Share your faith with humility

June 13, 2009


Share your faith with humility

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Last month, the Defense Department revealed that Afghan-
language Bibles sent to Bagram Air Base by a U.S. church were burned with the daily trash because they possibly could be used to convert Afghans.

The possession of such religious material violates something the military calls General Order No. 1. Out of respect of the local population, the order also prohibits sexual contact and the possession of alcohol.

Regarding proselytizing, General Order No. 1 contains wisdom the average pewsitter -- Paul La' Pew -- wouldn't likely understand. The purpose of the order is to prevent the kind of religious outreach that can jeopardize the lives of American troops among a volatile Muslim environment.

A CNN story quoted Lt. Col. Mark Wright saying it was a force protection issue. The concern was that "it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government . . . was trying to convert Muslims."

My first thought was, "Why didn't they hum a few verses of Elvis Presley and mark, 'Return to Sender'?"

Imagine the alarming reaction of the Muslim customs agents, however, who would have inspected the Bibles as they left the country. Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire.

Sharing your faith isn't an easy gig. It requires an understanding of your audience. It requires empathy for their condition. Most of all, it requires you to abandon all assumptions that you know what's best for someone else. The process of sharing faith requires a humility that acknowledges the possibility that the sharer also plays a part in receiving.

Having grown up as a Southern Baptist, I know something about the fervent sharing of faith. After all, I delivered plenty of Bibles to the unsuspecting neighbors who surrounded the church of my youth. Along with the gift, I fired the question: "If you were to die tonight, do you know if you'd be in heaven or hell?"

Can you imagine being asked this question by a pimply faced pastor before you've had your coffee? Not much humility there.

Sharing literature, such as a Bible, can be a true expression of faith. If done glibly and without humility, however, it becomes something we do to avoid understanding the hurt of people.

Don't get me wrong. Military chaplains would be hurting without the generosity of those who have sent Bibles for the troops. If it's done because it's just easier than caring, however, then it falls on deaf ears.

The best we can say in sharing our faith was said in the Biblical story of "The Woman at the Well."

Jesus found her drawing water from a well and confronted her about what was likely "serial adultery" in her having lived with five husbands.

The woman was amazed with how Jesus had abandoned the social customs of the day to share with her the most common of human experiences, thirst. In sharing his humanity, Jesus was able to show this woman that there might be a better way.

Jesus listened with his heart first, in a way that honored the speaker. He spoke only after there was connection of the heart. He knew people wouldn't listen to his words until they believed he cared.

This woman believed Jesus cared so much about her that she ran into town with evangelistic fervor and begged her village, "Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?"

And here's the part that I've always liked. To paraphrase "Star Trek," this is a verse that expresses my Prime Directive.

The Bible says: "And they went out to see for themselves."

As we step out and share faith in genuine ways, people will not need pounds of religious literature to persuade them. They will see it for themselves.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net.

Coming to Brevard County FL this week

Brevard Community College and Florida Tech
7 p.m. Wednesday, Simpkins Fine Arts Auditorium, Building 4, Brevard Community College in Cocoa, 1519 Clearlake Road;


7 p.m. Thursday, Florida Tech's Gleason Auditorium, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne

Admission: Free; no reservations necessary
Information: 242-3613 or visit floridatoday.com/events


June 14, 2009


To Iraq and back: Norris Burkes speaks about overseas work

BY CHRIS KRIDLER
FLORIDA TODAY

NORRIS BURKES FOUND his first wartime deployment as a chaplain full of "boredom interrupted by sheer terror."

The FLORIDA TODAY "Spirituality" columnist, who will talk about his experiences in Iraq at two free talks in Cocoa and Melbourne this week, said he was fortunate in that the terror was intermittent.

"We rejoiced at the routine nature of the job as well as sort of complained about it some days," he said in a telephone interview from his home in California. He and the medical personnel he was with knew that quiet times meant good news -- the troops they served were healthy.

Burkes described many of the most intense moments and encounters with wounded soldiers in his column, which appears in more than 30 newspapers and runs Saturdays in FLORIDA TODAY.

Burkes, who served as a chaplain at Patrick Air Force Base from 1999 to 2002, is attached to the 162nd Combat Communications Group in California. He also has worked as a hospital chaplain dealing with all faiths.

He was deployed with the 332nd
Air Expeditionary Wing, he went as a Protestant.

"I'm certainly a counselor to all people, but the worship and the liturgy and so forth I provide to them is Protestant-based," he said. Still, his support went beyond liturgy.

"When it's a patient, you're providing for whatever they need," Burkes said. "It's about them. It's not about you. So I delivered Korans and made sure that the Muslim patients are shown respect for their faith."

He's been asked whether performing his duty as a military chaplain means he condones war. "I worry about my part of it," he said -- providing troops with the opportunity to worship wherever they are.He sees his role as providing troops with the opportunity to worship, wherever they are.

Burkes expected more questioning of faith in the high-stress environment of war, but he saw the opposite.

"I actually found more people to affirm their faith and more people to return to their faith and actually less questioning of faith than I really anticipated," he said. "It goes back to that saying, 'There are no atheists in foxholes.' You know what? There's a lot of truth in that."

Burkes already had seen the effects of war at home, as the bearer of bad tidings to families who had lost a son or daughter.

"It probably is a little more difficult here when I actually face the loved ones at their front door, but I had never been around that level of trauma -- that level of fresh trauma," he said.

Duty in Iraq was not like working in a hospital, where the patient greets you cleaned and bandaged.

"When you watch them come out with tattered clothing and bloody clothing and stumps, really, sometimes, that was hard," he said."Again, fortunately, that wasn't every day, you know. We saw that about half a dozen times."

His most stressful experience came during his trip home last month. His plane made an emergency landing in Baltimore. It blew a tire and bounced a few times. Lights and speakers fell from the roof. Several were injured.

"For the next 10 minutes, all of us were praying and crying and wondering whether or not if it was all going to be for dying here," Burkes said.

That experience, of course, also became a column, in which he asked himself: "What legacy will you leave from this life? Will it be one of faith? Will it be one of compassion? What will it be like to die? Will this be a connecting flight to a celestial place? Will God meet me at the gate?"

Burkes was in Iraq for about four months. His wife, Becky, a schoolteacher frequently mentioned in his columns, tried to keep her routine at home. They have a son and three daughters; the youngest daughter just turned 18.

A self-confessed techno-junkie who loves his iPhone, Burkes has a bachelor's degree from Baylor University and a master's in divinity from Golden Gate Seminary.

He started writing his column for FLORIDA TODAY in 2001 while stationed at Patrick Air Force Base, and he's also the author of "No Small Miracles: Heartwarming, Humorous, and Hopefilled Stories from a Pediatric Chaplain," a compilation of columns.

Usually, Burkes writes about spirituality in everyday life, and many readers look for those often-humorous explorations of religion.

His talks in Brevard County, which are co-sponsored by FLORIDA TODAY, Florida Tech and Brevard Community College, will include not just the wartime experiences, but those everyday insights, he said.

"I think people enjoy the sense of humor mixed in with the tears," Burkes said. "If I had a writing formula or a speaking formula, it's: I make you laugh, I make you cry, I make you smile, and then I say, 'Amen.' "

His wife tells him to toughen up when he gets the occasional critical letter, but most of the reaction he gets is positive.

That's the message he shares, too.

"I like to start with laughter, then I like to tell a poignant story, and I like to just bring a smile to people's face -- like, you know what? It's going to be all right."

Additional Facts
Meet Burkes
What: Talks by FLORIDA TODAY "Spirituality" columnist Norris Burkes, co-sponsored by FLORIDA TODAY, Brevard Community College and Florida Tech
When and where: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Simpkins Fine Arts Auditorium, Building 4, Brevard Community College in Cocoa, 1519 Clearlake Road; and 7 p.m. Thursday, Florida Tech's Gleason Auditorium, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne
Admission: Free; no reservations necessary
Information: 242-3613 or visit floridatoday.com/events
More about Burkes: thechaplain.net

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