Last spring I struggled a lot with what it means to love people--fully and really, and even when that means not giving them what they want, and even when what they want is you and time with you. Oh God!--That's painful. I really want to love people, but let's be honest: my love never saved anyone, ever, so as much as I yearn to be present to and care for people, I have to remember that it is Jesus' love is preeminent, and that my attempts to love can go too far. (And sometimes, rather than failing by trying to be more than I can for someone, I run the opposite way and am downright unloving in my own selfishness.) Love is confusing.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. -- 1 John 3:16-18
How much should we lay down our lives? Laying ourselves down doesn't mean, I don't think, being totally available to everyone at all times; Jesus, for His part, withdrew to a quiet place many times when there were still huge crowds pressing in around Him. Is pity really enough? Because when Jesus was moved with pity, He was also moved, as in to heal or provide food or something. Or is it more about giving possessions away and not being selfish? Certainly enough of Jesus' teaching is dedicated to dealing with people who love their possessions more than Him and His people. But what actions are loving? What does it mean to love in truth?
There's a small, simple notebook I keep of sermon notes, prayer requests, testimonies, revelations during Bible reading, the ways in which I feel God speaking to me and directing my path in specific moments, and sometimes just desperate prayers. I wrote in it when I started having this love conundrum. Perhaps to illuminate how overwhelming it is when people want more of me than I can give, and how confounding it is sometimes that anyone thinks I have much good in me to offer them, I'll share my entry from 28 March 2012:
God answers prayers, usually in unexpected ways, and this was no exception. The day after I scrawled that desperate little prayer in my notebook, I felt God revealed to me something new; it was like He spoke it to me while I was praying. On 29 March, I recorded:
It's like the agonizing process of making out your childhood birthday invitation list when you're trying to decide if you have to invite the annoying kid in your 3rd grade class just because she invited you to her birthday party the month before. Are you expected to? Well, probably, at least by your classmate. Are you obliged? No, certainly not. But might you feel like you are (at least if you're a particularly emotionally sensitive 8-year-old)? I can't speak for you, but for me the answer is resoundingly "yes"... This has been something like the background music of my life. So the idea of not owing people things is radical to me. But it's also amazing, and liberating--it is for freedom we've been set free, not to be burdened again by a yolk of slavery (Galatians 5:1)--even slavery to others' expectations! Because Jesus cashed the check for my wages of death, I'm free (Romans 6:23)--and I cannot claim credit (Ephesians 2:8-10) or pay back this debt. Therefore, I don't respond to Jesus' gift of Himself out of obligation (I actually think trying to pay Jesus back would be sinfully prideful, as if I could equate my sacrifices with His ultimate sacrifice), but rather out of--wait for it--LOVE. So here we are again.
But this explication of love and debt has mostly been a prelude to what I want to share, that is, a four-part text message I got this afternoon from Nana Sarfo, the chief of Naama, a village nearby Asaam. After learning that the midwife with whom I was supposed to be working was essentially on medical leave for my entire 5 weeks in Ghana, Nana Sarfo accompanied me on a series of visits to the Mampong regional hospital and the hospital in nearby Kofiase, hoping to gain permission to shadow and research in Kofiase but ultimately gaining nothing more than a lot of dust on our feet and a close-up view of bureaucracy. Here's the transcript of the text:
He'd often remind me of the borehole and the laptop and the solar panels when I'd thank him after yet another fruitless, cramped taxi ride between Asaam and Kofiase and Mampong. He'd pay the fare and tell me that when I got home I should tell my father about the way he'd taken care of me by accompanying me on these trips, and that when I bought him a gift I could send it with the next batch of SIT students.
And there are others: The pastor of the tiny Asaam Presbyterian Church who wants me to send money for the congregation to build a church on the plot of land they somehow scraped enough money together to buy years ago, but that has sat fallow for so long weeds seem to have squelched the decaying foundation into submission. The physician's assistant at the Asaam Health Clinic who wants me to apply to an American college on behalf of his daughter so she can study nursing, mostly unaware of the exorbitant expenses and the complicated application and the necessity of the SAT. The fellow teacher and friend from my Bridge Year who will expect me to contact my fellow Bridge Year students to cobble together the $450 that will pay his school fees for next year, since we've already set that precedent this year.
It makes me weary.
It makes me angry at all the other white people who have traveled to Africa, seen poverty, cuddled some dirty-but-adorable kids as their unbelievably-poor-but-still-so-you-know-happy families stand around nearby, and whipped out their figurative checkbooks to make it all better before going back home to their cable TV and all-you-can-eat buffets.
Sometimes it makes me wish I had a checkbook like that so I could whip it out too.
It makes me want to explain the cost of living (and of college! and med school! and shipping!) in the US, sort of to justify it to myself that I haven't bought a laptop or a borehole or a field of solar panels.
It makes me wonder what Nana Sarfo thinks I "promise sometime ago" to give him, since I never told him that I'd buy him anything.
And it makes me wonder if this obligation-free life is tenable outside an abstractly theological realm.
This is probably why I was never supposed to give my phone number out in the first place. Forget that; I'm frustrated and uncertain and glad that I did. Love is confusing.
There's a small, simple notebook I keep of sermon notes, prayer requests, testimonies, revelations during Bible reading, the ways in which I feel God speaking to me and directing my path in specific moments, and sometimes just desperate prayers. I wrote in it when I started having this love conundrum. Perhaps to illuminate how overwhelming it is when people want more of me than I can give, and how confounding it is sometimes that anyone thinks I have much good in me to offer them, I'll share my entry from 28 March 2012:
Oh God.
People are looking for Jesus and they find me. God! Help me point them to Jesus. I'm falling flat on my face.I think a little clarification is useful here. Firstly, I don't think I have nothing to offer relationally, or that it's anomalous that anyone would want to be my friend, or that I don't have fulfilling friendships. But what I do know, and cling to, is that if there is anything beautiful in me, and I believe there is, it is there because the Holy Spirit made it grow there and because I'm made in God's lovely image. Secondly, nothing about Jessica can fulfill anyone, but the closer I grow to Jesus, the more I look like Him. I think the best explanation of why I found myself overwhelmed, feeling like people expected things from me that I could not give them, is that I must have looked enough like Jesus to have been attractive. Thirdly, I fall flat on my face--every time!--trying to be more to people than I can be, trying to take on others' weariness when it's clear that it's in Jesus, not me, that people can find rest for their souls, and that it's his yolk, not mine, that's easy. (Fourthly, let it also be known that, in spite of all this, I value human relationships very highly, and affirm wholeheartedly that God created humans as relational beings and that faith is to be pursued in community.)
God answers prayers, usually in unexpected ways, and this was no exception. The day after I scrawled that desperate little prayer in my notebook, I felt God revealed to me something new; it was like He spoke it to me while I was praying. On 29 March, I recorded:
When Jesus paid my debt, He paid it all. I don't owe anyone anything. At all.There is a certain perverse understanding of love in which we're constantly trying to pay everyone back. It's a well-known and widely accepted anthropological theory that gift-giving is in fact just a subset of exchange relationships. A sense of indebtedness and obligation can be fostered by many things, among them another's actions (the feeling you should reciprocate someone's kind gesture), or another's need (someone needs something that you have, so you feel you should give it).
It's like the agonizing process of making out your childhood birthday invitation list when you're trying to decide if you have to invite the annoying kid in your 3rd grade class just because she invited you to her birthday party the month before. Are you expected to? Well, probably, at least by your classmate. Are you obliged? No, certainly not. But might you feel like you are (at least if you're a particularly emotionally sensitive 8-year-old)? I can't speak for you, but for me the answer is resoundingly "yes"... This has been something like the background music of my life. So the idea of not owing people things is radical to me. But it's also amazing, and liberating--it is for freedom we've been set free, not to be burdened again by a yolk of slavery (Galatians 5:1)--even slavery to others' expectations! Because Jesus cashed the check for my wages of death, I'm free (Romans 6:23)--and I cannot claim credit (Ephesians 2:8-10) or pay back this debt. Therefore, I don't respond to Jesus' gift of Himself out of obligation (I actually think trying to pay Jesus back would be sinfully prideful, as if I could equate my sacrifices with His ultimate sacrifice), but rather out of--wait for it--LOVE. So here we are again.
But this explication of love and debt has mostly been a prelude to what I want to share, that is, a four-part text message I got this afternoon from Nana Sarfo, the chief of Naama, a village nearby Asaam. After learning that the midwife with whom I was supposed to be working was essentially on medical leave for my entire 5 weeks in Ghana, Nana Sarfo accompanied me on a series of visits to the Mampong regional hospital and the hospital in nearby Kofiase, hoping to gain permission to shadow and research in Kofiase but ultimately gaining nothing more than a lot of dust on our feet and a close-up view of bureaucracy. Here's the transcript of the text:
Hello akua Afriyie,how are you doing? You are doing great by God's grace.please another batch of SIT [study abroad students] are coming to Ghana this september so i would like to know whether you can get in touch with them,i mean those around your area so that contact them and give them the things u promise sometime ago.my secretary's email is ********@yahoo.com or facebook.i would be grateful if u could give me your email or facebook address.thank YOU goodbye.Nana sarfo Adu-Naama AshantiI've been long-winded already, and I'm slowing down, but here's where I've been getting: I remember many conversations with Nana (the name means grandpa or grandma, and is the title of all Ashanti chiefs) about the past study abroad students who came to visit. Some of them had built a solar panel station for the village to stabilize their electricity; another group had dug a borehole to provide clean drinking water; and one of his particular favorites had bought him a laptop computer, sending it to him by way of the next crop of Naama-bound SIT study abroad students. He carefully scrolled through each of the contacts in his cell phone, pleased to tell me when each of the Americans had come, and what they studied, and whether they stayed in his compound or nearby.
He'd often remind me of the borehole and the laptop and the solar panels when I'd thank him after yet another fruitless, cramped taxi ride between Asaam and Kofiase and Mampong. He'd pay the fare and tell me that when I got home I should tell my father about the way he'd taken care of me by accompanying me on these trips, and that when I bought him a gift I could send it with the next batch of SIT students.
And there are others: The pastor of the tiny Asaam Presbyterian Church who wants me to send money for the congregation to build a church on the plot of land they somehow scraped enough money together to buy years ago, but that has sat fallow for so long weeds seem to have squelched the decaying foundation into submission. The physician's assistant at the Asaam Health Clinic who wants me to apply to an American college on behalf of his daughter so she can study nursing, mostly unaware of the exorbitant expenses and the complicated application and the necessity of the SAT. The fellow teacher and friend from my Bridge Year who will expect me to contact my fellow Bridge Year students to cobble together the $450 that will pay his school fees for next year, since we've already set that precedent this year.
It makes me weary.
It makes me angry at all the other white people who have traveled to Africa, seen poverty, cuddled some dirty-but-adorable kids as their unbelievably-poor-but-still-so-you-know-happy families stand around nearby, and whipped out their figurative checkbooks to make it all better before going back home to their cable TV and all-you-can-eat buffets.
Sometimes it makes me wish I had a checkbook like that so I could whip it out too.
It makes me want to explain the cost of living (and of college! and med school! and shipping!) in the US, sort of to justify it to myself that I haven't bought a laptop or a borehole or a field of solar panels.
It makes me wonder what Nana Sarfo thinks I "promise sometime ago" to give him, since I never told him that I'd buy him anything.
And it makes me wonder if this obligation-free life is tenable outside an abstractly theological realm.
This is probably why I was never supposed to give my phone number out in the first place. Forget that; I'm frustrated and uncertain and glad that I did. Love is confusing.
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