Dear friends and family.
I must first apologize for my longstanding absence from this forum. It’s been almost six months, I think, since I
posted on this blog, and that, I have realized is far too long a time not to
share. It’s sort of one sided most of
the time, but the encouragement, prayer and acknowledgment I receive from
readers of this blog is an invaluable form of community for me that I have,
unfortunately, cut myself out of.
This is my ways of apologizing for the internet silence
these last few months. There are other
things that I feel I could apologize for, but I’ve already mentioned the thing
I wanted to post about today, so instead, I’ll just jump right in.
Recently, especially the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking
quite a lot about community. It’s a
concept that has always interested me, especially when living in cultures with
a different sense of community as the one I grew up in. Anyway, community and thoughts about
community have pervaded my thoughts recently because I’m really struggling to
understand how community in Japan works and how that is a reflection of what
community in the Kingdom of Heaven will be like. I’ve been thinking about this topic
especially as the lack of community in my life becomes ever more clear, and I’m
left wondering, do I need to create community, be able to rest in the community
of Christ, God and the Holy Spirit, open my heart to be able to join an already
present, but as yet invisible to me, community, or some other thing?
It seems this blog is going in several directions, please
bear with me, I’ll try to tie things together by the end.
I was recently talking to a friend about the high rates of
depression and suicide in Japan and South Korea and whether or not the
collectivist mindset of the culture in these countries has any impact on these
alarmingly high statistics. I wish I had
more training as an anthropologist than the two or three classes I took while
at Biola, because I’d like to do this question justice, but I’ve come to the
hypothesis that the answer is a very indirect yes. It’s not the collectivism that causes the
high rates of suicide, it’s the pressure that kind of collectivism can bring
on.
I’ve heard the difference in culture described like a
machine. In the west we focus on the
cogs, the gears, the gemstones in the watch, but here the focus is more on the
machine itself, on the actual functioning device. I can’t say which is a closer image to what
true community looks like, because they are both severely flawed and they both
have their own advantages, as well.
Especially among members of my generation, there is a severe distrust of
systems, at least in America, which is due, at least in part, to the focus we
give to the individual. True community,
I believe, is founded under the direct leadership of the Spirit of God, but in
the west, if we all want to be radical and unique and to be leaders, then who
will be able to follow even the simplest of directions from the Holy
Spirit? Conversely, from what I’ve seen
in Japan so far (and my views are especially limited here, as I still don’t
speak well enough to enter into anything other than small talk conversations) if
someone can’t find a way to fit into making the machine (society) progress and
move forward then there is a lot of pressure to either remove yourself entirely
from that machine or to change yourself so you can fit into it. This sort of forced community may be where
some of the anxiety that leads to suicide comes from.
I wish I knew more about culture and could see more, to have
something more interesting to relay back, but what I see and my understanding
of things is always so relative, so reflective, of my own life and experience
that as it is, I may not have anything interesting or new to offer to anyone,
but I don’t think things need to be new or interesting to be relevant, so:
Today, I want to talk about the idea of viewing people in terms of their
functionality.
Three years ago I felt God call me to give up on my grasp of
earthly things, so I did. I gave up all
of my money, which included my rent and food budget for the next two
months. The following week I wondered if
I had made the right decision, as I frantically searched for new jobs to take
on so I could afford to live. It wasn’t
until recently, looking back at that decision that I can see a fraction of the
way God blessed me through that bit of very difficult obedience. One of the greatest blessings I received was
the desperation for work that led me to taking a job I might not have otherwise
taken. In the fall of 2009 I started
working with an adult day care center as a paid intern. I was responsible for custodial maintenance
as well as assisting full time staff while they worked. Later, I became part of the full time* staff
of the organization I was working for.
Amongst the workers I met an array of so many different people from so
many different backgrounds, and among the clients I met so many people with so
many different disabilities. I had to
begin overtly wrestling with the problems of viewing humans in terms of functionality
here (even though I’d been wrestling with it for much longer). If I saw my clients in terms of what they had
to offer anyone other than themselves, if I saw them in terms of societal cogs,
then I could not justify working where I was working. If I tried to draw a picture of community,
incorporating my clients into the picture, I had no idea what to do with
them. My clients, who quickly became my
friends (and the greatest source of community I’ve ever known) have no place in
a society driven by function.
Understanding this, and understanding that my view of their abilities or
disabilities is irreparably contrasting to how God views them (as creations,
fearfully and wonderfully made) was how I started to learn to view people not
by what they can do, or even by what they do, but by how they were created.
After I left that company, in order to return to Tennessee
to prepare for leaving the country, I must have forgot what I spent such a long
time trying to learn. Either that, or I
stopped wearing my contact lenses, because myopia started setting in. I began to view my own life in terms of my
function. What thing have I done? What have I accomplished? What has my life led to and where will it
lead? How can I make God happy? What can I do to be a good person? What can I do to make the people who know me
proud to know me? Admittedly, not all of
these questions are terrible if you’re looking for motivation, but I wasn’t
looking for motivation. I was looking to
reinforce the lie that I wasn’t good enough for God’s grace, or for anything
that I was setting out to do. This, I
believe, was my greatest source of spiritual warfare before embarking on my
trip to Japan. The ideas that God would
never use me because I wasn’t good enough for him, and that I have to be used
in certain, specific ways for God to bestow love and grace on me permeated my
thoughts and left me feeling very empty, very estranged. I realize now that the majority of these
thoughts on personal functionality are centered in pride. I want to know how good I am so I can compare
myself to others, or measure up on some “You must be this tall to ride” picture
of Jesus, cut from acacia wood, of course, holding his hand somewhere by his
waist or something. I wanted to know
what God thought of me, but the idea that he loves me is unacceptable at times. If I truly accepted that he loved me, knowing
what I know about myself and knowing what I know about God, then my response
would have to be so drastic that at times I would just rather not accept God’s
view of me and exchange it for a view of my functionality.
I think this is where a lot of people get caught up. I think this is where the collectivist
society can add pressure, making an already difficult problem swell into an
insurmountable one. This is where my
thoughts have been today. I’m going to
try to sum this up concisely (like I promised earlier):
Community, true community, is an assortment of different
people (individuals) living together (in a system) under the head of one common
goal (the Glory of God). Community
cannot exist when we measure ourselves against our goal because this destroys
the image with which we were created, the image of God; in order to live in
community with others we must accept a view of ourselves and of them that does
not lie in their function (what they can do for us, what they can do to further
our goal) but instead lies in the very fact that as humans created by God they
bear his image and his stamp of approval.
Thanks for reading.
Please pray that God helps us to see others and ourselves for what he
has created, rather than the shadow of what our function might be, and pray
that Japan is receptive to the word of God.
