(As a side note: I wrote this blog during our debrief in Nairobi, but haven’t had internet access since. I’m sorry if I am not able to contact you often this month, but internet access is hard to find this month! We have been at our new ministry site in Kitale, Kenya for five days now and I am really enjoying our ministry here! More information to come! The pictures are from our first five days of ministry here…)
I try not to think about home too much while on the mission field because doing so compromises the effectiveness of my ministry. These past three days, however, I have allowed myself to think about home more often because it is the end of month four, and we have a four day “debrief-session” where our entire squad is meeting together in Nairobi, Kenya for a time of rest, worship, and teachings. I have had the opportunity to ponder such questions as “What will my day-to-day life look like when I get home?” and “What will my career look like?” in ways that I just haven’t had time to ponder before.
I certainly want to savor the uniqueness of this season —the radical sense of community, the fellowship unhindered by technology overload, and the cultural smorgasbord I am experiencing on the Race—but it is only natural to consider how all of these spiritual gains will spill over into life back home and manifest themselves in an American context.
I praise God for the sanctification he has wrought in me, but I am realizing that my social life back home will take a huge hit. It’s not that I foresee myself being less social—actually, quite the opposite is true, as my enjoyment of fellowship and community has only motivated me to be more social—but it’s just that I foresee myself being a loser! I guess that I just don’t find the same things interesting that most other people do, and in the most non-self righteous way possible (because that is the last thing I want), I praise God for changing my desires and my interests.
In the first four months of the World Race, God has really released me from what was virtually slavery to the opinions of others. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that I still often act with my own self-image in mind, and I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that the desire to be “cool” (this word deserves quotation marks because there are as many definitions of the word as there are people who tirelessly seek it) never consumes me anymore, but I will say that where I am now and where I was four months ago are night and day, by comparison.
One thing that I have learned during these first four months as a whole is the importance of praying (and even speaking) at the spiritual level where we truly are. For example, I did not want to say, “Christ, I want more of you” when every last ounce of me wanted more of the world and when I knew full well that, because gaining “more of Christ” was a long-term process, God will likely convict me of the tangible things I needed to add and remove from my life to gain more of Christ—a process that my fallen flesh, in it’s old spiritual state, had very little interest in pursuing. Instead, it was far more beneficial for me to pray, “Christ, I currently don’t really want more of you at all, because I would much rather have a comfortable life. So, please change my desires so that I want to want more of you.”
After all, God is omniscient and thus cannot be fooled. God knows our true spiritual condition regardless of what we pray. Admitting our true spiritual condition, however, at its deepest level, in our prayers, is a pronouncement of brokenness and humility, and God works greatest through broken and humbled people.
The only problem I experienced with praying at this level and asking God to change my desires to make me want to want Him was that He answered the prayer. The prayer was too dangerous. The prayer was too potent. It shouldn’t have been prayed. Slowly, but steadily, the things of the world have become less and less interesting to me, and the Bible and the nature of God have both become more interesting. This, in and of itself, is a recipe for lousy marks on the “cool scale”!
But, I’m starting to realize that maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay if cartoons don’t captivate me. Maybe it’s okay if I have no interest in playing Call of Duty. Maybe it’s okay if I get bored halfway through a movie and let my mind slip into wondering when I can read the Bible next. Maybe it’s even okay of you’re rolling your eyes right now—literally or figuratively.
I don’t mean to say that I am becoming more and more comfortable in the American “Christian culture” and will start to look like a loser to my secular friends, because I think that I will be a loser even in the Christian context. I wish I could fit into “Christian Culture” (I like to call it World-Lite) in America, but I don’t know if I will fit in there either.
God is murdering my rep. My arms are getting skinnier because I don’t eat as much on the race as I do back home and I’m not getting as tan as I thought I’d get, because we usually have to wear long pants during ministry. Also, my face isn’t lookin’ so hot, because I don’t get to wash it as often as I would back home. So, unfortunately, all chances of having a physical appearance that makes up for my social awkwardness disappeared many, many weeks ago.
Everything clicked for me, though, towards the end of ministry in Nepal. As we were heading into center city Kathmandu one day, I saw a billboard for a skin-whitening cream that read “As fair as you want to be!”. Suddenly, everything made sense. In the west, people want to be tan and in the east, people want to be pale! Popularity is so subjective and ever-changing that chasing it is like chasing the wind. The same thing is true of earning a good social status and social reputation. In college, my Greek friends would make fun of my athletic friends for wearing sweatpants and cargo shorts and my athletic friends would make fun of my Greek friends for wearing visors and shirts with front pockets! It’s literally impossible to gain popularity when popularity’s definition changes with whom you ask. I also just used the word “whom”, which, though grammatically correct, makes me even more of a loser in this generation!
Perhaps we must embrace the term “loser”, however, rather than fear it. If I am a loser, then what am I losing? I believe that I am losing my social status and my reputation, but maybe losing these things is not only beneficial to gaining Christ, but a prerequisite. Instead of asking, “How can I be a Christian and be socially cool at the same time?”, I want to start asking “How much more of a loser do I have to be, in the eyes of the World, to gain more Christ and save more souls?…because it’s worth it.”
I am still working through and what my day-to-day life and ministry will look like after the World Race. The one thing I know for sure, though, is that I won’t be cool.
