I recently watched the documentary I Am Not Your Negro. It was an amazing and thought provoking documentary about James Baldwin and his thoughts on America. He wrote these words in the 1960’s but they are eerily relevant still today.
“I am saying that a journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do with what you find, or what you find will do to you.” –James Baldwin
This quote seemed profoundly relevant to my time on the World Race so far. I’ve been in the field just three months and I feel that I’ve learned a lifetime of lessons about myself, humanity, and Christ. I have come across so many things that I never expected or imagined, and each time I have been faced with a choice of how I respond. This process has changed me. It has changed my heart and how I see myself, as well as how I see people, how I treat them and love them.
I am also learning that this is just a small window of time. The real journey is our whole time on earth. Indefinite and fleeting, we are created to make the most of these little windows of time called moments. We have the power to choose what we do in each of these moments. We get to choose whether we act in love or hate. We get to choose whether we help ourselves or help others. We get to choose whether we want to make the world better, or allow it to make us worse. We get to choose whether we make the most of our time or waste it.
In my own life, I have learned so many valuable things from my posterity. The wise people that have come before us, their attempts to change things and make them better. I’ve learned that grey hair is an indicator for a million wise lessons to be passed on. It’s true that there is a correlation between time spent on earth and valuable wisdom in individuals. So why then, after all the time we have occupied this planet, has it not proved true for humanity as a whole?
“We are misled here because we think of numbers. You don’t need numbers. You need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world. The tragedy is that most of the people who say they care about it, do not care. What they care about is their safety and their profits.” –James Baldwin
This is where I begin to believe that our generation is special. I have heard people call our generation lazy, entitled, apathetic, and careless. Those people are wrong. Our generation is nothing but passion. We literally care about everything. Spend a day on twitter or facebook and you’ll see it. The only problem is, a lot of that passion is misguided. The things we care about our often superficial and inconsequential to the journey. Opinions end up aimed at each other, focusing on winning unwinnable debates, rather than engaging in activism.
Fortunately, this problem has an easy solution. Don’t just talk about it, be about it. Choose activism, not criticism. Take the passion you have for facebook political debates, Kardashians, and iPhone games, and use them to light a fire under your friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens to start engaging in the real world and trying to make it better.
The ways of the world don’t want this to happen. That’s sin and the enemy. That’s the numbers. Each day the number of people murdered, kids orphaned, families starving, humans victimized, government decisions, nations oppressed, religions lying, the earth is dying. We get overwhelmed by all these numbers, so we choose profit and safety.
We need certain salaries and certain jobs with certain levels of enjoyment so that we live comfortably. We need the government to meet our specific set of needs so that we can live comfortably. We need crime to stop so that we can walk around anywhere comfortably. We need movies, and shows, and music, and apps, and malls, and sports, and designer drugs, and anything that will help us forget about how uncomfortable this messed up world really is.
So how can our generation break this system? How can we stop being overwhelmed by how much there is to fix? How can we actually make a difference? We choose to act. We choose to set aside our personal safety and comfort for the greater good. It’s our choice to make things change, so we must choose to.
“The American way of life has failed to make people happier or make them better. We do not want to admit this, and we do not admit it.” –James Baldwin
This is another area I find our generation to be special. The American Dream isn’t what we chase anymore, we want something more. In terms of our world-wide generation, we are sick and tired of hate, wars, and evil, no matter what the “purpose” is behind it. Our generation refuses to accept the notion that “that’s just the way it is.” We are a generation that is not satisfied with accepting the things with which we are not satisfied.
The problem is, we aren’t sure what we should be chasing to satisfy us.
Our generation is so self-aware. We know that we don’t feel okay about this world and our current roles in it. It’s why we see so much advertising, social media, entertainment, sports, news, sex, and drug use. It’s all in our face every day. The world wants us to be distracted and confused. The enemy doesn’t want us to admit that these things aren’t making us happier or better. These things leave us feeling empty.
So, once we finally rise above these things of the world, we look elsewhere. Science, religion, spirituality. These things have also been around a long time, why haven’t they fixed the world yet?
Because they haven’t had our generations hands on them quite yet. It’s very evident that we think in a way vastly different from those in the past. But I believe we are still falling into the past patterns of thinking. “Science and religion can’t coexist. If we don’t believe the same things, then we can’t really work together. If you don’t join my side, then you are an enemy.” These are they thoughts that got this world into so much trouble in the first place. It’s not love. It’s sin.
One danger I’ve seen in the Christians of my generation is overcompensating for these past ideas. We have shame from the crusades, and corruption, and anti-Semitism, and false justification for slavery, and hypocrisy residing in the church. We have become the most unchurched generation since the first church began. In a lot of cases this has resulted in aimless spirituality where anything goes, and it’s all up to us. It’s not.
I still believe that Christ’s example is the blueprint, roadmap, and answer. In order for our generation to do what it is capable of doing, we have to give the control over to Christ. Our way has never worked since the beginning. He loved unconditionally, He denied himself of anything that wouldn’t be beneficial to sharing true love, He sat down with people who believed and thought differently, and He shared the truth with them.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” –James Baldwin
So there are things we can’t change. We can’t change nature or its laws. We can’t change the time we have on earth. We can’t change the past. There is a lot more, however, that we can change. But we have to face it first. We have to face the fact that humans have never been able to change much on their own.
Like I said, our generation is very self-aware. I believe we know that we can’t do it on our own. We are called lazy and entitled because we are always asking for help, and losing interest in the things that we want to change, but haven’t figured out how. It’s easy to say that Jesus is the only way because his example was perfect and flawless. The example given by Christians is not perfect and flawless, and that makes it hard to get others on board. It also means that we won’t ever find perfect change on this earth. Instead, we can tell everyone about the perfect Heaven, and that’s a million times better.
Our generation can never fix all the world’s problems, but we can be the first to actually change it and make it truly better. Even if people didn’t believe a thing about Jesus, God or Holy Spirit, or any word of the bible actually being true, but they aimed to live like Jesus did, the world would be a lot better off. The problem is, we aren’t Jesus, and we can’t perfectly live like He did.
Instead, we have to live by faith, believe in Him, and ask God to control our lives. We get so caught up in the world, and its problems, and fixing them, that we lose sight of what’s actually important. Love God and believe His son Jesus died for us so that we can get the heck off this planet and live a perfect eternity in Heaven. HOW AMAZING DOES THAT SOUND? This world is beautiful and amazing, but it is so flawed. Heaven is without flaw, and exponentially more beautiful. That’s good news and we should spread it.
We are also a generation with the access to more world-wide communication and transportation than ever before. We have the most unique opportunity to work together as a world instantly, sharing ideas, resources, and assistance. This is what has become super exciting to me because it means that sharing the good news of Christ and heaven has become even easier.
In June, God gave me a prophecy. I closed my eyes, put my pen on my journal, and asked that He give me a word. Here is what God told me:
“This generation will be the one to speak my Love and Truth to every ear. This generation will carry my gospel to every corner of the earth, to every tribe, in every nation. This generation will end the unknowing of me. This generation will reach every soul for my Kingdom.”
That is the reason for this blog. I still don’t know what role I play in all of this. Right now, I’m just hoping and praying to start a fire in our generation because we actually have the abilities and means to change things for the first time. We should all do our best all the time, but we know longer have to worry.
God’s got it.
