#192 | How Do We Disciple In A Multicultural World? Pt. 2 | Ajith Fernando

The truth is always basic, but the way in which we learn the truth can change from situation to situation. But the danger is that truth has to be always basic, and that truth is the truth of the scriptures.

Watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

When the culture around seems to shift and sway wildly every five minutes, things get more than a little disorienting. It's hard to know where to stand or even how can we be Christians in such strange times?

Fortunately, we have an anchor, Jesus Christ, who is revealed to us in Scripture. Also, we have to remind ourselves that we're not alone. We're not. Jesus has given us his spirit and he's given us his church.

We do not follow Jesus alone. We are a part of his body, and that body is bigger than we often think and has resources that we often take for granted or even overlook.

Today, I'm continuing my conversation with Ajith Fernando, former head of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka and author of the recent book Discipling in a Multicultural World. Ajith isn't just a thinker or writer on discipleship. It's what he does daily.

Naturally, it's who he is, which makes him a great resource for understanding how he often missed things along the way.

The fact that Ajith has served among the poor and the young, among people who are often hostile to Christianity, makes him a perfect conversation partner for those of us in the west who have a tendency to get tunnel vision and wonder why what we are doing isn't working. If you haven't listened to part one, go back and do that first, because we're jumping off today exactly from the point we left off last time.

Discipleship, as we learned last time, is communal. That's how we grow. The lone soldier. Fighting for the gospel is not the biblical model. So what should we be doing?

How can Ajith's experiences in Sri Lanka help Westerners live out Christ's mission more fully? I'm glad you asked. Let's listen in and find out. Happy listening.

But we also need to understand and have a proper theology of suffering. And you refer to suffering in a great way, because I find those in the west are very allergic to the concept of suffering whatsoever.

And the health and wealth gospel hasn't helped at all. It's made it much worse. The idea that you just name it and you claim it to get out of your suffering.

But suffering, as we've alluded to through many tribulations, you must enter the kingdom of God. As we read in Acts or in Timothy, where he says, endure suffering is a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

Even Jesus, who is our example, endured the cross. And Jesus said, if the world persecutes me, it's going to persecute you.

So this idea of suffering has really been marginalized in much Western theology. What role does suffering play in our sanctification? And then how do we help our people recover a robust understanding of suffering?

Prosperity theology has given a certain aspect of happiness to people. You know, if I'm rich, I'll be happy. I think we cannot. I have written a book called the Call to Joy and Pain.

And in that book I say that I was able to find 18 places in the New Testament where joy and pain are presented together. I think it's dangerous to present suffering without a corresponding emphasis on joy.

Joy is a more basic aspect of Christianity than even suffering because our relationship with God is such that it is a joyful relationship. The joy of the Lord is your strength.

And so I think we have to redeem suffering from being this highly negative thing to something that is a means through which God is going to bless us and see suffering as a blessing rather than a problem.

I think our commitment to efficiency that finds frustration, a real aggravation, you know, things like that has given us a negative understanding about suffering because it holds back progress. But for us, progress is progress in joy, you know, and when you. I mean, the Bible talks about the joy of suffering.

You mentioned Jesus endured the cross, but it said who? For the joy that was set before him. That was the thing that drove one of the things that drove Jesus, that there was joy on the other side.

It's fascinating. We've had a lot of conversations on here of this new field called neurotheology, where they can actually map out spiritual formation on the brain.

And they've noted that we are wired for joy. We do what makes us joyful. And that's something that the scripture has already told us about, which is amazing to me, and how we find this joy.

And I appreciate how you've connected it to suffering. But the suffering part is real, and so is the fear that comes with it.

And that joy is not always noticeable, especially to those who are new and they're experiencing the frustration and the pain of their parents and pleasing them. And what they're doing in the greater community.

And you address and take a moment to talk about in the book and I very much appreciated it, talking about these so called, they've been named insider movements within these religious groups where people have become Christians or at least outwardly they have professed Jesus and yet because of one reason or another have, have decided to stay as almost like a covert Christian staying within the community of Hindu or Muslims still going to mosque. Why do we need to know about these insider movements and how do we help people to live as followers of Jesus in the way that the Bible commands?

It's a very controversial topic, but I think we need to know about it because a lot of people are doing that they are within. Personally, I see that as a transitional state.

I'm very careful about making it a doctrine because associating with the body of Christ, the wider body of Christ is a very important aspect of being a Christian.

But according to the situation they're in, sometimes it may be necessary for them not to overtly in a transitional state, not to overtly associate themselves with the Christian community. But I would say that is a very transitional state.

Help our people understand what that is. I've described it a little bit, but you describe it in what you see in your cultural context.

These are people who go with their parents for religious festivals but don't participate in them. But they don't. But they still remain within the family and participate. And they are there when there's an arms giving. They will be there.

They will do the washing, they will do the cooking, they will do all of those things, but they won't do some of those other rituals because those betray Christianity. So that, that would be a little moderate.

Some people go a little further and they will even participate in the rituals which I'm a little weary about.

I am as well.

I remember when the insider movement first kind of came into the light and it's, it's been quite controversial as people are trying to figure out how to reach people.

And you know as well as I do that when some, in some cultural contexts, when they come to know Jesus, they're expelled from that community if, if they, if it becomes known and they'll have no influence on it whatsoever. And others have said, well, in order to actually reach them, what if we stay within it? And there's arguments all around. This is a very difficult.

But there is a point in time where it does become syncretistic, where you're compromising the integrity of the Gospel message in there. And that brings me to my next question, you talk about culturally appropriate teaching methods, that there's not a one size fits all approach.

And many Westerners want to do that. They want to take a principle, they want to apply it to everybody. But it doesn't work because cultures are different, cultures are different.

And we're seeing that more and more as so many cultures are everywhere. As Alan Yeh wrote in his book Polycentric Missiology, the mission is from everyone to everywhere.

And we're seeing this convergence of cultures all over the place. But yet secularization and globalization is playing a part in every single culture.

Nevertheless, we still need to be aware of these appropriate cultural teaching methods. What do you mean by that?

And help our people to understand exactly why we need to take a culturally appropriate approach whenever we're trying to teach.

One thing is that if you look at Jesus's teaching method, it was not only he had formal teaching classes like the Sermon on the Mount and the other Discourses, but much of his teaching was conversation. And worldview is something that is imbibed.

And imbibing takes place when the person is actively engaged in the subject, and that takes place through conversation. So now it's very important to have the form formal classes, just like Jesus did with the Sermon on the Mount and his other Discourses.

But, but along with that, one cultural aspect that I think we need to incorporate is, is. Is just chatting, chatting about these truths and giving time for that. So that's one thing. Another thing is Jesus used story.

And I think the west is now beginning to become more and more emotive in their approach to truth. And people don't only argue to argue for the truth through logical processes, but they also sense the truth through feeling its reality.

Now, ultimately these propositions of Scripture are important. That's the problem that we have. People become story, story, story without rooting it in scriptural truth.

So there has to be scriptural truth as the base. That's always the base. But the means by which the scriptural truth is taught could be story and that kind of thing.

So I think that's what I mean by that's why I prefer.

I mean, having studied inductive Bible study, I prefer for us to go through Scripture that way rather than topically, you know, topically arranged things which are little more difficult for our people to understand.

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We had a conversation with Chris Watkin about his book Higher Biblical Theory. And in the book or Biblical Higher Theory, I don't have it in front of me right now.

And in the book he talks about we have to learn how to out narrate. We need to recover the power of story and sharing it with people.

You also though mentioned not just this aspect of story, but you capture this idea of how to bring a reality back in. Because most of our people that we're encountering, even though we are literate culture and on the show we talk about the Bible a lot.

But I had a young man on the show, his name, he actually runs a ministry called make sure I get this right Street Lights and they actually have taken the Bible and they put it to hip hop music. Because of urban youth has become a global culture because many people aren't reading as much as they used to.

And I know with my own children who have phones, they have their own Internet speak with symbols and pictures and things like that. What role does orality play within our ministering to people today? Rather than being so literacy based, I.

Think that's something that we have to rediscover. Even people who read, they are oral learners. A lot of them are oral learners. Even though they are reading, they know how to read. So.

So it is important, I think it's important for us to know, you know, the old methods showed the authority of scripture, you know, and it was scripture explained. Now I think oral type, these other newer approaches must preserve that authority of scripture. People must know that scripture is the base.

Otherwise what happens is this becomes an entertainment. We are entertaining people with Truth rather than basing them onto the word. So always truth. The truth of Scripture is basic.

The means by which the truth of Scripture is presented may be through the logical argumentation method, or it could be through a more story type method. So I think we have to maintain that basic thing. If we lose that, then it becomes haywire. You know, we are just entertaining people with nice stories.

And you're right, it needs to be rooted. And you mentioned the rooting, taking in the scripture. Yes, but you also talk about it.

Another aspect of that being rooted in scripture is in the corporate worship. What do you think we need to do in our corporate worship to ensure that we're discipling as we are worshiping?

I haven't been in Western worship for a long time. My worship is in Sri Lanka. In our language.

One of the greatest needs for our worship is to be more scriptural, for people to realize that what they are doing is scriptural and worship is a means by which teaching also takes place. I mean, I'm from the Methodist heritage where John Wesley used the hymn book as his theology book. He taught theology using hymns.

And so this is a big challenge for us to bring theology into our worship in a way where the heart is touched by the music. And usually the journey from the head to the heart is a long journey and music can help speed that journey.

So worship can be a wonderful means of teaching.

But I think we are because, again, because of our entertainment orientation, worship is to a great extent we are enjoying Jesus, you know, enjoying worshiping God and getting an emotional high without really rooting ourselves in the world.

Wish I didn't care about what you want to say. You mentioned, and you've again, you've referred to this in our conversation, the idea of experiencing God.

There's this aspect of experiencing God that in the west we have this idea if we get facts and we proceed in that way. I can't remember the exact way that you had worded it, but I do remember you talking about facts.

And actually I have this in the back here because I was taking notes as I was writing. You mentioned feeling faith and facts. But you also talk about, in the west it's usually facts and then it's the faith and then it's the feeling.

And you're calling for a reverse of the order in some certain instances. Why is that important to distinction, to hold onto and help people to see this idea of experience?

Yeah, well, I think I, I think in the Bible people learn through experience and through teaching both. And, and we, we must have Both those methods at work. So. So Peter learned that God is no respecter of persons.

Fung the vision he had, you know, and seeing the way Cornelius responded to the gospel, it was an experience that led him to the truth. The truth is always basic, but the way in which we learn the truth can change from situation to situation.

But the danger is that truth has to be always basic and that truth is the truth of the Scriptures. So that's what I'm trying to tell, that there are different ways in which people learn, but always Scripture is the base.

You mentioned Scripture, the witness of the Word, the community, as those parts of that playing, that transformation part. And then you delve into prayer and elaborate on prayer. Why is or what role does prayer play?

I think every Christian would give a nod to that, that prayer plays a vital part. But what role do you see that prayer plays that we often miss in our understanding of discipleship?

Well, there are many things I can say. One, of course, is that prayer is wrestling with God. Colossians 4:12. Epaphras, who is one of you, is wrestling in prayer for you.

So the discipler is wrestling on behalf of the other person in prayer. Prayer is powerful. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful as it is working. So that is one aspect, prayer.

When we pray for people, we are blessing the person. We are working on behalf of that person. So that's one aspect, but the other aspect is that for a person, I think prayer is medicine to the soul.

You know, insecurity is a major issue today. People, you know, our alienation from community life, you know, we found security in community. Now there is no community. So people are insecure.

And insecurity lies at the heart of a lot of the problems. Burnout, for example, people are trying to prove themselves and working, working, working, and then, you know, working themselves to the ground.

You know, so prayer, being in the presence of God can be one of those wonderful experiences of affirming our identity, of affirming our security. So I think prayer is a therapeutic thing, not just a duty, but it's something that God uses to help us realize who we are.

You also talk in the book about dealing with guilt and receiving forgiveness. Why did you feel that we needed to address that in our discipling.

The. The old paradigm of God's of salvation as overcoming, as freedom from guilt still remains basic to Christianity.

And if we lose that, we lose a major understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And so I think we need to find ways in which that is done.

Guilt is a reality when you when you fail, when you fail God, you have violated your humanity. And those who violate their humanity lose authenticity. They lose their fullness as people. And they need freedom from guilt.

And there is nothing that can take freedom, give you freedom from guilt.

As much as the fact that the God of this universe sent his son to die to take our guilt upon himself, and that now we can be free from guilt by virtue of what he did. I think that is a message that is difficult to communicate in today's world, but is still the greatest liberating news that there is.

It is amazing and incredible news that everyone needs to hear. You mentioned the relief of guilt. You mentioned in the book about finding this freedom.

And you also mentioned the need for helping people understand how to respond to injustice that had been done to them. You mentioned taking revenge. That's the first time I think I've ever read anyone talking about taking revenge in discipleship.

Where did that come from? That I. I mean, why did you feel the need to address that particular issue?

As you know, as I mentioned earlier, my work, my wife and I have been working primarily with Buddhist converts and in a church. Our grassroots ministry is in our church. I'm doing mentoring and teaching in Youth for Christ, but my grassroots ministry is in my church.

And church life wouldn't be church life if there aren't church fights. Yes. And then those of us who are leaders in the church, one of our great jobs is trying to be peacemakers in the church.

And constantly we have been told, I mean, I don't know how many times, but several times my wife and I have been told, you can do this, but we can't we. Because so much a part of their culture is revenge. If you have been dishonored, it would be dishonorable for you not to hit that.

You are bringing shame to your wife for not assaulting the person who insulted your wife. It's wrong. What you're doing is something wrong. So we have to bring another aspect.

We have to teach that Christians don't take revenge because already.

And the whole idea of Christ taking, the whole idea of judgment, in fact, I don't think we can push forgiveness and not taking revenge properly if we don't have a proper doctrine of judgment, because it's unfair. Unfair things have been done to us, and that's wrong.

But we know that there is a God who judges and that he will do what is necessary to bring justice. If we did it, we will make a mess of it.

So we do what we can do, which is love the person which May in the process end up in that person repenting and becoming our friend, you know, but there is such a thing as justice and God will judge. Without that whole biblical viewpoint, it's very difficult for us not to push to people, ask people not to take revenge.

In Buddhism though, isn't the problem of suffering rooted in desire? I mean, just theologically. So that doesn't make sense to me.

But there's a lot of things in different religions that don't seem logical to me, even in my own faith. But I don't understand how they want to take revenge.

If suffering is a result of desire and desire is bad, shouldn't then theologically, I don't know how you say that in a Buddhist context since they don't believe in one God. The term isn't theological. Philosophically, probably how does that work?

I mean, how do they justify the idea of suffering and say, okay, suffering is at the root of the problem and that's because of your desire. How do they then say justice? You don't even really have a concept of justice, Buddhism, do you?

Yeah, well, I think in all religions, even Christianity, the religion is mixed with culture.

Ah, got it.

And aspects that are not compatible with the religion are brought into the culture, brought into the lifestyle because of culture. And I think this is one of those cases.

And when they talk about suffering, what they really mean is more like frustration that, you know, Ecclesiastes talks about and things like that. What they are saying is that because you have desire, you are never going to be fulfilled. You know, you are going to be frustrated.

And if you are going to have freedom from that frustration, you have to get rid of desire that.

It just very fascinates me, this whole, the Buddhist idea and seeing how Buddhism and Hinduism are making a rise, I mean, continuing to rise in the west and also just seeing how the pagan religions of old are rising up again in Europe. Seeing.

There was an article that was done just this past week, I think, in the BBC, where they talk about the rise of paganism and it's the old gods are rising in some way. And there's a variety of reasons I think, for that. Which brings me to my next question.

You talk about the demonic, something that is often overlooked in the West. I talk to scholars and practitioners all the time. We will talk, especially in the Caucasian west concept, especially in my theological tribes.

We will talk about intellect, the mind all day long. But when you bring up the demonic, people don't want to be confused with those that they consider to be outside of their theological Tribe.

However, the scripture talks so much about the demonic. Why do we need to keep the demonic where it is biblically in our discipleship?

And how do we help people to see the need of understanding the demonic within our discipleship process?

Let me first say that I think part of the reason why the west is not so, you know, emphasizing the demonic is that Satan also finds different ways to attract people and people who are not interested in spiritual things. He doesn't attack spiritually. He'll do it other, other ways through drugs, through which is really almost like a possession, demonic possession.

So, so I think that is one reason why people are not as conscious of Satan because Satan's method in the west is more subtle than in our part of the world where people are conscious of the demonic world. So I think.

But we have to be aware always of Satan's devices and the, the lack of spiritual understanding of life that came with a very rationalistic sort of Christianity.

As you know, people are rejecting that now and they are getting more open towards the spiritual, which means that they are going to be more open towards demonic. Unfortunately, it's the non Christians who are getting more open to that rather than the Christians. So I think we have to teach the Scriptures.

We can't. You know, if you go through the scriptures, you come across many things that seem to be so irrelevant, but they are necessary.

And so we need to just keep, you know, I mean, you can't go through the Gospels without being fully confronted by the reality of the demonic. The only thing is that the demonic may be expressing itself in a little more subtle form in the west than it is in our part of the world.

I would wholeheartedly agree. I think that that's the one thing that I think academics don't ever talk about because they can't quantify it or qualify it.

It doesn't fall neatly within that. But I think C.S. lewis draws a lot of attention.

I'm seeing more authors starting to, and scholars starting to see that element that we've missed because we have been so rationalistic, so intellectual. But we forget that we don't wrestle with flesh and, but against the principalities and the powers and authorities in the heavenly places.

And we've addressed that on the show quite often because the demonic does play a role.

And I think this is where our brothers and sisters that are in the east is a good corrective because of their, an awareness of it that I think many of those in the west have largely forgotten. What role though does? Inner healing.

You actually brought out inner healing and I remember being in India and I was at a breakout session with a mutual friend of ours, and there was a thing on inner healing, and it was the first time I'd ever encountered it. It was almost about 10 years ago now. And I thought, what role does inner healing from trauma play within the Christian role of discipleship?

And at the time, that was the first time I heard of it. And I was thinking, oh, this is unbiblical. This isn't right. It's some new age type of thing come in.

But since then, I've seen more and more ministries talk about it that are dealing with. Helping deal with deliverance, but they're also dealing with trauma.

They're dealing with this aspect that I think that, again, it's a corrective because we've gone too far another way. What role does this idea of this healing aspect that you write about, this inner healing or healing from trauma, how does that play?

What role does that play in our discipleship?

I think today's world being so impatient, people are going to be hurt much more than in the earlier world. Earlier world, there was violence, and people were hurt through violence. Now we are seeing impatience causing us a kind of violence.

That is why today, capital punishment, not capital. What do you call it? Hitting children.

Yeah, Physical discipline is what they call that.

Yeah, yeah. Physical discipline is outlawed because people went beyond. You know, the impatience of today's world has caused a lot of pain in people.

And in my ministry of discipling, very often I have encountered people are not growing because they have pain and unresolved, unforgiven experiences, especially with their parents, especially fathers. You know, and I've. I've often had to. I mean, these things are. I'm not an expert in this. In this at all.

But we need to bring it up and help that person to come to grips, to apply scripture even to those experiences which earlier we may have not talked about. But today, I think today's world is expressing itself a little more emotionally, that people are talking about it, and it's real. And so I think.

I think it's important for us to apply scripture to people's wounds.

And how do we help? I mean, what's the proper way of doing that? How do we go about that?

How do we identify that trauma or roadblock that's there and help them overcome that? Is it a deliverance? Is it counseling? Is it. What is it? Or is it many? It depends on the person. And it's many different approaches.

I think it's many different approaches. I think there Is a time when you feel that people have been oppressed by Satan and you need to pray for deliverance from that.

I think very often it happens through forgiveness. But before forgiveness there has to be acknowledgment of wrong and a full recognition of that something terrible has been done.

If you don't do that and ask people to ask forgiveness, to forgive those who hurt them, we are hurting them even more.

So these are the things that I think have helped me when I realized that if you don't acknowledge wrong and you ask people to forgive those who hurt you without acknowledging that wrong was done, you are really hurting these people. That's not a scriptural approach. Scripture is just. God is just and God does not like injustice. And injustice has to be addressed.

So that is the way I approach this inner healing. I'm not all that fond of this word inner healing because it has all.

These connotations and buildup. What would you prefer to call it then?

I don't know, just healing of wounds.

Or, you know, emotional scars, psychological scars. Yeah, I understand your. I understand the terminology has got a lot of build up around it.

They're not very biblical ideas and we want to make sure that we stay. Stay biblical in our approach of it. You know, your book has been out now for. For what, a couple of years, I believe.

Yeah, unfortunately after the book came out, I was. We were hit by Covid and I haven't traveled and all of that. But more and more people are.

I mean recently, more recently people have been saying, just now just I. I made my first visit to the states in seven years after I wrote this book in about six years.

I visited the states this month and a president of a college told me, oh, I'm distributing your book. You know, I'm giving it as gifts to people because I think they realized that maybe there was something we missed out in our discipling.

And so I was very happy to hear that. That I have heard a lot. I mean, I don't expect the book to be a bestseller, but I think it's meeting a need that people need to be taking seriously.

What's going to be your next book?

Actually, I just finished my next book. It's a much lighter, 40,000 word small book on secrets of long term freshness in ministry after 46 years in ministry.

I want to write this long ago, but I thought, let me wait a few more years and see whether I'm still feeling fresh about ministry. I will write this. Yeah, that's.

Your son has a book coming out, too.

That's right. Yes.

Yes, I've been in correspondence with him. I've seen David Rowe of Lausanne quoting it over and over and over again. What's his new book going to be about?

It's on Philippians. I can't remember the details. Something like Unstoppable Passion for the Gospel or something like that.

Have you read it?

No, just sections. I've read sections. It's not out yet.

Yeah, it'll be a couple of months. If I remember correctly, he said it would be a couple of months, but I know it's already generating some excitement.

You have to be excited that he's following in that author part of your life. Have your other children written books?

No, my daughter also writes. I have two children. Their daughter writes, but it's short things. She writes for Our Daily Bread.

Oh, yes. Yes.

Yeah. So she does some writing for them.

And what. What is her name?

Nirmali.

Okay. All right. I'll have to look for that and see that it's. Look for. Look for when she. She writes.

How can people follow and pray for your ministry and what you're doing?

Yeah, well, I'm not very much of a social media person.

That's okay.

I do have a website, but. Yeah. I don't know what to say. Just pray. Sri Lankan church grew suddenly about 30 years ago. Started growing about 30 years ago suddenly.

But now we are seeing a lot of ill health within the church. And a lot of it is because our pastors haven't been discipled. They haven't.

They don't have spiritual parents to care for them, and they are making big mistakes and moral issues. And I am besieged right now. I'm mentoring several people. I'm mentoring young pastors. I have a particular interest in drug rehabilitation.

That's the ministry that I was involved with when I was actively more active in Youth for Christ. And so I mentor former drug addicts who are now in ministry. And very often I have to deal with issues among pastors that people bring up.

So I don't think I'm a very good counselor. But I guess because of my seniority, people come asking for help, and it's very difficult to say no. So I'm.

It's been a really challenging time for me also.

Well, how big is the church? The Christian population in Sri Lanka?

We have a. The Protestants are about 300,000.

Yeah.

So that's. That's about 300,000, about 150,000 or maybe less. A little less is from the assembly of God. That's the biggest denomination.

Okay. And how big is Sri Lanka, population wise?

Roughly 22 million.

22 million to 300,000.

And the challenges for the church right now you're seeing are the discipleship aspect of pastors, the stress, and probably going through what everyone around the world has gone through with COVID the issues that are going on within the church. There seems to be a paradigm shift that's going on right now.

What is your hope as we finish up our conversation for the church going forward around the world?

We are living at a time when the moral foundations of the world are being just attacked and discarded.

My hope is that the church will maintain its winsome witness for orthodoxy, moral and theological orthodoxy, so that when society realizes they went out on a limb and miss their way and start looking again for reality, for truth, for a foundation, that the church will be there to minister and to meet that need. So we have to be faithful right now to our task. We have to do our evangelism. That has to be done all the time.

But we also have to be faithful to these stars.

Well, thank you so much for honoring us and coming on the show. We really appreciate it. May God bless you and your ministry.

Let's face it, Ajith's situation is not like most of us, even if you live in a very multicultural place, however, the realities that he has faced in almost 50 years of ministry can really help us. The Sri Lankan church is not that large. They face persecution and cultural difficulties in ways that can be hard for many of us to imagine.

Yet Ajith's faith, his commitment to Jesus in the face of all that is, is remarkable. As we saw last time, the connection to community, a covenant community of believers, is crucial to that.

In today's conversation, I intentionally asked Jeeth questions about a wide variety of topics. I really did.

I wanted to get his take about the realities of his cultural situation and how being a Christian works its way out there in his specific culture. I wanted to understand things like suffering and worship, prayer and even the demonic. That's a lot of different topics.

And it may have seemed like I was randomly jumping around, but I had a point, and it really wasn't entirely random. I wanted his perspective because we need to hear from faithful believers from other cultures to help us.

You.

You need to hear this where you're at, because you wouldn't hear it any other way. Here's the deal.

We see God better and we can find wisdom that can apply to our situations precisely because they aren't our situations that he's talking about. You are enabled to see the world through his eyes, to get a different perspective, because sometimes we have blinders on. You know, C.S.

lewis and I love Lewis. If you've listened to our show for any period of time, I love C.S. lewis.

And one of my most favorite things that he ever said, and he said that we were guilty of chronological snobbery. And what he meant by that is that we only have a tendency to see within our own time. We have blinders on.

And he recommended for every new book that you read, read an old book in between. And the same is true. Culturally, we have a geographical or cultural snobbery too. We see only things in our own context.

And when we are able to see through their eyes, when you can see through their eyes, someone from a different culture who loves Jesus and his discipling people, it's a challenge to you. I know it is, because it's a challenge to me. When we read other cultures, we can correct the characteristic mistakes of our own.

There is a tremendous amount to unpack from this conversation, way more than I can cover in a few minutes of an intro or an outro to this podcast. It's a conversation I'm going to be thinking about for a while.

It's the kind that you need to mull over and go back to because there is so much wisdom in it.

There are a lot of moments that stand out, perhaps especially Ajith's statement about prayer, that being in the presence of God affirms our identity and security, that he uses it to help us realize who we are. Man, seriously, I need that. And I bet you do, too.

In all of the craziness of our world and all of the issues that we face, recognizing our true identity in Christ, our union with him and our calling to his mission, that allows us to stand together when otherwise it just doesn't make sense. I am struck, too, that Ajith didn't have a magic bullet to fix all of our problems. I was really, really glad for that.

Because in the west, that's what we do. We need our magic bullet. It's a quick fix. And you know, we can't microwave discipleship. It's a crock pot. Seriously, it's a crock pot.

He didn't just dismiss Western Christianity. Not everything is bad here. And he didn't propose Eastern Christianity as the way forward either, something I really appreciated.

He fully admitted that they had made mistakes in the early days of youth for Christ in Sri Lanka and that there are problems right now with pastors who had never been mentored, brought up well. What he did do was affirm aspects of Western Christianity and also challenge us. And again, we talk about this all the time on the show.

There's something that the gospel does where it affirms something every culture as a bridge building to the gospel to build credibility. But then it challenges something in every single culture and church and church. We have to keep our eyes open to that.

We need a better sense of community, especially in our very isolated online world. We need to connect story and experience to our faith. I know you can do that. You have your story, you have your faith. You can do this.

This isn't something for all of those who are trained you can do this. It just takes a willing heart, ears to listen and the courage to start the process.

Yes, it must be anchored in scripture, but the way we engage with the truth of scripture will change based on what is culturally appropriate. And that's an important insight too, especially because what is culturally appropriate is changing in our culture right now.

The biblical world is not so neat and tidy as our Western rationally dominated selves would like to think. The cracks are apparent. The spiritual world is real and people are slowly waking up to that fact, even if in dangerous ways.

Through it all, Ajayts call to us.

His hope is that our winsome witness for orthodoxy in a time where the moral foundations of the world are being attacked and discarded will stand so that when society wakes up to the realization that it's out on a limb and needs reality, we will be here. Not to say I told you so, but to minister and meet the needs that they have. We have to be faithful to the task. Amen. I could not say it better myself.

If you want to watch this conversation and many of our other conversations, be sure to check out our YouTube channel and make sure you subscribe. If you'd like to support us and partner with us to help water the world, simply click the link in your show notes.

I want to thank our Apollos water team for helping us to water the world. World, this is Travis Michael Fleming signing.

Off from Apollo's Watered Stay watered everybody.