Category: Living Like a Missionary in America Page 2 of 5

Swimming in the Stuff of America

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On December 6, 2022

In American Worldview, Living Like a Missionary in America, 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.

This American High

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On March 7, 2022

In Eternity, Fear, Living Like a Missionary in America

When I was a girl, my most prized possession was my sticker collection. Around age 10, Mom took me to a craft boutique, and I clearly remember the moment I laid my eyes on the most perfect sticker book ever: A photo album with a pink hand-sewn cover, hearts embroidered on top. 

My Gram snuck stickers into birthday cards. I peeled every sticker off A+ quizzes. “Trading stickers” was my favorite friend activity, and I relished carefully placing each sticker in that perfect album, gazing upon their colorful, sublime wonder over and over again.

I lay in bed, worrying about fires and thieves and tidal waves, and knew confidently what item I would save first: that sticker book.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents dug out my boxes of childhood treasures from the depths of their garage and brought them to my house. Lo and behold, there was my sticker book.

I look disdainfully at the object of my childhood adoration and see it for what it really is: a book of sticky paper, now browning around the edges. Thirty-five years offer a great deal of perspective.

Last week journalist Mindy Belz tweeted, “Pentecostal leader in Moldova writes of daughter and her family vacating their apartment and moving in with him so Ukrainian refugees can live in her place.”

Would I be willing to do that?

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Does God Want Us to Fight For Our Freedom?

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On February 16, 2022

In American Worldview, Fear, Living Like a Missionary in America

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.  

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To the 68% Who Aren’t Thrilled About Refugees

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On May 11, 2021

In American Worldview, Book Recommendations, Living Like a Missionary in America

So I’m still trying to figure out why people pay money for ripped jeans and why cauliflower has become a pizza crust so I guess you could say that there are a lot of things that still really confuse me around here.

But there’s one thing that has me especially perplexed: American Christians’ aversion to refugees. 

A couple of years ago, a Pew Research Center Study reported this: “By more than two-to-one (68% to 25%), white evangelical Protestants say the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees. Other religious groups are more likely to say the U.S. does have this responsibility. And opinions among religiously unaffiliated adults are nearly the reverse of those of white evangelical Protestants: 65% say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country, while just 31% say it does not.”

Seriously, I don’t get it. Help me out here; I need to understand. What is it about being a “white evangelical protestant” in particular that makes a person so averse to America accepting refugees? Now, I get that saying “the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees” isn’t the same thing as saying, “We don’t want them here.” But the sentiment is related. Right? 

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When America Makes No Sense

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On February 5, 2021

In American Worldview, Living Like a Missionary in America

You can’t understand Tanzanians without understanding their view of the spirit world. It permeates every facet of life. Witchdoctors are often present at national soccer games, fending off the curses of the other team. Albino children have been known to have a limb cut off in the middle of the night, the appendage sold by a family member to a wealthy businessman who uses it in magic rituals. A herd of witchdoctor’s goats on our street ran free, tended by a spirit creature.

These beliefs were not just seen as superstitions or old wives tales. They were embedded in the worldview, part of the air the people breathed. Coming from our western, enlightened, scientific worldview, our heads would spin from these stories. But we learned, early on, that this was serious business. We needed to pay attention. 

If we had come in scoffing and mocking, critical and judgmental, how well do you think Tanzanians would have listened to us? They would have written us off. Though some stories were speculative, every Tanzanian has experienced situations with the spirit world that defy western imagination. They know what they have seen, or felt, or heard. Blowing it off was not an option. If we wanted to have a voice in Tanzania, we needed to first be learners. 

Steven Hawthorne* wrote, “If our impression of another culture is that it ‘makes no sense,’ then we can be sure that we are not making sense to them either. The solution is to become a learner.” 

My job these days is to help prepare new missionaries to move overseas. What I am discovering is that the same things they are learning can be just as easily applied to American Christians. 

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