Oxymoron: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in “a deafening silence” and “a mournful optimist”. (dictionary.reference.com)
A friend of ours has kindly given us a subscription to “The Briefing” magazine. It is a fairly middle of the road evangelical journal, and to be honest we are so grateful to have reading material in English that we usually read it from cover to cover as soon as it arrives in the postbox.
This month I was reading a book review, during which the reviewer was lamenting the lack of Biblical content in the publication he was critiquing. He gave several examples, as in the following:
“One curious example can be found in chapter 3 where he describes a “World without God” with examples from poetry, Pink Floyd and Nietsche, but without a single reference to any Bible passage…. Another is when he uses Dorcas (of Acts 9:36-42) and the Samaritan woman (of John 4:1-29) as models of the way that we might evangelise. It’s not that we can learn nothing from Dorcas and the Samaritan woman, but to choose them as examples over and above biblical instruction….”
Now this guy’s Bible might be different to mine, but I have managed to locate both Dorcas and the Samaritan woman in my Bible, and therefore I was left slightly astounded by the inference that these examples were somehow as “unbiblical” as Pink Floyd or Nietsche.
It might be that the guy has an unfortunate writing style, or that the editing job could have been more thorough, but I suspect that it is closely related to the viewpoint that “if it isn’t Paul it doesn’t count”. I haven’t seen it on sale, but I know there is a marketing opportunity for a “wallet edition evangelical bible” starting from Romans and ending with Philemon. It would be an instant best seller.
I don’t know the reason for this phenomenon, I imagine it might be because actually we have no idea what to do with the Bible, and rather than say “we have no idea what to do with the Bible”, we try instead to stick with the bits that we think that we can most easily reduce to “three rules for holy living”.
What I do know is that this phenomenon needs challenging, if only because in some quarters the phrase “evangelical thinking” is hovering on the brink of being relegated to our list of favourite oxymorons, along with “police intelligence”, “Microsoft works” or “airline food”.
We made the most of our friend Paul’s visit by escaping for a couple days to visit the Iguazu falls, on the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Iguazu is a national park, and the location of a range of huge waterfalls. In fact, in some measurements they are actually bigger than Niagra, but of course they aren’t as well known because they are in South rather than North America.
Experiencing the sheer power of the water was absolutely amazing, partly because they have had a very rainy summer in the north-east corner, province of Misiones, and there was about four times the seasonal average volume of water coming over the falls, making it all jolly spectacular. It also meant that a lot of the walkways were rather wet, we got soaked several times which is all part of the experience really.
This shot is of San Martin fall, taken from the Argentinian side. This is where the guide took us having told us “now we are going to see some of the lesser falls”. We saw both the Argentinian side and Brazilian, and were also briefly in Paraguay, although the city on the Paraguayan side is rather a dive, and only really exists because of the contraband, which moves openly across the border in astonishing quantities.
This footpath sign was one of our favourite “English” translations. It meant to say “Don’t cross the barriers”, but we think it’s probably better as it is. Another good one was a sign inside the little tourist train which read “When the train is in motion, please do not stick your extremities out of the yellow lines”.
The wildlife in the national park could be out of a childrens’ picture book. Some of the colours were even brighter than our friend Paul’s yellow raincoat, especially the butterflies, and the toucans. We also saw wild guinea pigs, coatis, and a whole cloud of black vultures. There are also six kinds of wild cats, including jaguars and pumas, but they’re night hunters and I imagine they keep themselves scarce when the place is full of visitors in the daytime. The park closes in the evenings to preserve the habitat for the wildlife.
The church-plant in Barrio Sacchi has been growing slowly but surely over the last year. When we had the inauguration a year ago, there were about a dozen regular attendees, of whom six of us were from outside the neighbourhood. In recent weeks we have regularly been around 25-30 people, of whom all apart from the original six are from within Sacchi itself. Last weekend we had a little anniversary event, and it was good to look back over the last year and see where we have come. The kids club on Saturday afternoons regularly attracts around 40 children, all from within the neighbourhood, mostly from non-church families. Recently the church has also started putting on activities like volleyball for the older young people which has also generated a good response. In the church itself there is now a Bible-study once a week, a regular music group, home-made song-books, and a new-look shiny functional bathroom. Sacchi is a small self-contained community with some specific social needs, where one needs to move slowly and generate trust, so the fact that people are responding really is a sign of encouragement. We celebrated by inviting friends and family to a little service, a big cake, and a fantastic music group, Gauchos for Christ, who write and perform Christian music using traditional Argentinian folk styles. (The “Gaucho” being the traditional Argentinian cow-boy figure, beloved of national folk-lore).