Skip to main content

Haiti 2012: June 1

I started early today and worked on my last day of school for the year until a little over an hour before we had to be at the church to leave. After a send-off prayer, we left for San Francisco International airport. The drive allowed me to get acquainted with a missions leader at the church, named Bill. From him, I learned something about my assumptions of other Christians: I tend to believe that Christians are so concerned with conforming to an image of the ideal Christian that they bury any opinions that might be seen as judgmental or cynical. Bill, however, was open and forthright in our conversation, and I wholly respected him for that.

The truth is that I have this assumption of other Christians because I see it in myself. I'm learning again, though, that God set us free from the chains of habitual and uncontrolled sin, not to strip us of our personalities and opinions so that we fit some uniform cultural perspective and lifestyle; but freed us instead to be "conformed to the likeness of his son." This means living out our lives with purpose and using the gifts God gave us to serve him. It doesn't mean conforming to a culture, but finding yourself, your uniqueness, and to see more clearly the blurred image of the perfect creation God originally intended us to be, free from the bondage of sin and at peace with him and each other.

All of this served to reinforce something I've learned through my own experience: to borrow from C.S. Lewis, I was reminded that God doesn't want nice people, but new men. Now on the flight from San Francisco, at 11:30 or so and among the lively chatter of close-quartered conversation, I found myself able to rest, knowing that I learned something today, not realizing at the time that God would bring further lessons.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...