Last weekend I was out on the town with some of the dorm kids from my school. I teach music at a private Christian school in Montana now--in case I hadn't mentioned that before. The school is part boarding school, so we have a dorm full of students from all of the country and the world (Ethiopia, Korea, China, Rwanda, Haiti, New Jersey, Washington, Texas, Georgia...and others). We started the new trimester just before March, and with the trimester came new students. Four of these new students are Muslim. (Don't ask me why they came to a Christian school. I have no idea what-so-ever.)
So last Saturday I took some of the dorm kids--including three of the Muslims--into town to do some shopping. While we were there the kids persuaded me to let them go to a local Chinese restaurant. I like Chinese food, so it wasn't a hard sell.
The whole thing ended up being a very interesting experience. Here I was with five Chinese students in a Chinese restaurant listening as the students and the waitress (who must have been around their same age) converse in their native language. I just sat back and enjoyed the oddity of the whole situation (right up there with me teaching Spanish in Montana--oh yeah, I do a little bit of that too--where Latinos are few and far between).
We all order our food--the Muslims being very careful to not order pork per their religious dietary restrictions. Before too long the food arrives. I start digging in without thinking much about the situation around me. Next thing I know two of the students are waving their hands in the air trying to get the attention of the waitress. I figure they are just being ridiculous--and a little rude since the waitress is tending to other customers. When they do get her attention they babble frantically in Chinese, and pretty soon I realize what is going on. They are asking about the fried rice...the fried rice that was served to everyone at our table...the PORK fried rice. As the waitress explains the contents of the dish three students look with shock and dismay at the food before them.
Only two of the three had eaten any of the rice. Those two promptly excused themselves to the restroom so that they might, shall we say, "purify" their bodies.
The restaurant was very gracious about the whole thing once we explained the situation. They brought out some steamed rice and a new plate of food for the student who had dumped his rice all over his platter. The students returned from purging, and I thought it was all over and everything would be okay.
I returned to my food, and the students returned to their crazy antics and ridiculous conversations (I love high school kids). But now what? One of the students that had returned from purging was standing up in the middle of the meal to pay the waitress, and--as another student was so gracious as to point out for all the world to see--he was crying. To be honest, I didn't understand what was going on, but then I heard one of the students at the other end of the table explaining it in perhaps exaggerated, yet powerful terms: "eating pork is like killing someone to them."
So here is a boy, a young man who knows his religious duties and what he believes his god has commanded of him. He knows he has failed in his spiritual devotion, and he is sorrowful to the point of tears.
James--the brother of Jesus and one of the early church leaders in Jerusalem--says "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, 'do not commit adultery,' also said, 'Do not murder.' If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law" (James 2:10-11).
Now, many Christians believe that eating pig is no more a sin than brushing your teeth before going to bed. So we might be tempted to look at this instance of sorrow and think the boy is making a big deal of nothing. But he sees it as a command from his god (or--in all possibility--from his parents, family, and community) just as much as the other commands that we might even see as honorable and worthy of recognition.
I'm not saying what he believes is right. What I am saying is...why am I not that devoted to the commands of my God? For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). He who said, "You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment" also said, "Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment" (Matt. 5:21-22), and, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44).
So why do I not become sorrowful to the point of tears with every spiteful thought and with every lustful glance? Sure, you won't find me anywhere near the woman's bed. You won't catch me standing over a corps with a knife in my hand (and may the Lord preserve me from ever falling away into such practices). BUT if I am going to take my God at his word, if I am going to believe the one who is Lord and judge over all things, then I have to admit that I am no better than the man who does find himself holding that knife. In the moments when those thoughts pass through my mind I am harboring SIN. In those moments my heart is in a state of rebellion against the order God created, and a wall is put up to try and hide my sin and shame from God. Of course all the wall does is keep me from turning to him for help and healing while the sin continues to fester.
How did we come to this point where we would be so desensitized to sin that we could recognize wrong but not be ashamed of it to the point of sorrow? At the same time I recognize this is nothing new. There is a reason God destroyed the world with a flood. There is a reason God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a reason people in the early church had begun to "fall asleep" (ie. die). People had become so used to living in and accepting the sin around them that they could not even blush. God was going to destroy the people of Nineveh, and he says of them that they were so distorted in their understanding that they did not even know their right hand from their left (Jonah 4:11). BUT God spared Nineveh! Why? Because they sorrowfully repented!
Oh, that I could be like Nineveh, and in my ignorant and distorted understanding of right and wrong still come to a point of brokenness and sorrow before God. Oh, that the Spirit would bring me to a point of seeing my sin, and that he would turn my heart toward the only one who can spare my life and heal my mind and soul.
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