Tuna Taco??!!

My Honey is Hispanic and was raised in San Antonio, TX, spending his early years in his grandparent’s house where Spanish was the first language. I am not Hispanic and was raised in the bay area of the Gulf of Mexico where Small-Town-Texas-Redneck was the first language.

He is a ‘land crab’ and I am a ‘water baby’. Though our cultures and youth experiences are similar in some ways, there are more that are incredibly different. Understand we grew up only three and a half hours apart! (In Texas we measure distance in time rather than miles)

He grew up with menudo, tacos and tamales. I grew up with cornbread, greens and gumbo. Our common culinary denominator…beans and rice, prepared differently; yet the same. Our life has been an adventure of melding two cultures and living in harmony and appreciation for the differences. Today, though, we’re talking about food…sort of.

As a baby my Honey had a pacifier in one hand and a taco in the other. Sadly, my first experience with Mexican food was in a frozen dinner; an uninspired introduction to Latin cuisine. Not the case for my Honey. He is taco oriented from the word GO. Regardless of what I labor to place before him at mealtime, he finds a way to make a taco out of something! If there are not any tortillas on the table, he will wrap up a bread encased taco. He’s not picky, anything that will fold in half around anything else edible will do! Tacos are to him as mother’s milk to an infant.

One day while preparing tuna salad sandwiches for lunch I decided to make it easy for him and simply used tortillas instead of bread and made him tuna tacos. Mine just a plain ole’ tuna sandwich on whole grain bread. He was working outside in the yard and running in to find taco materials would be a waste of time, so I presented him with three tuna tacos on a plate. Settled on the yard swing in anticipation of lunch, he looked quizzically at his tacos and asked what they were. When I told him tuna salad tacos he looked at me like I was crazy. I explained it was only a matter of time before he made a taco so I was saving him time and effort. The first bite was a tentative one, indeed, but he relished every bite after that.

Here’s the spiritual analogy that you knew was just a few keystrokes away…hehehe.

When it comes to sharing Jesus sometimes you just might have to wrap the message in a taco. By that I mean we need to use discernment and be sensitive to how it will best be received by the one to which we are presenting it. If putting everything he eats in a taco is the most nurturing to my Honey, then I take comfort in knowing that the food I prepared for him is feeding his soul as well as his body. It doesn’t matter that it is unfamiliar to me and never in a million years would it occur to me to do so. It is the best way to reach him where it makes the most impact. If I tried to shove a heaping bowl of seafood gumbo down his throat just because it was my favorite regardless of how it appealed to him, I would be wasting my time and good gumbo. I use gumbo as an example because it is a part of my family tradition every bit as much as tacos are to him. He did not like it at first and had to acquire a taste for it. If we want people’s souls to be reached we must present Jesus in a concept they can understand. That’s why I encourage people not to use ‘Christian-eze’ as much as I do. It’s not a language non-Believers comprehend.

My theory is fairly simple. If the message of Jesus is to be shared with people of different backgrounds, cultures, languages and intellects it is imperative that while we remain true to the content, we may have to serve it in a recognizable form that touches the basic inner being of the receiver. Jesus in a taco here; Jesus in an eggroll there. Matters not as long as people are being fed the Bread of Life. Jesus supplies all that nurtures and nourishes us; we’re not adding to Him, just serving Him in a way that will touch hearts and lives though it may seem different and foreign to us. He is for all nations, all people, all cultures and tongues …. The Bible says so!

A missionary friend shared a story from a mission trip in Africa where the spiritual leader of the local people asked that they bring Jesus to them not as a potted plant but as seeds they could plant and grow in their own soil. WOW, that is so much more lyrical than ‘wrapped in a taco’ but the message is the same.