Would You Eat A Bug For Jesus?
By Rev. W. Allen Thomason

When we were kids we used to dare each other to eat things. Some kids would take the dare. Not me. Even today, if I don’t like the looks of it, I will not eat it. I have seen these TV shows where they make you eat bugs, and I will never watch them again. Now, as ridiculous as this may sound, I believe I would eat a bug if Jesus asked me to do it. If someone put a gun to my head and threatened to kill me if I did not eat a bug for Jesus, I suppose I would eat the bug. But if you asked me, of my own free choosing, to give up hamburgers and pizza to eat bugs instead, I would laugh in your face.

It sounds ridiculous. “Would you eat a bug for Jesus?” We always ask our church people, “Will you give your life for Jesus?” or “Will you be the one that answers God’s call to full time Christian service?” We always aim our questions as high as we know to aim. We ask for the most we can. This is Jesus we are lobbying for, not the cool bunch in the lunchroom. We do not ask people to eat bugs for Jesus. Perhaps we should start.

This question did not just come out of left field. Eighty percent of the world’s population includes insects as part of their diet. Because missionaries must adopt the cultural characteristics of their surroundings, many missionaries must learn to actually eat bugs, or they risk offending the people with whom they live.

It seems to me it’s easier to say “I’ll give my life to Jesus,” than it is to say “I will eat bugs for Jesus.” When people say that they will give their lives to Jesus, we usually don’t ask them for much more. Occasionally, we ask them to serve on committees, teach Vacation Bible School, or Sunday School and tithe. How many of us who have given our lives to Jesus, even answered the call to full time Christian service, would flinch if required to eat bugs?

How does our commitment to Jesus look when compared to a missionary’s? If we always refer to it in the abstract (give your life) and never make concrete demands (eat these worms), then we never really know how committed we are.

Baptists have always been inspired by the stories of our missionaries. That is because their level of commitment dwarfs our own. They do things that make our backbones wilt and stomachs turn. Not because they are forced, and not because they are required. They do these things because they love Jesus and the gospel enough to choose to do them. That is why we Baptists have always held missionaries with the highest esteem and respect.

I would like to think that if our missionaries were under attack, we would respond with all the zeal we can muster and come to their defense. I would hope that if someone or some group were threatening to block our missionaries from sharing the gospel that we would rush to stop them.

Surely, should someone attempt to shut down even 10 percent of our missions’ efforts, we would respond. And if a person at the International Mission Board (IMB) were to try and fire 500, or say even 100, of our missionaries, certainly we would hear the cry, “The fields are white for harvest! This work is too important! We are Great Commission people and nothing will stop us from fulfilling that task!” It has always been unthinkable that our missions efforts would be threatened from within our own ranks. Oh, Satan, we are used to you attacking our missions work, but not used to our own organizations attacking it.

Yet, that is exactly the case today. The IMB is now requiring all of the missionaries to sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, agreeing to live, teach and preach within its parameters. Some, perhaps many, perhaps hundreds will not be able to sign it and retain their integrity. Missionaries are people of great integrity if they are anything. If they do not, they certainly will be fired.

I can’t believe it. The IMB is going to take missionaries off the field. Fewer missionaries, instead of more.

I can hear Lottie Moon weeping. We raise our children in our churches. We train them in the ways of our faith. We urge them to follow God. We pray they will accept Jesus as Savior. We weep when they do. We watch them struggle and overcome adolescence and blossom into Christian adults. We rejoice at their spiritual journeys. We are overcome with joy when they surrender to God’s call upon their lives to full time Christian service. We pay their way through seminary. When they proclaim that they have felt God’s call to the mission field, we rejoice that the student has now become the teacher. So how do we have the nerve, the gall, the arrogance, and the pride to then ask them to sign our little piece of man-made paper in order to qualify for God’s service? Did we call them or did God? Who do we think they are working for?

Have we forgotten the definition of the word hypocrite? Do we not remember the Pharisees? How is it that a bunch of paper bishops, who have never seen the inside of a bamboo hut, who will not put their own lives on the line for Jesus, who have never even eaten a bug for the sake of the gospel, have decided that they are righteous enough to sit in judgment of our missionaries?

Can you even imagine a conversation like this? “Lottie, we know that you have led countless Chinese to Christ, and you are an inspiration to us all, but in order for you to continue your work here in Tengchow, you need to submit to our judgment and conform to some new standards we have drawn up.”

How is this even happening? What has the SBC come to? Is anyone in charge over there actually listening to God? Do we no longer care if people go to heaven or hell? Is the IMB actually more concerned with doctrinal and dogmatic conformity than winning lost souls? We do still believe that we need to share the gospel, don’t we? Don’t we? DON’T WE?

I wish I had some answers, but all I have is questions. Questions that I want to ask every single “would-be-bishop” at the IMB who does not eat bugs for Jesus. However, I have the feeling their answers are just not good enough.

April 2002