tribal trekker: Bread of Life, Rice of Life

I MEANT TO POST THIS BACK IN APRIL, I AM ONLY GETTING CAUGHT UP AGAIN NOW IN JULY...

“Here in the Philippines, your main food is rice, right?” I asked the guard.
“Yes sir, that's right.”
“So what do you think the main food is in America?”
“Ummm..., bread, right? No wait, potatoes?”

This is how I began a conversation with one of the local neighborhood security guards earlier today. I wanted to get him to think about staple foods and differences in culture, leading into talking about "the bread of life." But before I get into that, just to give a quick update on our current ministries...

The Lord has blessed Ginny's ministry to missionary kids at Faith Academy, as she is able to teach subjects they need to prepare them for moving on. She has also been a devotional speaker in the school's chapel setting, getting the chance to encourage kids from the Word of God and conducted inservice training for Elementary, Middle, and High School teachers.

I currently serve in a ministry primarily aimed at serving other missionaries, in order to equip them to be able to do the work in the tribes by coaching them in their tribal language studies. This has involved a significant amount of traveling over the past 2 years. The combination of excessive travel with an irregular diet gave me a medical condition, such that I can not now travel at all. I have been hit with a somewhat debilitating illness, the only cure of which is to learn how to manage it through a proper diet over a long period of time. The initial stages of this management are very restrictive. However, I have seen some positive growth and feel that I am getting some energy back now that I am a month into the diet. With your prayers and the Lord's blessings, I will be able to travel again later in this year, although I do not expect to regain full strength for at least a couple of years down the road.

Perhaps you are wondering how I can get any work done? Well, the Lord is good. I am able to communicate through the internet to our missionaries in other locations regarding their progress and coach them through their studies. Furthermore, there is plenty of work that I am able to do right here from home, as I develop curriculum and press forward in Tagalog studies (which requires further developing relationships in Tagalog). The curriculum I am working on is how to run a self-study language acquisition course in another language, which I will be teaching to Filipino missionaries that are slated to go to other countries. In addition, I have been asked to help a friend part time that works in this area, who runs a translation ministry where books and other materials are translated from English to Tagalog.

Communicating concepts in another tongue...
As I have mentioned before, we have many missionaries studying many of the different languages here in the Philippines. These are commonly referred to as different “dialects” by your average Filipino, but in truth they are actually different languages by definition. All of us in these contexts are seeking to communicate biblical truth in another language. When learning to communicate biblical principles in another language, culture, language, tradition, and a common understanding must all be taken into account.

To illustrate this principle, let's take the passage from John 6:35.

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty....”

Now in the Philippine culture, the word for bread is tinapay. So the first part of this verse could be translated as, “Ako ang tinapay na nagbibigay-buhay.” This literally means, “I am the bread that is giving life.” This is exactly how 2 different Tagalog translations have rendered it.

So here is where we stumble on to a bit of a problem, and it has to do with culture. In the first century Jewish culture, bread was the staple food. So Jesus saying he is “the bread of life” has very profound implications – He is saying that He is what gives life. We should not rely on the physical bread that we need to eat to survive, but on the one true source of life – Jesus.

Since bread was the primary staple food of the Jews in the first century, and not only them but many other peoples of the surrounding nations in the Roman Empire of the time, this statement communicated exactly as Jesus intended it to his audience. In the wider European culture over the centuries, it continued to communicate, and when Europeans came to the New World, this idea stayed with them, for bread is still the primary staple food of most if not all Western countries on both sides of the ocean. In America today, bread is probably still considered the primary staple food, but we have other substitutes for it in our meals, like potatoes, rice, and corn. So to us, this idea of the “bread of life” still can carry significant meaning, although sometimes it has to be explained a little more to someone who is new to the idea.

As you move into the native New World cultures, you find that some of them have corn, and others, potato, and some others cassava as their primary staple food. So perhaps in those contexts quite a bit of explanation is needed to expound on the idea of “the bread of life,” or even the use of a different term besides “bread.”

Here in the Philippines, rice is the main staple, not bread. They do eat bread, but mostly only for breakfast in small rolls called “pandesal.” Yet the translations here still use the term “tinapay” – bread – to communicate the idea. Why is that? Well, at first I thought this was because of the influence of the last hundred plus years of Protestant missionaries. However, upon further investigation, I realized it goes much deeper than that. The four hundred plus years of Spanish government here in the Philippines, with a strict Catholic influence, drilled into the minds of the people the significance of bread in the religious sense. The host, which is used in the Catholic mass, is a type of bread, not rice. The scriptural imagery of bread developed into a literal illustration in the rites of the Catholic church over the centuries in Europe, and was brought here to the Philippines. This tradition has been carried on into many Protestant denominations as well, so that many of the bible translations into lowland Philippine languages use the term “tinapay”.

Now because rice is the main staple here instead of bread, if we strictly translated the meaning of the English to Tagalog, we would probably translate John 6:35 as “ang kanin ng buhay” - the rice of life. However, if you say this to a Filipino, Christian or otherwise, they don't like it.

To verify this, I went out into our neighborhood just to ask around. These kind of discussions make for interesting conversations, to be sure! My conclusion after talking with people is that it feels almost like sacrilege to say the term “the rice of life.” In using that phrase with some Filipino friends, they all responded the same way – it was more than just sounding peculiar. It sounded “ugly” (as they would put it).

Ultimately, culture goes beyond just the use of words. It goes to a deeper understanding of the meanings and cultural implications of those words. In the national Filipino culture, there is a very strong Catholic influence, and so the phrase “bread of life” has taken on a meaning influenced by that. (I read that some Asian bible translations actually do use the phrase “rice of life,” but I looked up several, and the ones I found and put into Google translate still use the phrase “bread of life,” indicating this influence goes beyond just the Philippines.)

This presents a problem. If we want to communicate the original meaning in such a way that it does not sound foreign, we must use concepts and ideas that are not foreign. The only exceptions to this are when the concepts don't have an equivalent meaning in the target culture. For example, take the phrase “The Lamb of God,” and try to explain it to the mountain Palawanos, who have never seen or heard of an animal like that or any kind of sheep. Some of them may have seen goats that are raised by lowland Filipinos, but not sheep. In a case like that, an explanation of what the animal is, with pictures, and how it fit into the Jewish sacrificial system is necessary.

However, bread as a staple food is not like that. A staple food is a basic component of all human cultures, so we have missed out by always forcing the translation to read from the Western point of view and always using the term “bread,” when a more appropriate cultural equivalent would have communicated more effectively.

The Palawano translation for where we used to live translates it like this:

“Ako,” kuan yey, “pegkaan na ikebiag."

Translated back to English:
"I," he said, "am the food that gives life/makes alive."

The translators here used the generic term “pegkaan” which means food. The Palawanos live on rice for about half the year, and then their rice runs out so they live on cassava. Furthermore, they are also hunter-gatherers in the jungle, so they have many varieties of food to choose from besides only rice. Even though rice is their main staple, there are other options. So the generic term “food” fits the context much better.

The Palawano word for life, “biag” is the same as the word for “full.” I remember taking Palawanos into town sometimes for treatment, and one old man remarked to me once that if we could all live in town, they would never die of starvation. “Food that gives life” and “Food that makes a full stomach” are one and the same concept to them. So the translation must clearly indicate that the food we are referring to is about more than just having a full stomach. There again is where an understanding of both the language and culture play a key role.

Now consider a teaching like this. “Jesus did not come to give bread, but to be bread” (John Piper). In Tagalog, the literal translation would be, “Hindi pumunta rito si Jesus para magbigay ng tinapay, bagkus para maging tinapay.” However, the meaning gets lost on the word “tinapay” (bread), because Filipinos only eat bread sometimes in the morning and sometimes for a snack.

That is why it would be better to explain it like this, “Hindi pumunta rito si Jesus para magbigay ng pagkain, bagkus para maging pagkain.”

Literally, that is saying, “Jesus did not come to give food, but to be food.”

The idea here is that our true sustenance in life, both physical and spiritual, comes from Jesus. There are times when we go through difficulties and hardships, and where we may even lack food. However, Jesus is always our source of life, and the life He gives is eternal. This is where our focus should lie, and this is what we should pass on to others.

Since Palawanos have little to no concept of bread, calling Jesus “the bread of life” to them would have no meaning. All they know about bread is that it is what the downriver Filipinos eat for breakfast a couple of times a week. Furthermore, identifying Jesus with only one exclusive type of food (rice), when they have many types of food, would distort the meaning. Therefore, the use of the generic term for food communicates the concept most effectively.

These are all things that we have to think about when we want to communicate God's truth in another language.

Applying this to life
As I tie all this back into my own life, my physical condition right now is such that I cannot eat any bread. Neither can I eat rice, corn, oats, barley, or anything else that is a grain or derived from any sort of grain. I am not supposed to have even half a teaspoonful of anything like that. Neither can I eat anything with table sugar, mixed in (which makes up about 90% of any kind of processed food in the Philippines). There are other restrictions also, like no soy, avoid legumes, and be very careful with fiber. Everything I eat now has to be made from scratch, which is why I am confined to doing everything from home for the time being. It is not a gluten-free diet; it is a grain-free diet with other restrictions. (If you want to find out more, check out the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall.) Over time, as my digestive track slowly heals, I will be able to add back into my diet the foods I used to eat.

It would be easy (and demoralizing) to always be thinking about what I cannot eat. Instead, I focus on remembering that Jesus is the Bread of Life. He is also the Rice of Life and whatever other staple food might fit in there. He is Life. Life for me, life for you, life for us all. We fully trust and believe in His promises, and are sustained by Him every day. May he not only fill our stomachs, but also our hearts, souls, and spirits. May we take Him by faith as the one who sustains us through life!

And now that the game has changed for my eating, I am finding that there is a wide variety of things I can do with food that don't involve grains or sugar, so that food can still be an enjoyable part of life. It is a learning and growth period for us, but that is all part of what we are doing here! Do you see how the Lord Jesus sustains us?

We thank you for your continued prayers and support as we serve the Lord here in the Philippines! Please pray for my continued healing, our kids as they press on in their studies and work, and the work God is doing in the Philippines! We are very thankful to be able to serve here!

In Christ for us all,
George
With Ginny, Sarah, and Abby (Isaac in the USA)