Christians: Prisms, and Space Probes

Prisms

Let's start with prisms.
Have you ever seen how a glass prism splits and reflects the light that passes through it? Most of you probably have, in science class or on that Pink Floyd album cover if nowhere else.

That's right. I am using this for an illustration of our life in Christ.
1 Cor 9:22 all the way.

Like a mirror, the prism doesn't generate its own light. It takes the light it receives and reflects/refracts it out into the space around itself.

Actually the Pink Floyd triangular prism example above is about as simple as it gets. Anyone who's seen cut crystal for things like fancy light fixtures knows that the more facets a prism has, the more light it reflects in more directions. There's a reason diamonds are elaborately faceted into what's called a "brilliant" cut.

And if you are truly seeking to follow God, you will not feel like you're being gently sanded into a smooth sphere; you will feel like He is cutting pieces off of you. Smooth spheres might have a certain inner luminescence, but they don't reflect the light like multifaceted gems, don't send it shooting out in rainbow sparks. The gemstone must "suffer," must be cracked and fractured, to assume that kind of final brilliant form.

This is not a diamond commercial. Do your research, some are "blood diamonds" indeed.

The more we are shaped by God, the more we reflect the light of truth from Him to those around us. Yes, we do not merely passively shine; there is effort involved, but if we are not mature in our faith, if we have not sought out God to be in His presence, we are not going to put forth His light as we could, because we are simply not the right shape to do so. We must undergo fruitful suffering, to let the gemcutter grind new facets that will reflect His glory in new ways.


Note: Missionaries

So if believers are like prisms that reflect/refract the light they receive all around them, missionaries are simply prisms that have been placed far away, in places that may be quite dark. Imagine a fine cut gem* in a coal mine. Shine a light on it, and the effect is dramatic in the total darkness. Yet we cannot do anything to the coal, we can only keep reflecting our Lord's light; it is He alone who can exert the infinite Divine pressure to convert the coal into the rough diamonds for whom the cutting and polishing process can begin as it once began for us. (*- You can immediately see a problem with sending immature believers to the mission field...)

Left by itself in the coal mine, however, the jewel's reflective surface will quickly be coated by coal dust and stop reflecting light. In a nutshell, this is why missionaries need your prayer so much. It's not business as usual; we're not only in a darker spiritual environment, but being here tends to slowly dim our reflectiveness too. We need to be covered in prayer so that the coal dust doesn't stick to us and obscure our light, especially when the enemy is slinging it at us.

Space Probes

A prism doesn't only reflect more light by having more facets, of course. It also depends on how it's oriented with respect to the light it is receiving. (If you have ever played with a prism, or a dangling bit of chandelier or light fixture, you will no doubt have noticed that turning it at different angles towards the light changes how the light is reflected)

So orientation to the light is important, especially as we have "not yet been perfected" and are still undergoing sanctification. Our reflection is still partial and unbalanced; we need to stay rightly oriented to God for our light to shine effectively.

When discussing a craft in flight, especially space flight, one can speak of altitude but also attitude. Attitude in this context refers to the orientation of the craft with respect to some other frame of reference. (It could be the orientation of a space probe with respect to the mysterious planet it circles, or to an inertial frame of reference, etc.)

Bad image quality, but you get the idea.

Without the right attitude, an accelerating spacecraft orbiting, say, the Earth, will soon leave its proper orbit. It might dip too low, begin coasting through the Earth's outer atmosphere, and be dragged down, burning up in an unplanned, fiery re-entry. Conversely, it could swing too wide, begin to escape the earth's gravitational field, and head out into deep space.

Believers are no different. Without the right attitude -without the right orientation towards God- our effort will not result in productive progress for the Kingdom. We might sink lower and lower and burn out, or raise our opinion of ourselves higher and higher and grow distant from Him. In fact, with the wrong attitude, the more effort we put in, the faster we move in the wrong direction.

This is why ministry progress is a dangerous and misleading focus for Christians. Our focus must always be God. He is our frame of reference. If we are rightly oriented with Him, our efforts will progress in the right direction, in fact that's all they can do. On the other hand, if we aren't, all our efforts only take us further from where we need to be. It might look good at first; sometimes an orbit decays slowly. But sooner or later, without an attitude adjustment, we stray. God then graciously allows us to be zinged by a mini space rock at thousands of miles per hour, which hurts and confuses us, but has the effect of knocking us closer to our proper orbit around Christ.

Summary

 

So, what's the point of these two little analogies? Just two ways of thinking about our Christian lives.

First, in order to reflect the light of God's truth to those around us, we need to be in the right shape. This involves fruitful suffering, as Paul talks about in 2 Timothy, to chip pieces off until we are like a brilliant gemstone that does not merely receive the light but reflects it back into whatever context God places us in.

Second, if we don't maintain the right attitude to God, our eternal frame of reference, not only will we not reflect Him as strongly as we could, but our "progress" in ministry will, slowly or quickly, be leading us in the wrong direction. We need to constantly reorient ourselves with respect to God, through His word and time seeking out His presence, to make sure our orbit isn't decaying, leading us spinning out into the depths of space or crashing in flames down to earth.

You don't want to be this kind of shooting star...
Actually, biblically speaking, falling stars are pretty
much always bad news in general

The Hard Grace of Failure

1. What Failure is Not

Who likes failing?

These days, maybe some people would be clever and say they do. But what they mean is not really failure in the sense I'm talking about. I'm not talking about delayed success.

Now I know in the past few decades, piles of profound motivational statements have been made about failure and how important it is. I don't have to recount a list, you've seen many of them I'm sure. Edison failed how many times before he hit on a successful design for the incandescent bulb? (It seems no one knows... I saw 700, 1000, 2000, and 10,000)

Speaking of fails... Edison begs to differ

Uh-oh, an escalation of inspiration. Someone call Oprah.

That is not the kind of failure I'm talking about. Those are not really fails, those are attempts, experiments. "Cross that one off the list and get the next one" is not failure, it's a kind of confirmation.

2. Failure of a Sort

Not winning the presidential election is getting closer to actual failure. Half the country is angry and disappointed, maybe more at the other side, but still many will be angry at you. The best you could probably do is try again and succeed in four years, but even then it's not the same. However, you'll probably still do ok. You can leverage your now-massive name recognition somehow. That's also not really failure, it's more like what used to be called a "pivot" in business-speak. (Maybe it still is. Maybe I'm also using the term incorrectly... I'm an engineer by trade, pivots are things that require memorizing force equations)

Taiwanese students know about failure. There's an national university entrance exam at the end of high school, and how you perform on it has a profound impact on the rest of your life. Doing poorly on that test (there are a few limited options for retesting, but it's not like the SAT where you can take it multiple times and use your best score) means a low-tier college, a low-tier job, and fewer alternate paths to success than in America (even America circa 2015). In the US, even with bad grades or a degree from a lower-tier school, if you hustle*, you can nearly always be successful. In Taiwan, you have to do that anyway to keep your job.

(*- Apparently the positive connotation of this word is not universal. I use it in the sense of getting out there and working harder and with more focus than the average person, not selling drugs or deceiving people)

There is also heroic failure. This is the kind of failure that is irreversible, but where the importance lay mostly not on success but on being willing to try. The firefighter that does not succeed in getting the last person out of a burning building may be haunted by his failure, but we do not blame him for it, we praise him for the attempt, for his courage, even for his grief over not having succeeded. (We wouldn't praise him nearly so much if he shrugged it off as one of life's inevitable tragedies)

Failure is not lead that can be alchemied into gold. In reading for this entry I stumbled across this quote from Elizabeth Hardwick, and felt it strikes a chord:

"Failure is not funny. It is cockroaches on the service elevator, old men in carpet slippers waiting anxiously by the mail slots in the lobby, neighborhood walks where the shops, graphs of consumption, show only a clutter of broken vases, strings of cracked beads, dirty feathers, an old vaudevillian’s memorable dinner jacket and decades of cast-off books—the dust of ambition from which the eye turns away in misery." (from Grub Street: New York)

So how about real failure? What about the firefighter who not only fails to find the trapped child, but fails to find the courage to go look at all? What about the child of brilliant parents who just can't manage to ever do well in school, year after year, regardless of her effort? What about the man who fails to get help for his addiction and drags his family down with him?

Even those stories could end in redemption. You can probably imagine movies where the low point is any of those situations, but somehow manages to end triumphantly.

Failure of the kind I'm talking about is irredeemable. It's not noble, it's not "failing upwards," it's not one small step in the long road to victory, it's not even the nadir, the lowest point, at which one begins to climb back up from the pit again. It's an unrecoverable loss. It is coming to the end and there being no road ahead, no further options. Final failure. We don't even like to contemplate it.

It's also absolutely necessary to understand ourselves and our salvation.

3. Failure to the Point of Surrender

Its necessity doesn't make it any more pleasant- the real, visceral recognition that one cannot be good, that one cannot bring anything good to God in exchange for salvation, that attempting to do so will always end, finally, in failure. Discovering that Pelagius was so very wrong, though we long for him to be right in some little corner of our personalities. Some tiny hook from which to hang our righteousness, some shiny trinket unique to us, expressing our unique value, to trade for some slight reprieve from the terror of total surrender. To finally realize that we have nothing with which to redeem any part of ourselves back from the Redeemer is a devastating kind of experience. Some reach a point and then simply refuse to look further or go deeper; the continued loss of self is too terrifying. But Christ said only by losing our life can we save it.

As believers we think we've grasped this. We can say along with Jonathan Edwards, "you contribute nothing to your salvation but the sin that made it necessary," and acknowledge that it is true, but until we've really tried and failed, we don't get it. We are like addicts in that state of denial who still believe they can quit if they just put their mind to it. Next time, for sure.

Truly recognizing your failure before God is an extremely unpleasant experience. If you have not had such an experience, it's possible you haven't tried to fully surrender to God. When you do, He will show you something you were holding on to, and you will try to argue you should get to keep it. And you are quite likely to base that argument on some goodness or good behavior on your part that justifies a trade. Finally realizing you have nothing to offer, that you are merely a recipient of grace upon grace, you may surrender, until you are called to surrender again in the future, more deeply. And on it goes.

So when Paul says in Philippians 3 that what he once counted as gain he now counts as σκύβαλον (dung, rubbish), he is speaking as someone who has emotionally grasped how utterly comprehensive is human failure. His credentials didn't matter, his zeal wasn't "a valiant if misguided effort," he had nothing, no ground to stand on. That's what he's saying in the passage: if anyone should have had a standing with God, a bit of a starting point from which to barter, any confidence in the flesh whatsoever, it would have been he, and he could see that it was all rubbish. Paul had nothing- except Christ, who is everything.


That recognition of our total failure to have, do, or be good -to bring anything at all to the bargaining table with God- is like a kind of death. Although we recognize it when we repent and believe in Christ, it's something we experience repeatedly in the sanctification process, part of maturing in Christ, as God burns away the dross. We believed truly then that we could not save ourselves; now we experience the fact more and more fully with each painful recognition and admission of our failure. 

If you want a god you can barter with, come to Taiwan. That's religion here.

This is yet another reason the prosperity gospel is no gospel at all. Without failure, without falling on our knees in recognition of our abject spiritual poverty, we do not learn to grow more deeply into God. God's blessings are but one way to experience Him. If we love God and not merely His blessings, we must continue down the path of self-abnegation that sometimes comes only with pain and brokenness. There is no promise to name and claim which skips over the valley of the shadow of death.


But the joy grows, if we are willing to surrender. When in the deep darkness of our new awareness of utter failure the door of grace opens, leading further up and further in, we become more and more willing to grasp the offered hand.To reject it either in pride or despair leads only to bitterness and fruitlessness in the Christian life; yet more fully and painfully aware of our failure, yet refusing to let His grace heal us that much more deeply. Instead we must be recklessly humble, casting aside the reasonable-sounding temptation to reject the gracious consolation of the one who allowed the pain. Bow and worship instead, for it was His pain which earned our grace.

Bit by Bit - Grace Lag

Explanation for this blog series (Can skip if you're a gamer):

Back in the day, the internet was a source of great excitement, because now anyone could share their thoughts with millions of people. Shortly afterwards, the internet became a source of great frustration, because now anyone could share their thoughts with millions of people.

As one of those people trying to get your eyes to continue reading my words, I am aware of this difficulty, and that you don't want to waste your time. Therefore, I am trying to write about things regarding which I have some experience and can contribute something valuable. Whether I succeed or not is a subjective question that only you can answer for yourself.

For most millennials/Gen Y, especially perhaps those of us in the early years of the generational cohort, video games were a part of growing up. The first Christmas that I can remember distinctly, we got an NES, and 8-bit theme songs immediately began embedding themselves into my impressionable kid-brain. My parents, having bought it for us, decided to see what sort of thing it was, began playing around with it, looked up and found a couple hours had passed without their realizing it, and have instinctively disliked video games in general from that moment on. (They see nothing unusual with an evening of TV watching, however. Accepting the latter and not the former seems like a pretty clear example of generational bias to me!)

Anyway, what I'm trying to do with this series is connect in a humorous but truthful way with a generation who was raised on video games, whether console or computer or handheld. Video games, by their very nature, impact one's ways of thinking very deeply, and have affected our culture so greatly that probably very few people realize the true extent. Arguably, what sports analogies/metaphors were to earlier generations, video game metaphors are to ours.

For example, I know what "well boys, we're in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded" means, but I don't 'feel' the analogy, it's not instinctive. I might even have to pause for a moment to process it. But for millions of us, saying "alright guys, we're at the final boss battle" communicates the same basic idea in an instinctive way. (Attend a business meeting years down the road and I bet you phrases like this will be thrown around.)

Since, for better or worse, so many of my generation's minds have been engaged in game-playing for hours every week for years, to me it only makes sense to speak to this subculture. Paul uses metaphors based on the culture of athleticism in Greek metaculture, something the Gentiles he wrote to (and probably most Jews of the period as well) would be familiar with. Though we are also a culture which highly values athletics and have no trouble understanding these metaphors, I boldly submit that thousands of students who know the meaning of "run in such a way as to win the prize" would still reflexively nod in deeper understanding if one paraphrased it "play in such a way as to beat the level."

So, with that being said, here's the first entry..

Bit by Bit: Grace Lag

(Bit by Bit is a series I'll do from time to time expressing gospel truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

One of the most frustrating phenomena a gamer can experience is lag. Your rocket-dodging skills are rendered useless as your character freezes on screen; a confused second later and you are dead. Or you are trying to recreate the batcave in minecraft and have to mine the same block 3 times before it stays mined. Or your game simply sits there inert until your internet connection stabilizes, and meanwhile your party members are messaging you impatiently. Nobody likes lag, except maybe griefers, who can only be described as the enemies Jesus commands us to love, if indeed we count them as human beings.

Lag is an old word which entered English before Shakespeare, from Scandinavia. (Thought to derive from the Norwegian "lagga," meaning "to go slowly." One imagines a bunch of vikings making fun of that one longship in back with an oar that keeps getting stuck.. "Ja, it's locked up again, they're lagging bad." Sweden's gaming culture has deeper roots than I'd realized...)

The word has a variety of connotations, but in the gaming sense it is a gap between your input and the realization of that input. This either results in delayed realization, or a failure for your input to have any effect at all. Let us say, for example, you are playing an online shooter, and right before a bad lag, you give the game a command:
<Toss a Grenade>

Having done so, in one sense the grenade can be considered thrown, because, unless your connection gets totally dropped or the lag exceeds a certain time limit, your command will reach its destination, some bits will shift around, and eventually the display will show you a graphical representation of the result. Most games do not have a Ctrl-Z function, so once you have told the game you want to toss a grenade, you cannot then take advantage of the lag-induced delay to quickly Undo the grenade toss, there is no such command. So the grenade, for better or worse, has already been thrown.

Yet in another sense, the grenade has not been thrown. While waiting on the lag to resolve, you do not know at what point in the process of a) the command being issued, b) the execution of the command, c) and seeing the results of the command you are. You do not know whether the grenade's actions have been seen by other people before you, or whether perhaps the delay was simply too long, and the results of the command will never materialize. From your perspective, the grenade has not yet been thrown.

So we could say, regarding the throwing of the lagged grenade, that it is "already but not yet" thrown.

This, as it so happens, is a very important theological concept: in a similar fashion, we say that Jesus is "already but not yet" enthroned.

Christ has received that name above every other name, that at His name every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under it. He has been proclaimed Lord; He has won the victory. Yet Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that He must reign until all His enemies have been put under His feet. If Jesus already won, what's all this "until" business? If the command was effective, why can't we see the results of it?

Lag.
Intentional Divine lag.

God is purposefully delaying the inevitable earthly display of Christ's victory and rightful status of sovereign Lord of all creation. There is no extra requirement Christ needs to fulfill, no steps God must take before Jesus is ready to assume His place as the Alpha and Omega, the God-King of a world burned clean of evil. Jesus assumes humanity, wins the total victory, comes back to life as the firstborn of the dead, ascends into heaven with the disciples thinking He will return at any moment, and... pause. Confusing lag in the display of what is proclaimed to have already occurred, and that was two millennia ago.

But why would God introduce two thousand years of lag into His victory? 

Short answer: For us. The lag is the world's limited-time opportunity to come to God before the end.
Jesus won the victory, and before He takes charge, He delays, offering the world the chance to change their allegiance, to join His side before He destroys all His enemies, which they currently are. That is purely grace. And it is intentional grace, because His self-sacrifice and victory over sin and death were unnecessary for Himself. He did it for us, so that we could share in His joy instead of perishing in His wrath.

The Apostle Peter talks about this in 2 Peter chapter 3:

⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Peter is saying, I think, something to the effect of: "I love you, but you really shouldn't complain that after saving you, God is delaying His return to save other people too."

It's natural, of course. No one likes lag. Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation and our own inner selves are groaning in frustration at the delay. But the delay is for the salvation of millions of people from every tribe, clan, people group, and language.

So we have to endure the lag because we know the reason for it, though no one specifically enjoys it. Except possibly griefers, as I mentioned earlier, but Peter mentions their ilk a few verses earlier in chapter 3 as well: 

³ Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. ⁴ They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

In other words, scoffers gonna scoff. But we know that the level isn't completed until the required number of hostages are saved, and that having been rescued it's our job to free other hostages. Would you want Jesus to come back before your friends are saved? Take advantage of the lag, then, and tell them about Him.
This game has no save points or restarts; when it ends, it's over.

TL;DR:
God's gracious lag is a chance for the world to quickly swap to His side, because Jesus is just about to log onto the server, and as we all learned in Unreal Tournament, you want to be on the side that has the Redeemer.

An INTP on the Mission Field: The INTP Struggle Is Real (...And Needs to be Sanctified)

We return to the topic of being a (Myers-Briggs) INTP on the mission field (More posts here, and here), and the unique challenges and opportunities that presents. If you're not an INTP, don't leave just yet! I will attempt to explain why being right for us is not simply a matter of pride but part of a deadly struggle against nihilistic chaos, and how seeing part of the bigger picture is necessary for our growth in godliness. If it doesn't apply to you, it may help you understand that odd person in your life.

(Note: I am aware that a recent viral article attacked the validity of the Myers-Briggs system. I proceed on the basis that this way of roughly describing people's personalities corresponds to observable reality, is known to many people, and is in my experience a very useful heuristic.)

People often misunderstand INTPs. We tend to come across as know-it-alls, and as people who "just can't admit that you're wrong." The problem is that we typically aren't wrong, at least factually and logically, which is what we mean when we talk about being right or wrong. (Therein lies much of the problem, which we'll get to a little later on)

Typically, though, the person making that accusation has just presented a half-concocted premise riddled with logical errors and not even communicated using the most effective language. Then (we perceive) they are asking us to agree with them that not only is this a good and reasonable assertion, but it is superior to the one we've spent weeks both consciously and unconsciously formulating, testing, attacking to find weaknesses, etc.

Imagine that INTPs think of all ideas as cages for truth, and our brains are full of hypothetical velociraptors who systematically attack the cages trying to devour the tasty truth inside. Now along comes someone with a less carnivorous idea filter, and attempts to disagree with us using an idea that just occurred to them. Our mind-velociraptors simply laugh hungrily, imagining the helpless truth on which they would feast were that idea offered up to them, and wonder what sort of pathetic mental dinosaurs test your idea-cages.

Your obliviously incessant non sequiturs... smell delicious

(If, on the other hand, your truth-cage looks strong enough to hold up, we joyfully release our velociraptors to have a go at it. We -want- to find people who have solid ideas and can defend them well. It's hard not to have wonderful multiple-hour conversations with those people. We don't mind that this makes us a bit strange, we're having too much fun)

Or, if Jurassic Park analogies aren't your thing, imagine hanging a picture at a bad slant, on a bent rusty nail, with a photo frame missing one of its four sides and the glass shattered inside, and then being sad or angry when we can't successfully cover our eye-twitch enough to lie that we agree it is indeed a beautiful picture, masterfully hung. We don't understand... why can't you see how obviously inadequate it is and yet how quickly it could be fixed? (Feelings? Hurt?... Huh? Weren't we just talking about how to hang a picture?)

I'm not saying that's an entirely fair assessment on our part. I am saying, that we usually play the game very expertly and very fairly by the rules by which we think the game is played. When you accuse us of breaking the rules of the game, we take that accusation very seriously. But the problem is not that we're wrong about those rules, they're important rules. The problem is that there are other rules too, which are sometimes missing from the rulebook which came with our personality.

For example, I discovered at some point in my 20's that people get into the-debate-sort-of-arguments (the kind that are about ideas, not something someone did that made someone else angry) for all kinds of reasons. Up until that point, I had not imagined there was any other reason to engage in this kind of discussion besides 1) clarify/strengthen your understanding of the topic and 2) refute someone who is making false statements.

The idea that one might do it to enjoy the sensations that accompany an intense discussion regardless of the topic had never occurred to me. Or, insanely, because one simply likes arguing and would just as soon switch sides because it's "not about who's right and who's wrong." (As far as I'm concerned, one might as well have said this about choosing sides in WWII; that statement communicates nothing to us except that you're possibly a menace to society and certainly should be permanently excommunicated from the world of ideas)

The issue of who is right/wrong (here meaning correct/incorrect to whatever degree those terms can be applied) is very, very important for INTPs, but for a different reason than you might think. It's certainly a matter of pride on one level, but not the most important level. Being right is critically important because we are involved in the very serious, Sisyphean endeavor of making sense of reality. We are born into this world and the mental wheels start turning. You can see it in our eyes before we can walk. We are systemizing and categorizing causes and effects, noticing patterns, building a model of how everything fits and works together.

To be right means to have staked out a small spot of order and comprehension in a chaotic and random series of events and circumstances. To be wrong means to let that potential victory slip back into the darkness. Being wrong is very valuable in but one way: it eliminates a false possibility, narrowing our options and bringing us closer to the truth. If our error is brought to our attention and we recognize it, we are highly unlikely to make it again. That would be giving ground to the enemy a second time. Ain't nobody got time for that.

So to be wrong is to lose a small battle, though it may be a strategic victory if it leads to new information. To not care that one is wrong, however... must be either wanton apathy or outright treachery, through carelessness or nihilistic evil opening the gates that Error may come in. And Error is followed by Malfunction, and Malfunction by Damage, and Damage by Suffering.

(I have been speaking tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly)

Now, you may be wondering how any of this applies to life on the mission field. It applies very deeply, every day. Because the mission field is fraught with being wrong. Nearly every day, at some point one is wrong about culture, one is wrong about language, sometimes one lacks even the communication tool to clarify one's error. Sometimes one lacks even the means to discover if one was right or wrong, and that can be the most frustrating thing of all. One can at least humbly admit one's error, as painful as it may be, when one is aware of it. One of the most difficult ideas to face on the missions field for me is that I've acted wrongly at various times and to various people and I don't even know. They might be struggling to forgive me for an insult or wondering how a missionary could be so negligent in some area and I have no idea that I've communicated an insult or neglected anything.

The Taiwanese varieties of Chinese culture can make this more difficult because here to be polite is to not provide error feedback. When you are making mistakes and people are pretending not to notice (but of course really noticing and sometimes discussing it freely among themselves), it takes longer to discover those mistakes and try to correct them. One may even feel somewhat betrayed: "Why didn't you just tell me?"
(Or very betrayed: "Why didn't you tell me... before the church split/ministry failed/coworkers quit/friendships were irreparably damaged ?") It's a particularly frustrating clash of cultures, given that it's caused by the very attempts of both sides to demonstrate appropriate behavior.

I have directly asked my coworker and his family to not be hesitant or polite about correcting my mistakes, either in language or culture, because being polite according to my culture is sparing me the embarrassment of making those mistakes repeatedly in the future by pointing them out to me directly now. (When I explain it in this way, I can often see the metaphorical lightbulb coming on over people's heads...)

Being wrong constantly is wearying to an INTP, and it adds stress for us in a special way that it may not for other people, although admittedly that's partly balanced by the ecstatic joy of having vast oceans of knowledge to absorb merely by living here, so long as we get adequate respite time to assimilate it all. (when denied that respite time to cool off and recalibrate, we overheat quickly and can shut down)

An INTP wanting to go on the missions field will need an extra dose of humility and teachability, the ability to keep one's mouth shut when helpful, and may need to develop thicker skin in general as we tend to see the criticism we offer as non-personal and objective, yet take it personally when on the receiving end. They will need to learn how to remain in a situation where you make mistakes repeatedly and are forgiven because of the depth of relationship that exists between you and another person, and not on your correcting your mistakes, which you may never discover. They may need to cultivate especially good people skills if they do not already possess them, since an INTP typically builds relationships by sharing ideas with others, and limited communication ability impedes this considerably, especially at the beginning. Being someone people enjoy being around apart from the content of information shared helps considerably. The temptation to withdraw into one's shell when communication isn't easy may otherwise be much more difficult to avoid.

An INTP on the mission field will need to rely heavily on God's grace, and learn to forgive themselves because God does, and not because they dealt with a mistake or sin properly after committing it. They will need accountability and loving support from brothers and sisters in Christ as appropriate in order to keep themselves from getting stuck in a rut of depression and/or discouragement.

The desire to be right is not wrong, but for us it can distract us from what right and wrong really mean. Not logical and factual correctness, but what pleases God vs. what does not please God. Taking someone to task for a foolish error may be done with 100% factual accuracy, and even without pride, but it may still not be done in a loving manner.

Certainly, the words of Paul in his letter to Ephesus are spoken to us as much as any other Christians:

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ..." (Eph 4:15)

Speaking the truth is a deep instinctive desire for INTPs... but only by doing so in/through/via/according to love will we truly grow in maturity in Christ. I'm still learning, but I rejoice to see how much God has already changed me in this way, and am confident that He will do the same for you.

Buckets of Mud Pies

As someone who has done lots of ministry work with teenagers, I probably feel older than most people would consider 28 to be, though of course I know it's too early to write off the rest of my life.

But I can write it off entirely in one sense, because it's not mine. I am not my own, I've been bought for a price, and I serve a risen Lord who has more claim to my allegiance and obedience than any earthly ruler or parent ever could have.

We speak (more or less seriously, depending on the person) about a bucket list, and all the things we want to accomplish before we die. I don't have any actual list written down, but as a goal-oriented person, I certainly have things I'd like to experience in this life, both near and short-term. But from time to time I am reminded:


God doesn't care about my bucket list.

He cares for me, without question. More than I love myself; more than I can fathom. But as for my somewhat randomly-assembled little list of life goals, skills to master, things to do, places to see- God will see to it that I accomplish very little on that list.

We (especially in America, perhaps) are used to what we want being considered very important. Self-actualization has been elevated to the level of a religious doctrine. Even whole sections of the church have gone over to the side of Self, proclaiming that God eagerly desires to help you accomplish your goals.

This is false. God wants to help you die to yourself, and live for Him.

The process will really feel like dying at times, because it is; part of you -the old part which at this point you have trouble distinguishing from the new, glorious person into whom God is changing you- is being killed off, and it hurts like the pangs of death. But then, having submitted to God's surgical fire, what's left of you takes a deep breath, and tastes eternal air you've never before breathed. There is nothing in this life that compares to it.

As C.S.Lewis memorably wrote:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (From 'The Weight of Glory')

Our bucket lists, harmless as they may be, are full of mud. As materially blessed people who do not have to constantly be concerned for our own survival, we think of the best, most fun and most rewarding goals we can, and decide we're entitled to at least a shot at them. "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these... the pursuit of happiness," it's in the American Declaration of Independence, enshrined in our national and cultural DNA.

Apologies to our founders (who I'm aware were focused on rebuking earthly tyranny), but God is not primarily concerned with the inviolability of your pursuit of happiness; He is busy violating it. He sacrificed even Himself out of love for you, and intends to purify you into a son or daughter who can enjoy the eternal joy of His presence. That process means you will forgo much, much earthly happiness, even some of those things which those outside (and often inside) the Church claim make life worth living.

I personally believe that if you have never, in faith, given up something you didn't think you could live without, you haven't really tasted the presence of God in its fullness.

As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if there is no resurrection and this life is all we have, Christians are to be pitied more than anyone else. Since I started down the path of full-time missions work, the truth of that statement has been driven home repeatedly. At no time previous did I know so many people doing so many fun things around the world. In our current culture it is extremely difficult to be young, single, well-educated, well-connected internationally, and dying daily for Christ, without falling prey to discouragement.

(May I one day be so alive in Christ and so dead to myself that the joy always outshines the discouragement, but I hear from my older and wiser brothers and sisters in Christ that the struggle does not ever quite end in this life.)

But in my discouragement, God reminds me that I am chasing after the mud pies Lewis mentioned. Sure, the mud pies might be fancier than they were, with little encrusted pebbles and even a shiny trinket or two, but God is calling me away from it all, to Himself.

So I probably won't get to attend a World Cup match or the Olympics, won't get to tour Europe, won't get to learn a dozen languages, won't get to indulge my passionate desire to learn as much about the whole world as I possibly can in one lifetime. But to the extent that I long after those things, and not after Christ, those things are stumbling blocks, idols that God will mercifully deny me the opportunity to worship.

To the extent that I long after Christ and not those things, they will recede in importance behind knowing, obeying, and exalting Him, and making Him known among the nations. This is how earthly dreams die a supernatural death. And those dreams which distract us from God should die; to say otherwise is to make Him less than Lord in our life.

Many Christians have remained in sin trying to avoid bad behavior but not having something with which to replace it. But nature abhors a vacuum, and so does human nature; if we do not have a passionate, all-consuming desire for the glory of God, we won't gain it by simply ceasing to want earthly things. This is why sanctification is a process; God slowly refines us, taking away the lesser, earthly desires and replacing them with the relationship with Him that He created us to enjoy. This is a process in which we must participate with Him, and from which, if we are really in Christ and not drowning in the world's distractions (as difficult in today's culture to escape as they ever were, I believe), we should not drift away. (Hebrews 2:1)

I don't write this to say that doing fun things is wrong. I don't write this to say you shouldn't have goals or plans that are fun and rewarding. I write this because I am distressed by the number of Christians, especially my fellow young-professional-aged Christians, that I see who are believers but living life along the default path of success, fun, or comfort, not realizing God calls us to something much more difficult (far too difficult... impossible without Him) and infinitely more rewarding.

It won't be going to live on the other side of the world for most people (it will for some, maybe you!), but it will always look like waking up and recommitting to being a living sacrifice every day. You'll never see the amazing things God can do if you don't forsake your comfort zone to see them. (I don't say this from a position of superiority; seven years ago I was busily arranging my life to ensure maximum future comfort. It was God that invaded and kicked me out into an uncomfortable place of faith, praise Him.)

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." (Romans 12:1-2)

Take a chance right now. Pour out your bucket list on the altar, and surrender your life to God. If you follow after Him, He will lead you to places and work through you in ways you never dreamed of, for His glory, and your indescribable joy.