The Irony of my Missions-Saturated Upbringing

I heard the Amy Carmichael story too, but like those little girls in India it was only one of millions and did not have nearly the impact on me as others did. For example, Dr. Helen Roseveare or Don Richardson or the late missionary linguist, David Watters, to name only three missionaries I remember vividly from missions conferences, all had a far greater impact on me. Perhaps the most formative impressions came from rather mundane conversations around our dinner table over the years with my parents’ legion of missionary friends. Pictures of these people hung on our massive kitchen bulletin board. We prayed for them, and we received their prayer letters, (a literary genre employing some of the poorest and least inspiring writing known to man. The exceptions are rare and precious.) The irony was that while these missionary stories and messages gave me much to consider in terms of the church universal and how the gospel comes to people who don’t know it, all the while they failed to address the problem of my own lack of understanding of the gospel. If I was to catalogue sermons I’ve heard and sort them according to text, (and this would be a very large catalogue) the tally for Acts 1:8, Matthew 28: 19-20, and/or Isaiah 6 would win hands down. All this emphasis on mission actually probably did some harm when disconnected from the gospel and nurtured in the heady rule-based culture of the college campus.

I have a few very close personal friends who are missionaries. The thing I know for sure is they are no different than I am, and have the same crises of faith and the same struggles relating to evangelical culture as I do. We probably wouldn’t be close friends if that weren’t true. Because of their elevated position in evangelical narratives of furthering the kingdom of God through what is perceived as an ultimate sacrifice of giving up their native land, language, culture, close proximity to family, etc., their spiritual crises are filled with even greater angst because while they do not think of themselves as impervious to run-of-the-mill human struggles, they feel that expectation placed on them by some of their supporters. They are very aware of their own weaknesses, and being on display to their supporters while they are struggling to figure out whether they even believe in what they are doing only makes it more difficult. To admit such a struggle feels risky, inviting criticism regarding their spiritual qualifications to do the task, and so they struggle on alone, coerced to play the heroic role given to them by evangelicalism. One of my dearest friends is in this situation right now. I can pray. I can affirm the value of the struggle. God has to do the rest, just as he is doing for me.

Exposed

I feel like Anne of Green Gables, who in response to Marilla's criticism that she talked far too much, reasoned that Marilla should be glad for all the things she could say but didn't. I do apologize if there is some unwritten rule about how often a person should post. I assume it means I'm a little more screwed up than the rest of you.

The last Books & Culture (click on imaginary link) featured a review of a book that feels to me wonderfully damning of this evangelical culture we are resisting together. The book In the Land of Believers was written by a self-proclaimed atheist, who carried out a kind of ethnographic experiment to see if she could learn to “live as an evangelical” and thus learn what evangelicals were like as people “on their own terms.” Her participant observation involved pretending she was a new convert, joining a church, participating in sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, going on a mission trip and leading a little girl in the sinner’s prayer… She hoped through her experiment to find more appreciation for these evangelicals, more compassion perhaps, and much to her surprise she succeeded. She felt like she actually found belonging and affection, even while her beliefs didn’t change at all! How damning is that!? She came to the conclusion (as she calmly resumed her secular life) that evangelicals would eventually see the light and become more moderate, more adaptive to the culture around them. She arrived at a belief that they weren’t really bad people, just somewhat misguided, and needed a little time to see the light, the “mystical oneness of all things.”

This is completely believable to me. I successfully lived as a believer for years, but am quite sure looking back that my actual understanding and embrace of the gospel came gradually and much later, in spite of the culture not because of it. Does this not seem like the ultimate indictment: that we can live happily and successfully in evangelical communities, without the notion that belief is actually the core? What kind of community might Jesus have in mind for His church to be that this kind of experiment would not work? Or is that the great mystery: that this kind of an experiment could always work, that it would always be possible to buy the field for a million other reasons than its true value, the pearl of great price? It seems plausible to consider that the gravest danger to the gospel may well be the very religious cultures in which it lives, replete with their easy distractions of superficial performance—activities—rather than the inconspicuous realities of roots growing deep into the hidden sources of nourishment and sustenance that comprise real spiritual life. It drives me to my knees.

Seduced by Solitary Greatness

I recently heard the complete Coronation Anthems of Handel in a choral concert, texts from Psalms 89, 21, and 45. The other half of the concert featured Telemann’s setting of Psalm 72, Deus judicium tuum, Solomon’s coronation psalm. If I was clever like Darby, I could provide links to both of these works, but do check them out if you have the inclination. They are full of majestic Baroque music, with imaginative lyrical diversions for appropriate texts, my favourite being Telemann’s wonderful bassoons gurgling away while the tenor sings “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace until the moon disappears.” The characteristics of God’s rule—strong, just, merciful, righteous, executing salvation for the needy—are anticipated in the rule of a good king, and all the people rejoice with the possibilities of it. How great the king was in himself is not the theme. He would be great if his rule reflected the rule of God. He would be evil if it didn’t. But how perfect he personally was for the job is not the focus at all. What a challenge this is to our culture’s approach to highly visible positions of leadership.

The concert called to mind a college presidential inauguration in the evangelical tradition that I was involved with a number of years ago. The campus buzzed with the outstanding competency of the incoming president, and while there were prayers for God’s blessing and anointing, in retrospect, it seems we were asking God to stamp us, the gifted and competent, with His approval. We were not seeking God himself as our blessing. It came back to me rather vividly at this concert because I remembered I had been considering one of the Coronation Anthems for the inauguration ceremony, until I was told that the president specially requested a choral rendition of this Wayne Watson tune for his inauguration service. (I sincerely hope I’m not dumping on anyone’s favourite song):

Now, all I have is now to be faithful, to be holy
and to shine, lighting up the darkness


Right now, I really have no choice but to voice the truth to the nations


A generation looking for God



Chorus: For such a time as this I was placed upon the earth


To hear the voice of God 
and do His will, whatever it is


For such a time as this, for now and all the days He gives


I am here, I am here, and I am His, for such a time as this…

The refrain of course recalls the saving of Israel by Esther’s courageous entreaty of King Ahasuerus. But Esther’s expectation at that time was death, “If I perish, I perish.” It was her God-fearing uncle who persuaded her to take this risk by proposing that perhaps she had come to the throne “for such a time as this.” However, neither of them were calculating the status of their actions for posterity. They were just trying to make sure there would be posterity. It seems like a classic twist of evangelicalism to take such a biblical story, and interpret it as a self-conscious, inflated ministry vision that places yourself at the centre of some big new work of God. As I see it, this is not just the problem of evangelicalism as a system, although perhaps we are more blind to it in ourselves, as if we were no longer prone to these self-centered narratives that show up everywhere: academe, politics, business. We want so badly to be that unique story, to make a mark no one else has made, and to be conscious of exactly what we’ve done so we can modestly take credit whenever someone notices, and boy, we sure hope they do. Incidentally, this college president was fired recently and his name will go down in infamy in the annals of the organization. “And all the people rejoiced” characterized his dismissal much more than any other part of his tenure. It makes me wonder if everyone’s focus had been more on God’s character whether the outcome would have been different. Speculation, I know, but I really wonder. I recently came across this statement in Archibald Alexander’s address to the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1808: “It is a lamentable truth that talents, which qualify a man to do little good, enable him to do much mischief. So much easier is it to destroy than to edify.” I need look no further than myself for evidence that this is true. For me, the gospel is proving the only effective corrective.