Some thoughts on language and discipleship.

I have been preparing material for an aspect of our discipleship strategy called Grupos de Transformación Personal, which are adapted from the Organic Church's Life Transformation Groups and the House Church Network's Journey Groups. These are groups of two or three that meet weekly for a handful of purposes, one of which is accountability. I had run into the problem of translating "accountability" before but had never really stopped to ponder the issue. It gets roughly translated as "responsibility" (responsabilidad), so that is the word I adopted with a degree doubt that it would communicate what I intended.

As Alfredo was proof reading what I had prepared for the groups, I noticed that he corrected a sentence in a way that made it say something totally different-- something more in line with the typical meaning of responsibility. Whereas I was trying to speak about the participant being accountable to the other group members, he changed the sentence to refer to the participant's responsibility for the other group members. Alfredo teaches both Spanish and English, so we're able to have pretty good conversations about translation issues, and I was at last able to confirm my suspicions about using "responsibility" for accountability. Language is a mischievous thing, and the real issue isn't whether you can find a rough translation; it is whether you can find a conceptual match. Here's the punch line. There is no conceptual parallel to the English notion of accountability in the Spanish language. It simply doesn't exist within the conceptual framework the language provides.

I started asking Alfredo questions about his perception of my meaning in terms of responsibility for one another. There were some lovely ideas of community and mutual support and bearing one another's sins in what he said. But the idea of confessing to one another and therefore having to bring one's sins out of the darkness and face them in the light was decidedly absent. I explained that a benefit of regular accountability (perforce using the English word) is that we are unable to persist in habitual or addictive sins or to sin and pretend it didn't happen.

His response was classic. "So the other group members are like Jiminy Cricket." The conversation helped me realize that accountability as a concept is about enacting a communal conscience. Where my individual conscience is perhaps seared (1 Tim 4:2) or corrupted (Titus 1:15), accountability means that the community's conscience can be sensitive to the sin of each member and then, as Alfredo initially perceived, deal with it together.

Alfredo pointed out that the Catholic practice of contrition is, though comparable in a way, an intensely individual activity. And, as far as the general idea of accountability is concerned, he suspects that the total disregard for the social environment reflected in the trash that litters public places in Latin America is connected to the conceptual void. There is no feeling that the individual has to give answer to anyone beyond his or her family, and even there it is common for men to spend food money on beer because no one has the right to tell him otherwise. From one angle such behavior is selfishness and entitlement, but from another angle selfishness that is called to account may be held in check and transformed. Selfishness with no accountability structure is terrible to behold.

This is all very important for our work, because borrowing from American models of discipleship can be a dangerous course. Any time there is a linguistic miss like this one, it is a clear signal to pause and consider whether American culture needs to be discarded or Peruvian culture needs to be transformed. Perhaps the American Christian worldview engenders an overweening sense of spirituality in its eagerness for confession. Perhaps the Evangelical obsession with "grace-only" Christianity has unwittingly promoted pride in our sin. I have certainly experienced among my peers moments that seemed a veritable frenzy of confession after which some at least appeared to feel rather good about themselves, not for having been set free to live in the light but for having made grace increase through their confession and for having somehow flexed a spiritual muscle through their unflinching openness. It would be unfortunate to promote a discipleship with those sorts of underlying problems.

In many instances, mission work is experimentation. It will be interesting to see how the discipline of accountability plays out among Peruvian brothers and sisters.