A Life in Exile

Part of the chipping away process in my self-sufficiency and pride on the mission field came through listening to others and ultimately learning from them. We have a hard time, in our present culture of manufactured social media streams, really hearing opposing or differing viewpoints. Once I let the world know my online opinion, I receive artificial affirmation because of the way a platform takes my algorithm and feeds it back to me.

Yet, it doesn’t take social media interactions for us to live in our own self-made bubbles. In many ways, it’s a good thing. I want to go to a church that teaches Scripture and views the Christian life in the way I believe. That’s a natural thing. I hang out with friends who have the same views. We have the church and Christian friendships and even seminaries to sharpen and develop our beliefs and worldview. The problem comes when we are incapable of having a conversation with another believer from outside our circle of insiders. They came to Christianity from a different background, family circumstance, religion, or worldview. As a result, they see things from a different perspective—not a bad perspective—just a different one.

Dropping in from outer space.

When I moved out of my comfort zone of Middle Tennessee into the heat and humidity of a West African mega-city, I thought I landed in the Twilight Zone. It was hot, noisy, crowded, and filled with people of a much darker skin pigment than myself. However, like many who have gone before me, I was confident in my superior mind, education, and know-how. It would not take long to learn just how little I knew.

The local church was my natural go-to place for service in the Kingdom, but even with my “excellent” French, getting used to a new dialect of the language was a challenge. There was no jumping in to do my part. Just as I had to do in the publications office in which I was working, I had to listen and learn before I could be useful.

The girls who taught me.

I came to an early appreciation for the pastor of my new church, as he preached in a way that drew me deeper into the Word. As I listened, I was in awe of the man’s ability to minister, not only to his native congregants but to a white foreign girl. I took notes and thanked the Lord for reminding me that he has his pastors and teachers in every nation. I grew under his leadership and preaching because I opened my heart to hear what God wanted to say to me through him.

Yet, it was another group of people who taught me even more about myself and my relationship to God and his work. As a single woman, I naturally was placed into a Sunday School class with other single girls. The ages ranged from teens to late twenties. The only thing we had in common was our married status.

I soon realized that I had nothing I could offer these girls without first listening to them. Where were they in their relationship with the Lord? What backgrounds did they come from tribally, religiously, and socially? What were their hopes and dreams?

In every conceivable way, they were different from me. It would be in this group that I learned about the importance of proving one’s fertility in order to be a good catch for marriage. What did that mean for their Christian faith and witness? How could I address the ways tribal beliefs were mixed with Christian doctrine? How could I offer hope for those who lived in dire poverty and needed a husband to survive?

Knowing who has the answers when you don’t.

I still have the Good News Bible I carried to Ivory Coast and the French Bible I bought there. Both are worn and well-used, but they are reminders of what God taught me about listening and learning in those years. I eventually started teaching those girls in that class, and I knew it could not be my opinions or views that I shared; it had to be God’s Word. What does his Word say about marriage, who we are in Christ, and how we should live as his followers? It didn’t matter what I thought as an independent American woman, it mattered what he said.

After leaving Ivory Coast, I went to seminary. I knew that I didn’t have all the answers, and I wanted to learn how to better search the scriptures and understand my own faith before I traversed further cross-cultural plains. The Lord gave me a great gift to help me in listening and learning from those different from myself in the person of my late husband. As an Egyptian-American, he certainly came at almost everything in life from a different perspective, which put my learning and listening into warp-speed mode.

I learned from him what the Lord had been teaching me in those early days in Ivory Coast—seek God’s Word on everything! He was famous for saying, “Let’s see what God’s Word has to say about that,” as he grabbed his Bible or quoted Scripture on a certain topic. So, through his example, I came full circle in my journey of learning to listen to others first and always seeking God for the answers.

Do you struggle with respecting the opinions or viewpoints of others? Do you struggle simply with listening to them in the first place? It’s amazing what God teaches us about ourselves, this world, and himself if we take the time to keep our opinions to ourselves and listen first to others. The greatest thing I pray you will learn in service is that the Bible which meets you at your point of need in your home country is the same Bible that will meet each and every need of each and every person in each and every country of this wide, wide world. He’s amazing like that and that’s why he’s worthy of our trust and praise.

Grace and Peace

If you missed the last Mission Monday post, click HERE, or check out these posts on the topic of cross-cultural service: Losing Self in Contextualization, What Comes First: Christ or Culture?, Packing Up.