A friend of mine, who serves in the village of Wondo, told me a story of one of his church member, Kedir, who is a teacher, a husband of two wives and a father. A couple years ago, Kedir decided to follow Jesus with his family and be a part of the newly planted small church in Wondo village. Being sensitive to the culture and considerate to the wellbeing of Kedir\u2019s family, the church did not ask him to divorce his second wife, which they had required of others in the past. Kedir, although he did not serve in the church leadership, was an active member of the church until he was transferred to teach in a different county about 150 km away from his village. Since both his wives have children and farms, none of them could move with him. Being away from the comfort of his homes and having never worked in the kitchen, life become very difficult for Kedir. Two years later he decided to marry a new wife from his new village. When he was transferred back to the school in his home village, Kedir brought his new wife with him. When the church heard about it, they were very saddened and did not know how to respond.<\/p>\n
The common practice among the churches in my hometown has been to ban a polygamous person from church. A polygamous man would have no part in any church ministry until he divorces his second wife and returns to the Lord. Thus, it is utterly impossible to be polygamous and a Christian, unless the person had more than one wife before converting to Christianity. But the church in this story was new and lacking a strong leadership structure, and did not have clear biblical grounds to approve or reject Kedir\u2019s polygamous lifestyle. Imagine you are a minister in the Wondo church, how do you treat Kedir who wants to be part of the church family with his three wives? Would you ask him to divorce his new wife and repent his sin?<\/p>\n
While reading The Matrix of Christian Ethics: Integrating Philosophy and Moral Theology in a Postmodern Context,<\/em> Patrick Nullens and Ronald T. Michener, I remembered the above story and realized that there is no easy answer to such kinds of ethical issues we face in our ministry contexts. With the freedom of interpreting the Word of God within the matrix of its own ministry situation, the church is challenged with the potential cultural biases whether to defend the biblical truth or to make the gospel relevant (p.II). Finding the biblical grounds to reject polygamy is a real challenge for the church in Wondo. Unlike the church in the city whose immediate action to Kedir would have been excommunication from church membership, this small church in the villages has been reaching out for advice to others in their region.<\/p>\n From my evangelical background, I realize the limitation of implying black and white answers to pressing issues in today\u2019s church. The complexity of Christian ethics that Nullens and Michener depict in this book is a great reminder for Christians to \u201c[probe] our deepest sensibilities as humans and how we, as followers of Christ, go about seeking \u201cthe good\u201d for others as well as for ourselves\u201d(p.2). This leads me to critically reflect on Jesus\u2019 second commandment; what it means to \u201clove our neighbors as ourselves?\u201d I noted that our cultural and strong emphasis on certain Christian values sometimes get intermingled inhibiting us from developing a broad outlook to respect others\u2019 perspectives. When we fail to listen we became too quick to judge; and are unable to relate, love, and share the truth respectfully. There is a critical need to create space for dialogue on contemporary Christian ethical issues so that we can learn from one another and develop healthy Kingdom perspectives.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A friend of mine, who serves in the village of Wondo, told me a story of one of his church member, Kedir, who is a teacher, a husband of two wives and a father. A couple years ago, Kedir decided to follow Jesus with his family and be a part of the newly planted small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-3258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-nullens","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3259,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258\/revisions\/3259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}