Travel Letter . . .

TEACHING ROMANS IN THE HEART OF ASIA

There are those precious memories that linger with us. One that I will take home with me from Thailand is when 20 students stood at the close of one of our classes and read in unison in Thai those great lines in Rom. 11:33-36. We had given several hours to a study of Paul’s world view, as set forth in Romans 9-11, and it seemed appropriate to join him in the doxology at the end. I do not understand Thai, but I am persuaded that such praise as “Oh, the depth of the riches and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out” pleases the God of history in all tongues of earth.

We concluded that section of our study with the conviction expressed by the apostle, that “God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” No wonder Paul praised God! If one does not clearly see God’s mercy he will never clearly see the message of Romans.

I am now sitting in the home of Jerry and Pam Headen in ancient Chiang Mai City, which finally became a part of old Siam, known today as Thailand (meaning beautiful land), but the people have always been known as Thais. I flew here on Thai Air, stopping for a week of meetings in Tokyo. After three weeks of teaching at Chiang Mai Bible Institute, a school sponsored by Christian Churches back home, I will take a sleeper train for an all night journey to Bangkok, the nation’s capital, where I will board a Thai Air Boeing 747 for a direct flight of some 20 hours to Dallas-Ft. Worth, with stops in Tokyo and Seattle. Due to gaining a day in flight, I will arrive the same day I leave. Missionaries of yesteryear, who spent months coming to Asia, could never have imagined such conveniences.

I am also partly tourist in that I bought myself and my sons silk shirts, my daughter a silk purse, and Ouida yards and yards of bolt silk. What else but Thai silk in Thailand! It makes me think of the aphorism that Ouida has always quoted from her father: You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But you can make a silk purse out of Thai silk, which may be as wise an aphorism.

Jerry is on the faculty at the Institute, Pam teaches English to Thais, and their three young daughters attend an international school (English). They have been here long enough, six years, to acquire a facility with the language, especially Jerry who preaches and teaches in Thai with gusto.

Now that I am retired from the college classroom and am rich (by my standards, not Ouida’s), I am giving time to help ease the busy schedules of teachers in such schools as this one. If the Lord wills, I hope to help out in other such mission stations for a few weeks at a time in my remaining years. While I have to teach in such places through an interpreter, this has the advantage of reinforcing what is said in two languages since many of the students are also studying English. It also compels the teacher to strip away the fat and keep his lessons lean. If you want a challenging pedagogical experience, try teaching Romans to foreigners through an interpreter.

I will not bother you at this point with my opinion that our confusion of tongues is part of the curse that sinful pride has hung on us since the early history of mankind. Nor will I burden you with the details of my hope that one glorious language (probably not English!) will be ours in the gracious inheritance of God’s tomorrow, on a new earth.

Speaking of the memories I will take home with me, my visit to a Lisu (pronounced Lee-sue) tribal village one weekend, where I slept on a bamboo bed that rested on a dirt floor in a bamboo hut, will always be a part of me. One of my students, Ahtapa Seenlee, was going home for a visit and I conned him into letting me tag along, riding behind him on a rented motor bike.

We found his parents out harvesting rice in their paddy. We worked alongside them until dark, bearing the sheaves of rice, that had been cut and tied, to the father, whose name is Ahlepe, who stacked them for further drying in the field. With our help he soon had an impressive stack well over his head. In two weeks he will winnow the rice from the chaff. As we worked I began singing “Bringing in the Sheaves,” informing Ahtapa, who speaks English, that the hymn was written by our great singing evangelist of yesteryear, Knowles Shaw. On our way back home the next day Ahtapa, astride the motor bike, was singing “Bringing in the Sheaves”!

The older Lisus chew betel nut, a tobacco-like substance that reddens the lips and gums and blackens the teeth (which they view as beautiful), and which produces a smile that would shock most visitors. It also rottens the teeth, so Ahtapa wanted me to talk with his parents, who are believers, about quitting the habit. The Lisus, like all Asians, respect age, especially an aged teacher, so he was confident they would quit if I advised it.

Once in from the field, preparations for supper began, and that is most of their life: working in the field and trying to stir up enough food to stay alive, which is mostly rice. A separate and smaller bamboo hut, also with dirt floor, serves as the kitchen, which is furnished only with a small earthen stove with metal grate. I watched with great interest as the father cooked the rice, manipulating the coals of fire to get the desired temperature. Ahtapa cut up the chicken we had brought along (a company meal!), which was mixed with fresh greens from the field. A kettle of hot tea rounded off a super meal for Lisu country, especially when one counts the roasted corn kernels we had for dessert. We all feasted with thanksgiving, which included a two-year old grandson who eyed me with great suspicion.

Until bedtime I taught them the Scriptures, which reminded me how much illiterate people or even literate people with no Scripture to read can learn about the Bible if they have a teacher around now and again. I stayed with the basics — the beatitudes, the golden text, the golden rule, the greatest commandment, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the meaning of the gospel, the meaning of baptism. Without mentioning the betel, I did stress Christlikeness by showing that our bodies are a temple of the Spirit and that we want to keep our minds and bodies clean for God’s indwelling. I told them that I noticed how they brushed up the place (with a homemade straw broom!) when I came around. How much more should we straighten up bodies and minds for the Holy Guest of heaven!

Not only did they delight in the Scriptures, but they were touched that I would come to their humble home. “Y ou are an old man and it is not easy for you to do this,” they told me through their son. Most of the Lisu’s never live into their 60’s and the mortality rate for their newly born runs about 50%, which may be a blessing. The government has a sterilization program for them, but not until four of their children live beyond infancy, so that there will be someone to take care of the parents in old age.

As I lay alongside Ahtapa on my bamboo bed that night, beside the table where we had eaten (the parents, grandson, and a daughter were behind a partial partition in this one and only room), I pondered the age old problem of why so few have so much and so many have so little. I thought of how I could bless this community with “things” I could pick up for them from my neighbors’ garbage on my morning walks back home. But how would I get it to them?

I came to see while there, however, that money or a lack of it is not the problem with such tribal villages, which number in the hundreds if not thousands in this part of Asia, many of them being refugees from oppressive countries. I saw no starvation, no bloated stomachs. Their children are well fed — rice fed, which is adequate. They are poor, some very poor, but that is not their chief problem. They are blighted by ignorance. In this village of 59 families there are scores of children but no formal education at all. This problem is complicated by the fact that these tribal folk are a minority people who are not fully accepted by the general Thai population, something like Indians and blacks in America.

The missionary community in Thailand, which is considerable, gives much of its time to these tribal peoples, the Lisus being only one of many. I have visited with missionaries who live among these tribes, who have no written language, so as to learn their language. They then use their expertise to put said language into written form, and finally into portions of Scripture. Other missionaries teach hygiene, nutrition, medicine, farming methods. In short they live among them and show them how to improve their lives. The missionaries turn to these tribal villages because they are more susceptible to the gospel than the Thais in the cities, who are so steeped in Buddhist culture. Many among the tribes are now Christians, who may one day be able to take the gospel back to the countries from which they had to flee for freedom’s sake — China, Burma, Laos, Cambodia.

I arose from my bamboo mat as early as any of the others and was met by a glorious Lord’s day morning. For sometime I walked the countryside alone, pausing to study the very tall palm trees (70 feet?), the rushing water brooks, and neatly groomed gardens with their impressive growth of lettuce. Back at the Senlee home we had our rice breakfast and spent more time with the Scriptures. A few others in the community joined us for the “breaking of bread,” except that we had no choice but to break rice, which, the way they cook it, can be broken! And we used tea for “the cup.”

It reminded me that our Lord was in a similar situation when he “took bread,” which happened, due to it being Passover week, to be unleavened. But he did not choose (and certainly did not prescribe) a certain kind of bread. He simply took what was available. I assume he would have taken rice had he been in a Lisu village.

What impresses me about our diverse cultures is not how different we all are but how much alike. Romans talks about us all as it assures us that there is something dreadfully wrong with the human race. Sin has laid a heavy hand upon us all, and its destructive force is evident around the world, subjecting all creation to frustration, Paul tells us. But he also tells us that the creation “groans as in the pains of childbirth,” waiting for its redemption. And “We ourselves,” he tells us, “who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Ro. 8:23).

It is in this hope that we are saved, the apostle adds. And that hope makes all the difference, whatever side of the world we are on. —the Editor, from Chiang Mai, Thailand