Tour Guides

While riding the bus today and waiting in the doctor's office, I read chapter 3 ("True") in Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2005). This book is definitely worth reading. In this chapter, he has a section that compares cross-cultural ministers to tour guides. He writes:

TOUR GUIDES

In the same way that something can be labeled "Christian" and not be true, something can be true and not be labeled "Christian," Paul quotes Cretan prophets and Greek poets. He is interested in whether or not what they said is true. Now to be able to quote these prophets and poets, Paul obviously had to read them. And study them. And analyze them. And I'm sure he came across all kinds of things in their writings that he didn't agree with. So he sifts and sorts and separates the light from the dark and then claims and quotes the parts that are true. (p. 87, Bold mine)

It is as if Paul is a spiritual tour guide and is taking his readers through their world, pointing out the true and the good wherever he sees it. Notice what he does in the book of Acts. He visits the city of Lystra, which hasn't heard of Jesus or the God Paul believes in, and he tries to figure out how to explain his Christian worldview to them. He tells them, "[God] has not left himself without testimony. He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." (p. 87)

Paul essentially asks his audience. Have you had enough food? Who do you think it comes from? (p. 87)

Has it rained so your crops could grow? Who do you think did that? (p. 87)

Have you ever laughed? Who do think made that possible? (p. 87)

Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. (pp. 87-88, Bold mine)

Perhaps we ought to replace the word missionary with tour guide, because we cannot show people something we haven't seen. (p. 88)

Have you ever heard missionaries say they were going to "take Jesus" to a certain place? What they meant, I assume, was that they had Jesus and they were going to take him to a place like China or India or Chicago where people apparently didn't have him. (p. 88)

I would ask them if people in China and India and Chicago are eating and laughing and enjoying things and generally being held together? Because if they are, then Jesus, in a way that is difficult to fully articulate, is already present there. (p. 88)

So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the peoople there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. (p. 88, bold mine))

It is searching for the things they have already affirmed as real and beautiful and true and then telling them who you believe is the source of all that. "I am here to tell you where I think it comes from..." (p. 88, bold mine)

And if you do see yourself carrying God to places, it can be very exhausting. (p. 88, bold mine)

God is really heavy. (p. 88)

Some people actually believe that God is absent from a place until they get there. The problem with this idea is that if God is not there before you get there, then there is no "there" in the first place. (p. 88, bold mine)

Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connection where others don't. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything. (p. 89)

In the books of Matthew and Mark, Jesus has dinner with a group of religious leaders and a woman crashes the party, pouring expensive perfume on Jesus' head. The people Jesus is eating with are mad. This perfume could have been sold and the money used for all sorts of worthy causes. But Jesus defends her. He says, "He has done a beautiful thing for me." Jesus and his dinner companions experience the exact same event, yet they see it from totally different perspectives. Jesus sees another dimension to the events. For him it is a profoundly moving, spiritual, worshipful experience. He points out the beauty of it. The others miss it. He sees it. He is a tour guide. Pointing out the holy and sacred that are present, right there, right now. (p. 89)