the scourge of cultural Christianity

I've been home for almost a month and almost all of me is back.  I want to write just one more piece about my experiences.

Very early on, I met the assistant pastor of the English language church.  He is a Korean missionary named Revered Kim and he came to Aizawl 20 years ago at the prompting of the Lord. He was planning to start a church.  He not only didn't speak any Mizo; he didn't speak any English.  He studied English at the college and says that after all these years, he know 'market' Mizo, in other words, not very much.  His youngest daughter was born there and is thoroughly 'Mizo'ized.

Kim found Mizoram so evangelized that no more churches were needed. Everyone goes to church on Sunday, and some on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Friday as well.  There is at least one church in every neighborhood and driving through town on Sunday is like driving through Jerusalem on Shabbat.  Everyone is walking to or from church.

Kim looked around to see what was needed.  He found drug addicts, alcoholics, single parent homes.  He said that almost every family is effected by at least one of those societal ills.  He began by going out into the streets and ministering to these lost ‘Christians’.

This was the first I heard of the problem.  Later I was sitting in town waiting for the ride back to campus and I looked up and saw a sign "Association of Positive People".  I asked Nutei what it was.  She said it meant HIV positive.  I asked if that was a problem and she said, yes, since people have started traveling more.  All I could say was, it takes more than traveling to spread HIV.

Later in my stay, it was India Day and school was cancelled (again).  The head of state made a speech which was later quoted by one of the faculty members at morning devotions.  Mizoram has the highest percentage rate of cancer, drug abuse, tobacco use, and HIV in all of India.  Everywhere I went I saw many people chewing betel nut.  This in an area with a 90%+ literacy rate.  You see, it takes more than education to prevent self-destructive behavior.

On one of my rides with Rami, I asked her if people were serious about their faith.  She said she thought they were.  I mentioned the disease rate, just even on campus, and the disconnect was obvious.  I talked to several people about this, but please remember about the non-judgmental nature of the Mizo people.

It looks like there is a cultural Christianity which pervades this area, similar to the US.  Yes, if you go to the market and give a large bill, you will always get the correct change.  You could probably drop your wallet in the middle of the street and within a few hours, someone would have found it, figured out exactly where you were and returned it to you.  However, cultural religion will not change your life or lead you to live your life differently than the rest of the world.  If your dog has puppies in the garage, they aren't cars.  One can feel the potential rebellion floating just below the surface of the city life of the young people.  They are enamored of Korean culture, also a very "Christian" country but at the top of the pop culture of the world.  Many people believe and many people pray, but without the teaching of holiness, eventually the ways of this world, which is dark and getting darker day by day, will swallow up the general goodness passed down for the past three generations.

I thank everyone who has followed these episodes and to all who wrote to encourage me.  If you think of me, please remember to pray for the people of Mizoram, who are so close, and yet ignorant of so much of the economy of God.

Blessings to all and happy Passover.
                                                                        -30-

is it Hebrew?

One of the clues to the reputed lost tribe identity I was searching for would have been language similarities, both in vocabulary and grammar.  The day after my arrival, the Principal selected two students and a driver to accompany me into town to buy any necessities.  We went to the main produce market, an underground sort of affair, and to one store, one street vendor, and one desk in the back of a snack shop to purchase a phone, sim card, and minutes, respectively.

In general, Mizos have only one very long name.  The syllables mean things like 'heaven' or 'lord' or 'desire' and they are strung together.  Many folks I met had a last name that started with Vanlal (meaning 'heaven' and 'Lord').....followed by several more syllables.  Everyone also has a nickname derived from their longer names, which makes it all the more confusing, because sometimes the nicknames are not exactly a part of the longer name.  Rather they are some of the syllables elided together.  So even though Lalnunzira is called Zira and Vanlalruata is called Ruata, Lallumzwala is called Lawma.  It took me a while to get the professors that I had regular contact with sorted out and, to my shame, I learned only the names of my students who had western first names.  The ones with single, long Mizo names, I knew by face, personality, and number.

The young lady who accompanied me on my first shopping trip was a first year student who was also in my Hebrew class.  Her name was Shalom.  Hebrew names are not unusual in Mizoram.  Everywhere you go you see stores named Jehovah Jireh this or Moriah that or Jerusalem the other thing.  What was unusual in Shalom's case was that her father related that God told him to name her Shalom and they only in the past few weeks found out what it means.  The Sunday school teacher had recently taught them this Hebrew word.

The young man who came on the initial expedition was named Hnema.  I really thought he said Nehemiah, but later in the car, Shalom spelled it for me.  Then she said it was a Mizo word and it has some meaning like 'comfort.'  Aha!  That is also the root idea of Nehemiah.

As time went on, I accumulated a few other cognates.  To make a sentence negative in Mizo, in some cases, you add a 'lo' to the end of the sentence, a bit like לא There is a question word which is 'maw', a bit like מה  The number 'one' is pa-khat like אחת , but that is where that story ends.

Mizo sentence order is object-verb-subject but Hebrew is more fluid, tending toward verb-subject-object.  Mizo speakers put their adjectives after nouns as is done in Hebrew, but they have almost no prepositions, which you can clearly hear when they speak English ("I look you").  On the other hand, they have a locational ending which is -a-, similar the the Hebrew locative ה .   

However, the word for 'love' is 'hmangaihna' which seems like a very long word for an very important concept, and the word for 'tea' is 'thingpui' which I was told means 'big tree'.  It sounds nothing like the word for tea in the rest of the world, and it doesn't even grow on a tree.

And Mizo is a tonal language, so 'in' can mean 'house', 'you', or 'drink', depending on the tone. This fact contributed to my not having learned more of it.

Does all that add up to anything?  I don't think so.  It would take a lot more in depth study to come to a rigorous academic conclusion.

In almost every language, you will find similarities to Hebrew.  Some people say that is because =all= languages descend from it.  If you are interested in learning more about that, you can go here: http://edenics.net/


What is  more compelling to me is the inclusion of pre-Babel Biblical concepts in Chinese writing.  You can read more about that here: http://www.icr.org/article/genesis-chinese-pictographs/
 

Women's conference

Although I am back from my trip, there are still some things I want to tell you about.

The weekend before I left, I attended the Mizoram Presbyterian women's conference.  This is what 10,000 people looks like:

The women in front are dancing, sort of.  The dancing in the Presbyterian churches here is more like walking around in a circle, always counter-clockwise, I was informed.  All the indigenous praise music is a steady 4/4 beat in major keys and most of the melodies would be perfectly at home in a US country-western bar.  Of course, the lyrics are praising God and Jesus.  This steady rhythm, marked by a drum that resembles our bass drum, lends itself to just walking around in time to the music.

The event was held in a temporary structure which is owned by the church and erected at the site which is chosen for that year.  The women are crammed onto low, backless benches.  This picture is taken from the stage, where I was privileged to sit.  My friend who took me is the head of the group of theologically trained women in Mizoram and as a person of consequence, she is entitled to sit on the stage in a plastic lawn chair with arms and a back.  I became a celebrity as the only white person there.  I was also in view of everyone, which became a problem as I walked through the crowd and people began pulling at my clothes in order to get me to stop and take pictures with them.

Unfortunately it rained most of the weekend.  We were just about up to our ankles in mud.  In some places, they had laid down boards to walk on.  In some places, there were a few scattered bricks.  I, having no illusions about style, wore my athletic shoes.  On the other hand, most of the attendees were all dressed up, including heels. 

I was told that some of the people were 'charismatic', but I was not expecting to see a few women turning somersaults in the mire, some passed out on the mud-covered astroturf, and some just moaning and wailing.  The Mizo people are very non-judgmental, but it also appears that they have very little discernment.  On the last day, one woman who was covered from head-to-toe in mud was throwing handfuls of mud at the participants and saying "God bless you."  When I casually asked if anyone was going to cast the demon out of her, I was told that no one can judge another person's spirituality.  Their recommended reaction is to just ignore her.  Some on the platform with me were snickering.

Although I could not understand the sermons, I got the gist of the direction of the main speaker.  He was really excellent, solidly capturing the attention of the people.  The theme of the conference was "Prepare to meet your God" from Amos 4:12. His first sermon was about returning to 'Poppa'.  He told a well-known story in English about a man who wanted to be reconciled to his son and put a an anonymous ad in the paper: meet me at the Hotel Montana, all is forgiven, Poppa.  Eight hundred boys showed up for that meeting.  The preacher's point was to be reconciled to God.  During his second sermon, he said in English 'simple gospel' and mentioned Abraham and Moses enough for me to know that he was expressing anti-nomian sentiments.  I didn't ask anyone for the translation; I got one from the folks I met in the evening.

Since the whole conference was in Mizo, I was mentally exhausted after the four sessions I attended, in addition to being chased as some commodity for picture taking.   I opted to stay back in our lodging on Sunday night.  The house is owned by Seventh Day Adventists, of whom there are very few in Mizoram.  These people own a bakery and the lady of the house came up to bring me some fresh bread.  She related to me that she had told her father of my presence, a white Jewish lady staying in the apartment upstairs.  She said he had never met a Jew in his life, so I asked her if she wanted me to come downstairs with her.  She was delighted.

Mr. Hrangsata (pronounced 'shrangsata') is 89 years old and his wife passed away just six months ago.  His family was in the Presbyterian church when he was growing up, until his brother went to work in Burma and brought back the 'Sabbath truth.'  The whole family began to follow SDA teachings, including Sabbath and Biblical dietary laws.  Hrangsata was 27 years old at the time.  They were the only family in their village to believe and came under persecution by the rest of the village.  He is still quite sharp and had lots of questions about Israel and the Palestinians.  Unfortunately, he does not speak any English, so the conversation was a bit strained.  He expressed his own frustration at this, saying that if only I spoke Mizo, he would have so many questions to ask me.  After his daughter translated the history of Israel and the so-called Palestinians from my English account, he came to the conclusion that the problem will not be solved.  Yes, I agreed, it is a 4,000 year old problem that only the return of Jesus will solve.

It was so wonderful for me to be able to speak with some like-minded believers after being exposed to some of the general deception at the conference.  The old man and his family had been watching it live on the television and we agreed that teaching in holiness is generally lacking. It was also an honor for me to be able to fulfill the dream of one old man, to meet a Jew.  

back stateside

Shalom.  I have arrived back to Georgia safely and am recuperating from a very long trip.  I post more here soon.
Thank you so much for your prayers.

passover

Thank you everyone for your prayers and follow-up questions about the Passover.  I have been completely out of pocket, prisoner of the women's conference in Serchhip (yes, there are 2 'h's). More about that another time.

The Passover was a tremendous success. The OT faculty went out of their way to find lamb.  They bought 3 animals and had them chopped into 400 pieces.  Rami cooked it all and it was delicious!  Many of the students and faculty had never eaten it before.  We had about 185 people in attendance and of the people that I spoke to, they were amazed at how clearly the Passover, what is called the Last Supper, communion, and the life of Yeshua were tied together.  They also videotaped the whole thing for future reference and kept the leftover matzah and my traditional haggadah for their museum.

Today I have some guests coming and then I need to pack.  I am on my way to the airport tomorrow morning about 11:00 am India time and then the very long flight back to the U.S.

I will continue to write a few more posts here after I get back to Georgia to cover some of the things that have happened the past few days.

I look forward to seeing/skyping/talking to everyone soon.  Thank you all for your prayers over this trip.  It would not have been possible without you.

spring has sprung

State tree of Mizoram called Herhse in Mizo, botanical name is mesua ferrea, also called iron wood or muscle wood

Pots of petunias

Weird cactus looking thing blooms even though it looks dead.  Couldn't find it on google.

Roses bloom all year around here.

Bottle brush trees or at least they look like what we call them in the US

Passover for 200

Shalom, friends.
Today I simply ask for your prayers for a Passover demonstration that I will do on Friday at 3:00 pm (Thursday 4:30 am east coast time).  All the students, faculty, and staff are invited.  If everyone shows up, it will be about 200 people.
I am so blessed that YH has opened the door for this to happen.  Almost since the day I arrived, the Old Testament faculty have been asking about it.  I actually packed one box of matzah which I will break into teeny, tiny pieces to use for the afikomen.
I was concerned about the horseradish because there is nothing like it here.  However, as I started to think about it, I realized that it is a very eastern European food. I began to research the history of maror and found a very detailed article online. http://halachicadventures.com/history-of-maror-and-horse-raddish/  Turns out, horseradish in no way fits the rabbinic parameters for the bitter herb.  They have something here which is called bitter gourd and looks like this:

Like everything else, they boil it and eat it cold.  I tasted some yesterday and it really is bitter.  We bought three kilograms today, along with 4 kilos of apples, which I am going to pressure cook and add cinnamon as a modified haroset.  The OT faculty are going to buy I don't know how many kilos of goat for their wives to roast in the small things which pass for ovens here.  It seems that lamb is too difficult to get.  The cook in the canteen is going to make us paratha, a flat, unleavened bread.
No big meal, just the essence of what Passover is, with a big emphasis on the new covenant and their understanding of communion.  Of course, as Mizo people love to sing, I will teach them 'dayenu' and 'hodu l'adonai ki tov'.  How can I resist singing 'hodu' in India?
Please pray that all would go smoothly and that blind eyes would be opened.
Thank you so much.