There's this thing out here. If you've been reading blogs, you've probably been able to pick up on it. If you're planning on going on the Race, it's probably kept you up at night. If you're out here now or have been, you know it as intimately as I do. This World Race culture, the way we do things and the lens through which we see them, is something I have for so long loved so much, and for so long held in such high esteem.
But God has been extremely pushy with me lately, teaching me and showing me a lot of challenging things, in a season that has been everything but comfortable… and in an effort to keep the trend of honesty and transparency I've developed in my blogs, I find myself writing (yet again) in a way that most people probably wouldn't. Please show me grace.
Let me explain the season and context in which I'm dealing with these questions.
The Lord's been pressing me, as I explained in my last blog, into a season of dependence and abandonment and growth, that has left me with no where left to go but deeper into Him. And while it honestly hasn't been that radical or whatever (I'm still here and still learning), it has been tough. And He keeps asking me these things like "If fulltime international ministry [which I've felt for a while] among closed, Islamic countries [which I've also felt for a while] to forced-underground oppressed homosexual communities [something I've felt for a while, but have only recently begun to embrace and even long for] is something you're really seriously beginning to consider and believe in as the direction I'm pushing you, then what do you need to do to get there, and what do you need to get rid of?"
And as the answers come, the discomfort level rises. Well, I'll need to learn the language, and I'll need to know the culture, and I'll need to live among people as they live, and know them intimately. I'll need to have a job to support me and possibly a wife, or at least someone to keep me encouraged and pressing in. I'll need to lose any connection to anything online that says I'm Christian and/or attracted to guys, as both of those will probably be illegal. In fact, posting this blog will probably be a horrible idea. I'll need to forego maintaining relationshps at home, as no one will really be able to understand me. A wife would be tough, but kids almost out of the question, as death or deportation will always be threats. Visa renewals, anonymity, culturization, complete dependence – these will be my constant worries and companions.
And it's from this lens that I begin to see things that I do, and things that we do, that have become so 'cultural' for us, but may be doing us more harm than good.
World Race culture has got us all hording, desperate for anything to call our own. We exalt western meals and accomodations, we hunt out wifi like it's our jobs, we go overbudget for candy or peanut butter or coffee, we overspiritualize, and we cling to American community. We spend more on shipping home a package of souvenirs than the people we're working with make in a month, and what we carry on our backs is worth more than what they make in a year. We take breaks from the food, from the culture, from the people whenever we can, as if we're entitled to safety nets and an American base. And we respond to being eternally exhausted by being lazy.
And it's really begun to wear on me, to question every day, what am I doing that is bringing me closer to Him, and what am I seeing and hearing through the bias of my world race filter? Are we really listening when we go places? Are we really making every effort to forego what we know and how we do things, so that we can know, truly know, the people and places we're engaging? Is He our biggest treasure, every day? Or is the way we do things, the way we see things, and the way we handle things making us miss the way things actually are, stealing opportunity to learn and engage and affect and be affected? Are we actually beginning to understand and feel the way God speaks through the world, or are we satisfied to just let people know that we've been here? Do we feel the heartbeat of places, do we take time to know anything of the passions and struggles and triumphs of the people we came to meet, or the people we could meet but don't, or are we content with the lessons we're sure we have to teach them? Are our words – abandonment, dependence, growth – are these words that we've only barely begun to tire from throwing around, but only because we've emptied them of their weight?
When we're in places do we actually see them, or just the part of them that is most comfortable to see? When we meet people, do we actually know them, or just the parts of them that are most comfortable to know?
We've spent 5 months in Asia, and I'm left to wonder if we truly know anything about what a person goes through when they hear or see the message of Christ through an entire lifetime of Hindu or Buddhist religious perspective and the culture it engenders.
I used to love the world so much, and hear from it so clearly. Traveling, culture, people – they spoke to my heart in such a way that left me no doubt that this was the most effective, most encompassing, most real classroom through which the Lord speaks, is speaking, and always will speak. I love the passion and the vibrancy by which the Lord has chosen to color the world more than anything except for Jesus Himself, and I relish the lessons I've allowed it to teach me more than any other lessons. But recently, I've felt like this passion and love and understanding have been absent, and I haven't been able to figure out why. And I'd begun to let myself believe that maybe the classroom wasn't as big as I thought it was – but now I've come to understand that maybe, just maybe, we're just not hearing the teacher very clearly.
I don't mean to offend and I don't mean to judge – but I do mean to challenge, and I'm going to work through this. It's no coincidence to me, that when the Lord pushes me the hardest, I tend to get in the most trouble. And I've finally come to regain my love and my passion for just hearing and listening to what the Lord is saying, through the places and people He's chosen to speak through, whether they're Christian or not. But I don't want to buy the lie that I'm alone in wanting this, that I'm alone in being willing to say, 'maybe there are things we're doing that are getting in the way of what the Lord is trying to say to us'. What the world is saying, what it's groaning and pushing to get out, be it age old wisdom or a hidden heart-filled tragic story – these are stories that the freedom in Christ we carry around can unlock, without us even having to say a thing, for our benefit and for everyone elses… and the Lord has stripped me of a lot of things and of a lot of entitlements – but that's a benefit I am no longer willing to forego.
Love,
Danny
