Daily Bread Deja Vu

A third short story from one of my Asia mission trips has been posted on the International Mission Board's East Asia field blog.

It's been three years since I went on a mission trip in that part of the world, but God has kept the memories fresh. I hope to continue putting down on paper (or blogs, as the case may be) all the amazing experiences He's allowed me to have.

Click here to check out the story about meeting a friendly face while walking through a rainforest park in southern China.

This post will link you to the other two stories the East Asia blog has published, as well as a chronological list of entries from my 2006 trip.

Living Watermelons - An East Asia Missions Story

A short story from one of my China mission trips appeared on the International Mission Board's East Asia field blog today.

On a backpacking expedition in 2005, a travel companion and I shared some watermelons and a poignant 15 minutes with a peasant family at a roadside hut. Without speaking our language, they communicated hospitality to us, even though we were strangers intruding on their land.

I pray that their kindness returns to them in the form of eternal life through the Gospel. Read the story here.

See all my blog entries from that trip here.

Photo: We left a gospel VCD on this well, the water god's doorstep.

Waking Up to the Gospel

A post from one of my mission trips is featured on the International Mission Board's East Asia field blog today. It's amazing how that journey changed my life and allowed me to wake up to the reality of the Gospel in a way that hadn't been real before.

As I said in one of my most recent posts, it's humbling to know that there are still places in this world where we are only representatives of the kingdom of God, living stones forming the pavement on the road that leads to him.

That backpacking trip across three countries keeps on giving - in friendships, in writing content and in the assurance that short-term trips are necessary and life-altering when done in the right context.

Click here to see my chronological journal of posts.

You Are the Kingdom

A pastor friend of mine just re-posted an entry on his blog about a trip we took four years ago to three Asian countries. We were backpacking through villages, leaving traces of the Gospel and praying for those people we encountered - and many others we will never see.

His post recounts the last leg of our journey, when a six-hour trip turned into 13 after an out-of-season rainstorm flooded the country, turning dusty mountain roads into red-clay mush.

We caught one of the last buses out of town after having lost contact with our American team leaders. When we came to a place where the deluge had overtaken the road, we crossed a torrent of water on a makeshift bamboo bridge, and everyone on our bus crammed into another one on the other side of the river that was almost full already.

On another occasion, we waited an hour for workers to use a tiny chainsaw to cut a massive tree out of our path. Further down the road, we twice had to get out as the driver made impossible turns on mountain ledges, spinning the wheels of the dilapidated school bus that carried us to this country's border. At one point, the water was three- to five-feet deep, and we all applauded as our intrepid driver plowed through, getting us one step closer to home. We had a plane to catch to the U.S., and there was no telling if we'd make it.

I spent about half the journey standing up, holding a bar for support, or sitting on my pack or a bag of produce in the middle aisle. The rest of the time, I shared about one cubic foot with a native woman and her baby. With all the canvas bags of garlic-y crops scattered about and a bus filled to twice its capacity with hot, disgruntled patrons, it's amazing that I ever got to sit, even more amazing that the kids behind me were the only ones losing their lunch.

My friend mentions that at the end of this hellish ride we spent Easter Sunday at the border between two countries, one open to the Gospel, one militantly opposed to it. Did I mention that we had spent three hours the day before detained at the border of another country?

We were talking the other day about how life-changing it was to celebrate the risen Christ in a land where worshiping him is not permitted, where believers don't have the same privilege that we enjoyed in as we sat partaking Easter Communion in that river town. We broke bread from a local shop and sipped mango juice as wine.

"People just can't understand what that was like when you explain it to them," I told him the other day about the impact of the trip.

"You know," he replied, "People in this country just don't get that there are times when you are the Kingdom of God. You're it."

For that reason, the bus ride was worth it, even with all the obstacles along the way. In a way, it was like God leading us in a dramatic crescendo to the resounding final note on our journey. The roadblocks, he seemed to be showing us, were the reason we were there.

Before our trip even began, before we knew all the transportation trouble we'd face, our team had a name. It was the Roadmakers.

See my original blog posts from that trip here.

Living Water

America has two obesity problems. Along with our bellies, our billfolds are getting fat, flabby and out of shape.

Just as eating good food isn't bad, padding our pockets isn't necessarily a negative thing. But gorging ourselves leads to weight gain, causing health problems that could be avoided with exercise and a smart and disciplined diet.

Financially, it's the same principle. Hoarding our wealth is a symptom of selfishness, a stem that sprouts out of the roots of pride and selfishness. Building a fortune to serve ourselves, to prop up our comfortable lifestyles, causes clogs in the arteries that lead from our heart to God's and undue strain on the system that circulates his love and ideas throughout our lives.

Today I've been listening to the audiobook of "Revolution in World Missions," a semi-autobiography by the founder of a ministry I support called Gospel for Asia. The ministry seeks to mobilize native missionaries throughout Asia to bring the name of Jesus to their own people.

K.P. Yohannan, the author of the book and the founder and president of GFA, describes the vision as a cost-effective and timely way to reach the most unreached peoples of the world with culturally relevant Gospel teaching. He pits this idea against the paradigm of Western missions, sending "blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white people" to areas throughout the globe where their presence is often unwelcome or forbidden.

In these situations, Mr. Yohannan argues, it often takes years to learn language, secure the requisite immigrant status, build relationships, learn cultural mores, and finally, to plant churches. Gospel for Asia operates by cultivating trained native missionaries who are ready to go to their own people for a fraction of the cost of Western missionaries, if only someone will send them.

A native of the Indian state of Kerala, Mr. Yohannan didn't come to America until he was college-aged. He didn't speak English until he was 16. He'd always heard about American affluence but finally experienced it when he came to study on scholarship at a seminary in Dallas. To make a long story short, he was appalled by the way that U.S. citizens went about their days with little idea of how filthy rich they really were.

One day's meat for us was enough to feed an Asian family for a week, he said. A $3 latte at Starbucks is the equivalent of three days' wages for more than a billion people living in poverty. After meetings where he spoke about the lost and dying, he was shocked to note that the after-church meal he ate often cost more than what he had collected in his love offering for the support of native missionaries who were suffering for Christ.

In fairness, Mr. Yohannan isn't all self-congratulating. He grapples with these issues in the text, and he admits the failures when he fell into the same traps. But his message is clear and unabashed: The Church in the U.S. and other wealthy Western nations has been financially blessed so that it can help faithfully bankroll the work of reaching the lost for Christ in some of the most untouched places.

GFA has grown tremendously out of this vision. A turning point in the ministry was creating $30/month (about a dollar a day) sponsorship plan so that a believer here can support a believer there. That remains a cornerstone of GFA's fundraising efforts.

The problem is that it's hard to get Americans to sacrifice anything. If the current financial crisis tells us anything about ourselves, it's that we haven't yet begun to loosen the grip that materialism has not only on our culture, but on our hearts as Christians and our churches as well.

I propose a way to combat this, and in the process, waistlines will likely slim.

We spend tons of money going out to eat every week, some of us more than others. For many, getting a drink with a meal is second nature, nevermind the fact that it usually adds about $2 to the bill and hundreds of calories that our waistlines are fighting hopelessly against.

Maybe we should try to only drink water (offered free at most establishments) when we eat out and put the money that we saved away so that we can support GFA or ministries like it. I think we'd be surprised at the millions we could raise so quickly and easily. Jesus said that there would be untold blessings for anyone who gives a cup of cold water to nourish his disciples. With this plan, we can even drink the water ourselves and still reap the spiritual benefit. It's dying to self in a small way. Starting here, it's possible that we could begin to walk the path of true, sacrifical giving that invests in God's kingdom rather than our own.

What does anyone out there think?

Click here to support a Gospel for Asia missionary.

Download "Revolution in World Missions" after you sign up for email updates.

Every Tribe and Tongue

A new ministry is building an online community to expedite Jesus' goal of making disciples from every tribe and tongue.

Using open-source wiki technology and an army of volunteer translators, Gospel Translations is looking to provide online access to Gospel-focused books and articles in a variety of languages.

Wiki is a code framework used for collaborative Web sites like Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia where registered users can contribute and edit articles.

Gospel Translations builds its English library by partnering with ministries that allow the use of their copyrighted content (See list here). Then, volunteer translators convert the resources into other languages on the site.

The goal is to quickly and efficiently provide a knowledge base for Christian leaders in parts of the world where there is a dearth of suitable theological materials or where traditional print distribution hasn't kept up with the demands of the rapidly growing church.

The leaders of the effort say the Christian center of the world is shifting away from its traditional seat in the West as the evangelical populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America multiply exponentially.

In some of these areas, the Bible is the only Christian literature available. In places like China, many resources are published, but they're regulated by complex rules.

The emotional fervor of Christianity can spread like wildfire, but if a spiritual movement is not based on true discipleship, it's ultimately an exercise in fanaticism. Yes, God's Word has everything we need for the process of discipleship, but a broader base of knowledge provides protection against heresy and a check against the temptation to interpret difficult passages based on presupposition rather than truth.

The one spiritual commodity the West has available for export is biblical knowledge. What would my spiritual intellect be without the insight of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity? How would I have started to understand the supremacy of God in day-to-day life without John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life? If not for Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, who would have colorfully explained the mystery and wonder of finding identity in the person of Jesus?

Resources like these need to escape the stuffy libraries of ungrateful and complacent hoarders like me. This new platform gives them a chance - through telephone lines, underground wires and fiber optic cables - to really spread their wings.

Projects have already begun in Arabic, Russian, Bahasa Indonesian and other languages, including an entire portal in Spanish. See the complete list of languages on the homepage.

Click here to become a translator.

Watch Gospel Translation's intro video below. It is an initiative of OpenSource Mission:

State of Christian Persecution in China

On Aug. 8, I watched the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies in Atlanta with about 100 Chinese people. They cheered with each spectacular act of choreography and acrobatics. They were dazzled by the thousands of colorful, luminous costumes. They sat stunned by each passing vocal or dance performance. At commercial breaks, they scrambled to answer Olympic trivia questions. As an outsider, I saw a moment of pride unfolding.

And so it should. China has come a long way since most of them have been alive. Many in that room lived through the Cultural Revolution, when young people ruled the nation and sometimes imposed a state of near anarchy in their zealous pursuit of Chairman Mao's ideal of revolution. During that time, all things foreign, intellectual and religious were considered regressive and "counter-revolutionary" and targeted for humiliation and destruction.

Contrast that climate with China's current hospitable stance toward foreign investment, global brands and even iconic American athletes like Kobe Bryant, and it's easy to see the substantial progress over the past three decades since reform and opening helped China begin to shake off its dour international face and march towards political integration.

But just like in the U.S. and every other country, progress simply means strides toward an ideal, not its achievement. China still has ample room for improvement on that eternally wide continuum between totalitarian regime and full-on democracy.

For one, the Chinese economy's dizzying growth has produced a cavernous wealth gap. Many companies are targeting China's emerging middle class, but it should also be said noted that classes of super rich and super poor are being created along with this new consumer market. Peasant farmers still make up the majority of China's population, though many believe that a massive urban migration will occur over the next 20 years, at which point three-fifths of the country's 1.3 billion people are projected to live in cities. That huge movement of humanity will create a whole new set of problems.

During the Olympic run-up, human rights have been the buzz word. Even as the festive echo of fireworks hangs in the Beijing air, many residents have been forced from their homes and businesses. Dissidents have been jailed or cordoned off while the foreign press is present. Farther off, in areas like Xinjiang, Tibet and Sichuan provinces, periodic unrest has forced the government into defense mode, meaning more crackdowns on groups that don't exactly share the Party's point of view.

This has far-reaching implications for leaders of Christian house church networks and foreign missionaries, who often operate outside the realm of legality for the sake of theological and organizational independence. A missionary friend told me that the well-meaning efforts of many believers looking to "win China" during the Olympics were making it difficult for the folks on the ground there, who have to deal with government monitoring and interrogation in a very real way.

So how bad is Christian persecution in China? I often wonder how to answer that question. I've read and heard firsthand horror stories, but its easy to extrapolate incorrectly when working from emotional anecdotes. A few ministries have made it their mission to compile these stories into a systematic and ongoing study of the fate of believers in China.

The China Aid Association is led by former house church pastor and Tiananmen democracy activist Bob Fu. The association tracks stories of persecutio, using the power of public opinion by reporting their untold stories. Recently, the association partnered with Voice of the Martyrs, a group that ministers to the persecuted church worldwide. Fu joined Todd Nettleton, VoM's director of media development, for a conference call moderated by "Charisma" magazine.

A few highlights:

-The Olympics are being used as a massive PR tool by China. "This is our party, our face to the world. Don't do anything to cause a bad impression." That was Fu's summary of the Chinese government's justification for jailing pastors and kicking many out of their homes in Beijing.

-Bush urged to attend house church. Instead, for the second time, the president decided to go to a registered Three-Self church and advocate for religious freedom from the front steps. Bob Fu says it wasn't enough: "By choosing to worship in government-sanctioned church again, it will further validate the government's stance," he said, adding that 80 percent of Chinese believers worship in unregistered house churches.

This point of view ignores many of the diplomatic and cultural issues Bush would face in going to a house church. Fu has the luxury of ignoring such considerations. Bush doesn't.

-Amity Press in China recently celebrated publishing its 50 millionth Bible. Many believe this is a sign of openness. Nettleton points out that most of these are exported, and even if they were all Chinese, they'd only be half of what's needed for all the Christians there.

-House churches that have relations with foreigners and sophisticated networks may be targeted more heavily by the government. The highest ideal in Chinese politics is stability, which the government perveives is threatened by belief.

-China Aid found instances of persecution in half of China's 22 provinces in 2007. Labor camps are still prevalent as a tool of the government to "re-educate" offenders.

-Nettleton rejects the idea that we can't use capitalism as a tool to convert them to our ways. "I think that's a myth, that we're gonna trade them into democracy, trade them into relgious freedom," he said. Personally, I think it's a way to work from the inside.

-With local officials running their own fiefdoms, there's no end in sight for rural and urban persecution, but government policies have gotten more receptive to a general idea of religion.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW AT THE CHARISMA WEBSITE

Photo: Our bags confiscated at a border stop. Notice the green hats of the border patrol agents. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2008.

Bush Finds Diplomatic Middle Way With China

A few days ago I made a post about the mixed signals China often gives us about its human rights picture, especially in relation to Christian persecution. While in many ways the situation has drastically improved, the sterilized and whitewashed view of China that the government would like us to see at the Olympics has not erased the all-too-obvious blots on the its recent record.

That said, President Bush has a difficult tight-rope to walk in attending this week's Olympic opening ceremonies. Ironically, in a country where Buddhism thrives, Bush has had to take a sort of "middle way" of his own.

The balancing act he'll undertake is typical and necessary in dealing with the Chinese conundrum. The leader of the free world has said repeatedly that he will not stop urging the government to use the Olympics and events beyond as a chance to recognize the religious rights of all its citizens. At the same time, he's come under fire from some human rights activists and even the highest officials of the Democratic Party, who believe he should've boycotted the games altogether.

Somewhere on the line the president is straddling is the right approach. A conciliatory tone toward the government would be deadly to his legitimacy as an advocate for China's persecuted Christians and a step back from the tough line he's already taken. Antagonistic rhetoric could lead him into an equally undesirable quagmire. The Chinese authorities would suffer serious embarassment if Bush were to insult their progress on the eve of their big party. As anyone who knows anything about Chinese culture knows, it's hard to gain the trust of someone there when you've made them lose face.

For all the fiery comments by the Democrats during the primary season, Bush has taken the right tack. He stuck it to the Chinese government when he awarded a congressional medal to the Dalai Lama last October, despite their childish insults and noisy opposition to the gesture. The action turned out to foreshadow of a much more intense conflict that would break out in March of this year, when violent acts of vandalism committed by Tibetans against Han Chinese in the province escalated into weeks of protests and subsequent crackdowns by the government in western China.

On July 29, a little more than a week before Air Force One is scheduled to touch down in Beijing, Bush made another very crafty move. He hosted five high-profile human rights activists at the White House. Among these were Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp; Rebiya Kadeer, the foremost activist in the U.S. for the Muslim Turkic Uighur people in China; Bob Fu, a former persecuted pastor and head of China Aid Association; Wei Jingsheng, a prominent political dissident and Sasha Gong, a dissident and writer.

Bush's message was clear. “These are very high profile people. These are people designed to get the Chinese’s attention. It was not just a political move to provide cover at home. It was an important move to let Chinese leaders know that he’s not satisfied with the progress,” the New York Times quotes Michael Green, an Asia expert and former White House adviser as saying.

Christian activists are urging Bush to do even more during his trip. In a conference call Tuesday night, Bob Fu of China Aid and Todd Nettleton, director of media development for Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian group that ministers to the persecuted church, both urged Bush to attend a unregistered house church while in China. Mr. Fu gave Mr. Bush "Pray for China" bracelets during the meeting at the White House and gave the president coordinates of four different house churches in Beijing where Fu assured him he would be welcomed.

Bush attended a registered church during a 2005 trip to China and held a press conference afterwards. Fu said a return visit to the government-sanctioned church could be seen by some as validating the Chinese government's policies of hosting religion on its own terms. This would be disheartening to see for pastors who have been ousted from Beijing to keep them from talking to foreign media during the games, Fu said.

Some 80 percent of Chinese Christians worship in house churches, he added.

"By choosing to worship in a government-sanctioned church again, it will further validate" the government's stance on persecution, Fu told listeners from around the world who had tuned in for a Webcast and conference call with Charisma magazine. Listen here to the complete interview. You might have to log in or return to the Web site at a later time.

It remains to be seen what the president's legacy will be with regard to China. However it turns out, he's taken as right an approach as his position and its many responsibilities will allow.

Photo: A gate in the Forbidden City. Beijing. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2006.

China 2005 Trip Narrative

This is the first ever chronological compilation of my blog posts about my March 2005 trip to China. For most people, this is probably way too much to read, but I have had requests from some readers to put it in this reader-friendly format, rather than the bottom-to-top way Blogger puts posts in order. This way, you'll be able to remember where you left off, if you're really that interested. The links are dated by the time I wrote them, but they're also chronological as far as the events recounted within the post.

This menu will be linked from the "China 2005" icon in the sidebar on the homepage and will always be accessible from there.

You'll notice, if you read all the way through, that the trip ends abruptly. There was plenty more where that came from, but it took me almost a year to get that far. On subsequent narratives I got a bit more concise and timely in my trip summaries.

I hope eventually to have a YouTube page with all my videos linked to these posts. Stay tuned for new developments as I'll be updating the other trip narratives soon, and enjoy reading up on Yunnan province, China.

1. 3/3/05 – Freedom Fighting
2. 4/7/05 – Gametime
3. 4/21/05 – The First of Many Sunrises – Day 1
4. 4/25/05 – Our Humble Abode
5. 4/28/05 – An 8-Part Body
6. 4/28/05 – Two by Two
7. 8/9/05 – In Search of Three Circles
8. 8/9/05 – We Are the Pavement
9. 8/9/05 – Village 1 – Our Test Run
10. 8/23/05 – Bus Station
11. 8/23/05 – Linear Perspective
12. 8/23/05 – Service Road
13. 8/23/05 – Village 2
14. 8/23/05 – Seeing the Future
15. 8/23/05 – Bearing a Bamboo Burden
16. 8/25/05 – The Kingdom Belongs to Such as These
17. 8/25/05 – Kingdom Bearers
18. 8/27/05 – The Next Generation
19. 8/27/05 – Alley-oop: A VCD Drop Highlight Reel
20. 8/27/05 – Deep Roots
21. 9/8/05 – Perspectives of Pain
22. 11/17/05 – Our Chariot
23. 11/21/05 – Another Helping Hand
24. 11/21/05 – The Colonel
25. 11/28/05 – Blind Faith and Passes
26. 11/28/05 – Movable Beds
27. 11/28/05 – Crouching Driver, Whistling Steve
28. 11/28/05 – Tired Sun
29. 11/30/05 – Good Night
30. 11/30/05 – Success
31. 12/24/05 – The North Road
32. 12/24/05 – Hat Trick
33. 12/24/05 – Bamboo Storehouse
34. 12/24/05 – Quick Change
35. 12/24/05 – Uncharted Villages and Strange Prayers
36. 12/24/05 – Temple Sideview
37. 12/24/05 – Courtyard
38. 12/24/05 –Breakfast with the Fangs – Part I
39. 1/9/06 – Real China
40. 1/9/06 – Breakfast with the Fangs – Part II
41. 1/9/06 – Refuge
42. 1/11/06 – Rubber Trees
43. 1/27/06 – Home
44. 1/27/06 – Harvesting Mud

Protesting the Press on the Tibet Riots

China's state news agency aimed to temper harsh foreign news coverage of Tibet with one of its strikingly childish journalistic rebuttals today. But Xinhua's response, though immature, raises a serious question: With so little known about the events in Tibet, have the foreign media been totally fair?

China has been under fire recently for its "crackdown" on the protests in Tibet and riots in other regions where there are significant Tibetan populations. From a variety of jumbled news reports, I've gathered that hundreds have been killed in the rioting, but sources can't agree on the death toll.

AFP reported today that the Tibetan prime minister-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, is saying 130 have been confirmed dead. Xinhua, China's official news agency, says 18 "innocent" Chinese were killed by protesters and has confirmed that more have died in neighboring Gansu province, but it hasn't acknowledged the Tibetan government's official count as accurate. No matter the disputes, news agencies have been singing one chorus in unison throughout the entire ordeal: any toll is impossible to independently verify.

That sentence seems to sum up the press's knowledge of the entire incident. The questions of Who killed whom? What provoked such vehement protests? And is this really a "crackdown" or just stern enforcement of the law? are largely going unanswered, even as the story remains a top fixture in every major newspaper.

The uncertainty is partly because China has restricted access to the province. All foreign reporters have been banned from visiting Tibet in another one of China's futile attempts to keep the press silent as the Olympics approach. The Chinese government hasn't caught onto the fact that most reporters in today's era of 24-hour news never stop writing. They keep on, but in doing so resort to speculation and sensationalism rather than hard facts.

In that sense, the government is partly to blame if indeed there is misinformation being circulated about Tibet. But I have to say that I agree with the government that Western media reports do seem to have a been a little biased thus far.

Even in their own reports, many media outlets have noted that Tibetans seem to have initiated the March 14 violence and stoked it with repeated attacks on Han Chinese cars, places of business and even people. Granted, these people were reacting to almost 60 years of oppression as a vassal of the Chinese, and it's understandable that they have some anger to release.

But sending in troops to quell an uprising seems to be understandable if protests turn violent, as long as those troops don't use excessive force. I seem to remember a certain Democratic convention in 1972 where police got a little nightstick practice on rioters that crossed the line. The first amendment guarantees the right to "peaceably" assemble, not to throw rocks and set things on fire. As the heroes of our Revolutionary War were, you have to be ready to endure the consequences if you undertake acts of violent rebellion.

There have been incidents of beatings and rumors of shots fired into crowds, but the real stories are still elusive, and firsthand reports are scarce. The journalist's job, even here in the land of the free, is not to overtly side with the oppressed group and condemn the government before the facts are in the open. It's to get the facts. China has plenty of human rights abuses to criticize without having to make things up.

And that's what bothers me about the whole situation. For one, we like to carry the banner of freedom in Tibet, but we turn a blind eye to other regions of the world where people are being oppressed more harshly. Tibet has become a trendy cause, the convenient human rights flag to wave. I think a top Chinese official was partly right when he said smugly today that some people treat the Dalai Lama as if he's a god.

It's not that I think Tibetan rights are less important than those of other groups; it's just that I don't think they're more important. Where are the calls for peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Where is the outrage over continued oppression in Myanmar?

And within China, what about the people in the Northwest, the Uighurs, who have also seen their homeland overrun with Chinese immigrants? What about the Christians and Falun Gong practitioners and Buddhists that continue to experience discrimination daily?

And don't forget, regardless of Tibet's unique cultural brand, the Chinese see the Himalayan region as a part of their motherland. Call them crazy, but as Peter Hessler wrote in this article in 1999, the issue is not settled in their eyes, and they have some convenient historical methodology to justify their beliefs. They're developing their wild west, and it seems to me that the Tibetans and Uighurs (among others) are to China what the Native Americans were to the white man. As far as I can recall from history classes, we didn't wave the same banner of freedom for native peoples during those days.

All that is to say that we'd do well to look at the other side of our calls for freedom. We don't want to lose our ideals, but we don't want to sacrifice one (truth) for the sake of another.