Wasteful Worship

The grace to give when generosity seems absurd

Offertory. Acrylic on Canvas. 32 x 26

If there’s one thing I love, it’s an unexpected gift—whether given or received. Recently, I’ve found myself sending house guests on their way with things I’ve cherished: teapots, clothes, and even jewelry off my own person. I’ve felt the exhilaration and freedom found in the act of giving things away— things with real value. But extravagant and unexpected giving like this rarely comes from a place of natural generosity. There’s a supernatural grace at work, like the grace we see in the story of the woman with her alabaster jar (Mark 14:3–9).

I know this is grace because I’ve spent most of my life suffering from a scarcity mindset: the idea that there’s not enough to go around, and I’d be better off socking away what little I have. When I read the account of the woman anointing Jesus in the days before his crucifixion, my spirit wells with a resounding, Yes! and I wipe away tears in awe of this momentous act of worship. But I confess—and cringe as I do so—that my flesh still has the same response as those who were in the room, and I start to scrutinize her extravagance.

Against the protests of wastefulness and impropriety, Christ defends the woman, explaining to his disciples that she has prepared him for burial (v. 8). Her act of devotion and sacrifice will forever point to the Good News, and she will be remembered whenever it is proclaimed in all the world (v. 9). The woman anointing Jesus emptied out what could have been her most precious possession, pouring out her treasure for the sake of God incarnate. She anointed the Word before his burial, bringing about a tangible reminder of Jesus as the Anointed One, the long-awaited Messiah (Isaiah 61:1–3).

I imagine Jesus would still have been faintly fragrant with that oil as he was taken before Pilate. I imagine he would still have the sweet woody aroma of the nard on his hair, his beard—the lingering anointing. As he carried his cross, I wonder if the bystanders caught the fragrance, beyond the smell of sweat and blood. Perhaps they smelled a sweetness in the air as Christ ascended Golgotha. I wonder if the men nailed to their own crosses on either side of him picked up the scent.

The sign of anointing was largely reserved for kings in ancient Judaism. This woman’s bold act not only acknowledged Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, it also foreshadowed what Christ would do two days later as he poured himself out in a lavish, loving, and seemingly foolish way on the cross. By giving himself as an offering, Jesus accomplishes what we could never have done for ourselves. What can sometimes look like foolishness to us is faithfulness; what appears wasteful is worshipful.

My generosity is more a spiritual discipline than a virtue; I cannot boast in giving because it’s against the will of my flesh. God, in his kindness, both invites me to give generously and empowers me by his Spirit to do so. I’ve come to realize that in teaching me to give things away he’s healing the part of me that still believes there won’t be enough. So I boast in this weakness, and I rejoice even though I still sometimes hear the voices directed at the woman at Bethany:

“How dare you do that?”

“This is irresponsible. You are irresponsible.”

“You’re giving away what you can’t afford. And for what?”

Then comes Jesus, my defender: “She has done a beautiful thing . . . She did what she could.” And the voices hush.

Hannah Weidmann is the co-founder of Everyday Heirloom Co., a brand dedicated to adorning women as God’s beloved using timeless methods of craft and storytelling.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Hannah Weidmann

Theology

The Fatal Fantasy

Eniola Abioye

How Judas’s betrayal reveals the heart of misguided hope

Death is Vast as a Planet at Night. Oil on Canvas. 20 x 25

Catherine Prescott

"We may note . . . that [Jesus] was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.” — C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

We don’t get to pick the version of Jesus we will worship. We love him as he is. Anything else is idolatry. Anything else is fantasy. Anything else is less than what Jesus died for us to have. A man once followed Jesus, counted as one of his disciples. He was released to do works only Jesus could empower, and tasked with guarding the resources of their assignment. However, at some point on his three-year journey with the Messiah, he succumbed to the sickness of disenchantment. His life, which ended at Akeldama, or “the field of blood” (Acts 1:19) reveals both the limitations of our human perspective and Jesus’ invitation to complete trust.

But let’s take a step back from the famous fatality of his story, and observe the climate that seemed to surround him. How could life in proximity to the Source of all hope, all beauty, all joy, end with such anguish and despair? Could the poison of comparison have embittered his heart? Was his imagination captivated by a fantasy of a heroic monarch who would topple an oppressive empire? Did he see a disorienting contradiction in Jesus’ gracious response to Mary of Bethany pouring out precious oil to anoint his feet?

Fantasy tethers a person to a false vision. It takes up the space faith and hope should fill. When things don’t go as expected, spirals of disillusionment and disappointment unfurl. Someone is to blame. Although it’s tempting to blame God for not bringing about the good we imagined, if we catch a glimpse of reality in the mirror, it turns out we are the ones yielding to the seductive call of illusion.

When faced with the reality of Jesus, Judas’s allegiance to his own aims ended up blinding him, and he missed the story that he could have lived. Jesus stays away from our pigeon holes and boxes. He continually shatters our expectations. His kingship is established in truth and grace, not in meeting our expectations. He has an intention, a goal, a gravity in his every step and every decision.

Grief, pain, confusion, unmet expectations, and unanswered prayers tend to reveal the depths of our hearts—do we love Jesus for who he truly is, or the fantasy we’ve created?

Jesus was the King who toppled an oppressive empire, but contrary to Judas’s expectations that empire was not Rome, but sin, hatred, and, ultimately death. Jesus is not disappointing. He is the King who blasts our most exciting dreams to pieces and reveals a story rich with possibility, faith, and joy.

In the story of Judas, we grieve the false promise of the flesh and our desire for worldly gain. We also lift our eyes from the fantasy we built for ourselves, toward the One whose life provokes us to desire things that are more profound, more beautiful, more authentic, and more enduring than our minds can conceive.

When our fantasies shatter and we feel exposed, we can turn away in disappointment, or turn vulnerably toward Jesus and let his everlasting nature swallow up the make-believe and be our living, breathing, and resurrected hope.

Eniola Abioye is a California-based missionary, songwriter, and poet, collaborating with groups like Upper Room, Bethel, and Maverick City.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Eniola Abioye

Theology

‘I Nosedived into Christianity’: How a President’s Daughter Found Jesus

Interview by Pia Camagay

Once broken and desperate, Jerika Ejercito—daughter of former Philippine president Estrada—now wants to help others find wholeness.

Jerika Ejercito

Courtesy of Jerika Ejercito / Edits by CT

From a young age, Jerika Ejercito has been thrust into the spotlight. Her father is former Philippine president Joseph Ejercito Estrada, popularly known as Erap, and her mother is former actress Laarni Enriquez. Erap’s term was cut short in 2001 as corruption allegations led to an impeachment trial and his ousting. He was imprisoned for seven years.

For Ejercito, then only 16, the pressure of public scrutiny led to eating disorders, depression, suicide attempts, and a lifestyle of partying and drinking. Yet at age 27 she found Christ, and her new relationship with God sparked a life transformation.

Today Ejercito is a mother of five, an Instagram influencer, a Christian life coach, and a women’s ministry leader with a passion for biblical counseling. She talked to CT about her journey of finding redemption in Christ and how she now helps others process hardships and traumas like the ones she once kept secret.

This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

Can you tell me about your unique family and upbringing?

My parents are both public figures. My mom was an actress and my dad was an actor turned politician who held government office for 50 years: He was a mayor, senator, vice president, and then the president of the Philippines (1988–2001).

My dad has led a colorful life and has never been ashamed of it. He’s had many partners and nine children outside his marriage—including me and my two younger brothers. Growing up, I was very confused; the whole situation was too complicated for a child to understand, and my parents were not equipped to explain it to me in a way that I would understand.

We Filipinos tend to sweep things under the rug and just pray that everything will turn out okay. We don’t talk about the elephant in the room.

It's easy for people to cast stones against my dad. We are a very Catholic country, and people judge easily. Despite everything, my dad is a loving man. He’s the most generous person I know. He takes care of all of his children equally, and that says a lot about his character. Still, our unusual setup made me feel very insecure; we did not have a strong family foundation at home.

How did your father’s impeachment trial in 2001 impact you?

A few years before the impeachment trial, I was sexually abused. I was around 13 and already kind of lost. Suddenly, my innocence was gone, and that started my rebellious streak. I felt like I had nothing more to lose. After that incident, I became very conscious of my body and became bulimic at age 15.

So when the impeachment happened a year later, I was already a mess. I was in high school, and because of who my father was, I was bullied incessantly. My parents didn’t know how to handle the situation. We didn’t want to make things worse, because there was an ongoing impeachment. My younger brothers and I were all left to just figure things out on our own.

I couldn’t even share with anyone about the bullying I experienced in school because there were just so many things happening all at once. My mom didn’t know how to deal with all the pressure, so she sent me away to boarding school in the UK. She felt like I was going to be safer outside the Philippines.

I was 17 with all of these issues in my head: I felt worthless, not good enough, ashamed, guilty from the abuse and what was happening to my dad—and then I was sent away to be by myself. It was the first time I left the country without my family for that long, and everything just went downhill from there.

Courtesy of Jerika Ejercito

Jerika Ejercito with her husband and kids.

Were you able to process that with anyone?

No, because it’s cultural for us to dismiss things like that. Sexual abuse is more common than we would like to admit. It’s a very shameful thing—especially for us because our family is well-known. I never really opened up about it publicly until now, but I would open up about it in church settings when they asked for my testimony.

After being sent away, I wanted to escape. I didn’t want to feel the pain and the shame. I felt so dirty and worthless. I needed things and people to numb me and take my mind off of it, and that’s how I dealt with it for the next 10 years. I don’t think I was ever sober in those 10 years.

None of my friends in boarding school were Christians, so we would feed off of each other’s brokenness. But I was still a good daughter and did everything my parents wanted me to do, and I managed to graduate from university. In 2011, my mom told me it was time to come home—and it was the last thing I wanted to do. When I left, it was the height of the impeachment, and I never really dealt with all the trauma that came with that. It felt safer to stay away from the Philippines.

But then my mom said, “No, it’s time to come home. Your dad has been released; it’s time to make up for lost time.” And so I went home without dealing with my issues.

How did you come to Christ?

Our faith journey started with my mom, who gave her life to the Lord in 1989 when I was four. From then until my teen years, she would constantly go back and forth between the Protestant and the Catholic church. Long before the impeachment, we had already experienced a lot of condemnation from both sides. So we were sometimes Protestant, sometimes Catholic, depending on where we felt a little more welcome. The seed of the gospel was planted in us, but I had a hard time separating God and church back then. He really had to bring me to a breaking point so I could meet him.

During a family gathering in 2012, a cousin of mine who happens to be a pastor came up to me and asked how I was. I wanted to run away because I knew he would try to take me to church again. As I started talking to him, I felt the heaviness of everything and broke down.

At that time, I was already searching. I had tried taking my life twice already. My mom was scared that if I talked to a psychiatrist, they would spread rumors about our family. But I knew I needed help.

After talking to my cousin, I decided that I was going to give Christianity one last try, and this time I’d give it my best shot. I quit drugs. I quit drinking. I quit going out. I started going to therapy, but I ended up feeling more confused than when I started. I felt like I was just going around in circles. So I stopped therapy and focused on my faith.

That’s when I nosedived into Christianity. I did not have a life outside of church. I thought, if this God is who he says he is, then maybe he’s my last chance. So I nosedived into my faith, and here I am now, still nosediving.

You mentioned that faith was more helpful than therapy for you. How so?

Secular therapy is focused on relief. It will give you relief, but there’s no transformation. I was relieved of my addiction and certain compulsions, but I was not changed. I knew I needed more. I don’t want to knock secular therapy, because it did help me quit the bad stuff, the glaring sins. But it was so self-focused, and if I’m trying to save myself, I can’t keep looking at the self. When I took my faith seriously, that was when real transformation happened.

While I was doing therapy, I got pregnant with my first son, Isaiah, with a guy I was in a very toxic relationship with. I eventually left that relationship because it was pulling me down. That was another big blow. I had already started going to church, and the whole congregation was praying for us, asking God to breathe life into this relationship. But nothing happened.

I got really depressed again because I didn’t want a broken family for my son. I didn’t want him to experience what I experienced. Eventually, I decided that if it was just going to be me, my son, and God, I’d be okay. I told God, “If this is your will, then I submit. Just help me raise my son.”

Not long after, I met my husband. Later on, my mom also renewed her faith, and that’s when our relationship started to get better. I also began having better relationships with my brothers. Restoration happened. That’s when I saw that the kind of transformation with the Lord is not just relief—it’s a deep heart surgery. When he humbled me enough to realize that I could not do things on my own, everything took a turn.

One time, after I shared my testimony at a church, people told me, “Wow, you went through all of that?” The term they used was Walang bakas! (“There is no trace!”). And I said, “Well, in Christ, there really is no trace.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtorOawPMbW/

Has your family been supportive of your faith journey?

At first, it was just me and my youngest brother, Jacob, who would go to church. My mom also had her own faith journey. She had a health issue and went through a season of wilderness; that’s when she really became on fire for the Lord. It helped restore our relationship naturally in a way that could not have happened through secular therapy. There was just so much resentment and trauma between me and my mom—I blamed her for a lot of things, but then I realized she was also just doing her best in her brokenness. This restoration was only possible with Christ.

Whenever I visit my dad, I play GOD TV, and he doesn’t realize it’s just there in the background. Back in the day, when he was incarcerated, he did Bible study with one of our family friends. I know his life does not reflect it, but my dad is a prayerful man. Growing up, I would always see him pray. Whether he has given his life to Christ is between him and the Lord. Whenever I see him, I pray for him and do little things to help him hear the Word. On my mom’s side, more and more relatives are becoming believers, and we’re praying for them.

What are some areas in life where you still face challenges today?

It’s easy to deal with the glaring sins, the obvious ones. But the tiny ones, the compulsive sins, are the ones that will get you. Sometimes I still place my worth on being a wife or a mom—my worth is not completely in Christ. For example, when my husband and I argue, I explode quite quickly. This happens especially when he corrects me. I would feel convicted after that. I know that correction is from the Lord, but when it’s my husband, I get so annoyed.

I’m also still working through hardwired ways of bringing up the kids in the way I was brought up. Sometimes I shout too often, but I try to catch myself and ask God to make me a gentle and quiet spirit. There are some sins, thorns in my flesh, that remind me how dependent I am [on God]. Nothing good comes out of me. Nothing.

As a content creator, do you ever feel ensnared by the approval found in likes on social media?

Ever since I was bullied during my dad’s impeachment trial, I have been conditioned to not care about what people say. If I do, it will consume me. I’ve had that foundation. So now that I have this platform, I don’t care much for likes. This is who I am, and this is how passionate I am about the God I serve.

If you find that cheesy, that’s okay. If you’re learning something, I’m happy that you’re here. Of course, I have friends from different industries, and being a Christian is not always cool in everyone’s eyes. But this is my life, and I am not ashamed of the gospel. I do pray, though, every time I post something. I pray for wisdom in creating the content I put out there.

Tell me about how you became interested in becoming a biblical counselor.

In 2012, a few months after renewing my faith, I started becoming a mental health advocate. I got really deep into it—I even joined the research group for the Mental Health Law, spoke in the Senate, and campaigned alongside politicians advocating for it.

However, as I grew in my faith, I realized that the principles of secular therapy would always be in conflict with what the Bible says. And so, in 2020, I quietly left mental health advocacy because it just left me even more confused than I already was. I tried to find out if there was a combination of mental health and spirituality. And two years ago, I learned the term psycho-spiritual. That was it—exactly what I was looking for this whole time.

Recently, my brother Jacob started working on his life coaching certificate and said, “I can see you doing this too!” But I didn’t want to do it if it wasn’t Christian or Bible-based. I already knew what didn’t work. So, I prayed and read about Christian life coaching. I applied and got my Christian life coaching certificate.

As I researched further, I ended up reading about biblical counseling. I sensed that it was where God was leading me.

I’ve been working on my certification for a year and a half now. It’s a long and difficult process, but I’m enjoying it. God has been so gracious. He’s healing things as I go along learning about biblical counseling. It’s also ministering to me and helping me minister to others. It helps when I invite the Holy Spirit, am sensitive to his leading, and really abide in the Word in one-on-one conversations.

What sustains your passion for God and your ministry?

I am a product of God’s grace—nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but we are called to be faithful in the little things. I try to be faithful with what’s in front of me. I try to be faithful in what he has given me for the day, and I surrender the big things to him. He has shown up for me countless times, so even when I doubt, I go back and remember the times that he saved me.

- More from Pia Camagay

Theology

Christ and Cancel Culture

Gavin Ortlund

A lesson from the Alistair Begg controversy.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

Debate has raged in recent weeks about pastor and author Alistair Begg’s advice that a grandmother attend her grandchild’s wedding to a transgender person. Now that the dust is somewhat settled, it’s worth asking what we can learn from the whole episode.

I’ve explained elsewhere why I disagree with Begg’s advice, but here I want to reflect on how we navigate our differences about such matters within the body of Christ. How can Christians disagree so that there is minimal collateral damage to the kingdom of God?

In this case, the disagreement is not about sexual ethics (Begg’s position on that is clear). It’s about a specific, more prudential question: How should Christians who maintain a traditional understanding of marriage function in a society that is increasingly abandoning it? In the circumstance Begg was addressing, for example—a grandmother-to-grandchild relationship in which the grandmother’s conviction is clearly known—is attendance at a gay or transgender wedding ceremony ever permissible?

While I come to a different conclusion about this than Begg, his position should not discount his decades of faithful ministry. Yet many responses portray him as fundamentally compromised or untrustworthy or as a proponent of gay marriage. While it’s perfectly appropriate for people to articulate their disagreement, the wholesale denunciations and cutting of ties seem reflective of a broader dysfunction in how Christians express disagreement.

Unfortunately, “cancel culture” is increasingly common in the church as well as the world. Especially in disagreements that play out over the internet, we often display a reactive, all-or-nothing mentality that ultimately reduces the other person to our disagreement with them—even a disagreement on a secondary or tertiary matter. We desperately need to retain and cultivate the ability to say, I disagree with so-and-so on issue X, but they are still my brother or sister in Christ, and so our disagreement takes place in this larger context. Too often, our disagreements reflect little or no awareness of Christian unity and love.

Could fruitful Christian leaders of the past survive the climate we are currently creating? Would John Stott be cancelled for his views on annihilationism? What about C. S. Lewis for his rejection of biblical inerrancy? Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer for his position on the historicity of Genesis 2–3?

I am not minimizing the importance of these issues. Nor am I saying, Let’s just be nice and not talk about our disagreements. But if the disagreement is with a fellow Christian, the way we disagree must be constrained by that reality.

What does healthy Christian disagreement look like? It’s not formulaic, and I don’t have all the answers, but here are a few ideas worth considering.

Take a break from public disagreement on Sundays

Some of the most heated battles among Christians take place on Twitter on Sunday, even Sunday morning. I wonder if the enemy can use this to distract us from that time in our weekly rhythm that should be especially set aside for rest and worship. What if we took a break from our feuds on the Lord’s Day and instead committed to worship, prayer, and rest?

I cannot bind anyone else’s conscience on a prudential matter like this, but I am making a personal decision to avoid engaging in public disagreement on Sundays, and I would invite others to consider whether something similar might be fruitful in their own lives.

Cultivate a culture of honor

The New Testament calls us to a culture of honor (Rom. 12:10) and gentleness (Gal. 6:1). This does not mean we avoid accountability or criticism as necessary. There is a place for public rebuke (e.g., 1 Tim. 5:20), including of leaders (Gal. 2:11).

However, we need to consider the overall culture we are creating in the church right now, especially for leadership. More than ever before, pastors and other church leaders are operating in a climate of suspicion. According to a recent poll, less than a third of Americans rate clergy as honest and ethical. Relatedly, pastors are increasingly discouraged.

Again, legitimate criticism must be allowed. But the overall trajectory of our culture is such that distrust toward clergy (and distrust toward institutions and leaders generally) is multiplying. This is bad for us all. The entire body of Christ benefits when our leaders flourish. And who can flourish in a climate of suspicion and speedy judgment?

So when we engage in criticism, we do well to ask: What is the overall culture I am cultivating with my words?

Show love amid disagreement

One reason love is so important is that the world watches how we disagree with each other. Jesus taught that “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Further, he prayed for our unity so that the world would believe in him (John 17:21).

In a recent podcast, Trevin Wax drew attention to Francis Schaeffer’s comment on this teaching of Christ: “Jesus, here, gives the world a right to do something on the basis of his own authority. He gives the world a right to judge whether you and I are born-again Christians on the basis of whether we show love to all Christians.” How did the controversy around Begg’s comments come across to non-Christians who are watching us?

Again, love does not mean refraining from disagreement. But when we engage in public disagreement with a brother or sister in Christ, we should consider its broader effect on the credibility of the gospel. Charles Spurgeon gives us a good model here. Discussing his disagreement with George Herbert, he said:

Where the Spirit of God is there must be love, and if I have once known and recognized any man to be my brother in Christ Jesus, the love of Christ constraineth me no more to think of him as a stranger or foreigner, but a fellow citizen with the saints. Now I hate High Churchism as my soul hates Satan; but I love George Herbert, although George Herbert is a desperately High Churchman. I hate his High Churchism, but I love George Herbert from my very soul, and I have a warm corner in my heart for every man who is like him. Let me find a man who loves my Lord Jesus Christ as George Herbert did and I do not ask myself whether I shall love him or not; there is no room for question, for I cannot help myself; unless I can leave off loving Jesus Christ, I cannot cease loving those who love him. … I will defy you, if you have any love to Jesus Christ, to pick or choose among His people.

In the years and decades ahead, we will likely face many more complicated questions of what Christian faithfulness looks like in our society. We will not always agree. But even our disagreements can honor Jesus and commend the gospel to those around us if we have a “warm corner” in our hearts for all the sheep of Christ.

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Seminary) is president of Truth Unites and theologian-in-residence at Immanuel Nashville. He is the author of eight books, including Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't.

A version of this article originally appeared at Truth Unites.

- More from Gavin Ortlund

Theology

A Call to ‘Wake Up’ 50 Years After Malaysia’s Bario Revival

Lillian Bulan-Dorai

A revival spread in a small tribal village in 1973. Its impact is still being felt today.

Kelabit women praying.

Courtesy of Lillian Bulan-Dorai / Edits by CT

One October afternoon in 1973, my brother stood in front of a dozen secondary students in Bario, a remote village in Sarawak, Malaysia. In tears, 23-year-old Solomon Bulan announced his resignation as the advisor of the school’s Inter-Christian Students’ Fellowship, confessing that he felt unworthy to lead the group. He saw himself as a hypocrite, lacking personal conviction and a relationship with God. He felt disgusted and ashamed of his lifestyle of drinking and partying, and he struggled to model what he was preaching to the students.

At the close of the meeting, a normally timid student suddenly began to cry as he also asked for forgiveness from his friends for his wrongdoings and confessed and repented of his sins. Another student piped up, then more and more, until the whole room was filled with cries of repentance.

“Their cries were agonizing, pleading with God for mercy while others went around hugging their friends as they confessed their sins to each other, seeking forgiveness, all amidst unrestrained tears,” Bulan later wrote in a book we published together in 2004. “The massive outpouring went on for at least 45 minutes.”

The following week, the revival reached Bario Primary School, where I was a third-grade student. I remember older students pleading with their classmates, “Please forgive me. Jesus is coming soon! Let’s forgive one another and repent.”

From such humble beginnings came the 1973 Bario Revival, which spread through the various villages of our indigenous Kelabit tribe and into neighboring tribes and communities. Repentance, reconciliation, and restoration radically transformed the community’s perspective of God and church, resulting in an immediate cultural shift.

It also set off four waves of revivals in the next 11 years. More than 50 years later, the fruits of the revival are still evident in Bario and other tribal communities. It has also contributed significantly to the growth of the Malaysian church—the Borneo Evangelical Mission, locally known as Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB), is one of the largest evangelical denominations in the country today.

“These events could only be supernatural and the works of our God,” wrote Osart Jallong, one of the 12 students at the meeting, on the 40th anniversary of the revival. “We were mere kampong (village) boys who knew very little about God’s works. I was timid and would not, in my natural self, carry myself to speak to a large crowd of people. But at that time, we feared nobody and would speak and pray for anyone. Only God could give us such courage and words to speak!”

A changed Bario

Bario is located in the remotest part of the Kelabit highlands in northern Sarawak on the island of Borneo, which is shared by three countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. Bario is home to the close-knit Kelabit people. Australian missionary Charles Hudson Southwell, founder of the Borneo Evangelical Mission, reported the first known conversion among this small tribe (then 5,000 people) in January 1940. In 1943, Aris Doemat of the China Missionary Alliance (CMA) in Surabaya, Indonesia, visited the highland villages, and the Kelabit in Bario converted en masse. Missionaries also built the first schools in the village. The introduction of formal education enhanced the Kelabit’s experience of liberation from oppressive rituals and control of evil spirits.

Over time, as a new generation grew up, nominalism set in. Growing up, I learned to pray before eating, bathing, sleeping, and going to school. But when the revival came, the sense of the fear of God and his holiness became pervasive. I remember daily confessing my sins to God. I desired to be in his presence and sought miraculous signs of his presence all the time. My friends and I attended adult prayer meetings and services whenever we could and we even held our own prayer meetings. We often prayed to have visions of God. One night, I encountered God, who assured me that he would always be present to protect me like a mother hen.

Courtesy of Lillian Bulan-Dorai / Edits by CT

Bario, a tribal village in Malaysia, where the revivals took place.

Around me, villagers were overtaken by a deep consciousness of God’s holiness. They stopped drinking and smoking. They got baptized and repented of sins such as pride, lying, adultery, witchcraft, and sorcery. Some returned what they had stolen and gave to the church generously. One man confessed to murder. Yet because of the prevailing conviction to forgive every sin, offenders didn’t face criminal proceedings. The spirit of reconciliation among the villagers was so strong that all pending cases at the court were resolved, and for a number of years, the courts had no work to do.

Despite investing their time in preaching around the villages, the secondary students still managed to do well in their qualifying exams conducted at the end of October that year, earning the school’s best results to date.

Even the land healed. The people’s preoccupation with prayer meetings, services, and outreaches meant less time spent in their paddy fields. Yet throughout those few years, the fields yielded an extraordinary harvest.

Worship and prayer shaped the villagers’ new response to life. Church services became more vibrant and frequent. Worship was spontaneous, while young people preached boldly and evangelized the adults. In the village chapels, people gathered for daily morning devotion at 5 a.m. and attended services on Wednesday and Saturday nights, while also dedicating their Sundays to three adult services and Sunday school for children. These routines remain today in most churches.

Doubts and a revival’s spread

The village’s influential church leaders initially doubted the authenticity of the revival, with some claiming it was simply heightened emotionalism. But Joseph Balan Seling, a respected political leader and seminary-trained church elder, believed otherwise. He promptly returned from a conference in London to Bario upon hearing about the movement.

Balan eagerly wrote to his missionary friends in England and Australia with his observations of the revival: “The Holy Spirit has come down upon the Kelabit churches in the Bario highlands in a mighty force, somewhat similar to the story recorded in the Book of Acts, the Congo, and the Indonesian revivals.”

Because the church leaders in Bario deeply respected Balan, they listened as he explained that Bario was witnessing a great visitation of God, just as the apostles had experienced at Pentecost in Acts 2. Balan shared that what was happening in Bario had happened elsewhere in the world, and the leaders finally accepted that this was a revival.

The people felt the revival needed to be shared. Young people walked for days through the dense jungle and hilly terrain to share the glorious message of repentance and forgiveness to their neighbors. Everywhere they went, people turned to God, repented, confessed their sins, received healings, and were baptized.

In just two months, two other indigenous villages—Ba’kelalan and Taginambur in Sabah—also experienced revival. While these remain the most well-known revivals of Malaysian Borneo, other indigenous communities and churches in the lowlands and towns also experienced their own waves of revival.

Revival’s waves

Revivals ebb and flow. “Like a wave, revival will crest at some point,” wrote Tom Phillips, author and vice president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “The culmination will be relatively short before the wave follows its natural course and recedes. It’s impossible to live ‘at the peak’ or ‘on the crest’ forever. A revival will move us to new heights and revitalize us.”

We experienced that in Bario too. After about a year and a half, Bario experienced a season of spiritual dryness. Church attendance dwindled as the meetings became routine. People seemed tired and complacent. Bario lacked the needed spiritual leadership.

Looking back, I now see that this was due to the transient nature of Bario church leadership and members. Congregations depended on a handful of government servants, teachers, and church pastors to run weekly services and disciple congregants. Young people often had to leave the village to further their studies in towns and cities. Others left because the village lacked economic opportunities to sustain growing families. The void created by these absences caused Bario to lose the fervor that had started the revival.

Nevertheless, a handful of faithful intercessors arose from the Bario Revival. They consistently prayed together, and God graciously sent three more outpourings in 1975, 1979, and 1984. Each wave came with a different thrust, but all carried the certainty of the Holy Spirit’s power to convict and transform lives and drove the villagers to evangelism.

The second wave was ignited by visits from an Indonesian charismatic preacher, Yohanes Sakai, in 1975, refreshing the community after a period of stagnancy. This wave was marked by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, with people breaking out in tongues, experiencing healing and deliverance, seeing visions, and receiving words of prophecy with immediate interpretations.

New and prophetic songs emerged—sometimes spontaneously—inspired by the Holy Spirit. People experienced deliverance and healing simply through claiming God’s power with the lyrics of songs like “BilurNya, BilurNya Sungguh Heran” (His Stripes Are Miraculous) and “In the Name of Jesus.” For instance, one young woman with a serious eye impairment was healed, and she never wore her thick spectacles again.

I remember the exuberance in the worship and prayer after each testimony of healing. Without fail, the great hymn “How Great Thou Art,” sung in our native language, would bring us down to our knees in thanksgiving, worship, and adoration. Mission teams went out from Bario to the villages and tribes scattered near and far. They returned with reports of miracles: healing of diseases as well as deliverance from the occult and demon possession.

The third revival wave in 1979 came as global influences, technological advancements, and socioeconomic changes brought materialism and self-obsession into our village. The church was deeply concerned about young professionals who had backslid or left the faith and about several prominent church leaders who had fallen into adulterous relationships. Once again, the same faithful intercessors began to mobilize. They received a specific word and vision to retreat to the mountains and devote themselves to pray for the people. As they did, more intercessors joined them, and the intensity of prayer grew.

Prayer meetings often lasted into the cold nights and spilled over into the villages as the intercessors shared testimonies of healings and miracles. Prayer troupes initially climbed the mountains surrounding Bario. Eventually, they had a vision to pray on Mount Murud, the highest mountain in Sarawak. On their first visit, Christians from neighboring Ba’ Kelalan joined them. The Lun Bawang people continued prayers on Mount Murud and built Gedung Halleluyah (Mount Murud Prayer House), which remains to this day.

Courtesy of Lillian Bulan-Dorai / Edits by CT

Baptisms in Bario.

The fourth wave came in 1984 as people blessed by the earlier waves or who had heard of the Bario Revival in other parts of Malaysia came to Bario either to experience God or to minister to the now complacent villagers. Teams from the Pentecostal and charismatic movement that was sweeping through churches in Peninsular Malaysia came to Bario with charismatic teachings on spiritual gifts, and people were renewed in their experiences of power through baptism in the Holy Spirit, with evidence of speaking in tongues. The gift of tongues then was not just a form of prayer but prophetic words with interpretations.

A new generation

In 1998, church leaders and intercessors in Bario organized the first commemoration of the Bario Revival, calling it Kebaktian Kebangunan Roh (KKR, “Revival Meeting”) so that people might not forget God’s work through the revival. Since then, meetings have been organized annually in Bario and in the growing SIB churches in the city of Miri in Sarawak. The focus is always to call people back to God in the hope that God would bring revival again.

These KKR meetings brought to light the lack of spiritual interest among the younger generation of Borneo’s indigenous people. Many had not yet seen or experienced the mighty work of God among their ancestors and were falling away, even adopting other faiths. So church leaders created a fellowship group for the younger generation called Persatuan Kelabit Saban and Berawan (PKSB), which focused on three small, closely related ethnic groups: the Kelabit, the Saban, and the Berawan.

In 2018, the older leaders of PKSB handed over the leadership to a handful of keen young leaders. With direction from the Holy Spirit, the movement has transitioned from a focus on the Bario Revival to include all 60 indigenous people groups in Malaysia, in keeping with the vision of Revelation 12:9. It changed its name to Tribal Gathering—an intertribal, intergenerational, interdenominational, international prayer movement.

Last year, which marked the 50th anniversary of the Bario Revival, intercessors from across the country focused prayer on the next move of the Holy Spirit in Malaysia. Pastors Sabrina Low and Rachel Bulan (my niece) of Cornerstone Community Church in Miri believed that revival in Borneo was imminent. Leading the monthly Tribal Gathering prayer meetings, they collaborated with pastor Lee Choo of Sidang Injil Borneo Kuala Lumpur (SIBKL), who had started a 24-hour nationwide prayer movement called Malaysia United Fire Wall.

These prayer movements culminated in Tribal Gathering 2023, held in Miri last October and organized to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Bario Revival. More than 4,000 believers congregated in the city’s indoor stadium. Young leaders from more than 100 churches led the gathering and called on God to awaken the nation. There was a high expectation that revival might break out during the three-day gathering. While that did not happen, it awakened the Malaysian church to an even greater need to pray to change the spiritual trajectory of Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Never before had the Malaysian church seen such unity and deep longing among the young generation for revival.

While the Tribal Gathering 2023 movement is strongly supported and reinforced by prominent church elders from Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, its heart is the young leaders seeking to tu’ee’—or “wake up”—arise, and pick up the baton for the transformation and salvation of our land.

A song sung at the gathering, composed by Rachel Bulan and her cousin Joshua Maran, provided a thunderous, powerful call for the church: “Every tongue and tribe will know Your name / Every knee will bow and sing Your praise / Tu’ee sons and daughters. Come awake, army of God. Wake up!”

Lillian Bulan-Dorai is a registered licensed counselor and a pastor at Full Gospel Assembly in Kuala Lumpur. She heads Family Life, the church’s family and counseling ministry. Lillian is the author of Rushing Wind (2023) and The Bario Revival (2004), both of which she wrote with her brother, Solomon Bulan.

- More from Lillian Bulan-Dorai

Books

Review

The Data-Backed Case for Marriage

Joseph Holmes

Brad Wilcox’s Get Married debunks misguided conventional wisdom and offers both challenge and hope to Christian singles.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash / Getty

Marriage and family are much discussed today, and not only among Christians. Marriage rates are going down, the meaning of marriage is contested, and dropping fertility is raising worries of a lonely and childless future, even in the church. Meanwhile, many Christian singles are left hoping their local church will somehow help them get married—or that our growing numbers will finally convince congregations to stop making us feel like second-class Christians.

Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization

Brad Wilcox (Author)

Broadside Books

320 pages

The latest contribution to this conversation is Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, a new book from Brad Wilcox, a Christian professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox is experienced, widely published, and respected in his field. He’s pulling off an admirable feat: leading a secular institution without compromising his Christian values or reducing his work to a “fringe” project only valued inside the church.

Get Married is a popular-level distillation of that academic work. Wilcox argues that while most culture shapers in our society—from journalists to celebrities, artists to influencers—promote a cynical idea of marriage, data shows that perspective is wrong. And we need to understand the good of marriage, he contends, because the alternatives to a society where most people get married are worrisome: either fewer children (which means a less dynamic economy and declining family and community life) or more out-of-wedlock births (which means more child poverty and more crime).

The book follows a consistent pattern: Each chapter introduces a popular negative idea about marriage, then presents a mountain of mainstream research (much of it conducted by Wilcox himself) and anecdotes debunking the claim. For example, popular wisdom says single people are happier. But the data shows that’s not true; in fact, no single factor better determines happiness and life satisfaction than marriage. Wilcox similarly debunks common claims that single people are wealthier, that divorce is often unpreventable, that parenthood makes you unhappy, and that economic pressures are the main reason marriage and fertility rates are so low.

The strength of Get Married is how deeply aware Wilcox is of modern conversations around marriage. He easily references cultural influences ranging from the anti-marriage rhetoric of red-pill male influencers like Andrew Tate to self-centered views of love marketed toward women in works like Eat Pray Love. And just as important, Wilcox’s responses are readable and research-based, providing a concise compilation of the data in this sprawling debate.

While the book is primarily written for a secular audience, Christians will find its information deeply relevant to our own conversations around marriage. You may be gratified (and in some cases, surprised) to learn how much of this data from mainstream researchers corroborates basic Christian teaching on marriage. For instance, religious couples who attend services regularly are among the least likely to divorce and the most likely to report being happy in their marriages. So are couples who put guardrails around their marriages to avoid opportunities for temptation.

For Christian singles specifically, Get Married may produce more mixed feelings. Many singles already feel our fellow Christians are dismissive of our circumstances, unwilling to take seriously how difficult it is to find a spouse, or assuming that because we aren’t married yet, we must not value marriage and family. Wilcox’s arguments that married people are usually happier than singles—and that failure to marry is often due to poor personal choices—may feel like even more unfair assumptions, however well supported by data the arguments are.

But as a Christian single myself, I found most of Wilcox’s challenges refreshing rather than hurtful. If I embrace singleness, is it because of a call of God on my life (and a rejection of the idolatry of marriage and family)? Or is it because I’ve made an idol of careerism and individualism? For single Christians not pursuing marriage, these are difficult questions, but worth asking.

For singles who are pursuing marriage, Get Married is deeply hopeful. I struggle a lot with my singleness both inside and outside the church. The problem I face most is that Christians either have no good advice for how to find a spouse or they tell me that there’s something wrong with me for still looking for marriage. I should just “focus on Jesus” and “let it happen or not,” they say.

Get Married disagrees. With data to support his claims, Wilcox’s work says my desire for a spouse is not something wrong with me but something deeply right. It says I may be doing things that are holding me back from having a spouse—but I can also stop doing those things and instead take steps to make it very likely I will have a happy and lasting marriage.

That said, while Wilcox acknowledges ways our culture has made it harder to find a spouse—careerism, loosening community ties, an education system increasingly inhospitable to boys—Get Married offers little advice for how individuals can actually get married. Most of his proposals concern public policy and structural societal changes. Single readers convinced by the title and thesis of the book may be left wondering what to do next. (Wilcox gave some more concrete advice in an interview on my Overthinkers podcast.)

Get Married also would have been a stronger book if it anticipated and answered more objections to its thesis from the Left, given Wilcox’s broad intended audience. For example, he mentions that some people say they won’t have kids because of worries about climate change but he doesn’t address any reasons that fear is ill-founded. (Wilcox’s goal is not just marriage but marriage with children.) He also doesn’t grapple with the claim that it’s too soon to say whether nontraditional family arrangements, like same-sex relationships or polyamory, can produce quality-of-life benefits similar to traditional marriage.

All in all, Get Married is a vital contribution to the modern conversation around marriage—a helpful resource to make sure our views of marriage are based on facts rather than on cultural folklore and memes. Wilcox’s next task, perhaps, should be an equally data-backed book on how to actually get married in our time.

Joseph Holmes is a Christian culture critic and podcast host living and working out of New York City. He has written at outlets including Forbes, The New York Times, Religion Unplugged, Relevant, and An Unexpected Journal. He co-hosts a weekly podcast called The Overthinkers.

- More from Joseph Holmes

Theology

Easter in the Everyday

From the Editor

Prepare your heart for Easter with Christianity Today

Zatelepina / Getty

Let’s prepare our hearts together during this season leading up to Easter and beyond. The events of over 2000 years ago still reverberate through our bones and bodies today. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the most powerful, world-shaping reality in history, and we still find the truth transported into our everyday lives. It’s up to us to remember, reflect, and abide in the everyday, glorious consequences of Christ’s love for us, revealed through his humility and power, the crisis and the overcoming, the despair, and the overflowing joy. He has died and he has risen indeed, and that changes everything—even the small parts of our daily life. As we prepare our hearts, this devotional invites you on the journey of Lent and Easter through the different stages of the emotional journey and theological truth of death, life, and everything between.

Easter in the Everyday is divided into three frames, each representing a different emotional reality along the Easter journey. The first frame leads us through the time in the church calendar called Lent, where we will confront the humility of our humanness, examine the limitations of our fleshly state, and embrace the call to sacrificial living, fasting, and self-denial. The second frame will take us through Holy Week and prepare us for Easter, leaning in the anticipation of hope. Finally, we will immerse ourselves in the turbulence and intensity of Jesus’ betrayal, crucifixion, resurrection, and reunion. Through this journey, love and awe have overcome the sting of sorrow and death on the eternal stage, as well as in our small lives that will one day be caught up in glory.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from From the Editor

News

Wire Story

Aaron Ivey, Worship Pastor at Austin Stone, Fired Over Explicit Texts

Roxanne Stone – Religion News Service

The author, musician, and husband of podcaster Jamie Ivey showed “a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation” in messages to multiple males, according to church elders.

Aaron Ivey

Austin Stone Worship / YouTube screengrab

The Austin Stone Community Church, a multicampus evangelical church in Austin, Texas, announced on Sunday that it had dismissed its head worship pastor after discovering he had engaged in “inappropriate and explicit ongoing text messages with an adult male,” according to a statement from the church’s elders.

Aaron Ivey, the pastor of worship and creativity and an elder at the megachurch, was fired last Monday for what the statement called a “disqualifying situation,” which the elders said they became aware of the previous day.

“Several elders were made aware of this situation on the evening of Sunday, February 4th and after reviewing the explicit nature of these messages, it was clear that termination of Aaron’s eldership and employment was necessary in accordance with the clear biblical standards outlined in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and 1 Timothy 5:19-20,” according to the statement. The first passage, from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to Timothy, urges church leaders to be faithful in marriage; the second says church elders “who are sinning” should be reproved before everyone.

After firing Ivey, the elders said, they then discovered that Ivey, the husband of bestselling author and popular podcaster Jamie Ivey, had a history of texting with men, including one who had been underage at the time of the explicit texts, according to the statement.

“Since then, we have uncovered multiple similar instances with different individuals dating back to 2011 that show a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation, sexual exploitation, and abuse of influence,” the statement said.

The elders detailed a timeline of texts they had discovered, alleging that they began in 2011 with the exchanges with a minor, which they said they had reported to the “appropriate authorities.”

“The first known instance, which took place with a teenage male victim and continued over time, involved inappropriate and explicit communications, indecent exposure, and the use of alcohol and illegal substances,” read the statement.

A spokesperson for the church, which has been affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, declined to offer additional comment on the allegations and Ivey’s termination.

The elder statement said MinistrySafe, which trains the church’s staff to prevent child abuse, has been alerted about the situation.

“As elders, we are heartbroken for the victims and their families. Knowing the Lord’s sheep are worth our protection and our love, we are committed to loving this body and rooting out evil. We know this may affect your trust because we know it certainly has rattled ours,” read the statement.

Jamie Ivey, host of the popular podcast The Happy Hour, appeared on Good Morning America on Friday to promote her new book, Why Can’t I Get It Together? Afterward, she posted on her Instagram that she was “off to China Town with my man for some epic Chinese food for lunch!” It’s unclear whether she knew at the time of her husband’s firing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3OjXm1AHVq/

In 2021, the Iveys wrote Complement, a book and accompanying Bible study about marriage. The couple subscribed to a complementarian theology of marriage, which emphasizes male leadership, and spoke on it often. Aaron Ivey appeared on a 2019 panel hosted by the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, titled “Faithful Husband, Strong Father: Embracing God’s Design for Manhood in Marriage,” that focused on the role of biblical manhood in marriage.

The couple, who have four children, including three adopted Black children, have also publicly talked about the challenges of living as a multiracial family in a majority white community and church.

Aaron Ivey did not respond to requests for comment.

- More from Roxanne Stone – Religion News Service

News

Wire Story

What Research Says About the Five Love Languages

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

Even Gary Chapman clarifies it’s not about picking just one.

RgStudio / Getty Images

When Katie Frugé and her husband, Lafayette, decided to get married in 2007, they were 21 and did not know what they did not know.

“We were too young to get married and too young really to care,” said Frugé, who is now director of the Center for Cultural Engagement for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

For guidance, the young couple turned to The Five Love Languages, a popular book by North Carolina author and pastor Gary Chapman. First published in 1992, the book explores different ways people express love—words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, acts of service and giving gifts—in hopes of helping couples find happiness.

The book claims understanding each other’s love language can help create healthy marriages. Frugé recalls thinking the book held the key to a bright future.

“We thought, we’ll just learn each other’s love languages and everything’s going be hunky-dory,” she said. “We’re not going to ever have any fights and we’re both going to feel fully satisfied all the time.”

Married life proved more complicated.

Frugé said she and her husband are still happily married 17 years later but there were a lot of bumps, including several health crises—“We had the sickness and health part,” she said. And they needed more love along the way than a formula could provide.

“When I’m diagnosed with cancer, I don’t need my husband to go out and buy me a gift at that moment,” she said.

Once popular mostly in evangelical Christian circles, the Five Love Languages have exploded into a pop culture phenomenon. The dating app Bumble offers a Five Love Languages quiz, the concept has been featured on The Bachelorette and in major media outlets, while the Five Love Languages channel on TikTok has attracted tens of millions of views. Chapman has sold more than 20 million copies of his books and launched a cottage industry of conferences, related books and an online quiz taken tens of millions of times.

All of that attention has led researchers such as Emily Impett, a psychology professor and director of the Relationships and Well-Being Laboratory at the University of Toronto Mississauga, to ask if the claims of the Five Love Languages stand up to scientific scrutiny, and perhaps nearly as important—what can scholars learn from the popularity of Chapman’s work?

A new paper in “Current Directions in Psychological Science” suggests Chapman’s theory about how love works doesn’t quite add up. For the paper, Impett and a pair of colleagues looked at a series of studies that tried to test three key ideas about the Five Love Languages: that people have a primary love language, that five love languages exist and that people are happier with a partner who speaks their primary love language.

The studies, said Impett and her colleagues, don’t support that theory.

For example, people will choose a preferred language if forced to in a quiz. However, researchers found that if asked about all five love languages on an individual basis—people rate all of them highly. The researchers also found that some important ideas, such as supporting a partner’s or spouse’s goals, don’t fit in the five love language model and that people who have the same love languages aren’t happier than other couples.

“Love is not akin to a language one needs to learn to speak but can be more appropriately understood as a balanced diet in which people need a full range of essential nutrients to cultivate lasting love,” Impett and her colleagues wrote.

They did suggest Chapman’s book has filled a need for couples in that “it provides partners an opportunity to reflect on, discuss, and respond to one another’s need.”

In a follow-up email, Impett said that reading the love languages book—which includes examples of how to practice showing love in different ways—is much more helpful than using the online quiz. That’s in part because the focus on finding a partner’s primary love language can be too restrictive and ends up putting people into a box.

Instead, she told Religion News Service in an email, “all of the behaviors Chapman identified are important.”

“We are not suggesting that people necessarily are multilingual (skilled at all five behaviors) but that they should learn to be since the five behaviors that Chapman identifies are really important things people can do to maintain their relationships.”

On that point, Chapman agrees.

The 86-year-old author, who recently stepped down after 50 years on the staff of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said all of the love languages matter.

“There is absolutely no question that what makes one person feel loved doesn’t necessarily make another person feel loved,” he said in an interview. “But I don’t want to communicate that you only speak the person’s primary love language.”

Chapman, who still travels and speaks at marriage conferences and other events, said he was surprised by some of the paper’s findings but appreciates researchers taking his work seriously. The more research, he said, the better.

He said he continues to be surprised at how popular the idea of love languages has been. Chapman developed the idea for the book while counseling troubled couples at his church. Those couples, he said, were often at their wit’s ends, because each partner thought they were acting in loving ways, but the other partner felt unloved.

A master storyteller, Chapman recalled one husband saying he cooked dinner most nights, shared in the housework and lawn work, and did all he could to support the family. But his wife felt distant because he was so busy helping out at home that they never had time to talk.

Looking over his counseling notes, Chapman began to look for patterns and eventually came up with the five love languages.

“It’s a simple concept,” he said. “But I knew from my counseling and working with couples—it would help people if they could get that concept. In all of my writing, I’ve tried to put the cookies on the bottom shelf, so people can understand it easily.”

That approach is something researchers say they can learn from.

In their paper about the love languages, they said Chapman’s book has connected with people because it uses “intuitive metaphors, which may resonate with people and convey an easily digestible message free of scientific jargon.”

Impett also said the focus on finding a primary love language can overshadow the reason why so many people find Chapman’s book helpful. The book, she said in an email, “gets people to identify any currently unmet needs (areas of improvement) in their relationship and opens up lines of communication to address those needs.”

Chapman, who has been married 62 years, said that’s the point. He said love begins with emotion but is sustained by having the right attitude and by acting in ways that put your spouse or romantic partner first.

That right attitude, he said, can be summed up this way: “I want to do anything and everything I can do to help you become the person that you want to be. I want to do everything that would be good for you.”

Meleah Smith of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who coaches “brands and bands” on marketing, said the idea of five love languages never really connected with her. She knows the book has worked for other people, but for her, it’s too simplistic, said the 40-something, who described herself as “single as a Pringle.”

Smith said she has plenty of love in her life, with friends, her church and her family—she helps manage her brother’s band—but no romantic relationship. She said the love languages can be too easy at times—tempting people to avoid the hard work of getting to know someone and paying attention to them.

“If I have to give you a list of things you have to do for me—maybe we are not a good match,” she said.

After 17 years of marriage, Frugé had some advice for those using the five love languages. Remember that people need all kinds of love, not just one kind. Pay attention to them—rather than running to a book for all the answers.

Sometimes the answers you need are right in front of you.

“Thriving relationships occur when you have a partner who understands and knows you, sees what your need is and meets you in that moment.”

- More from Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

News

The Tragic Injustice of the British Post Office Scandal, Explained

Madeleine Davies in London

How a tech glitch ruined hundreds of lives … and what the Church of England is learning in the aftermath.

Post Office in Westminster in London

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

In recent weeks, Britain has seen an outpouring of anger at what has been described as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in its history: the Post Office scandal.

Over more than a decade, hundreds of local businesspeople were prosecuted on the basis of a faulty IT system, and the government has just recently begun to right its wrongs. A TV dramatization of the saga aired last month has generated further outrage and empathy for the innocent victims.

And because the Post Office’s former CEO happened to be a member of the clergy, the Church of England is also trying to learn lessons from the scandal.

What is the Post Office scandal?

Between 1999 and 2015, 736 people running local post offices (“sub-postmasters”) were prosecuted for false accounting, theft, and fraud, based on information from an online accounting system called Horizon. Hundreds went to prison. Families were left bankrupt, marriages collapsed, and lives were ruined.

Sub-postmasters had raised concerns about Horizon and the shortfalls it reported, and eventually 550 of them brought a group legal action. The Post Office agreed in 2019 to pay out £58 million ($73 million) but didn’t admit liability. In 2021, the Court of Appeal ruled that “the failures of investigation and disclosure were … so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court.”

A public inquiry is now underway to determine what went wrong. Although media first exposed the scandal, a recent TV miniseries, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, has sparked outrage among a much wider public.

What is the Post Office?

More than a mail service, the Post Office is an institution that is part of the fabric of British society and dates back to the rule of King Charles I in 1635. The postal market remained a state monopoly until 2006 and, while much has changed in recent decades, the Post Office is still entirely owned by the British government. With more than 11,500 branches, it is the largest retailer in the UK. Much of the population is able to walk to a branch.

The Post Office has expanded to offer banking for individuals and small businesses. The vast majority of local post offices are operated by franchise partners: “sub-postmasters.” They are often regarded as pillars of the community: familiar faces entrusted with thousands of pounds of local money. Another important fact is that the Post Office is able to bring private prosecutions. In fact, Royal Mail solicitors are believed to the earliest known formal investigators and prosecutors in the world.

When did the Horizon scandal begin?

More than 20 years ago, sub-postmasters flagged Horizon for generating shortfalls in accounts that they couldn’t explain. But the Post Office approach was to demand that they either make up the shortfall or face prosecution. In 2004, a sub-postmaster from Northern England, Lee Castleton, was made bankrupt after losing a legal battle with the Post Office.

Although the sub-postmasters eventually formed an alliance, each were initially told that they were the only ones reporting problems with Horizon. A key aim of the public inquiry is to establish who knew of faults with Horizon and when. Last month, one of the executives at Fujitsu, the IT company that ran Horizon, said that bugs had been present in the system for “nearly two decades” and that the Post Office had been made aware. The chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, Paula Vennells, told a parliamentary inquiry in 2020 that Fujitsu had assured her Horizon was “fundamentally sound.”

What is the connection to the Church of England?

Paula Vennells was unusual in serving as the CEO of a major company while also being ordained. She became a priest in the Church of England in 2006 and worked as a “non-stipendiary” (unpaid) minister at village churches in an area north of London.

She was a trustee of Hymns Ancient & Modern, the charity that owns the independent Church Times newspaper, serving a full nine-year term that ended in January 2019. She also served in a number of advisory roles for the church, including its Ethical Investment Advisory Group from 2019 until 2021, when she resigned.

Last month, it was reported that she had been considered for appointment as the bishop of London—one of the most senior roles in the church. Although she was not appointed, eyebrows were raised about the shortlisting, given that she had held no other senior roles in the church. A Church of England spokesperson has said that “more questions should have been asked about the appropriateness of Vennells’s involvement in various committees and working groups.”

In January, she handed back her Commander of the British Empire honor, which was bestowed upon her by the queen in 2019 for services to the Post Office and to charity. Vennells said, “I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system. I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.” She stepped back from public ministry in 2021.

How has the church responded?

The bishop who leads the area in which Paula Vennells has carried out her local ministry, Alan Smith, is the son of a former sub-postmaster. After the 2021 court ruling, he expressed his “distress at the miscarriage of justice that so many sub-postmasters have suffered” and last month he said that the TV dramatization “rekindles the suffering and pain of the sub-postmasters and their families who are victims of the Horizon IT scandal, and anger in all of us for such a serious miscarriage of justice.”

He added, “I hope and pray that the public inquiry will explain fully the sequence of events, provide redress for the victims and hold to account the responsible people and organisations.” Some clergy have personal links to the scandal, including those who supported sub-postmasters facing prosecution.

What has the recent response been like?

Recent weeks have seen an outpouring of sympathy for those wrongly convicted and anger at how the Post Office pursued prosecutions. The subject of the miniseries, Alan Bates, has been hailed as a hero, with the sub-postmasters regarded as David up against Goliath. The story has tapped into wider anxieties about large-scale IT projects and corporate faith in technology, with many people incredulous that the Post Office was ready to believe that so many sub-postmasters had turned to crime.

Within the church, questions have been raised about its own relationship with corporate culture. Vennells was a member of a faculty appointed by the Church of England to deliver training for senior leaders.

A few weeks ago, an overview of the program was shared on social media, with topics including “applying concepts around value creation, value destruction and resource allocation to support the ministry and mission of the Church.” It comes against a wider, long-term backdrop of anxiety about incorporating secular management techniques in the church.

What happens now?

The public inquiry remains underway, with Vennells due to give evidence later this year. To date, only 95 convictions of sub-postmasters have been overturned, although the government has said that those previously convicted will be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law. Each will be eligible for a compensation payment of £600,000 ($756,765). For some, it is too late: at least 60 died without seeing justice or compensation. Some took their own lives.

Madeleine Davies is a senior writer for the

Church Times

in London, where she has covered the Post Office scandal.’

- More from Madeleine Davies

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Take a break from public disagreement on Sundays

Cultivate a culture of honor

Show love amid disagreement

Share

Share

A changed Bario

Doubts and a revival’s spread

Revival’s waves

A new generation

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share