“For the Sinim people, they see life as a circle.” Van grabs an expo marker and draws a circle on the whiteboard. Missionaries Lewis River, Elisha Joy and I all make sounds of understanding.

“For instance, a person could be in their point of life here.” She makes a point on the circle and follows the rounded line. “Maybe you die at this point. You go up to heaven or go down to hell, and afterward, you will be reborn into a person here,” she says, making two more dots around the circle. “Then you die, and it will keep going and going. It doesn’t end.”

Our team has been working together to understand the culture more deeply. We have been reading through peer-reviewed papers, studies and even dissertations to seek out what is at the heart of the Sinim people. For months we have struggled to figure out their goal in life. We have visited temples, observed funerals, watched people burn incense and set free caged birds, frogs, turtles and snails, all to discover where the gospel can catch a foothold in the hearts of the locals. To continue our research, our team set up a meeting with a few language and culture teachers, including Van. As Van explained to us the shared worldview of the Sinim on death, I remembered a conversation I once had with Trung.

About a year into my arrival in Sinim, I had asked for her assistance with translating a Bible study, seeing as she was my language teacher at the time. She was happy to help. As we went through the study, the verse John 3:16 came up. Up until that point, I was internally hoping the Spirit would work. As she read through the verse, so cherished in our culture, with appearances on fast-food soft drink cups, Superbowl ads, shopping bags, and even the faces of athletes, I was certain an epiphany would take place like a lightning strike.

Instead, I was humbled. I could see a clear look of confusion on Trung’s face.

“I don’t understand it. So God has more than one son?” Trung asked.

I was taken aback by her question. How did she come up with that? I pondered.

The answer was in the translation: “For God loved the world He gave His first son, that whoever believes in him won’t ‘die missing’ but live forever?”
At first, I was so disoriented about what was happening. The words were in Trung’s language, yet she did not understand and was actually more confused. I tried to explain that the translation was perhaps not clear. But, I assured her, God did not have many sons, but instead, there was no one like His Son Jesus.
“What is this word, ‘die missing?’ Trung asked. I know the word for ‘dead,’ and the word ‘missing’ but what is ‘die missing?’”

I then tried to explain that the meaning of the translated word means “perish,” something slightly different than just death.

“Oh,” she responded flatly. I was quite disappointed. I had imagined Trung’s heart being touched and awed by a God that would send His Son to save the world from its sins. Instead, she seemed impassive and unimpressed.

Now, having done some research to understand the culture, I see how ignorant, narrow and naïve I was to believe simply placing John 3:16 in front of her would have some magical effect and help lead to her conversion. The Sinim believe that life is a circle, a perpetual cycle between life, death, maybe heaven this time, rebirth, life, death, maybe hell the next time, rebirth and so on.

In Trung’s mind, everyone has eternal life already. Death is not the end. Even reaching heaven or hell is merely a bus stop in the overall route of life. Everyone will eventually get to heaven, and everyone will go to hell. It’s no wonder Trung was unimpressed. I had grown up thinking John 3:16 was the ultimate answer. But for Trung, it was not a question she was even asking.

As our team has continued wrestling with how to communicate the gospel and relate its beauty to the Sinim people, I have thought of how it must be for God as He has attempted to communicate the gospel to His wayward people over millennia. Through prophets, baskets of figs, a potter and clay, a vision of dry bones, a marriage to a prostitute, and more, God utilized radical demonstrations to relate the gospel to the Israelites. But nothing was as revolutionary, humble and relatable as Christ’s birth into humanity’s flesh and sinful weaknesses. Jesus knows the struggle of communicating the gospel to men whose hearts have been hardened by darkness and whose minds are confused with a misapprehension of God. He learned to speak in a language we could understand, told stories with which our heart could resonate and chose to live 33 years in our foreign world so that our eyes could glimpse the unseen heart of God.

Please pray that God gives our team wisdom in understanding the hearts of the Sinim people to communicate to them the heart of God.

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