A Worldview from Romans 14

The context of book of Romans was the different position of the Jew and Gentile to think about days and meats. It was difficult for a Jew to rid himself of the sense of difference between days and between meats. A Gentile, having abandoned his whole religious system as idolatrous, did not put any care about it. Human nature is liable to sin on both sides - a want of conscience, an uncontrolled will, and a ceremonial conscience. Christianity recognizes neither of these things. It delivers from the question of days and meats by making us heavenly with Christ. But it teaches us to bear with conscientious weakness, and to be conscientious ourselves.

The focus on this chapter is verses eight, “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord”. In everything we do, we have to do it as for Christ. Therefore in any decision taken, we must think as how Christ thinks about that matter. Christ is the center of Christian's life, and we must apply this point of view as our Christian Worldview generally in our daily life.

Cultural Idolatry

Indonesia is a vast country which has different kinds of religion. Bali, an island in Indonesia, is a unique island where the major religion is Hinduism. We could see many Hindu temples called Pura which is the place to pray. In a complex of Pura, they built many temples. The biggest one which is usually in the center of the area is designated to pray to God. However, the rest of temples around the biggest temple are purposely built for their ancestors’ spirit because they believe that their ancestors’ spirit are still alive. The purpose for built the ancestors’ temple is to respect the spirit of the ancestors, yet to pray and beg something from them. This phenomenon of praising the ancestors is not only happened in Bali, but also in many areas in Indonesia in another kind of religions.

Cultural idolatry as mentioned in the example above explains about a community who believes that there is God who created the universe, but in the other hand, they also praise their died ancestors. From the bible perspective as we read in Hebrews 9:27, “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”; we can conclude that every human being who has been passed away has no power anymore in this earth. Since a man has two aspects (dichotomy): body and spirit/soul, so after a man died, he has no body but his spirit/soul will directly enter the eternal life. If they believe in Jesus, the spirit will go to heaven, on the contrary it will go to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus.

Worldview

Worldview is very important in human life. Every decision that we make every day in our life is never ever neutral. God gives human beings the ability of keeping, thinking and analyzing information. It means that our brain will process all information needed before any decision is taken in our life, such as: what should we do, what would we do or not to do.

It is very essential for us as human beings to consider who we are, what we are, and where we are from. This is the very first step to understand before we can make any right decision. We have to look back to our God as the One and only source who created us. We also have to ask Him and consider Him before we decide something and walk in it.

Nowadays, there are so many cultural idolatry that we can see and feel around us. Without our awareness to seek God first in our life, we would decide something that is not what God wants us to do. As a Christian we must realize and aware about this condition. We must be an agent of change in our community to critique what is not supposed to be before God's presence.

Redemptive Analogy

Redemptive is an adjective word that means serving to redeem. In the term of Christianity, this word refers to God’s salvation to believers from sin through Jesus’ sacrifice. In the other way, analogy is a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based. Synonyms of analogy are (1) comparison, likeness, resemblance, similitude, affinity; (2) correspondence.

So, Redemptive Analogy is an illustration or similarity or likeness story within cultures and gospel message so we can use it to communicate gospel to among tribal peoples and other cultures.

Sawi Tribe - The Peace Child
This is relevant with the true story “Peace Child”. Don and Carol Richardson who were gifted from God a calling to serve Sawi tribe in Irian Jaya, Dutch New Guinea had difficulties to understand the tribe. Therefore, first of all they learned about the languages. After they can speak and explain the gospel to the tribe, the villagers have misunderstanding about the gospel. It was when missionary Don told the story about Jesus and the part of Judas betrayed Jesus. They thought that Judas was the real hero. This understanding is happened because of Sawi's idealize treachery.

Don wondered how there could be a guaranteed peace in the village if Sawi has a culture like that. Everyone in the village has their own perspective or worldview about treachery that is very different with the common sense. Until one moment of a battle between tribes came, the Richardsons were considering leaving the area. In order to keep the Richardson staying in the village, both tribes had a discussion and decided to make peace among them. Their tradition in making peace was to exchange young children between the two villages. It was called "peace child". If the "peace child"s were exchanged, it would bring peace between the tribes.

In this point, Don Richardson found the key and made this tradition to be an analogy to explain how God the Father redeem human beings from their sin through Jesus Christ, His Son who came as the “Peace Child”. He is the one who made peace between Himself and His people.

Works Cited:
"analogy." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 13 Mar. 2009. .
Call, Ray and Michele. “Cross Cultural Missions Jesus Style” Campus Crusade for Christ, It’s all about Jesus. 11 January 2002. 14 March. 2009
Culbertson, Howard. “Intro to Missions” Southern Nazarene University. 17 November 2008. 14 March. 2009
"redemptive." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 13 Mar. 2009.