A missionary of 40 years was trying to elicit a word for forgiveness.\u00a0 He had arrived, decades before, as a single missionary, and had even spent time living in a communal house with the people.\u00a0 Later he had brought a wife back to the jungle with him and spent his life there, teaching the Word of God in that language.\u00a0 The people all talk about how well he speaks.\u00a0 But one never gets done learning.\u00a0 Who knows if, after all these years, he might finally discover a word he had been listening for all along and just never heard.\u00a0 So he asked a young indigenous man – one who had spent a lot of time in town and knew more Portuguese than most – what was his people’s word for “perd\u00e3o” – forgiveness.<\/p>\n
“There is no word for forgiveness,”\u00a0 was the decisive answer of the native speaker.\u00a0 “We don’t have a word for forgiveness because before, forgiveness did not exist in our culture.\u00a0 After someone offended you, every time you saw him you would always say ‘oh, that’s the person who did such-and-such to me’.\u00a0 There was no forgiveness.”<\/p>\n
The man went on to explain that, while there was no cultural word for forgiveness, you could demonstrate it.\u00a0 For example, one demonstration of forgiveness was eating together.\u00a0 He said that after an offense, if you invited that person to your house to eat and the two of you sat down to eat together, that would mean you were reconciled; all was forgiven.<\/p>\n
We had a chance to see that put in to practice several weeks later.\u00a0 That same man’s pet tapir attacked Jevon one night while he was outside, alone, in the dark.\u00a0 The animal bit him multiple times and probably would have killed him if someone hadn’t heard him yelling and come to help.\u00a0 The next day the animal’s owner came to see us and to look at the bites and hoof wounds.\u00a0 He expressed sympathy and let us know the tapir had received its necessary end.\u00a0 Then he asked Jevon to come to his house and eat.\u00a0 Actually, the last thing Jevon wanted to do at that moment was clamber into a hard aluminum boat, travel downriver in the hot sun to someone else’s house, and eat there.\u00a0 He wanted to lie still in his own bed in his own house with a fan on him.\u00a0 But he knew that this invitation was about more than just food.\u00a0 So he got up and went.\u00a0 He ate in the man’s house.\u00a0 They talked and laughed and enjoyed the time together.\u00a0 When they were finished, the man said, “Go.\u00a0 It’s in the past now.”<\/p>\n
“Yes,” Jevon said, “and everything will scab over and heal.”\u00a0 They all had a good laugh, and Jevon went on his way, thankful that relationships were in tact and reconciliation had been concretely demonstrated.<\/p>\n
Did you ever stop to think what life would be like if forgiveness did not exist?\u00a0 If reconciliation was not a possibility?<\/p>\n
Or did you ever stop to wonder HOW you would teach about forgiveness and reconciliation if a word for it does not exist in the language?<\/p>\n
What do you think the reaction will be when people of this culture hear how Jesus passed the bread to Judas on the night Judas would betray him?\u00a0 How will that story impact them?<\/p>\n
The truth is, all of our languages and all of our cultural backgrounds are missing crucial aspects of God’s character and crucial concepts of God’s message.\u00a0 It is the Story of God, as He Himself unfolded it in the pages of Scripture, coupled with applicative teaching, that the Spirit of God uses to open eyes and change lives.<\/p>\n
Please pray for us that we will continue to discover this language and culture.\u00a0 Pray that God will continue uncovering the things we need to know in order to teach the Word of God clearly and impact lives from the inside out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A missionary of 40 years was trying to elicit a word for forgiveness.\u00a0 He had arrived, decades before, as a single missionary, and had even spent time living in a communal house with the people.\u00a0 Later he had brought a wife back to the jungle with him and spent his life there, teaching the Word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":552,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[448,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-1514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ministry","7":"tag-ethnos360","8":"tag-new-tribes-mission","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/552"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/jevon-rich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}