Nasreddin Hodja, the tricky teacher, is a much-loved philosopher from Turkish history. Lovingly depicted riding his donkey backwards, he lived about eight hundred years ago in Antalya.

Most Turks have fond memories of drinking tea and laughing with friends at stories of Nasreddin Hodja’s unusual wit and concealed wisdom. Hodja means teacher, and for this Nasreddin receives much respect, but something about his logic is a bit reminiscent of Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. Here are a few examples of his classic irrational rational:

Nasreddin Hodja was strolling through the marketplace one day when a shopkeeper accosted him, berating him loudly for his failure to pay a debt.

“My dear friend,” answered the Hodja, “just how much do I owe you?”

“Seventy-five lira!” shouted the angry shopkeeper.

“Wait a minute,” replied the Hodja. “You must know that I intend to pay you 35 lira tomorrow, and another 35 next month. That means I owe you only five lira. You should be ashamed of yourself for accosting me so loudly in public for a debt of only five lira!”

Turks love these stories—some true and some made up—and relish telling and re-telling them. Here’s another:

Nasreddin Hodja was standing in the marketplace when a stranger stepped up to him and slapped him in the face but then quickly apologized saying, “I beg your pardon. I thought you were someone else.”
This explanation did not satisfy the Hodja, so he brought the man before the local judge and demanded compensation.

The Hodja soon perceived that the judge and the defendant were friends. The defendant admitted his guilt, and the judge pronounced the sentence: “The settlement for this offense is one lira, to be paid to the plaintiff.” Then, to the man, “If you do not have a lira with you, you may bring it here to the plaintiff at your convenience.”

The defendant went on his way with a smile. The Hodja waited for him to return with the lira. He waited, and he waited.

Sometime later, when the man still hadn’t returned, the Hodja said to the judge, “Do I understand correctly that one lira is sufficient payment for a slap?”

“Yes,” answered the judge.

The Hodja sighed and then slapped the judge in the face. Gathering his bag to leave, he said, “When the defendant returns, you may keep my lira.”
Few Nasreddin Hodja stories have any Biblical virtue. However, sprinkling these anecdotes in spiritual conversations causes Turks to relax and open up.

We have begun the huge work of writing hundreds of sequential Bible lessons that aim to align Turkish worldview with the gospel. These are very different from what you might find as part of a typical evangelistic series or Internet Bible lesson. We have to write differently because Turks think about life very differently from those “underprivileged people who live outside of Turkey.” (Did I mention that they think differently?)

One of the foundation stones of Turkish worldview is fate. Belief in fate is so deeply entrenched here that if, for example, a mother leaves a pot of boiling water where a child can reach it and the child is seriously burned, the mother may not feel any personal sense of guilt. She might shrug and say, “It was written in my child’s fate.” The belief is that God has destined us all for certain trouble or certain good, and no one really knows when this fate may pop up. Sort of like drawing cards from the Chance pile in the Monopoly board game.

Writing Bible lessons to shift a person’s entire worldview foundation is not easy. Here is a Nasreddin story I use to introduce a new angle on the concept of fate:

One night, the Hodja awoke, thinking he had heard a strange noise outside his window. Looking out, he saw a suspicious white figure. “Who goes there?” he shouted.

The figure did not reply. Nasreddin reached for his bow, set an arrow to the string, took aim, and shot in the direction of the mysterious figure. Satisfied that the intruder now would do him no harm, Nasreddin returned to bed and slept until dawn.

By morning’s light, he examined the scene outside his window, only to discover his own white shirt hanging on the clothesline with a hole in the middle where his arrow had pierced it.

“That was a close call!” murmured the Hodja. “My own shirt, shot through by an arrow! What if I had been wearing it at the time?”

That’s a light introduction to the heavy topic of fate. In this lesson, I visit people’s fear of God, whom they wrongly perceive to be the one shooting arrows of trouble at them.

In this lesson, I walk the learner through the life stories of Saul as an example of a man who “shot arrows” at himself. Each of us is given a quiver full of arrows called “freedom of choice.” Bad choices can alter the perfect and beautiful plan God has for us. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you’” (Jer. 29:11). Then, reflecting on the story of Job, I introduce the idea that Satan also is an archer who lives to bring pain, problems and death. (Satan is a figure in common Turkic Islamic belief, but he is not seen as a personal opponent, much less an enemy set on the demise of all humans.)

Currently, our project strategy focuses on the writing of hundreds of stories—a retelling of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in a way that emphasizes the worldview issues that keep Turks from seeing the beautiful light of the gospel. Please pray for me and our Turkish team that we will write in ways that ignite Turkish thought, making people hungry for truth.

If you have a really good story that you think would serve as a parable to break a worldview paradigm and build a biblical worldview in a Muslim context, please take a minute and e-mail it to us: svance@afmonline.org.

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