Book Smart

On one of these Sundays in church, our mission rep told us about a young woman who is called to be a missionary. I love this. He also casually added the fact that she is getting a Masters degree. That is fine. I have no problem with that. But in our culture, this casual addition to the young missionary’s pedigree might just give the impression that higher degree equals better missionary. I know the speaker didn’t mean this. I’m just saying. Let me explain.

In my extended family, some of us are book smart and some of us have other kinds of smarts. There are the idea people who devour books and love intellectual conversations. Then there are the ones who buckle down and get their degrees but have to work at it. Then there are those like my sister Angie, who are smart at what they do and know their stuff backwards and forwards, but they aren’t drawn to theology texts. To be honest, in my experience, sometimes the Church is hard on people in this last category, the ones that don’t necessarily have book smarts. In fact, the Church seems to be hard on two kinds of people: quiet ones and non-literary ones. Like they just don’t cut it somehow. I already wrote about how I didn’t feel I measured up as an introvert. I mean, if God wants us to go out and win everyone to Christ, why in the world does he insist on making quiet people? Why doesn’t he make us all really gifted, really extroverted evangelists? I have wrestled with this question a lot. I’ve come to terms with it, more or less, so what I’m writing about today is the other group of people that gets sidelined by the church. Those who don’t LOVE books.

So let me tell you a story. Two, in fact. When Robert and I first went to Mexico, we lived among Mixtec Indians in their mountain village.  They are oral people. This means they rely on information coming to them out of other people’s mouths, not information that comes on paper. This is because they don’t read in their own language (there are translators working on that, but it’s SLOW going), and though they are taught to read Spanish in school, they don’t own many books and tend to distrust what they see on paper. Some of the believers can read the Spanish Bible. But that can be tough when they use the standard 500 year old version with thee’s and thou’s, because in Spanish, it’s you’s and we’s, and the you’s (vosotros) sound very much like the we’s (nosotros), so sometimes the sermons, which include much translating of Spanish into Mixtec, can get a bit…interesting.

When the first church was born in this area, it was in response to one man’s testimony about the power of Jesus. That was it. There wasn’t a Bible in sight. And half the village came to Jesus and made a commitment to follow Him, all in one day. And they decided to stop doing the things that they knew were really wrong: they stopped getting drunk and beating their wives; they stopped taking money in exchange for marrying off (they call it selling) their daughters, and they stopped taking interest for loans (the going rate is 50-100% interest--a month!). We are talking about Pentecost, Holy Spirit transformation in this village. And one of them, a musician, started writing songs about Jesus: “People here say I will die. And if I do, I am going straight to heaven with Jesus.” And the founder of the church did die--was shot in broad daylight in the middle of town for it. And so was one of his relatives, another leader. And all this faith and obedience without reading the Bible! These people loved Jesus, and that is what mattered. I saw this.

Story number two. Robert was in Panama, meeting with leaders from the Wounan church there. They were talking about how their culture was oral, too, like the Mixtecs. (the Wounan call Robert el Mixteco). But their churches depend for their spiritual growth mainly on reading. And most visiting speakers spend all their time insisting that people read the Bible. On one such occasion, an old man stood up to speak. His words were forthright and cut to the quick: “I think I need to die now. I cannot read. I cannot even see well. I will never read. So I can never be nourished by the Word of God on my own. I think I should die now.”

Do we need to learn to read the Scriptures? OF COURSE! But we are a body. And those with the gifts of reading and analyzing can help those who don’t have these gifts. And those without those gifts can show their faith and love for Jesus to those who sometimes lose perspective and get proud of sheer book-learning, keeping them connected to the real world. Some people in our churches here in North America could feel like that Wounan man. They love Jesus, but they might not do private devos well. They might find it hard to read, to make long prayers, or to analyze sermons. But this means nothing. The only thing that Jesus is looking at is their heart, and Jesus is the only one who can see what is happening there. It’s never about what we know, but about how we respond in love. And God is the only Judge of that.

I’ve seen people (including members of my family) get judged for what knowledge they lacked, or what degrees they’d failed to earn, or what natural book smarts they’d never been given. When I was growing up, my dad, who mentored semi-literate Honduran pastors, drilled this sentence into my head: “Just because they can’t read well does not mean they cannot grasp and apply the deepest truths of God.” I’m glad he kept insisting because it’s easy to forget.