As my wife has frequently reminded me whenever she shares a problem that she is not looking for a solution but empathy. Of course, representing the typical male species, I am a problem solver. That is our default mode and we think that offering solutions is the most practical and “loving” thing to do. Indeed, marital relationships would be much smoother if husbands realize that a listening ear and an empathetic heart are what our wives really need first and most of the time. Solutions and answers can come later on but the emotional dimension is the key to a woman’s heart and mind. Maybe I am stereotyping but that is what my wife tells me!

Perhaps we are not all that different. Deep down inside, men and women have similar needs for acceptance, affirmation, applause, and adulation. We simply crave to love and be loved. It is just that we express it and seek for it differently. Indeed, discovering and speaking “love languages” has become an effective way for couples to understand each other and grow in maturity in their marriages or relationships.

Jesus certainly went against prevailing traditions and attitudes toward women. Men did not speak to women in public, yet He spoke to women in the open, such as the Samaritan woman in John chapter four. Unlike His Jewish and pagan contemporaries, Jesus was not derogatory about women’s nature, ability or religious capacities. At each of His encounters with women in the Gospels, Jesus treated them as people intrinsically intelligent and worthy of God’s grace. He did not view women in terms of sexual temptation or as objects of sexual gratification. He encouraged women to serve without specifying boundaries. Jesus certainly has gotten it!

This issue seeks to highlight the challenges and prejudices that women face today as well as celebrate the role and contribution of the women in life and society. Most men have at least two significant women in our lives – mother and wife. Without them, we will never be. Got it?

For the next hour, he unleashed all his objections about Christianity and I patiently listened and offered clarifications, rationales, and all possible answers. After more than 2,000 years of study and scholarship, there are no questions under the sun that the Church has not encountered and sought to give reasonable answers. Fabian soon ran out of questions. I broached the question about following Christ if all his objections were answered. Then he revealed why he was hesitant about becoming a Christian. “I wouldn’t be able to enjoy life and do all the things I wanted!”

In other words, all the intellectual and philosophical questions were not the reason why Fabian could not follow Christ. They were excuses or a smokescreen. His issue was that by following Christ, life would be restrictive and boring. He would not be able to indulge in life’s pleasures and have fun anymore. That’s really a misconception about being a Christian. But where did Fabian get that impression from?

It would not be wrong to say that Christians are the ones perpetuating this misconception. We have often presented Christianity and the Church as no nonsense, humorless, dull, full of rules and regulations, and dead serious. Obviously God has a sense of humor to have granted Sarah fertility when she was way past the age. Obviously God was having fun, so to speak, when He commanded Gideon to fight against ten thousand commandoes with only three hundred unarmed soldiers! In this issue, we hope to rectify this and suggest that humor is heavenly and laughter is divine. God must have a sense of humor. He created you, didn’t He? Come on, have a laugh… it’s okay!

Jesus saw a way to test their faith. He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” They could have looked at each other and said, “Well, nothing is going to happen to us!” Instead, they obeyed him. As they went, they were cleansed. What a tremendous experience!

The point about healing is our response to the Healer. The ten were all healed. But only one took the trouble to come back and say, “thank you.”

It is not far-fetched to imagine tears running down our Lord’s cheeks when he asked, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” There could be many reasons why the nine did not come back. Certainly one is that miracles do not automatically guarantee that they become changed in their attitude or freed from pride and self-centeredness. Instead of giving thanks, they were just as self-absorbed as they were in their previous leprous state.

All the ten lepers received a physical blessing the first time, but the one who came back the second time received an even greater blessing. Jesus said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” The man learned that spiritual blessings are more important than physical blessings. The lepers who did not thank Jesus had the blessing of healing, but they missed the blessing of wholeness.

The articles in this issue will affirm that physical healing is a divine gift. Some do experience miraculous healing while others continue to live with their condition. God has His purpose in both situations and that purpose is to go beyond the physical.

Get the point?

To be sure, there is a phenomenal increase in the awareness of social injustices around the world, especially among young people today. The spirit of volunteerism seems to mark the generation of the under 30s with so many across the globe actively involved in community service and even pioneering initiatives to speak for those who are powerless and voiceless, whose plights need to be heard. The media eases its own social conscience by highlighting laudable efforts of celebrities like Oprah and Bono in championing and supporting causes that seek to stop human trafficking or make poverty history. Businesses are stepping up in discharging their corporate social responsibility in a big and sustainable way. You know what – doing good has become the new cool!

The good news is that churches are also reaffirming the biblical mandate and call to respond to social justice issues, following the legacies of outstanding examples in William Wilberforce, Lord Acton, George Muller, William and Catherine Booth, to name just a few. In this issue, we seek to engage you with our thoughts as well as inspire you through the examples of individuals and groups who are expressing the heart of God for the oppressed and disadvantaged (Jeremiah 7:5-7) and defending the rights of the afflicted and needy (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Life in the Kingdom of God is different. It will be according to His attributes – holy, loving, and just. In fact, there is only one kind of slave in God’s Kingdom – slaves of Christ, a favorite self-description of the Apostle Paul. It is not an image depicting a brutal existence, senseless exploitation, and an impersonal servitude. Rather, it is a response of gratitude to be set free from former enslavements and to be led by a most gracious and loving Master. When we are slaves of Christ, doing good is beyond cool.

In fact, infidelity or sexual exploits are more alluring to the married ones, having themselves tasted the “forbidden fruit” so to speak. Persons who live in the same house but pass by each other in their values become estranged; their sex life runs down; it becomes perfunctory because they have nothing more to say to each other.

What do we really need? What are we really looking for as singles or as spouses? In our day when contraceptives and sexual techniques are supposed to pave the way to the pleasures of sex without anxiety and guilt, we are experiencing a gnawing disappointment, a new anxiety. It is time to stop being silenced by those who roar that “sex is fun,” that anxiety and guilt are created only by outworn custom, and that all we really need is better technology and better technique so that we may “enjoy” each other’s bodies more.

When one shares one’s body, when one shares another’s, as part of the give-and-take, as symbolic of the frustrations and appreciations that both face together in life, then sexual experience becomes a way of saying what we all need to say and to hear: “I care!” It is the pursuit of meaning that makes sex a source of renewal as persons who care for one another find in their sexual experience a symbol of their union and mutual concern. It is what God has intended for two caring people, in commitment to each other as persons, to share and risk.

What couples are really looking for is commitment to love and courage to marry. And for that, sex can surely wait. What singles can look forward to is fulfillment in life and relationships whether they eventually get hitched or not. In other words, both single and married people want a sanctified life for that is the only quality of life worth pursuing.

The principle of being servant (the word is “slave” in Greek) to all is devastating to chains of command and systems where submission is upward. In God’s kingdom, the power pyramid is reversed, up-ended, so that authority is on the bottom, not the top.

When Jesus alludes to submission, it is always directed toward leaders or the ones who want to be great in the Kingdom. And they are always ordered to submit downward, not upward. For example, in Matthew 20:26 Jesus declares, “Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.”

This downward submission of the greatest seems to be a natural outgrowth of the way Jesus viewed people. He served them because He knew their value. We lord over others because we neither recognize their value nor see people in the way Jesus does.

In practice then, one who leads in the style of Jesus does not use forms of coercion nor does he depend on institutional position for authority. Instead, by serving people, he leads as they recognize his ability and authority and choose voluntarily to follow. And those who follow by whatever means will become like their leader, for better or worse.

Perhaps a good way to handle the trappings of leadership would be to put the plaque SLAVE over the doors of our plush offices! As you see, a slave should have no title that raises him above the lowly level and definitively no title that raises him above others. There are so many ways that the nature of Jesus is in direct opposition to the leadership patterns of the world that this list could go on and on.

Where can we start? Perhaps we should start in the family where we can firstly be servant-parents. We can certainly live it out in church and community where we seek to be servant leaders. Servanthood is not just the mandate for leadership. Servanthood is also the measure of our spirituality. A question then for all existing and emerging leaders   “Who serves to lead?”