Does John Piper Overplay Bible Literacy?
00:00:00.000 | Does John Piper overplay literacy and diminish the glorious power of sermon-centered missions
00:00:10.160 | in oral cultures?
00:00:11.800 | It's a pushback from a podcast listener named Miles.
00:00:14.560 | Pastor John, my wife and I have our lives on the trajectory towards doing Bible translations
00:00:18.800 | as a career, so I am in no way suggesting that I think the Bible is unimportant.
00:00:23.360 | But when I think historically of the practice of believers prior to the advent of the printing
00:00:26.560 | press and when I think globally about the millions of believers who don't currently
00:00:30.280 | have the Bible in a language that they can understand, it seems that our American evangelical
00:00:35.680 | ideal of Christian discipleship might be too dependent on assumptions about literacy and
00:00:40.840 | access to cheap copies of the Bible.
00:00:43.760 | There was a video of you, Pastor John, on Facebook on April 19th, and you said, "You
00:00:49.040 | don't have a chance against the devil unless you know how to read and understand God's
00:00:53.960 | Word."
00:00:56.560 | This statement was obviously not intending to convey that people without access to Scripture
00:01:00.400 | are hopeless, but I think it reflects to some degree what I'm getting at here.
00:01:04.420 | Literacy is obviously a good thing, but have we made it a test of genuine faith and obedience?
00:01:09.680 | Pastor John, what would you say to Miles?
00:01:11.880 | Well, I am really glad for this question, especially to correct either a misunderstanding
00:01:17.560 | of what I said or to correct a misstatement of what I said.
00:01:21.440 | I mean, I made the mistake, not anybody else.
00:01:25.360 | The whole issue of orality in missions has been an issue for me for about 20 years or
00:01:33.760 | so, and I'm really glad to say some clarifying things about it.
00:01:38.280 | So first, let's make some missiological observations and then some biblical observations.
00:01:47.520 | It's a plain and important fact that there are several thousand languages in the world
00:01:56.200 | that do not have complete Bible translations in them.
00:02:00.880 | The exact number right now is not important for the point I'm making.
00:02:05.200 | Just the fact that there are any is the point that I'm making.
00:02:09.100 | Those languages have real people who speak them, people that need to believe on Jesus
00:02:16.060 | Christ in order to be saved from the wrath of God.
00:02:20.280 | And some of these people speak only that unwritten language rather than a trade language in which
00:02:26.160 | the Bible exists, and many of them are not yet able to read at all.
00:02:32.520 | That's one fact.
00:02:33.940 | Another fact is that translating the Bible into a language often takes many years, sometimes
00:02:40.880 | decades.
00:02:42.840 | It seems to me patently clear that the people who are without Christ should not have to
00:02:50.000 | wait until they have a Bible in their own language in order to hear the gospel, be saved,
00:02:58.200 | be discipled, form churches, grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord.
00:03:03.560 | And that implies that someone who knows the scriptures, either because they can read or
00:03:10.240 | because someone else told them, must speak, must speak orally, must speak the gospel to
00:03:17.800 | the people groups so that they may believe and be saved and grow in grace.
00:03:23.480 | Therefore, the last thing I want to do is discourage missionaries from penetrating people
00:03:31.600 | groups who are preliterate as if evangelism and discipleship were not possible until the
00:03:37.720 | people have their own written copies of the Bible or have the ability to read for themselves.
00:03:45.360 | We take people where they are and give them what we can, and we do it as soon as we can.
00:03:51.760 | And I don't doubt that God in his mercy through the faithful oral teaching of the scriptures
00:04:01.440 | can grow for himself mighty, devil-defeating saints.
00:04:08.640 | So what I said, or at least what was heard, is wrong.
00:04:12.680 | I mean, what did they say?
00:04:14.720 | I said that you don't have a chance against the devil unless you know how to read and
00:04:20.960 | understand God's word.
00:04:24.280 | So if I said that and I didn't put any qualifiers around it, then I'm just plain wrong.
00:04:31.960 | What I mean by qualifiers is I hope I said or implied that if you can't read the Bible
00:04:41.560 | for yourself, you have to depend on somebody else who can read.
00:04:49.000 | So reading is essential.
00:04:50.720 | You can read the Bible to tell you what it says because, in fact, without the word of
00:04:56.440 | God—I'm going to say this—without the word of God, we cannot defeat the devil.
00:05:03.840 | So let's be clear.
00:05:04.840 | A new convert who believes the gospel and cannot read can defeat the devil.
00:05:11.920 | Got that?
00:05:12.920 | I say it.
00:05:13.920 | A non-reader who is preliterate can defeat the devil, but he can only defeat the devil
00:05:21.440 | by faith, 1 Peter 5:9, and faith flourishes by the word of God.
00:05:27.600 | Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
00:05:30.720 | So if a person can't read, he'll be dependent for his devil-defeating power to be fed the
00:05:39.860 | word by somebody who can read or has been taught by somebody who can read.
00:05:45.400 | Christianity is not magic.
00:05:48.000 | It is faith in a historical reality mediated through inspired writing and believed by the
00:05:55.040 | power of the Spirit.
00:05:57.120 | Now, here are the biblical observations I had in mind when I said missiological observations
00:06:02.640 | and biblical ones.
00:06:04.760 | Here's three.
00:06:06.640 | And I'm so glad to hear that Miles and his wife care about Bible translation because
00:06:12.200 | that really clues me into where they're coming from.
00:06:15.880 | They just don't want to minimize the necessity of oral dimensions of discipleship, which
00:06:22.800 | is what I'm trying to rectify here.
00:06:26.280 | Number one, the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 3, 4, "By reading, you can perceive my insight
00:06:33.240 | into the mysteries of Christ."
00:06:35.000 | This is absolutely astonishing.
00:06:36.920 | Paul is the inspired representative of the risen Christ, and he's been given profound
00:06:43.440 | insight into the mysteries of Christ.
00:06:45.880 | And he says, "By reading," it's a participle, just says, "Reading, you can join him in spiritual
00:06:54.360 | perception of divine reality."
00:06:57.140 | Nothing could elevate reading more highly than that sentence.
00:07:01.840 | And all of us should want that for ourselves and want it for everybody we can help.
00:07:09.640 | So the priority of reading is huge, and Christianity has always been building schools and building
00:07:16.720 | hospitals wherever they go.
00:07:18.860 | Number two, second biblical observation.
00:07:22.320 | The words of the Lord are true and righteous, Psalm 1910.
00:07:26.840 | More to be desired are they than gold, much fine gold, sweeter also than drippings from
00:07:31.400 | the honeycomb or Psalm 119.72, "The law of the Lord is better to me than thousands of
00:07:40.720 | gold and silver pieces."
00:07:43.100 | In other words, to possess the words of God is a great treasure.
00:07:48.600 | To be sure, somebody who can't read but has the word of God stored up in his heart orally
00:07:56.960 | is better off than a literate person who has a Bible and it just sits on the shelf collecting
00:08:06.400 | dust.
00:08:08.240 | But when you are holding the written word of God in your hands, you are holding a treasure
00:08:15.080 | better than tens of thousands of gold and silver pieces.
00:08:19.380 | And every Christian virtue I can think of inclines me to want others to be able to hold
00:08:26.880 | it in their hands as well and read it.
00:08:31.120 | And the last biblical observation would be to simply observe that paternalism of missionaries
00:08:40.520 | over new churches and the breeding of perpetual dependence in younger churches is something
00:08:48.000 | to be avoided like the plague in missions.
00:08:52.780 | And as long as we have the Bible and we are the readers and we are the teachers and they
00:09:00.320 | don't have the Bible and they don't have the teachers and they can't read, well, they're
00:09:07.320 | in a position of dependence and we're in a position of power and control, and that should
00:09:12.800 | not go on indefinitely.
00:09:15.800 | And this is what has lamed so many younger churches over the centuries, a perpetual dependence
00:09:22.980 | on outside influence for the understanding and teaching of the word of God.
00:09:28.260 | So my conclusion is, by all means, give the gospel.
00:09:35.460 | Let's give the gospel to pre-literate people as soon as we can.
00:09:43.180 | And let's not postpone disciple making until a written Bible is available in their language.
00:09:50.660 | And even in our own culture, if there are people who for various reasons are not able
00:09:56.900 | to read or find it very difficult to read.
00:10:00.660 | I remember asking a young man one time, "What are you reading?"
00:10:04.380 | And he's about 30 years old.
00:10:05.460 | He said, "I don't read."
00:10:06.460 | I said, "You mean not even magazines?"
00:10:09.660 | He said, "No."
00:10:10.660 | I said, "What a revelation."
00:10:13.580 | There are people who either by disposition or dyslexia or other kinds of things that
00:10:19.220 | just don't read.
00:10:20.220 | They don't ever read.
00:10:22.180 | We must not neglect those people.
00:10:24.540 | We must not.
00:10:25.540 | We must be about the business of strategies of disciple making.
00:10:31.120 | So we do what we can do, for nobody lives by bread alone but by every word that comes
00:10:38.460 | out of the mouth of God.
00:10:40.640 | So we must not neglect the people who are willing to read and to follow the word of
00:10:47.640 | God.
00:10:48.640 | And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God.
00:10:54.640 | And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God.
00:10:59.640 | And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God.
00:11:04.640 | And we must not neglect the people who are willing to follow the word of God.
00:11:18.460 | Amen.
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