Bamboo joints explain justification!

How would you explain the Biblical concept of justification to your next door neighbor?  How about explaining it to a recent immigrant to your area who is learning English? What about a group of people who speak a language with no one word for “justification”?

For us, one way to answer that last question involved bamboo joints and dirty sticks.

So what does justification have to do with bamboo joints and dirty sticks?

Well, a lot, if you happen to be a Tobo believer coming to our weekly gatherings to study Romans.

At the end of chapter 3, we discussed the fact that our faith in Christ does not mean that we stop sinning and become perfect people in our daily lives on this earth.  But it does mean that God says of us, or declares of us, that we are straight and righteous people now. This not of ourselves, we know that we still mess up and sin on a daily basis.  But the righteousness we have is that of our Lord Jesus Christ!  When God sees us, He no longer sees our sinfulness, since Christ took care of the penalty for that when He died on the cross. Instead, He sees us as covered with the righteousness of His Son and our Savior.  Wow!  All that is wrapped up in that big term “justification”.

To communicate this important (and freeing!) concept of justification, I had Tingon bring me a nasty brown bamboo joint that was old and covered in dirt, and another freshly-cut shiny clean green bamboo joint (bamboo joints are hollow tubes with segments between the hollow spaces at top and bottom). These two joints were cut open at the top, and the bottoms left on, so they formed 2 long cylinders like large cups that a small child could reach their arm into.  I then had Tingon bring me several dirty sticks, which I put into the dirty joint.

I had a number of curious eyes on me as I held up the dirty joint and pulled one of the dirty sticks out of it.

“Is this stick clean or dirty?” I asked.

“Dirty!” was the response.

“What about the bamboo joint?”

“It too is very dirty!”

I then took the stick and put it into the glistening green joint.  “Is the stick clean now?”

“No, the stick’s still dirty.”

“That’s true.  What about this joint?”

“The joint’s very clean!”

“Can you see the stick now that I put in down into the joint?”

“No, only if you take the stick back out.”

Then I put a few sticks into the clean joint, and left the rest in the dirty one.  “These sticks are all dirty, and they represent us people. At first, we were all in the dirty joint, stuck in our sinfulness, in Satan’s joint and under the hand of (meaning control or power of) Satan and sin.

“Then, just as I grabbed some sticks and put them into the clean joint, God has put us into the clean joint of Yesu.  Just as the stick is still dirty, we are still people who sin even after being placed into Yesu’s clean joint. However, just as the stick is hidden in the clean joint and all we see is the good cleanness of the joint now, so now God looks at us as hidden inside of Yesu and His cleanness. Because of the cleanness of Yesu, He now says of us that we are straight people in his eyes.”

At this point, there were lots of nods, smiles, and whispers of “Élok!’ (“True!”) from the group.  I then asked them this:

“So, did God take some of these sticks and put them in there because they were a little bit cleaner or better than the other dirty sticks still in the dirty joint?”

“No, they are all the same, all dirty.”

“You’re right!  So then we too are not better or cleaner than our friends who have not believed in Yesu.  But we are now in a better place in God’s eyes, aren’t we?”

“Oh, yeah!  We still sin even now, but God still took us out of Satan’s joint and put us into Yesu’s joint because of what He did for us!”

So, readers of this email, if you have trusted in Christ to pay the penalty for your sin once and for all, then you along with our Tobo brothers and sisters are all safely in His bamboo joint and God sees us in that special place as perfectly clean—not because we are better than other people, but as a result of the righteousness of Christ He covered us with when we first believed!  Can I get an “Amen” now?  Or perhaps an “Égat migi i élagék yamda,” (Tobo for “This talk is hugely true”)?

(Taken from Chad Mankins – a PNG missionary with the Tobo people.)

A friend or foe?

If you saw this man walking down the road…would you stop and talk to him. In PNG, it is normal for you to see men and women carrying bush knifes like this. The closer you get to evening the more you see. Almost all of them carry some weapon at night.  There are quite a few rascals about and they use the bush knife as a weapon of choice. Having said that, the bush knife makes up part of who they are. Kind of like wearing shoes would be for us.  There are a hundred different uses for bush knifes and most of the locals are quite adept at using them.  So what do you think?  Having heard that…would you smile and share Christ’s love with those that you pass a long the road?

Did you know that CATS taste good

Well that is what a majority of the the locals think.   I don’t care to find out.  Cats are one of the ideal pets of choice in PNG.   When they are young they eat a lot of pesty rats…because of such “fine dining”   it is said that cats make great tasting meals when they get older.   Cats raised by Americans are said to be especially tasty because they get all this special cat food…at least that is the word on the street. The locals  appear to help themselves to our fat cats quite a bit.   They think it is a shame to have a fat cat and not eat it!  How about you?   If you were invited for lunch and they served you cat stew…would you eat it?

What is for lunch?

You would ask yourself if you were headed to the village around 2pm.  Typically women are given the responsibility to maintain and harvest their gardens.  However, there are exceptions depending on the culture of that particular village.  Quite often if they feel like they have an inside track on getting the spirits to bless their gardening work, the men may get involved as well.  The kids always pitch in and make the work load easier.  Usually the women will rise early and go to work in their gardens…while the temperature is cool and will return before noon to clean and prep the food for lunch.  Our kids are helping prep this meal…

Typically they will collect “greens” which they harvest a long the path or in their gardens.  They will mix bananas, sweet potatoes or manioc with it and usually if they can afford it will either add some fish or meat to it to give it a little more taste.  Here is the pot of stew for our meal that day.  Can you see the three little fish on the top.

On the other side of the world…

Every missionary must first understand what the tribal person is thinking (his world view) in order for him to clearly give him the gospel in a way that will not be offensive or repulsive.

This particular man is getting ready to appease the spirits with his dance during one of the sing-sing dances near Goroka.