Feeling sick

A lot has happened to me recently. A baptism by fire, I have felt like I have been drunk or asleep for five years, only now to wake up and wonder what happened. Why are things out of place? Why are the familiar things missing and where did these unrecognisable things come from? I do not recognise my surroundings. I cannot tell where the years have gone. Where did they start? Where did they end? How could it have been so long?

I look around at all this, stuff. All of it served only to distract me. None of it gave me any comfort. None of it gave me any consolation. I have traded away the things of God, traded away His purpose and His blessings, and gotten what exactly? I feel sick when I look at any of it. I feel unfaithful when I touch any of it. I am cold when it surrounds me, hollow when I gaze at it. I compare it to what I was once given, and I hate it all.

I am the prodigal son of Luke 15. Like in the narrative I dwelled in my Father’s house, enjoyed His provision, took advantage of His love. I lived out my Father’s will, I was happy, I was blessed.

Then I left.

The son squandered all of his inheritance on loose living. He traded it away for meaningless distraction. I filled my time with stuff, distracted myself with empty belongings.

The son was left empty and depressed, and planned to go beg his father to make him a servant, that he might just be close to what he threw away. I was left empty and depressed, and planned to go beg my God to make me a slave, that I might have some reason to exist.

So the son went back home. I went back to the land I was once called.

Now it is today. I can see the parallel’s by looking back, so I look to the story to discover my hope.

Still a far way off, the father saw the son. Running to him with no anger, he ignored the son’s plea, overjoyed only that his beloved son was back. Before I got back, my Father saw me, holding no anger but happy that His beloved son was back.

The father gave his son the best robe (blessing), put a ring on his finger (position as a son), handles on his feet (purpose), and gave the fattened calf that they may celebrate (the, not ‘a’).

So I look forward, not to servitude, not even to a consolation prize. I look forward to the best blessing, to what I was meant to have all along. I look forward to the position as a Son. I look forward to the purpose of my Father. I look forward to the blessing.

I look forward to my restoration.

Feeling full

Last Friday I was walking around town during my lunch break. As I was walking I happened past a homeless man begging on the street (as in, sitting on the ground, downward gaze, with a hand-written sign explaining that he is homeless). As I was passing I noticed a lady standing beside him digging through her purse with her back to the man. Grabbing a pamphlet out, she handed it to him, nodded shyly but reassuringly, and walked off. As I passed I saw the cover of the pamphlet, a picture of a pink flower with the writing ‘You’re special’ across it. The look on the man’s face in response to her shy nod just caused some kind of reaction in me. First amusement, then thoughtfulness.

There is a certain theology referred to as ‘Liberation Theology’. It was prominent in the 50s and 60s, starting in Latin-America as a political movement in response to the social injustice at the time. Gustavo Gutierrez, often called the father of Liberation Theology was one day at a school as a visiting professor. While he was there a lavish buffet was held. One senior professor, armed with a plate piled with food, approached Gutierrez and asked him, “So, Professor Gutierrez, explain liberation theology to me.” Gutierrez looked at the man. “It’s a matter of the stomach”, he responded. “The stomach?” the senior professor, himself a portly man, replied in confusion. “Yes,” Gutierrez continued as he looked at the professor’s loaded plate. “You do theology differently when your stomach is full than when it is empty.” (Liberation Theology for Beginners – OnFaith.) 

I love this story, and never has another story made me think so much and for so long afterwards. Context is everything! Now, I can’t say if that woman with the pamphlet was a church goer or not (though I’d recognise that budget printing anywhere), but the idea of Liberation Theology underlines the problem with the church, with christians, with mission, and with evangelisation as a whole.

From that woman’s perspective, to know that you are special, that you are cared for, and that you matter to someone is the most important thing. Perhaps her need for food, shelter and security were so well met that the only real lacking in her life was to do with self. That was her context, and so that was the need she looked to answer. But from that man’s perspective, from the look on his face when she turned from rummaging in her purse to give him not money, but a pamphlet, you could feel the earth stumble as if struck by his agape jaw. His self-worth likely wasn’t one of his immediate needs. You do theology, you do life, you do everything differently when your stomach is full than when it is empty.

So how does this fit in with the wider picture? Well, I kind of always felt that preaching without suitable action was kind of like flirting with no end game. It just kind of fizzles out into nothingness. When I was in Thailand I realised that just telling a man who was struggling to feed his family that God loved him was a bit of a waste of time, particularly if I would finish up telling him and then go on to eat out of boredom. If I refused to show love by action, then how could he be expected to receive that love? How could you expect someone to sit and listen about Jesus from a well fed man, when the sound of their roaring stomach is deafening? I might as well stand in front of them eating roast pork, preaching in between chews, and finish by complaining “oh, this is a bit dry” as I throw out the pig!

It is essential for us to give people what they need, not what we want them to have. It is easy to say that all you need is Jesus when you already have everything else, but I can’t help but feel a sense of meaningless when you insist on a loving God who provides for our needs to someone who is so hungry that he may not wake up tomorrow. People need to know about a loving God. Know, not hear. Preaching should be the follow up, not the show itself. People need to matter, their needs need to matter, they need to matter, otherwise the God we preach will not matter to them.

 

The Rights of the Served

Why you do something is, I believe, just as important as what you do. If you do a great thing, but with bad reasons, then it ceases to be great. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:1: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

In my travels I have come across very meaning Christians. I wouldn’t say ‘well-meaning’, as that is debatable, but meaning none-the-less. Surely, one would think, if a person is benefitted, then the reasons why we do are second, that the ends justify the means, and perhaps even: “beggars can’t be choosers”. But that is not true, not true at all. For each and every person, regardless of need has the right to dignity, to self-worth, and to respect. 

I have met people who have given up their time and money to travel across the world to help the poor natives, able to return home, head held high, and tell tales to all their friends of how they saved the world. Those natives, poor buggers, how life has surely delivered them a bad hand. This, friends, is not love, is not well-meaning, and is far from being a great thing. In fact, I’d say that person would have been better off spending their money on a brand new TV, a fancy dinner, or something else that is honest. Honest, because at least they do not masquerade their purchase as anything other than self-serving, as they do when they help those poor natives.

Does it really matter though? I mean, regardless of the “giver’s” motive, a person benefits from their actions and their need is fulfilled, right? Wrong. In 1964 US President Lyndon B. Johnson ran a ‘War on Poverty’, at which time he visited the likes of eastern Kentucky. Opening her article ‘In Appalachia, Poverty is in the Eye of the Beholder’, Pam Fessler wrote: “But when he did [go], he opened a wound that remains raw today. People in the region say they’re tired of always being depicted as poor.” By bringing the country’s attention to the place, he took away the people’s dignity, making them a point of sympathy, eschewing them, and even opening them up to be a target of ridicule.

When I lived at the children’s home I did not get along with the group responsible with raising support for them. I make no effort to hide the fact that I believe they do a shitty job. I read the blurbs about each of the kids on their website one day after they visited, and was disgusted by what I saw. Generic, shallow descriptions accompanied posed photos of the kids. This disgusted me, as did the people’s interactions with the kids, because I loved them. I knew the children; their good points and their bad. They were my family, and they were more than what they were shown as. They were not some cause, they were individuals. They were unique, and the truth about them was far more loveable than the garbage that group was peddling. It would have been forgivable, if not for the fact that they summed up each individual so poorly only because they knew them so poorly, and they knew them so poorly because they didn’t care to know them any better, and they didn’t care to know them any better because truly, they didn’t love them. And as a result, the kids didn’t love them back.

Truly, if you think about anything I have written today, let it be this. Do not do something simply because it seems right. Do it because you are compelled to by love. It is better that you be an asshole if that resembles the truth, than to be a sanctimonious scumbag masquerading as a saint.

Many people visit poor sods in downtrodden places. But the truth is, everything is relative. Poverty is relative. To me, a man without a home may be poor. To another looking at me: “you call that a home?!?” To help a person without any love behind that is then meaningless; nothing more than a showing off of wealth. Going overseas to “help”, simply so that you can return home to your friends, head held up high, saying, even believing, that “I’m a good person. I help people!” It’s meaningless. What you do should not come by an effort to be a “good person”, but should come as a result of genuine love. Motives are important.

And people in the church, you need to be particularly vigilant in why you do things. If you are secretly a prick then fine! Good! “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick!” (Matthew 9:12). Let your actions come as a result of love, or even well intentions will lead to pain. I have seen people come to church, get involved, and meet people. They share their lives, their struggles, their aspirations with their church leaders and church friends. They are prayed for. How intimate. There is little more intimate than praying with another person about their deepest most darkest. But then, something might happen. Perhaps they move. For whatever reason they do not attend quite so much. Maybe they have a struggle, or maybe they just aren’t all that convinced. I have seen this many times, and many times I have seen that church leader, that church friend, that representation of Christ and the church who prayed with them, simply forget about them. No. Life moves on, but you don’t just share such intimacy with a person only to disregard them if it seems you cannot ‘win’ them. What is your goal? What is your reason? Love? Or something else?

People are not prizes, people are not projects. People are individuals, with their own stories, their own challenges, their own pains, and their own joys. Christians are not called simply to do good things. Why is it called ‘fruit’? Because it grows as a result of something. It grows off of something. Christians are called to love, and that love cannot be forced, it cannot be faked, it comes from deep within, forever aching, forever pushing forward, struggling to produce ‘fruit’. You cannot force fruit, if you strain and strain all that’s going to come out is shit. Be honest. Have integrity. Don’t pretend. The best actions, if done with the worst motives will only bring pain!

Do not help a person because you feel bad for them. That is a relationship of superiority. Rather, serve a person’s needs because you love them. That is a relationship of love, and it instills in the served their rights as a human being, and their rights to be loved. Anything less is a resounding gong or a clashing symbol.

Moving on

I don’t want to go back to Thailand.

When I was in Thailand I achieved nothing. I wasted my time and money, and I lost years of my twenties that I will never get back. I met some terrible people who used and abused me, and I left there a shell of my former self.

I was blind. I endured mistreatment all in the belief that it was for a greater good, that it was leading somewhere greater. I chalked it all up to taking up my cross, suffering for Christ.

I arrived there, a light so bright burning within me, enough passion to be called an inferno. I left, no more than the smouldering remains of a fire that had long since been extinguished.

I’m sorry to all those who believed in me, all those whose lives I in some way influenced or “inspired” by my “selflessness”. I am a fraud. I’m sorry to the kids that I let down. I’m sorry for the money that was wasted on me. It seems it was all for naught.

This is how I feel most of the time, ashamed by what I let happen to me. But let’s sit down and talk for a while, as I found myself doing with my friend Kim the other day. Not about me and “purpose”, but let’s just reminisce for a while. Let’s just talk about how I used to get in trouble saying the wrong thing. Let’s talk how I used to ride my bike at a speed that would make my mother hit me (if only she knew). Let’s talk about the daily struggle. Let’s talk about my friends, and the kids there. Let’s talk about the people. Let’s talk about the issues.

Suddenly my heart begins to beat, as it did so many years ago. Suddenly my eyes light up. Suddenly that faded ember breaths again, and an excitement peppers my words.

I shouldn’t want ever to return. I shouldn’t want ever to go to that place where I was hurt so badly, where the passion of my youth was put down so violently. I shouldn’t ever want to show my face in the place where I feel I failed so badly. And yet, I do. I really, really do.

I am haunted by the thought that I failed, yet so far on many there still consider me family. Despite my inability to take pride in my time there, I am still remembered, still present in the lives of those I knew, still loved, still unique. I visited last month, almost two years on, and I barely skipped a beat. I was still warmly embraced. I was still their “P’Mikon”.

The question isn’t whether that is where I should be. The question is “who do i see God to be?” Did he abandon me? Is He still with me? It is obvious where I should be. It is obvious where I want to be.

I want to go back to Thailand.

Where I am now

It has been a long time since the rug was pulled out from beneath me. I’m still angry, but now I accept that. I accept that I am still angry, and I might always be so. Somehow though, against all the wisdom offered to me that I should move on, forgive, and stop being angry, reaching this point of acceptance has been liberating. Right or wrong, accepting that I may never move on has actually allowed me to move on somewhat. I feel a change in the air – a change in myself. Now, instead of trying my hardest not to be angry, and becoming frustrated at my inability to do so, I feel a calmness, that wherever I am, and however I feel, it’s ok… I’M ok.

And now that my sense of fight or flight hasn’t been dulled, I can start to see the future. I’m no longer stuck focusing on how the present has come from the past, and now can see how my present can avoid that same past from repeating in the future. People may attempt to take me down again, but this time I’ll be ready. The things I do now will stop the past from EVER repeating. I won’t let it happen again.

Each step I take I now take with a purpose. How I feel, my emotions, they are secondary to that. One day I am scared, another I am a conqueror. One day I am sure, another I am seemingly aimless. But in spite of all that, the future is there, and it draws me near.