Category: How Americans Think Page 3 of 8

Swimming in the Stuff of America

On December 6, 2022

In How Americans Think, Living Like a Missionary, Poverty

I spent my first years of life in suburban California, and I assumed every person on earth had a TV and a bike and a refrigerator that magically produced food. As a fish doesn’t know anything besides water, I couldn’t conceive of anything besides middle-class.

I moved to Liberia when I was six years old, and the boy on the other side of our fence ate frogs out of the swamp when his family ran out of food. I met girls who walked miles to haul water while I walked to my privileged international school. I later lived 16 of my adult years in Tanzania, where my rickety van and millepede-infested house felt like luxury. I didn’t have a dishwasher, a dryer or central air conditioning, but I had electricity and plumbing, and that lifted me above most Tanzanians.

I was a fish out of water, gasping for breath at the dichotomy between my life and theirs.

Now I’ve been back in America for two years, and I find myself slowly captivated by the middle-class ocean. The voices calling me from billboards and magazines and screens are persistent: You need more. You deserve more. It’s your right. I don’t want to listen, but I do.

Americans make up only 4 percent of the world’s population yet hold 31 percent of the world’s wealth. As a little girl, I dreamed of being a princess, and then living in Africa revealed to me that I already had royal status. How Rich Am I? tells me that even on my ministry income, I am richer than 94% of the world’s population. That can only be defined as aristocracy. 

Americans spent over 10 billion dollars on Halloween this year, which is more than the entire GDP of 60 countries. Americans will spend around 900 billion dollars for Christmas, which is more than the GDP of 173 countries – all but 17. Just Christmas. Scientists estimate that if everyone on earth lived the lifestyle of Americans, it would take five planet Earths to support them all. Guess that means I should be “glad” most people are poorer than Americans.

Yet when I drive through neighborhoods of houses that look just like mine with a Starbucks and a Panera on every corner, when everyone around me goes to Disneyland and Outback Steakhouse, I struggle to put my head above the water and remember how most of the world lives. It’s easy to fool myself into believing that just about everyone has what I have, that I am in the majority. Or perhaps I’m poorer than the majority since I can’t afford pedicures, cruises and designer purses.

A friend in Tanzania wrote to tell us that he hasn’t had a job for a year, so could we front him the money to start a new business? And my immediate thought was no, because I just found out this morning that my child needs braces.

And my next thought was that I just chose braces over my friend’s desperation to put food on the table and pay school fees for his kids. 

I like to pretend I’m not wealthy. Jesus said that to whom much has been given, much will be required, so if I’m not rich, He can’t require much of me. I can hunker down and pay for braces and not worry about people who need the money more than I do.

Read the rest at the EFCA blog.

Selling Our Souls to Soccer?

By Amy Medina

On August 5, 2022

In How Americans Think, Parenting

Josiah came home to us at nine months old and found the ping pong balls on the second day. They were the perfect size for his tiny fists and he crawled around the house with one in each hand, clicking on the tile floors.

His first word was daddy and his second word was ball and I’m not bitter about that at all of course.

All his favorite toys centered around soccer. On Sundays after church, we ate at P-Square and while we waited for our rice and beans and mishkaki (P-Square had the best mishkaki), he and his sisters would hunt around the plastic tables for bottle caps. Soon he had enough so that each kind was a soccer team – like, Fanta was Manchester United and Sprite was Liverpool. Gil made him a soccer field out of green pressboard and Josiah spent hours playing bottlecap soccer, arranging his “players” in perfect formation.

Every year for his birthday, the only gift he wanted was the new version of the FIFA video game. So every fall, we figured out a way for somebody to bring us FIFA 2014 or 2015 or 2016 out to Tanzania. His parties were soccer themed for six years in a row.

He mastered a diving header at three and a bicycle kick at four. He played soccer before school, at recess, and after school and usually came home with his lunch uneaten because he played then too. When I nagged him about eating lunch, he asked me to make him something he could shove down his throat in 30 seconds.

In Tanzania, I loved that Josiah loved soccer and I loved watching him play. He joined the HOPAC team and had a couple of practices and a game each week. Maybe twice a year, he had a tournament on a Saturday. Often, Gil was his coach. On Sunday evenings, families would informally gather at HOPAC and play together – all ages. Soccer almost always happened at HOPAC so it flowed easily into our lives.

Two years ago, we moved to America, and I started hating soccer. Josiah was quickly recruited for an AYSO club team, and we said yes because during the pandemic, we were eager to help him make connections. And thus, the full force of what it means to have a kid play club soccer crashed down on me, with evening practices and games almost every weekend – year-round.

I threw several little hissy fits last year. I seethed against the hurried family dinners and the lack of free time on weekends. I mourned our busyness and inability to spend more time in ministry. But then I looked around and other families didn’t seem fazed by this. Driving an hour to a tournament every Saturday was apparently normal life for American parents. I experienced serious culture shock.

Gil and I have never had aspirations for our kids to go far in sports. We don’t have lofty goals for college; we drive past the community college five minutes from our house and cheerfully announce, “Hey kids, wave hello to your future college!” I rail against this American culture that tells me I must push my children to reach their potential in every area, that success in school and sports or arts is the ultimate goal of parenting.

Josiah always said he wanted to be a professional soccer player when he grew up. And I would always smile condescendingly and say, “That’s a nice dream, Buddy, but it’s not going to happen. Choose something else.” This was usually followed by, “Get off your backside and do your homework.”

Unfortunately for me, this summer the coach of an elite team invited Josiah to be a starter on his team. He told us that Josiah could likely play for a Division I college. And possibly become a professional player.

My Body, My Choice: The Argument of Autonomy

By Amy Medina

On July 6, 2022

In Abortion, How Americans Think

My mom always told me that my first full sentence was (with all the attitude a two-year-old can muster), “I can do it myself!”

You could say that the rest of my life has been one big lesson in precisely the opposite: I cannot, actually, do it myself.

Sometimes I can’t even keep a grip on reality. There are times in extreme anxiety when I’ve told Gil or a friend, “When I feel this way, you need to tell me this truth.” Without other people, I wonder if I would even be sane.

Children raised with minimal human interaction are underdeveloped mentally, socially, emotionally. Our very existence is dependent on others.

So isn’t it ironic that in America, we idolize autonomy? Americans love choices. Whether it’s frozen yogurt toppings, owning a gun, getting a vaccine, wearing a mask, or determining your gender, we champion individual decisions. Follow your heart. You be you. Your body, your choice.

Independence is such a part of the air we breathe that we might not realize that it’s not a universal value.

Did you know that when compared with other countries, the “Individualism” score for the United States ranks the highest in the entire world? Autonomy is not a universal value. With few exceptions, every country in the world values connection to family and society more than we do.

I asked a friend from Europe what he found unexpected about American culture. He said, “Going into a sandwich shop and choosing your own toppings.” In Europe, they choose the toppings for you. But here, you can have it your way.

In America, we hand babies a spoon at six months old. We praise the three-year-old who puts on his shoes. “You’re such a big girl!” is the ultimate toddler compliment. But I’ve met Tanzanian mamas who still breastfeed at three and Indian mamas who are still spoon-feeding their four-year-olds. They are in no hurry for their children to gain independence.

Autonomy is not a universal value. So should we step back and evaluate it?

Does God Want Us to Fight For Our Freedom?

By Amy Medina

On February 16, 2022

In Fear, How Americans Think, Living Like a Missionary

Early in our marriage, Gil casually mentioned that he wasn’t sure he would have been on the side of the Patriots in the Revolutionary War.

I wondered if I had married some kind of Benedict Arnold. Movies, songs, and Christian school ingrained in me that Patriots were on God’s side – they were the good guys, the heroes. The Loyalists were filthy rotten traitors who had no right to call themselves American, let alone Christian.

But Gil has always been one to question the status quo; it drives me crazy, but that’s part of why I fell in love with him. He explained that he is deeply grateful for American freedoms, and he is not necessarily a pacifist. He simply doesn’t know if “taxation without representation” was a biblical reason to go to war.

That’s my Gil; he always has to bring the Bible into it. I wish it was easier to ignore him.

(If you’re wondering if I am heading into the realm of crazy talk, please, don’t deport me yet. Hang in there with me.)

I sense a pervasive worldview among Americans: God wants us to fight for our freedom. Let your memory roll through American history – the wars, the invasions, the protests, the marches. Americans believe that fighting for freedom is a God-ordained right….even a responsibility.

But is this biblical truth?

Ironically, first-century Jews expected Jesus to be their George Washington, leading them in their own Revolutionary War. The oppression they experienced under Rome went far beyond unfair taxation. Jesus’ disciples waited with bated breath for the moment when he would call them to arms to overpower the Romans.

Except, he never did.

Back When I Took Scissors on a Plane

By Amy Medina

On August 27, 2021

In Book Recommendations, How Americans Think

20 years ago this month, Gil and I were boarding our first flight to Tanzania.

As we went through security, my carry-on bag got pulled aside. I watched patiently as the agent unzipped my black roller bag, poked around, and pulled out a full-sized pair of Fiskars scissors.

I was mortified. “I’m so sorry,” I fumbled. “I was using those for cutting tape for boxes and I meant to take them out before we left for the airport. You can confiscate them.”

He shrugged, put the scissors back into my bag, and waved me through.

I was taken aback. I recall telling Gil, “Fiskars scissors are really sharp. I’m surprised they are allowing me to take them on the plane.”

I don’t remember anything else about that journey. But that memory stayed with me because it was just a few weeks later when 19 terrorists with knives about as big as my scissors forever changed air travel, America, and the world.