conference

Yesterday, I went to a conference by Stuart and Jill Briscoe, a famous couple that travels around the world giving talks to encourage C leaders. It’s so amazing – they are in their mid-70s, and they are traveling the globe!

It’s always refreshing to be reminded of the basics. The B tells us everything we need to know, and all we need to do is believe it and do it. The problem is sometimes we forget these truths and promises – or we don’t really believe them – and so we needed to be reminded.

Stuart talked about how the lost are like “sheep without a shepherd.” How many times have we heard this analogy? But it is an amazing one if you think about it. We are dumb and crazy like sheep – we are a bleating, stubborn, and stupid mob. We try to cross the hedge the shepherd puts up for own good because we want freedom – and in this search for “freedom” we walk into the road and become mutton.

Ever since being in CN, I have had new, intimate experience with mobs. Especially on the bus. Sometimes I don’t have to hold onto anything because I am pressed up against bodies on all sides. Sometimes I’m carried by the wave of people coming in – I’ve been stepped on, squeezed, jostled, elbowed, pushed on and, in return, I have stepped on, squeezed, jostled, and pushed others. The worst thing is when you are in the back or front of the bus, and you need to get to the exit door. There are about 40 people between you and your goal. And then this mob becomes especially annoying and frustrating.

But instead of being frustrated, annoyed, or angry at mobs, J looked at them with compassion.

“When J saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” - Matt 9:36

How did he do that? How do I possibly love the mob keeping me from the exit door, and, even more, how could I possibly love the 1.3 billion people in this country?

Use J as the example.

He saw the crowd was “harassed and helpless.” Stuart had said “Behind every aberrant behavior, there is unresolved pain.” We need to realize that the crowd is made up of individuals, individuals who behave this way because they’re trapped, fallen, in pain, and lost. They push and shove, just as I pushed and shoved, because everyone else is – and if you don’t, how will you ever get to the door? If I don’t take the bribe, how will I ever get to the top? How will I support my parents and grandparents? I am their pride and joy - If I don’t succeed, how will I make them proud?

I admit that I know very little about this country – and the less you know and understand about something, the easier it is to criticize it. It’s easy for an outsider to simple-mindedly complain about how things work here, regarding such subjects like corruption, pollution, inefficiency. But Dad looks past the surface into the heart – the reasons and motives behind it all.

Take corruption, for instance. No one denies that this is one of the biggest problems CN faces. Anti-corruption is on the top of the list of the government’s agenda. “Tsk, tsk” the American says. “That’s so messed up how so many people get their jobs by paying officials.” And I think I would have said that only a few weeks ago, but I was editing this article on corruption – and it helped me see the big picture. I am not excusing corruption – I’m only saying that many of these officials and leaders feel trapped. They see it as unavoidable and necessary because the very framework of society and bureaucracy here is built on guanxi. Sometimes, it’s the only way to “succeed.” For example, one official was given a bribe by some leader of a province. The official slipped the money back into the leader’s car, but their relationship has been broken since. So if you can’t beat the system, why fight it?

I’m trying to get used to this idea of guanxi. But I guess we have it in America too – we call it “connections”, but it plays a smaller role there, I suppose. Guanxi goes against my “Protestant ethic” of being rewarded solely by hard work, capability, and integrity, and I will have to get used to it, because, really, you can’t function here without it. I got my internship through guanxi, through a friend of a friend of a friend.

But anyway, that’s a discussion for another day - back to my point. We need to look past the surface of the sweaty, noisy, obnoxious mob into the heart of the individual in order to love them as J does. I hope I can begin to understand this place – because the beginning of loving them is understanding who they are in light of who G is. People are greedy, violent, evil, but they can’t help it because they are fallen from what G intended them to be. They are sheep who need a shepherd. C.S. Lewis said we must see each person as an eternal being who has the potential of being an eternal abomination or a child of G caught up in the weight of glory.



More thoughts about the conference later.