Waste Your Life

This guy I know (well, kind of, he speaks at APU stuff a lot, but I don't actually know him) named Andrew Gaines said once, "Waste your life getting to know God, doing what he was doing, and praying what he was praying." When I first heard it, I liked it, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you exactly what it meant, aside from the obvious implications. I couldn't have really articulated why he called it a "waste".

It was almost a year ago that I heard him say that, and I think I'm finally starting to understand what he meant.

As I make my way through this semester, I feel bogged down by all that is expected of me. Graduate, do well in your classes, make something of yourself, have a job, maintain relationships with people all over the country and with the new and old friends you have here in Azusa. Too many things to keep track of, if you ask me. The tough part is that, while all of these things are good, and mostly necessary, they leave very little time for what I would much rather be doing: seeking God, spending hours upon hours in his word, listening to him, talking with him, talking about him. I'd so much rather be using all my time to seek him.

I want to "waste" my life on Jesus. Sure, all these things are important for me in order to do what I want to do in the world. But what good is that if I don't really know God? Don't get me wrong, I know God, I have a relationship with him, but I'm no longer satisfied with the shallowness of it. I want to dive so deeply into the character of God that I get lost in the world. That it appears as though I'm "wasting" my life on this Christian thing.

But I don't know how to reconcile what I have to do in order to be effective in what God has called me to (finishing college, for starters) with what I desperate want to do (seeking God above all else without feeling obligated to do other things, i.e. homework).

It's a dilemma I have no idea how to solve.

What's really exciting though, is this new series my church just started. We are going through the book of Hosea. I was so excited before it even started, and I'm ecstatic after the first week. If any of you have read Redeeming Love, it's that kind of radical love story. I think God is going to teach me what it means for him to be my lover through this series. An intimate, passionate love that I haven't really experienced yet. I'm excited.

I'm pretty sure it will only fuel my desire to waste my life on Jesus.

Unanswerable Questions

In trying to help Africa, have we merely imposed our identity on them? We say we are trying to lift them out of poverty, but why have we made poverty the enemy? Why is our way of life preferable to theirs? Perhaps it is us who needs to be taking notes from them.

I know the different arguments, the different things we have to offer them: the value of the individual, longer life through medicine, food security, education. No one in western culture ever questions the value of these things because they are so ingrained us as things to value and promote. But why? Have we merely lost sight of the value of the alternative: the value of the corporate body, embracing death (even at a young age) as a natural and good part of life.

Perhaps our desire to impose our culture and standard of living on the rest of the world is us trying to justify that standard of living. A basic capitalistic principle is that an economy can grow, and everyone benefits from it. We are trying to grow it so much that our ways no longer seem exorbitant. Everyone can and should live as we do right? It’s what’s best for everyone, we say.

Well, I’m not buying it. So many of the things we assume are just that, assumptions. I’m waiting for someone to show me real justification for all the work we do abroad in developing countries from a biblical, scholarly perspective. Not one that says “Hey, these are good things I value, where can I find them in the Bible?” With that as the starting point, you can find anything you want. But what I really want to know is can a Bible scholar with no agenda come to our conclusions about development on his own.

Honestly, I don’t know if we will ever know. Scholars of the Bible will always have a culture they are assimilated to. They will hold values and ideas necessary to exist within that culture, and they won’t be able to see a world without it.

Disclaimer: These are my questions, my doubts. I still want to do what is called development work. To inspire people to be as good as they can be. But I can’t help but think of all the questions I can’t answer and haven’t ever heard anyone else try to answer.