it less because our "poor" people, in most cases, have everything that they actually need.  Many rich people in the Philippines live in gated communities with security guards who have to know who you are in the neighborhood to see.  They don't seem to want anything to do with the poor people that surround them in Metro Manila and the neighboring provinces.  Poor people there tend to, at best, be househelps who get to stay with rich people in houses that they can't afford to buy themselves, so that they can take care of the children of these rich people who often work much harder than they need to in order to provide both their needs and their wants.  Americans do the same thing with daycare.  But most of the poor people in the Philippines go mostly unnoticed - or at least unnoticed in positive ways - by the rich people.  There seems to be a division in their body of Christ between churches that try to minister to rich people and churches that try to minister to poor people, but don't we also do that to some extent in America?

Getting back from the Philippines was a hard adjustment.  I took an airline that I fell in love with during this trip and ate great food as I made the difficult journey west to east.  After two days with no sleep during the travel, I slept in my own bed again, which I did not have to share with anyone else.  I went back to work the day after I landed and received some difficult words in my annual performance review.  And my way of thinking became American again rather quickly: why did I get such a small raise?

There are heart issues here as well.  Hebrews 13:5 directs us to "Keep yourselves free from the love of money."  I think God has used this trip to the Philippines to expose my own love of money, when I thought I was being generous in giving to the poor and practicing wartime living.  In reality, I have some of my dad's tendency to give a lot to charity and missions so that we can pay less in taxes to the government.  But Jesus said, "Whose image is on that coin?"  When we file our taxes, we watch our estimated refunds go up and up until we are done and wonder what we will blow the money on when we get it.  So in giving to others, we really want to just bless ourselves.

In my case, the ATMs I use always tell me my account balance when I take money out.  Single and saving for a house, I am looking to pay cash for a small house so that I can live below my means and use as much of my income as I can to advance the gospel.  But as my balances get bigger, so does my head.  So does my pride in what I have accomplished so far.  So does my desire to invest and reach my goal faster.  So does my mentality that money is a significant motivator for my being in my line of work.  So my testimony in the workplace degrades to, "Man, my dream car is an Aston Martin One-77!"  You could sell a new Aston Martin One-77 or Bugatti Veyron and take almost everyone in my sponsored young man's entire city out to dinner.  And his city has over half a million people.  Why do we chase things that are so useless and excessive?

My pastor has been preaching through the book of James in our Saturday night services for young adults.  Last night, he preached through James 2:1-7, a text about favoritism:

1 My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. 2 For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, 3 and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 5 Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? 7 Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?

Several of his points included:
1.  You can hold the faith that God saved you with in a way that does not please God! (v.1)
2.  Do you care about people outside your own generation or small group in your church?
3.  God chose poor believers to be rich in faith toward God and heirs to the Kingdom of God. (v. 5)
4.  The fact that you dishonored this poor man negates all the books you read (Piper, Sproul, etc.) and all the Bible studies you go to. (v. 6)

A gold ring and fine (like sequins and bling) clothes reflect a super-rich status.  These are celebrities.  "Come to my church because Manny Pacquiao goes here."  "Come to my church because so-and-so is preaching today."  A poor man in shabby clothes is "dirt upon dirt upon dirt".  If we favor rich people over poor people within the body of Christ, or make any other kind of favoritism distinction within the body, we become hypocrites - judges with evil motives (thoughts) (v.4).

These poor believers are "rich in faith" toward God.  Their God is the same God as the God of the people who are rich in finances.  But they are more able to see that God is more valuable than possessions.  Living in America, we are more (or only) concerned about what we can get.  "See what God is doing with the have-nots!"

These poor believers are also "heirs to the Kingdom of God."  One of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible, Romans 8, begins with the precious statement, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  It spells out several facets of our common identity in Christ that we cannot ignore.  We have the Spirit of Christ in us (v. 9).  We are adopted as children of the Most High God (vv. 15-16).  And we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (v. 17).  Regardless of our income level, our ethnicity, our intellect, our spiritual qualifications, our popularity - God has made us co-heirs with His only begotten Son.  "God prides Himself in saving you."

But what can poorer believers gain from us if all we do is spout doctrine?  We can have all mysteries and knowledge and yet be nothing if we show it without love (v. 2).  What can they gain from our slactivism, changing our Facebook profile pictures in support of their cause so that we feel good about it and make people sad about it?  These people have real needs which must be met.  If you are in America, you most likely do have the resources to help them.

"I don't want to just talk. I've got to show,
'Cause I've got a couple brothers in the hospital
And I've got a couple brothers from across the globe:
Poor or sick, with joy - you've got to know.
Feeling bad, you tell them, 'I want to pray for you'
But they feel worse, saying they want to pray for you.
Oh, you're thinking we've got it worse?  It's a mistake for you.
Living in America is what's great to you.
No hating you.  Prosperity's replaced the truth
When God is only enough, when He's gracin' you.
Y'all don't value faith.  You only value what your faith can do.
Y'all love to eat, but hate on the Person who made the food.
So I'll pray for you, but let's make a truce:
When famine hits, you won't ignore the light like an ambulance.
Hold on to the Savior, even in the midst of your affliction.
Remember our condition.  Your affliction's your chance to witness!"
- KB, "Enough".

This Entertaining Truth, Part 2: Sola "Scriptura + My Opinions"?

"In a separate report, Barna found that more than 6 in 10 born-again Christians say they are customizing their faith, not following any one church's theology. 'Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible,' the report notes."

- "Christian faith: Calvinism is Back".

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In the last few years, I have picked up on a tendency of American Christians (including myself, to some extent) going into a church service with everything they believe already made up and then filtering everything they hear through that lens instead of through Scripture. There's this notion of "Joel Osteen is saying this; Paul Washer is saying that; they are both Christians, so they must both somehow be telling the truth... so I'll believe both of them." A lot of them don't read their Bibles enough to know the difference, and a lot of them do not "search the Scriptures to see if these things are so" like the Bereans did. And a lot of them don't examine themselves well enough to see whether they or their teachers are genuinely converted. (Note: God is the final arbiter of that, as the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked - Jeremiah 17:9. But: "you shall know them by their fruit" - Matthew 7:16.)

And then as they hear all these teachers saying all these different things, they cancel each other out. So when they do hear something about how their lifestyle habitually does not fall in line with Scripture and that if they don't repent, that is evidence that they may have never been saved, they dismiss it as, "Oh, that's just what John Piper thinks. That's nice. I'll just let him believe what he believes." Just as bad: "Oooo, that's convicting! But I don't need to do anything about it." It becomes like a college lecture on something that has nothing to do with your job: just interesting, just entertainment, just more useless knowledge in a brain that is most likely already full of worldly useless knowledge.

The problem is, God, not you, determines absolute truth. He alone sets the standards that determine whether you are really saved and whether you are growing in holiness. A lot of people mask their opinions with "God told me..." to get away with anything. But the Bible alone holds final authority regarding doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

So I ask: where does your "customized faith" come from? Does it come from legitimate Biblical convictions obtained by reading and praying through Scripture? Or is it just what you want to believe?

It would be nigh upon impossible for me to pick a church that agrees with me 100% on every major and minor issue. I identify, in rapidly descending order of importance, as a Christian, a five-point Calvinist, a Baptist, and a qualified continuationist (in the vein of John Piper and Wayne Grudem). And I don't worship like a dead man. All of this, I arrived at through studying Scripture and listening to faithful preachers from Baptist, Presbyterian, nondenominational, Sovereign Grace, Acts 29, (etc.) churches.

Maybe you are from a Sovereign Grace church, read the preceding paragraph, and said, "I don't see what this guy's problem is. He should just join one of our churches. We agree with him on practically everything." The problem is the will of God.

After spending time in prayer about it and becoming convinced that God would be most glorified in my life right now if I do this, I became a member of a Reformed Baptist church in my area. (This is also the "international church" to which I referred in Godly Fellowship, Part 8.) We don't actually have "Reformed" or "Baptist" in our name. We have gone through three names and two pastors during the two-plus years that I have been there. The majority of the members who were there two years ago have left the church and been replaced by new people whom I do not know as well. And in my age group, our church is so full of young men that we all basically have to look outside our local church for prospective wives - and then make sure that they too agree with us on matters of the faith and can serve in our church - not an easy task. (In our young adult ministry recently, we had five men's small groups and only one for women.) There is really very little in it for me except that I know I am being fed with the Word here and worshiping God truthfully with other genuinely converted people here. And those two things outweigh everything else.

I do not want to make minor issues major, if I can help it in the least. To have fellowship with me as a Christian, someone must agree with me on one thing: the gospel. That is the most important thing in all of Christianity, and everything else in our faith is insignificant to this one thing: Christ died for sinners. And if someone repents of their sins (not just confessing them) and believes in Christ alone, God has given them that repentance and faith and saved them. Nothing else really matters compared to this gospel.

At this stage in life, loving the church means the following for me: "To the wind with 10- or 20-year Christian friendships that were not founded in Christ. Possibly, to the wind with getting married or even finding love, at least for now. I do not wear a cross around my neck. I carry it on my shoulder. And this is no sacrifice to me, because God killing His Son at Calvary was an unthinkable sacrifice, and He did it anyway to glorify His name by saving my soul from His eternal wrath. These are my brothers and sisters. They are with Christ. So I am with them."

When we approach doctrine or the church with apathy or we emphasize our customized theology above everything else, we ought to consider the following:

"You wonder why people choose fields away from the States when young people at home are drifting because no one wants to take time to listen to their problems. I’ll tell you why I left. Because those Stateside young people have every opportunity to study, hear, and understand the Word of God in their own language, and these Indians have no opportunity whatsoever. I have had to make a cross of two logs, and lie down on it, to show the Indians what it means to crucify a man. When there is that much ignorance over here and so much knowledge and opportunity over there, I have no question in my mind why God sent me here. Those whimpering Stateside young people will wake up on the Day of Judgment condemned to worst fates than these demon-fearing Indians, because having a Bible, they were bored with it – while these never heard of such a thing as writing."

- Jim Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty, p. 237, quoted on Pure Church.

Godly Fellowship: Part 9: A Barkada, Pan-National: The Greatest of These Is Love.

"Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace."

- Charles Spurgeon.

The cross of Christ levels the playing field by truly eliminating all boasts of man before God. The Lord saves poor and rich, educated and uneducated, criminal and self-righteous. He created us equal, and as Christians we really cannot name any factor that sets us in a "better-than-equal" position before Him. He does this to show his all-surpassing power to save even the most unlikely man and, ultimately, to glorify His name. God glorifies Himself as much when He saves an uneducated serial killer from a poor background as He does when He saves a suburban church kid who has dotted every "i" and crossed every "t" for twenty years. Both have repented, and thus both cause a remarkable amount of joy among the angels in heaven, who have no need for the gospel for themselves because they lack the sin nature of fallen man.

About “race”: The construct of "race" to mean anything other than the human race is largely societal. If anyone could lay claim before God to be closer to God because of their race or ethnicity, it was the Jews in the Old Testament. Yet in Christ, there is no distinction between Greek and Jew. In surrendering this part of our identity, we can see more of how God has glorified Himself by saving people from many different backgrounds from, for, and by Himself. To put it another way, most of my Christian friends do not look like me. Some of them do not speak my native language most of the time. Yet, by taking the time to know them and look at their lives, I have seen God's hand working in and through them - in different ways than I have seen in my own life. Doing this has encouraged my walk with the Lord and enhanced my worship of Him.

About "face": I am currently reading through 1 Chronicles after completing 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. King Saul - the ruler that the people picked - was famous for his dashing outward appearance. God, by His sovereign hand, ordained that he be the first human ruler of Israel. Yet He was not pleased with Saul. A shepherd boy who killed a lion, a bear, and a nine-foot-tall Philistine giant spent his life with his heart overjoyed in God's presence and enthralled with the Word and the will of God. He did not look like much when he was called to succeed Saul as king. And Christ did not look like much when He came to Earth. He laid aside His glory and took on a physical frame with physical needs. Rejected by religious and civil authorities and possessing no good looks or noble birth to cause men to esteem Him, Christ lived the truth that "God looks at the heart". It shows me the importance of not allowing human culture's preoccupation with the outward appearance to dictate my thoughts about a brother or sister in Christ. Outwardly, they may look like a fringe figure in society. But if I dig deep in examining their life inwardly, I may be able to see how much they love God more than I do.

About "place": We use "place" to mean several things, such as a place in society or a geographic area. How many times have I thought that God could not save someone just because they work in Hollywood? How many times since September 11, 2001, have my fellow Americans thought that Muslims were beyond saving? "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save", as Isaiah, inspired by God, gloriously wrote.

And about "grace": I have seen several definitions for this: "God's Riches At Christ's Expense", if you like a memorable acrostic... "God's unmerited favor towards us"... either way, it is driven by God's desire to magnify His own name in us. My church has a very faithful servant who cooks very well for us and participates in many ministries. One of our pastors said that if we were justified by works, this man would be at the front of the line going into heaven. But not even he trusts in his own works. He leans fully on Christ.

Our effort to please God is driven by grace and a heart that He has caused to love Him. Matt Chandler said, "The law was given to show me I can't be perfect, that I'm going to fall short, that I am in desperate need of a Savior (Romans 1-7). When we stumble and fall, the Spirit reminds us of the Scriptures that promise that there has been a death for those failures and that there is a new covenant resting on Christ now and not on my ability to obey the law. This allows me to pursue Christ without fear and by 'beholding His glory I am transformed'." There is no right, biblical way to be proud of ourselves for that. Oh, may I boast in God!

"When you do talk about race, root the conversation in the Gospel."

- Thabiti Anyabwile, “Thabiti’s Top Ten Tips for Talking About Race”.

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“Thou our Father, Christ our brother,

all who live in love are Thine;

teach us how to love each other,

lift us to the joy divine.”

- Henry Van Dyke, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”

I take issue with how many larger churches handle the matter of cross-generational fellowship among the brethren. In many large church settings, children grow up in Sunday school, where they change classes from year to year and rarely spend time with anyone outside their own grade. When they become junior high or high school students, they attend their respective youth groups and, again, try to figure out matters of maturity with each other or with young adults leading them who usually are telling them that their parents are not cool.

And there are groups within the youth group of kids with common interests and/or common dislikes who often only spend time with each other. When I was growing up there were cliques in my youth group of kids that either were preps, were jocks, or hated both. (Being hated by both, I hated both and started a group of “freaks” that I called the “freakish brotherhood”… separate rabbit trail.) Generally, there was exclusivity between the groups; and friendships were usually not lifelong – just the typical friendships in my area of the US with an attitude of, “This is where I am right now. I’m not staying. But I might as well have a few friends here, and then I’ll find some new friends after I leave.”

I think the Philippines, with its concept of the barkada, has a huge advantage over America in regards to how people in the two countries treat friendship. I had read about barkadas in several books about the Philippines, but there is no true English translation for the word. Basically, a barkada is a group of friends that feels like a family. Loyalty runs high, and they remain friends after they move away. Some of them have reunions. The friendships can legitimately be lifelong friendships.

And shouldn’t we think of our church family this way? Let us replace our surface, Facebook-level friendships with ties closer than blood brothers and sisters. Blood is thicker than water? Our identity in Christ is thicker than blood and stronger than steel.

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To me, a church like mine is sort of like a larger-scale barkada that is not constrained by age. Sure, there are groups-within-the-group of people who do things outside church together. But I can freely fellowship with almost anyone there, whether we are chopping up divine truth, praying together, discussing work, or playing with cute babies.

And the local church is “a microcosm or a small-scale example / but it is the Church, even though it’s just a sample / invisible, spiritual, physical, visible / not a brick temple, never that simple” (Lecrae, “The Bride”). In heaven we will see the full-scale barkada, comprised of untold numbers of people representing every tribe, language, and nation. This tells me that we have no reason for racism or xenophobia in dealing with our Christian brethren, even those who come from countries with which my country is at war. Here on this earth, we have no lasting city; we seek the Celestial City, which is eternal and far better (Hebrews 13:14).

Let me clear up something: Jesus and Allah are not the same God. Islam is a religion of works, where its adherents work their way to God by keeping the Five Pillars of Islam. Islam sees Jesus Christ as a prophet and has no savior or means of forgiveness. And it does not allow any kind of assurance of salvation. It’s just, “I think I’ve been good enough that I will probably go to paradise.” On the other hand, Christians become saved by repenting of their sins and trusting in Christ. God alone can give them the faith to do that and the assurance that they have been born again. And Christians are called to suffer for the cause of Christ as much as necessary, even to the point of death. These two gods are not the same god. The scandal of the Christian gospel is that the Bible says that Christ is the only way to be saved.

But if I met a brother in Christ who came from the Arab world, grew up in the Islamic faith, and left that faith in favor of Christ, should I not seek to have meaningful godly fellowship with him? And similarly, most of the people that have spoken God’s truth to me through song recently have been Christian rappers, most of whom are from the inner city, and many of whom have a lot of scars in their past. They still minister for God in their cities, and with the changes in their lives they can point to the power of God! Similarly, if I were to meet a man from, say, Venezuela who had converted from Santeria (a Catholicism/animism/Satanism hybrid) to Christianity and displayed a desire for God, should I not discuss the things of God with him as well?

Yes to all of those questions, even if they do not have all their facts about the faith correct – and even if you think there is little or nothing for you to gain from being friends with them. The Bible is a very rich book, and no one aside from God knows the correct answers to every question about theology, soteriology, Christology, eschatology, and so on. However, the biggest item that postmodern thinkers misunderstand or outright deny is the truth that we can know the truth. Jesus Christ Himself even said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). And the more of the truth you know – even by wrestling with it – the more that you can pour into other believers, so that they may use it in better imitating Christ.

“If your theology’s bangin’, I hate to offend you.

But where are the faithful men you’ve been pouring it into?”

- Json, “Run”

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To sum up, my favorite Christian bumper stickers out there (no, they are not all kitsch) says this:

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation – Or Bust.

And God’s Word says He’s going to do exactly that.

But you don’t just need to spread the gospel wide. Spread it deep.

Paul planted the seed. Apollos watered it. God made it grow. (1 Corinthians 3:6)

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“ ⁷ The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. ⁸ Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. ⁹ Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. ¹⁰ Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. ¹¹ If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

- 1 Peter 4:7-11

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For further reading, please check out the prayer at the end of David Legge’s message, “Sins We Have Sanitized, Part 4: Cultural Sins”. Indeed, as he says well, “our love should mark us out”.

Godly Fellowship: Part 8: On the Surrender of Inborn Identity for the Glory of God.

It is profitable to elaborate on my decision to "become the diversity" in my local church. The United States has an abundance of churches, seemingly custom-made to fit the tastes of anyone wishing to attend. This is possibly due to the decision of church-growth experts in the 1980s to "open the front door and close the back door", to market church as a product within America's consumer-driven culture. And of course, it would be ludicrous to suggest that American history would have nothing to do with this. Just as the "black church" has long served as a pillar of African-American identity throughout American history, many other churches cater to the taste of the average suburban and rural whites - whether they explicitly try to or not.

And let us not think that any other ethnicity is free from criticism on this point, except in international ministries to those for whom language barriers are quite real. Are you Korean? You can go to a church where Korean identity is paraded at or above Christian identity. Are you Dutch? You are probably expected to be Dutch Reformed. Are you Irish? The Scottish Presbyterians would be surprised to see you. And of course, I do not argue for a complete ignorance of the cultures that we all come from. God has placed us where we are to feel our way towards Him (Acts 17), and we ought to praise Him for placing us where He has.

In Unfashionable, Tullian Tchividjian recommends that those who find fault in the church's lack of diversity go "be the diversity" at a church full of people that do not look like them. By God's grace, I can speak from the perspective of one who has done that. As of right now, I am, on most Sundays, the only white person in my church. So what would drive me to do that?

Starting several years before I began attending my church, I had what I have always believed a God-given passion for the Philippines. In His providence, He brought several families into my life who had moved to the US from there. One of them had previously attended my church and switched churches to help their children assimilate into American culture. Having fellowship with them each Sunday at my previous church after the service strengthened my ties to their culture. After several years, I went to a Philippine festival and decided to start visiting Philippine churches in our area; and now, I have gone to one of those churches as many Sundays as possible for almost two years. Yet I still live in America and have held lifelong interests in several aspects of American culture. It is not possible for me to wave a magic wand and become Filipino.

Yet God has shown me the profit of laying down cultural identity to focus on Christian identity. In going to my church, I have had to make practical adjustments in my life and invest my time in learning about the culture that my friends there come from. But I do not seek to take on their identity as my own. Our first identity is in Christ and is far more important. Christ did not die for only the Jews, the Americans, the Filipinos, or any other ethnic group. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek (Galatians 3:28). One of the ways in which God glorifies Himself in the new covenant is by gathering a people for Himself that transcends every ethnic, national, and language barrier (Revelation 5:9). The cultural identities that He gives us serve a purpose in that He uses them to glorify Himself. In heaven, He does not deny these identities; but He uses them to make much of Himself through those identities and to show that His seal upon them binds them together much stronger than any cultural identity in this world ever can.

Christ lived in this world during the Roman Empire, and doubtless many people in that day thought of themselves as citizens of Rome more than anything else. Rome was the only citizenship that most of them knew. It continued on throughout the entire lives of many people throughout centuries and centuries of history. Yet God appointed a time for the Roman Empire to crumble and fall. The people in the apostles' time did not see this happen, but God made their identity as Romans expire. He made the Latin language die. Other nations took the place of Rome, and studying history now, we see that "Roman" was a temporal, not eternal, identity.

Yet, as many have said well, history repeats itself. Many people in well-to-do nations see their countries as unconquerable and "God and country" as the banner that they wave. Yet if we place anything next to the Most High in our identity, we cease to see Him as the Most High. No other name - "America", "the Philippines", "Dallas Cowboys", "Manchester United", "Boston Red Sox", "New York Yankees", and so on - deserves to be elevated to equal stature with God. I could not be content with only spending time with those who put "American" or any other country on the same level as "Christian". We worship God alone.

It has taken a lot of work to know enough of my friends' culture to be able to fellowship with them. I have had to invest less time in closer, long-running friendships with people from my previous church. To put it more clearly, this has also cost me many of those friends. I have had to read books on Philippine culture, learn some Tagalog, and ask questions about cross-cultural interactions about which I am unclear. In some ways, it resembles a cross-cultural missionary's preparation, though of course they invest a higher level of effort. So it is important to occasionally - not in rabid, constant introspection - check my motivations for doing this. I must remain sure that I do this from a pure heart that wants to see God's name glorified. Only then can this be more than a sociological experiment.

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“In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.

“In Him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find;
His service is the golden cord,
Close binding humankind.

“Join hands, then, members of the faith,
Whatever your race may be!
Who serves my Father as His child
Is surely kin to me.

“In Christ now meet both East and West,
In Him meet North and South;
All Christly souls are one in Him
Throughout the whole wide earth.”

- William Dunkerley, “In Christ There Is No East or West”