Category: Other Page 8 of 184

Yes, I Am Judgmental

On April 6, 2019

Let’s say that one day you meet a modern-day slave owner in your own country. He’s found a legal loophole to get away with it, and he finds no moral problem with owning slaves. He argues passionately that he is good to his slaves and that they have a much better life than they did before he owned them. He staunchly believes that they have consented to this way of life, which wouldn’t be far-fetched if they came from poor, hierarchical societies.

In fact, he gets angry with you if you dare question his right to own slaves. Who are you to judge me for my personal choices? If you don’t like slavery, that’s fine; then don’t own slaves. But don’t impose your values on me.

Not many of us would be satisfied with that argument. We wouldn’t be able stay silent about what this man was doing. We would have a moral obligation to speak up.

How judgmental of us.

Humans are hard-wired to make judgments. We can say that we are open-minded and accepting and not bigoted until we’re blue in the face, but when someone comes along who tries to justify raping a child or stealing our car or owning slaves, we suddenly become very judgmental indeed.

So can we please stop trying to pretend that we are not judgmental?

I have chosen to define my moral standards from a historical, literal interpretation of the Bible. I have some pretty significant reasons for that, which will perhaps be for another day’s discussion. But that decision means that I believe a lot of things that are quite contrary to what many in my culture believe. Yet somehow that makes me a mean-spirited, bigoted, even dangerous person. Some would say that I need to be silenced for what I believe. At the very least, I should keep my opinions to myself, and not try to impose what I believe on society.

So why wouldn’t that standard be permitted for the slave-owner? Why shouldn’t he too be allowed to make his own personal choices in how he lives his life and not be confronted by others who judge his morals?

If it seems obvious to you why it would be important to judge the slave-owner, can you therefore try to understand why it is important to me to have the freedom to speak up about biblical morality? A person’s individual choices about personhood, abortion, sexuality, gender, and family affect all of us when they start shaping our society. None of us live in a vacuum. We can’t assume that anyone’s personal choices won’t affect other people, because one person’s choices affect other people’s thinking–and that’s how cultures change, and how whole worldviews change. Your personal choices are a big deal to me, as mine should be to you.

“Being judgmental” has become a modern-day badge of shame, and it has caused many of us to be afraid to speak up about what we believe is best for society. But that’s not fair. Because those who are labeling others as judgmental are doing the exact same thing–making judgments.

There’s an important distinction to make here. Being judgmental is often equated with arrogance, and that is often true. There’s a difference between being nasty, cold, or rude with someone you disagree with, versus being kind, but still openly disagreeing. Making moral judgments shouldn’t have to assume arrogance. Christians don’t always do this right, and that’s a problem. Christians often need to do better at speaking the truth in love. But non-Christians need to realize that it’s impossible to live as a non-judgmental person.

The bigger, more important questions are these: What is the basis for your judgments? How do you decide whether something is right or wrong? Every single one of us needs to have an answer for those questions, because that’s the starting point for having an honest discussion about what is best for our society.

Yes, I’m judging you. You are judging me too. Let’s get over it and have a conversation.

*******

*This piece was originally titled, “Yes, I’m Judging You.” I changed the title to better reflect what I was trying to communicate.

After dialogue with readers, I also want to add that I recognize that not all Christians agree on the “literal and historical” meaning of Scripture. That’s okay–there is room for debate on certain issues. But Christians who agree that there is a literal and historical meaning at least gives us a starting place for discussion. We might not agree on what that meaning is, but that should just compel us to deeper study to find that meaning, not throw it out as our source of authority.

Overall, I’m not particularly happy with this piece as I think it comes across as too defensive. I’m not sure if it’s particularly helpful. Maybe I’ll just eventually delete it. 🙂

The Big Bad Wolf

By Amy Medina

On March 15, 2019

In Other

I keep a list of things that inspire me to write, but the list just keeps getting longer but the ideas don’t get crossed off. My head is at HOPAC for nine hours a day and what’s left goes to family and cooking and other exciting things like trying to navigate the US immigration system so that we can get Johnny his US citizenship.

I get brilliant flashes of inspiration but no time to work them out, and for a person who has grown accustomed to processing my thinking by writing, this has created a massive traffic jam in my head.

In my old life, the one where I would sit at my computer and contemplate the intersection of my American-ness with Tanzanian culture to the soundtrack of Dora the Explorer, I used to get sleepy all the time. I would constantly find myself nodding off, and it didn’t matter how much sleep I had gotten the night before. I think I was bored. I know I was bored. Bored and restless. But I also had time to bring meals to new moms and bake 100 cupcakes at a time and have people over for dinner every weekend. And I had time to write.

And now I am often exhausted but I don’t get sleepy, even when I am supposed to, because my mind is so full of so many bazillions of details that I can’t shut it off. I feel like a kid digging a hole in wet sand right where the waves stretch, the kind of hole where no matter how much sand you pull out of it, the hole never gets deeper. You can even have a giant pile of wet sand next to that hole–sitting there as a monument of all you think you have accomplished–but the hole never gets dug. I keep waiting for the day when I will finally feel like I am on top of everything, but I’ve been at this job for 19 months now, and that hole still has just as much sand in it.

My eye started twitching the other day, which is always a sure sign of stress, which I’m pretty sure was instigated by the United States Department of Immigration, which has, I believe, a secret plan to drive me over the edge. All I’m trying to do is complete the process of getting citizenship for my son who has been in our legal custody for well over three years now, which seems like it should be simple (since it was relatively so for our other three children), but as any good American knows, immigration to America is no longer simple. These days I’m picturing US immigration as a doorless, windowless, impenetrable bunker that refuses to give anyone any shred of useful information other than one guy who growls through a peephole, “You want information? Use your children’s college fund to hire an immigration lawyer! Now go away!” and maybe “Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin!” just for good measure.

There goes my twitching eye again.

Maybe this is why I was the Big Bad Wolf for Book Character Day last week. I huffed and I puffed, but in the end I ended up roasted in a pot.

Your hunch is probably right. I am losing it. You might want to just walk away slowly at this point.

What I really want to do is sit here and write a good long essay exploring the role of stress in a Christian’s life. When is it good? When is it burnout? When was my life more glorifying to God–during those days when I made people happy with my cupcakes, or these days when I spend most of my days writing people emails that I know will make them unhappy?

That’s an exaggeration, of course. Not all of my emails make people unhappy. But I can think of at least a dozen this week that did. There’s a reason why principals have a bad reputation. (Like I said, Big Bad Wolf.)

But the problem is that I am too stressed and my brain is too full to be able to do any evaluating; all I can do is hang on for dear life and keep frantically scooping sand out of that hole.

I know I need to actively search for more rest and I know that after one more week, I’ll have a break from school, so things will look different at this time a week from now. But I also want to somehow figure out how to live fully and gloriously and fearlessly in the middle of the stress, because this is where I think I’m supposed to be. If I’m looking around and it really seems, from all I can tell, that I’m living in the will of God, then there’s got to be a way to do it without eye twitching. So if you’ve got that figured out, can you let me know? Because I don’t have time to think about it.

Josiah Went to the Amani Rainforest

By Amy Medina

On March 10, 2019

In Other

(So did Gil, who took all these wonderful pictures.)

Going to Amani in fifth grade is the highlight of the year, and since that tradition started way back when I taught fifth grade at HOPAC, it’s especially fun to see my own kids go. In fact, one of my first posts on this blog was from an Amani trip!

African violets are native to the Amani Rainforest.

So are chameleons of all shapes and sizes.

These guys are much more interesting in the forest than in my bathroom.

The Back-Burner of Missions (and Why It Shouldn’t Be That Way)

By Amy Medina

On February 10, 2019

In Other

Four-year-olds don’t walk, they twirl and prance. They think everything about the world is fascinating, even writing their names or matching shapes or learning to sit criss-cross applesauce.

On Saturday, I met dozens of them. They visited our kindergarten room while some teachers and I asked them to count and say their letters and watched them play and dance while we took notes. Some were shy, some were cheerful, some, we could tell, would be a handful, but that just made them all the more charming.

I was enchanted. But I was also depressed. There were just too many. Three times too many, to be exact. All of them had come to be assessed for next year’s kindergarten class, and all of them were wonderful. But there were just too many. I will only be able to offer places to about a third of them.

Their parents sat outside drinking coffee under the trees. Their eyes were hopeful, expectant, a little nervous. I tried not to make much eye contact. It is just too hard, knowing that I will have to turn down most of them. I don’t want to get their hopes up.

Their emails turn my stomach into knots. We’ve never wanted any other school for our child since she was born! HOPAC is our first and only choice. My child loved his visit with you! He is so excited to attend HOPAC now.

I know my response will break their hearts. Your child was wonderful; we just don’t have room. He can join the 40 other children on our waiting list for that class.

We never advertise, but we never fail to have at least sixty applicants for kindergarten. For some families, it’s because of the Christian environment at HOPAC. For some, it’s our reputation of sending students to the world’s top universities. For others, it’s the price. Among similar schools in Tanzania, we offer the best quality for the lowest fees.

Mystified, parents will ask, Why don’t you just expand?

And the answer is always the same: We can’t get enough teachers.

Though over half of our students are Tanzanian, we are a missionary school, relying on volunteers from westernized countries to raise support to teach here. Of course, we hire Tanzanians whenever we can, but finding Tanzanian Christians who are qualified to teach in an international school is not easy. Which means we are dependent on the Church (mainly from the US and Europe) to send us teachers.

But for some reason, recruiting and sending missionary teachers is not a priority for the Church, or even for most mission agencies. Maybe because teachers fall into the category of second-class missionaries. Sometimes it feels like church planters or aid workers seem more exciting or important.

I don’t understand why teachers are often on the back-burner of missions. Parents of all kinds of religious faiths are pounding down the door of our Christian school, desperate for their kids to attend. We get the privilege of influencing those kids for seven hours a day for thirteen years. We teach with a biblical worldview. We train our students in poverty alleviation. The gospel permeates everything we do. How is this ministry not a priority?

Please, Church, prioritize missionary teachers. Find them. Encourage them. Support them. It’s one of the most strategic avenues of missions that I’ve witnessed in my twenty years overseas.

And if you’re a Christian teacher, why not you?

We Have a Hedgehog and His Name is Hamilton

By Amy Medina

On January 27, 2019

In Other

“What do baby hedgehogs eat?” I hear Grace ask.

“I have no idea,” I say.

She gives me a 13-year-old look. “I wasn’t asking you, Mom. I was asking Siri.”

Well, excuuuuuse me.

Contrary to what many may believe about our life in Tanzania, we don’t live in the Serengeti; we live in a city of six million people. But we do have a rather enormous backyard, and it has brought us an interesting variety of wildlife: Chickens (not really wildlife, but certainly wild), tortoises, kingfishers, monitor lizards, bats, snakes, and hedgehogs. I got over the novelty of hedgehogs a long time ago….those things are loud when they want to be–like when a dog is trying to kill it. After many, many evenings of frantic barking and wailing hedgehogs, we got used to finding the poor prickly creatures and chucking them over the fence, just to get everybody to shut up.

But then my children found a baby hedgehog, which, according to my children, is apparently an entirely different category of hedgehog which shouldn’t be thrown over the fence but needs to be brought into the house and fed and named and snuggled (as much as a creature with spines can be snuggled). The children’s father immediately went along with this idea as soon as Google told him that this type of hedgehog will cost you about $200 in the States. He’s always up for a good deal. The children’s mother was not consulted, because she is the family’s stick-in-the-mud.

So there you have it: We now have added Hamilton Willow Leo Medina into our family, which is a very long name for something that weighs about five ounces. Hammie now has his own, homemade, elaborate cage complete with a hamster wheel, even though he is not a hamster and may not like wheels. In fact, he showed very little appreciation for the cage, because while we were eating dinner he got out of it and got lost in my bedroom, which meant that there were four children crawling around the floor with flashlights while Mom was hollering, “I don’t want a hedgehog to die in my bedroom so no one gets to watch AFV until you find it!”

And of course, this is all very confusing to Snoopy, who as a Jack Russell was bred to search and destroy small moving creatures and has, until this point, been encouraged to do so. But no one seems to listen to me when I bring this up. Siri is smarter than me anyway, so what do I know?