When Chadian Muslims ask forgiveness from someone they have wronged, they use a word which we would translate in English as “forgive me.” Embedded in their request for forgiveness from the offending party is a strong sense that God has forgiven them, whether or not the offended party forgives.
The Arabic words for “sin” against God and “error” against man are two different ideas. Biblically, when we sin against our brother, as Psalm 51 shows us, we are ultimately, primarily sinning against God and His law. In Muslim thinking, an “error” against their friend or brother is not necessarily seen as a sin against God.
It is hugely important to communicate to our new believing friends as well as to those we are sharing the Gospel with that when we speak of sin, we are speaking of the big and little things – all are against a Holy God. If I use the Arabic word “zanib”, translated in English as “sin”, with the average Chadian Muslim without explanation they will not understand it in a biblical sense. I may assume they’re understanding me, and they will probably say they are if asked, but they aren’t. For one thing, Islam rejects the idea of original sin. And as long as they haven’t committed the “big sins” (murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc) they’re doing ok. The petty stealing, lying, gossiping, and other fruits of the sinful nature are not that big of a deal. These “errors” are not seen as offenses against the Holy God of the Scriptures. If they don’t understand sin as the Bible describes, then God’s love and mercy, His holiness and justice, in fact, all the gifts he bestows on us through Christ, frankly are not such “Good News” after all. In order to understand this Gospel, they must understand the Biblical definition of sin.
Why spend this much time in language learning? We can’t afford not to! We can’t afford to spend our energy sharing, assuming they’ve understood us, when they really haven’t. The Gospel is too precious. We don’t continue learning language because we’re good at it, or even because we like it. We press forward in order to understand the nuances of the language, religion, and culture so that we can communicate very clearly the richness of the Gospel we are seeking to proclaim.
Would you pray for us to learn to communicate the Gospel clearly? Would you also pray that we would find a homeschool helper/nanny to return to Chad with us next year to allow Kimberly to focus full-time on language for 1-2 more years?