Ryan and Cindy Clark Philippines Reflecting eleven years after graduating from McAfee and moving half-way around the world, I can say that my theological education has held up well. The inclusiveness that shocked me in my first months in Atlanta has fostered a warm curiosity that has been a vital tool for living abroad. I serve as the Dean of Students and Professor of Pastoral Care at the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary, a 60 year-old school located in West-central Luzon. It’s an international seminary with students from thirteen different countries. A few months ago I sat with a Bangladeshi family in the public hospital as I helped them decide whether or not to pay for an emergency appendectomy from a private surgeon or wait for the public surgeon to come available. The public surgeon fees would come to about $125 dollars, the private surgeon would come to about $800. The average annual income in Bangladesh is $640 USD per year. The student and his wife were unable to make the decision themselves, frozen
in fear of what their supporting church back home might think, doing something extravagant like paying 18 months’ salary on a private surgeon. They had decided to “leave it up for God to decide.” When another Korean professor, who is also the student’s pastor, arrived we decided to split the private surgeon fee. “Here is God’s decision,” I thought to myself. The student was in surgery within 45 minutes and the student lived. His appendix had indeed burst and if he had waited for the availability of the public surgeon he would have died. I’m not making drama here. This is what happened. I struggle making room for, or being inclusive of, a theology that seems to only wait to see what “God” is going to do. I might have given this other explanations before, but I’m quite sure now it’s because I’m an American. Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the Noise, points out about Americans that “most of our strengths and weaknesses as a nation – our ingenuity and our