Learning a New Language
One of the most important things I ever did for my faith was trying to learn another culture and language.
I have studied Spanish off-and-on since 2011. My wife and I spent a year living and working with a church in Argentina and, from the moment we landed, we had to work in a language not our own. The congregation accepted us with open arms and open homes, inviting us in and helping us become hermanos en la fe during the time we spent with them. We learned more Spanish and navigated life while teaching and preaching and praying in a foreign language. We developed deep friendships that have lasted until today.
The church in Argentina reminded me of life in the 1st-century church in a place like Antioch. We had members from all over the Spanish-speaking world, including a few who were also refugees from violence and oppression. We had a member from the Middle East who became a Christian and had to flee, visitors from Africa and Asia, porteños from Buenos Aires, and members from the Caribbean nations. Church conversations were a mix of accents and vocabulary, differences of preferences and backgrounds, and strong Latino/Latina personalities.
We went to help the church, but our lives and faith were forever changed as well. I came to deeply admire and respect the faith of my brothers and sisters in Christ in Argentina. We didn’t always agree on theological points of view or ministerial practice—at times the missionary would tell people they ought to do things biblicamente that I would argue are matters of preference! But I loved and admired their profound faith and faithfulness to the way of Jesus. They challenged me to not just read the Bible with exegesis, typology, and originalist meanings of Greek words, but also to read the Bible from a position of trusting faithfulness.
Some have called this “precritical” or “premodern,”[1] while others say it is “intuitive,”[2] and some simply scoff at the naivete. but I appreciate the term used by Padilla DeBorst, et al: "reading sencillamente.” They write that, in the Bible, “the passages were not dead letters to be scrutinized and dissected but rather words given by God to nourish them as God’s people, to sustain their faith, to encourage them when the going got tough, to convict them of sin, to call them to repentance, and to assure them of forgiveness… They simply received the Bible as God’s Word and as a gift that shed light on their way.”[3] They reminded me that the Bible was meant to be a guide for my everyday life, something that was living and active and doing incredible things in the here-and-now.
As I have returned to studying the Spanish language these past two years, one of the practices that has deepened my love for God is reading the Bible in Spanish. Since it isn’t my native language, I am forced to slow down and almost meditate over the passage as I slowly grasp the words and phrases.[4] Indeed, seeing how these ideas are transmitted in another language has affected my love of the Bible profoundly. For me, it is more impactful to slowly ponder, “Porque mientras aún éramos débiles, a su tiempo Cristo murió por los impíos… Pero Dios demuestra Su amor para con nosotros, en que siendo aún pecadores, Cristo murió por nosotros” (Romanos 5.6, 8).[5] I am forced to wrestle with the words and with the ideas, rather than just skimming over it like I often do in English—I come to remember I’m one of the impíos, the un-pious and ungodly! Yet Christ died for me and the rest of the world, too.
Theologically, I sit in a position of “power”—I have multiple degrees, including a terminal one; I have held relatively “important” ministry roles in numerous weighty churches; I have the ability to read just about any book on hermeneutics and theology I want to get my hands on; and I have the right “pedigree” to be listened to and invited to speak. But I have been convicted by reading the works of Spanish-speaking theologians who transform my understanding of the Bible, reminding me that theology isn’t confined to the academic halls of the mostly white, European-centric hallmarks of theological education.
Instead, theology that flows from the Majority World that runs counter to my middle-class, relatively pain-free theological sphere ought to remind me what it means to “take up my cross daily” on behalf of the least of these; that my faith ought to be fully alive and have an impact on “the practical life in the social, the economic, and the political spheres.”[6] To summarize Paul, these things have shaped me, but now I should consider them all rubbish “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.”[7]
May God continue to reveal to each of us where he needs us to continue to be broken… and to grow.
