Fat and Forgetful

Yesterday a friend back home in Ireland shared with me about the heaviness of heart that accompanies opportunities to share the Gospel. He described how friends, neighbours and co-workers could sit, happy to attend a Christian event, and yet remain completely unmoved by the Gospel call. He wondered if it was fair to compare the “blindness here” of Ireland that he saw, to the great “darkness there” of South Asia.

The two descriptions give more depth every time I consider them. In darkness, a light can be brought that people may see. With blindness, no matter how much light is brought, the response will be the same. And in this circumstance that blindness is self-inflicted. Of course, Scripture uses both analogies for the human condition, and it is not as if one is less sinful than the other. And yet, somehow there is a distinction in responsibility of those on the receiving end.

As I thought about it, it was a different analogy that popped into my head to describe the difference:

“Two things I ask of you;
    deny them not to me before I die:

Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
    give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you
    and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal
    and profane the name of my God.”

– Proverbs 30:7-9

When it comes to the nations and their sin, it seems to me that they fall into one of the two camps above. There are those to whom the Gospel has come, they have had years of Gospel access, their laws, customs, societal building blocks, healthcare and education institutions have all been built on the bedrock of the Christianity that once transformed their land. Ireland is such a case. Since the 4th Century AD there has been a Christian witness in my homeland. Yet the nation, along with almost all other Western nations, has become fat and happy, living off the fruits of the food from heaven that has come to them, and now has the audacity to turn and say, “Who is the Lord?”. They look at the meal, forgetting the waiters who served it, or the chef who prepared it. Who needs the Lord when we have all the benefits that accompany the Gospel meal? This is the Western attitude.

And now? Now approaches a famine as was spoken of by Amos, not of bread, nor of water, but of the Word of God. In the same lands where William Tyndale could pray that a ploughboy would know more Scripture than the Pope, in times where there was no access to the Word of God, now that famine has returned. It has not returned due to lack of Bibles, Tyndale would be pleased to know. But how grieved he would be that despite the abundance, the food is piled high on a scrapheap, the Lord is forgotten, and the children in the schools across Ireland today cannot tell one story of King David.

On the other hand, there are those who have a scarcity of food. They have no spiritual resources to feed upon. There are swathes of nations that have little to no access to the Gospel and therefore, like the individual of Proverbs 30, they turn elsewhere to get by. Is it any wonder that I walked past a thousand men kneeling before a mosque yesterday afternoon? Is it not understandable, (note, I did not say excusable), that a billion Hindus offer up food to gods made of wood and clay? They are hungry for something, and for lack of that spiritual food, they turn elsewhere. The need in these lands is great.

Both is Acts 17:30 and 1 Timothy 1:13, Paul speaks of ignorance as a precursor to reception of mercy. Yet for the two groups above, ignorance looks very different. To the one, they have slowly become fat and forgetful. How hard it is to awake them from their satisfied slumber while eternity beckons. For the other they are ignorant that there is another option to the theft of God’s glory.

Maybe this might be a helpful framework for some to consider the needs of the nations, and to discern their own gift and calling. Ministering in both contexts is so needful. Both will require becoming acquainted with a heavy heart and groaning bones. And yet the joy of feeding the gospel-hungry with good food, or of making disciples who choose rather to train themselves for godliness than become fat on God’s gifts, has no comparison.

May we learn to pray Agur’s prayer for ourselves and our families, but also for the nations of the world. That in the mercy of God they might be held in the balance of having access to the Word of God, and yet refrain from growing fat and forgetful.