Christians

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." This quote, commonly (but not definitively) attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, often reflects my own sentiments. I am often confronted with words spoken and behaviors exhibited Christians that fly in the face of what I understand about the heart of Jesus Christ. My pain increases when I think about what all those who do not know Jesus might now think of him. Its a unique feeling of awkward discomfort-- I classify it as an "I-want-to-hide-under-a-rock-for-a-hundred-years-or-until-this-goes-away" emotion. The representation of un-Christlike Christians in the media is so pervasive that I hesitate to identify myself as a Christian; not as much that I don't want to identify with Christ as much as I don't want to be identified with people who would do or say such awful things.

I was reading a book this afternoon called "Good News About Injustice" by Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Mission. There's a a section that talks about the history of justice work in the United States, and how much of it was fueled by the evangelical church. It told the stories of Dr. Kate Bushnell, Reverend Edgar Gardner Murphy, and  Jessie Daniel Ames, three Christians who played a major role in abolishing forced prostitution, child labor, and mob lynching in the United States. It was their belief in Christ gave them the conviction and the determination to risk their own health to stand up against a system that attacked what they understood about the heart of Jesus.

These three are far from being the only Christians who have done this. There are hundreds of similar stories about Christians, Protestants and Catholics alike, who have chosen to live out the love of Christ for humanity at risk to their own lives. William Wilberforce, Mother Teresa, Donaldina Cameron, Martin Luther King, Jr., are just a couple more prominent names. Then there's the untold scores of men and women who have lived out their lives demonstrating the love of Jesus for their families, friends, strangers, and communities yet whose service has never been recognized by the Church at large. 

As I read this chapter, I realized that as many incredibly silly people who call themselves Christians as there are (and to be honest, I'm probably one of them more often than I care to admit), there are so many more that use their lives to paint beautiful pictures of what it means to embody the Jesus's love for a hurting world. This thought greatly reduces my level of cynicism. Gary Haugen writes that "... the biblical mandate to seek justice and rescue the oppressed is an integral and magnificent theme of the Christian heritage." Far from being averse to the label "Christian," I should be excited about the history from which I come and eager to join the millions of others who share a belief in a God who cares enough and is powerful enough to do something about injustice in this world. I hope to live my life in a way that blatantly demonstrates the love of Christ for all people.

Graduation

Well, I've graduated from college. It hit me as I was driving away that I'd never be coming back, and that felt strange. When you live somewhere, that place becomes your frame of reference, your mode of understanding life, your world. And just like that, that world is gone. How can something that for four years was the pattern for your thoughts and the borders of your existence suddenly vanish? But it has. And that's ok.

My mom shared with me once that when I graduated from high school, she worried that I wouldn't experience the same caliber of amazing friendships that I had in high school. But God was faithful, and I found a group of people in college who became my spiritual and emotional family, with relationships every bit as vibrant as those of high school.

As I move on  to the next phase of life, its tempting to despair that I will be left lonely and unfulfilled. I'm leaving the place where I cried and laughed and thought and loved. And although I will keep my high school and college friends who have filled my life with color and adventure, we may not always be geographically near each other. I know it will be a struggle to form a new home in Asia, Law School, and beyond. I can easily become afraid that I may end up feeling lost and homesick. When I start to think these thoughts, I am chided by Truth, who gently reminds me that I did basically nothing to form my friendships or my home in the first place. But really. I kind of awkwardly followed people around and then somehow we became friends. The people I would have chosen to be my friends never became so, but the friendships I did form were so much more worthwhile than the ones I originally desired. I didn't know when I chose to attend Spring Arbor how it would grow me in ways I could never imagine, but somehow I chose it anyway. I can only conclude that God steered my friendships and my life toward what he knew I would need, and I have no reason to believe that he'll abandon me to my own devices next time around.

I'm leaving college, but God has promised me hope, a future, and eternal pleasures in his presence. My friends and family will not always be near, but God was faithful in providing them to me in the first place, and he will provide again. I'm leaving college, my world for the last four years, and its strange, but its ok.

My Brother and my Enemy

The more I read words written by johns (customers of prostitutes and trafficked people), the more I am dissuaded from my initial irate anger toward them. These are not evil men; these are men caught in a trap. They have been caught in a variety of different traps, some of shattered self-esteem, some of betrayal, some of broken homes and emotions, some of unfulfillment. And by their actions they are creating traps for these young women, by creating a market for their owners to sell them repeatedly. Even the owners and pimps can be caught in their own kind of trap. I am becoming ever more convinced that not a single one of these human beings are evil. They are each imago dei, no different than I, that have fallen into traps of lonliness and desperation, and the evil one is using them to his own advantage, to further his personal cause of death and despair. I see him, jumping and dancing and clapping his hands in glee at all the destruction he has caused and that continues to perpetuate itself. He laughs at those who continue to make decisions that serve his purpose. He is the ultimate trafficker, forcing, frauding, and coercing us away from our true home with our Father with false promises of a better life. I am reminded of the verse in Ephesians 6: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The truth of this verse makes itself more apparent with every day. As I continue my journey in this fight against human trafficking, may I never forget that those whom I fight are not my enemies, but my brothers.