Necessary Injuries

Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech. – Genesis 11:7

At the age of 50, my wife and I yielded to God’s call to serve as missionaries in West Africa. There is much more to the story of how we came to this decision, and how long it took to do so, but perhaps that is a book unto itself!

The truth is that while we served there, we found language learning to be a difficult prospect. Our ability to acquire a new language was inversely proportional to our advancing years. Of course, in spite of our “middle age,” we were not alone in this difficulty as this is something with which every new missionary struggles.

Here is an interesting truth I came across during our experience. The sin that led to the division of language is the same sin that makes it difficult to learn one, pride. Pride led people to build the Tower of Babel and it can also be an obstacle to language learning. To learn (at all) a person has to admit he or she is ignorant, and with a new language, a person feels ignorant almost all the time! In a sense, you must become a child again. This truth, this actualized inadequacy, necessarily injures one's pride.

We never became language experts, but thank God for necessary injuries; especially those that destroy the flesh and make us more like Jesus.

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge