through the proclamation of the gospel. And then of course, there are many of you who follow us specifically because we sit at that very interesting and very rare nexus of pro life work and missions. There simply are not very many people in the world using the pro life platform specifically as a means of Taking the gospel and the ministry of reconciliation and the healing power that comes along with the gospel into these very dark strongholds.
in our world. And so I thought that I would, uh, use my time with you today to go into a little more detail about the missions in, of what we do and how so often we at Passion Life are trying to answer very, very difficult questions based on taking the gospel across cultural boundaries, uh, in a missionary context and what kind of situations arise specifically because we’re doing that.
Now, here’s an example. I was a church planting ministry, uh, missionary with my family in Tibet for a little over 10 years. We lived in a Tibetan context and the Tibetans were Tibetan Buddhist. Tibetan Buddhist is very different from Buddhisms in all other parts of the world. Tibetan Buddhism is actually its own religion separate from quote unquote Buddhism that you find in.
Cambodia and in Thailand and in India, these, these more generic forms of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism is different specifically because the Tibet, the Tibetans resisted the preaching of the, of the, of the Buddhist gospel, if you will, the preaching of Buddhism, which came over from India 1600 years ago or something like that.
At that time, the Buddhist, the Tibetan people were, uh, had an indigenous, animistic, shamanistic religion called Bon, B O N, and they resisted Buddhism for a while, but eventually added Buddhism on as a veneer to the way that they see the world through actually what is this bun religion, which is very demonic.
It’s very, it’s ancestor manipulation. It’s spirit manipulation. It’s, uh, sexual sacrifice. It’s child sacrifice. It’s human sacrifice. Not all of those things happen in all places, though all of those things still do happen in some places in Tibet. They added Buddhism on as a veneer to that, that indigenous religion that they had believed in for so long.
And that’s what makes Tibetan Buddhism very different from all other forms of, we think of Buddhism as being this contemplation and one with nature and, and this and that. But actually, Tibetan Buddhism is a fearful, fearful religion based on faith. The manipulation of the demonic and the Tibetans always said that to be Tibetan is to be Buddhist, that they’re, they are so intertwined, uh, with one another that, that the Buddhist, the Buddhist, uh, mentality that they now see themselves as having, they, they do now accept themselves as Buddhist.
They don’t think of themselves as Buddhism with bone at the middle. The boot, the mentality of the Tibetans is you cannot be a Tibetan. If you are not Buddhist. And that if you somehow were to leave the Tibetan Buddhism behind, you would no longer be Tibetan. That’s how strongly they felt about it.
Everyone in Tibet is a Tibetan Buddhist. Which makes, of course, it very difficult for the gospel to go forward. Because these people hold to their religion very, very, very tightly in their mind. Their land has been taken from them. Their system of government has been taken from them. Their autonomy has been taken from them.
Their language is being taken from them. Their monetary system has been taken from them. One of the only things that they have that makes them distinctively Tibetan, uh, Tibetan. The way they see it is their religious belief in Tibetan Buddhism. And so as a missionary, I was faced with this question early on.
If everything that you do and, and think and the way you act and where you sit in a room and how you hold your teacup, everything is determined by your Buddhist beliefs as a Tibetan how. How could a Christian missionary come in and challenge those religious beliefs without making the people feel that they had left Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetanism itself behind without having, without making them feel like they had abandoned their entire native identity, if you will.
And as I thought about that question early in my time, I went back to a question that a seminary professor asked of me. When I was in seminary, uh, in the early two thousands, and that question was true or false to be human is to be sinful. So ask yourself that question. I would, I would challenge you to be human is to be sinful.
True or false. Instinctively, many of us would say, well, that’s true. You know, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one is without sin. We know that from the Bible. And yet the answer to the question is false. To be human is not to be sinful. Jesus was fully human, but he was not sinful.
And before the fall, Adam and Eve were fully human, and yet we’re not sinful. In fact, sin is a plague on our humanity. It is something that, that feasts on and diminishes our humanity. If you could open up my brain or my, my head and take out somehow, if you could take out my soul, or if you could take out my my mind, what would be left would be less than human.
However, if you could open me up in some way and remove all sin from me, what would be left would not only be human, it would be human as God designed it to be. Sin keeps us from experiencing humanity the way God for us designed for us to experience our humanity here on earth. It is a shackling hindering disease and we all suffer from it.
There’s no question about that. We all suffer from this disease and yet it is not true to say that to be human is to be sinful. Similarly, it is not true to say that to be Tibetan is to be Tibetan Buddhist. And this is where I finally shook out on this question as I asked God and wrestled with it over the time.
Um, I came to realize that I could say to my Tibetan friends, no, my friend, here’s what you don’t understand. If the Christian God Who made you created, you knew your culture, understood the way you think, understood the way you feel, understands Tibetan, the way he created Tibetan to be. Uh, if you could get to know that creator, you would experience what it truly means to be Tibetan for the first time.
Is that an offensive notion? I can imagine that there are people who would take offense to that. No, no question about it. But again. The Tibetans rejected Buddhism. They were a strong people. They were a fierce people. They were a proud warlike people who controlled a large swath of the Tibetan plateau, their own land.
Uh, and arguably you could say that it was the Buddhism. that prepared the Tibetan people to have their land taken away, to have their monetary system taken away, to have their sense of government taken away because they became a pacified people because of Buddhism. The pacifism that was taught by Buddhism prepared them to be culturally mowed down.
In many ways, it is the Buddhism of Tibet that is the plague on their society and on their culture. Their culture is not really on its way to extinction. It’s still strong, but it has nowhere near the strength that it had at one time. And so, uh, I was able to share with my Tibetan friends, friend, if you will get to know this Christian God who created you and created Tibetans and created what it means to be Tibetan in the first place, if you will bow the knee to Christ and get to know this creator God through a reconciled relationship with him through the blood of Christ on the cross, you will experience what it means to be Tibetan fully, freely, uh, to the capacity.
That God created you to experience your Tibetanism. If you want to know what it means to be Tibetan, find Jesus. Jesus is the answer. If you want to know what it means to be human, find holiness. As God has outlined in his word, perfection. That does not mean that we are ever going to attain it, doesn’t ever mean that we’re going to fully experience holiness, but this is why God wants holiness for us is because he wants us to experience reconciliation with him.
And we will experience that reconciliation in heaven. It’s going to be a wonderful thing. The ministry of Passion Life is a reconciling ministry. We take the gospel and we inject it into places where there is so much fear, so much hurt, so much inner turmoil. And we bring all of that to the cross of Christ through the Ministry of Passion Life.
And that is why not only do people find the strength to rescue babies, to save babies, to, to say no to their own abortions, but many of the people that we’re ministering to find a relationship with Christ, specifically because we are bringing Christ into a crisis. situation. Pray for us at Passion Life that we are good missionaries, that we will figure out creative and, uh, and, and insightful and non watered down ways to communicate the gospel in ways that penetrate cultural boundaries, even the ones that we fail to recognize because of our lack of intimacy and knowledge with the many cultures in which we serve.
We need you. We need you to pray for us. Missions is a tricky thing. And, uh, we are glad to have you on our team. We’re glad to have you watching these videos. We’re glad to have you invested in the Ministry of Passion Life. We ask you to go on praying for us as we take the gospel into the darkest strongholds of abortion, infanticide, and gendercide in this world.