MI Bible is Better Than Yours.

For the past few weeks, those of us who are going on the trip have met once a week to get to know one another and prepare our hearts and minds for our time in Romania. Part of our training has been exploring a book called “Serving With Eyes Wide Open.” It is was written in the hopes that short-term missionaries would be able to make more long-lasting impacts by planting the right seeds and being aware of cross-cultural differences. Thus far, it has offered several good points. Early on, they were easy to understand-don’t assume that your beliefs are the only ones that are correct, don’t try to enforce any one system of life on anyone else, don’t expect to know the deep significance of your actions until after you have allowed your “seed” to grow into a plant.

However, there have been some concepts with which I have wrestled. This past week, for example, the author, David Livermore, spoke of how we should interpret the Bible. He claimed that, for missions, it is best used to see how God worked historically. He also said that, while Christ was important, we should be careful when we try to apply His examples of ministry, for different cultures see different aspects of Jesus’ personality. 

One of the things that he warned against was the Western tendency to try to make the Bible fit our own lives. He believes that, in order for use of the Bible on missions to be effective, we have to widen our limited view and accept its story as raw, allowing those with whom we are trying to share it to do the interpreting.

This was hard to wrap my mind around. For the past two years, my smallgroup has studied the author Don Miller. I, personally, find Miller fascinating. His belief is that the Christian church is giving everyone a false conception of Christ. He states that people use the term “Christian” defensively, and that Christians really aren’t Christians at all. He rejects religion and calls himself a lover of Christ. His theory on the Bible is that it was created to highlight the Gospels, the works of Jesus. 

Prior to reading Livermore’s chapter on the Bible, I had never considered myself a modernist. However, I found his idea of the Bible difficult to accept; at least, much more difficult to accept than that of Miller. At first, I found myself critical. To me, my mission should be out of a love for Christ’s kingdom on Earth and to not allow others to see why I am devoting my time and energy would be depriving God of some due glory. Then, I realized that this mission isn’t really about whether I feel fulfilled. In fact, trying to accomplish what I previously stated would almost be hypocritical: it would be placing emphasis on my idea of justification rather than bettering the kingdom.

Upon rereading Livermore’s chapter it several times, I think I’m beginning to see his point. One of the concluding lines of the chapter reads, “We must always leave our perceptions of who [Jesus] is subject to correction.” While it will be hard to relinquish my understanding of the story of Christ, I realize that it is for the benefit of those around me that I interpret as little as possible .

MI Road Thus Far.

Every road has to start somewhere. Sometimes, I think that we are so focused on our destination that we forget from where we came. So, I thought I'd share my road to the present, or at least enough of it to give you a good idea of where I have been.
I was born in Tulsa; I've always lived here and, even though I used to resent it, it's grown on me. I attended Eisenhower International School for primary school. While I used to see being a part of a Spanish immersion program as the norm, I now realize how it is shaped my values into something different from those of my peers. I was taught from a young age the importance of global awareness. While it wasn't a mindset that I developed until my middle school years, I think that it had a lot to do with the fact that I am here now. 
I went to Edison for middle school; though I initially went for more social reasons rather than academics (good parenting, Mama & Papa) it ended up being an environment where I was challenged as a student and stretched as a person. This is when I forged strong friendships with girls who share my faith, the same friends to whom I am still very close. 
At this season in life, I wasn't at my best with God. When I was in elementary school, church wasn't an option. My father was a Sunday School teacher and, whether I liked it or not, I was out of bed and at church at 9:30 on Sunday morning. When I got to middle school, I had the choice, but I still went.  In my eighth grade year, I and several friends attended a conference at which an organization called Compassion International spoke. During one of those petty intermissions that they often offer so that kids scarf down a Juicy Juice and a Pop-Tart, I wandered over to their booth where I saw dozens of faces staring up at me from behind plastic packets. The one that caught my eye was a young boy named Moti Baisa. I carried the package back to my friends, and we decided then and there that we would become Moti’s sponsors. 

For nearly nine months, we met every week to plan fundraisers and write letters to Moti. It eventually evolved into a mini-organization, one that we christened “Save the Word” (I couldn’t tell you the origin or meaning of this name, but it made perfect sense to us at the time, so it went unchallenged.)

As the anniversary of our sponsorship drew near, our minute budget ran out (after all, the allowance of five jobless eighth graders isn’t exactly abundant.) When we received a letter asking us to renew Moti’s sponsorship, we disappointedly declined. Two weeks later, we received the only correspondence that Moti ever offered us--a brief letter with a drawing at the bottom. The note expressed his gratitude for what we had been able to give him: he told us about the commencement of his education, a rarity in his rural Ethiopian village. His drawing portrayed the village how he saw it, though he was nearly blind. 

I cried when I received the letter and, while I showed it to my other friends in “Save the Word,” I selfishly kept it and still have it in a box that sits on my nightstand. I’m not sure what happened to Moti, but I do know that there are millions like him. While he was only able to offer me a glimpse of his life, I became enthralled with his world, a world I have never known. 

That was a long tangent for a short statement: I felt a calling. 

Unfortunately, I haven't acted upon it throughout my high school career. While a school like Booker T. probably would have been an excellent place to start a movement, I took the easy way out and concentrated on academics. This is not to say that I have been strictly studious; in addition to what few would classify as a social life, I've pursued just about every extra curricular I could dream of: dance, debate, piano, philanthropy-to name a few. My summers, too, have been fulfilling-I served as an Ignite intern, worked as a US Senate Page, and ran around with kids at Camp Loughridge. However, something has been missing and, until this spring, I didn't realize that it all might have to do with Moti.