California

It's been a while since I have last posted. I apologize for how long I've taken to get my thoughts together... I'm not even sure if they Are together, but I'm going to try anyways.

I warn you. I've had time to think and I've got some tough things to say.

Adjusting back to California life hasn't necessarily been difficult. I do have plenty to say about it though... It's easy to get drunk on all of the amenities we have here, so it's been more of a struggle to remember where I came from and remember where God has convicted me to change. It's been a little difficult reading some facebook statuses that have 20-somethings (some even older) complaining about the tiniest little things, just a week after being in a country where I sat with a young child dying of AIDs.

I recently read a post on a forum I participate on where a young man was bragging that he bought a $300 pair of "True Religion" jeans, and how he felt cool wearing them. There's some irony to that, isn't there. The country God chose to place me currently does follow this "True Religion." The religion isn't true, but it is a religion. Christians even give up Jesus to follow this religion from time to time. The sermon I heard in church last Sunday said something interesting about this topic. It was about imitation, and about how we all imitate somebody or something. Some people choose to imitate their neighbors... others celebrities or singers. Some people choose to imitate their parents or siblings... others choose to imitate their friends. When you boil it down though, we are either imitating Jesus Christ or we are imitating the opposite. If we aren't rooted in the love that Jesus gives us and our lives aren't a representation of that love, we are imitating the wrong person (and might be as far away from God as they are).

That poor young man is imitating a culture that tells him that he needs to buy expensive things to help cure his feelings of insecurity. He has an aching for something better, but is going to the wrong doctor. You don't go to an optometrist for brain surgery. Jesus says that he came to heal the sick, not the well. The devil acts in brilliant fashion in different parts of the world. He acts within the spiritual realm of witchcraft in Zambia, and acts in keeping us comfortable and fattened in the day of slaughter here in America. You don't even have to look to Zambia to see places where God's love needs to be spread. My college campus is full of people like the young man I described who are looking for the right thing in the wrong places. There are needs in your own backyard. Mine happens to be a university at the moment, and was Zambia for two months. Where is yours?

It's funny, because when you tell people that you spent two months in Zambia they often (naively) say how hard it must've been to see the poverty. Of course it is true that my heart broke when I saw children and adults who were just "surviving." Often times though, those same people had brighter smiles than the people I meet who are making six figures. When you are looking through the "American" lens at poverty, you think of people who are struggling to live. When you look through God's lens at poverty, you might also find people who are living plentifully in death.

I don't hate my culture. I don't dislike my peers in California at all... I love them. My heart just breaks for them. You expect me to say my heart breaks for Zambia (and it did and still does), but you might not be as happy and warm-hearted to hear that my heart breaks for my own country just as much. Where there is physical need in Zambia to go along with the spiritual needs that every country has, there is a spiritual paradox that I'm afraid of in America. The average Christian (which translates to a follower of Christ) doesn't resemble Christ at all. Buying a $200 cross necklace doesn't make you more Christian... it actually goes against how Jesus called us to spend our money. Putting a Jesus fish on a car that we never use to further his kingdom seems odd. There is a "popular Christian culture" that has been growing for the past 10-20 years that I am afraid of.

I'm not saying this from a "pedestal" that I think I'm better than other Christians. I'm the chief of all sinners. I say these things from experience! I mentioned jewelry because I bought a $100 ring that had a cross on it from C28 with good intentions. I wanted it to remind me of Jesus throughout my day. What it ended up doing was making me think highly of my ring, and think more about the shiny ring than of Jesus anyways - it aided me in my materialism. I'm the guy who often acts more "Christian" in front of people than I do in the darkness alone, and people think that I'm a perfect Christian. I like being regarded as a good Christian. I feed off of people's compliments. I've got plenty of problems, and am just as messed up (if not more) than any of the examples I've put out there. Please don't mistake me for thinking that I've somehow achieved a status to where I can speak down upon "American Christian Culture" just because I spent two months abroad.

What I can attest to however, is that God has been speaking to me and convicting me in things that I usually wouldn't think of had I not seen his global perspective this summer. He may not be convicting you in the same ways, and that's fine. I'm not here to judge anyone, and it doesn't mean that if you own a pair of "True Religion" jeans you aren't Christian. I would argue that that purchase wasn't within the will of God, but I would also argue that my purchases of fast food (which add up very very fast) don't fit into His will either.

What I'm hoping to do is share ways that I have been convicted against myself, and ways that my heart breaks for my country. Nothing more, nothing less.

Often times a missionary leaves his or her soil with a feeling that he is going to "save" wherever he or she is going. That might even be correct. What happened for me however, was that every time God graced me with the opportunity to be used to save, I was saved ten-fold. I come back from Zambia saved ten times as much as I might have saved others. Seeing God in a new way and sharing his compassion for the helpless (orphans and widows) taught me more than I could have ever taught the orphans and widows.

The purpose of my writing about what I learned is not to tell you what to do or not to do, but to see if God wants to use what he taught me to teach you.

That said, it has been hard to transition into American ministry. With Zambia it was cut and dry: I'm there to disciple and serve orphans who otherwise would be in absolutely desolate situations. In America, I'm trying to spread the name of Jesus to a people who are sick of Christians. They like the idea of Jesus, but hate his followers. What's even worse is to think of all the ways I've contributed to that. Keeps my life in check, that's for sure.

On a completely different note, I miss the children in the My Father's House homes. I miss the Zambian staff, and I miss the Mamas who run the homes and love the kids every day. I knew every time I got to hang with those kids I was one of the luckiest people in the world, but it's still hard to know that I don't know if God will ever let me go back. Every Orphan's Hope is doing some amazing things in Zambia. I can only pray that I can be a part of them again sometime later in life.

-Ben