The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

by Jamie Wright

Imagine my dismay when I finally came face to face with this thing called Christian missions and what I found was actually countless ways in which things were not awesome or amazing.

God will not be swallowed like a pill to cure the herpes of your soul so you can run in a field of sunflowers with your hot boyfriend. It just doesn’t go down like that. No matter how much we beg and plead, nor how fervently we pray, having faith does not release us from the hard work of maturing.

He searched for validation by performing for affirmation, believing that love was a competition to be won and that he could be loved only if and when he earned it.

I’d spent my whole life pretending to be someone I wasn’t so that I would be safe, accepted, popular, worthy, wanted, and loved.

But when I really got to know him, what I found in Jesus was a strong man with a submissive will, fully and courageously given over to God’s wild purpose for the world.

Jesus was just a badass. He was a rule breaker. A system-bucking ball buster. He boldly pushed back against social norms and the religious order of the day to engage in his God-given duty to heal the sick, feed the poor, call out injustice, and pave the way for everyone to know the saving grace of faith, hope, and love. The world called him weird and the club called him dangerous. They spit on him, they threw things at him, they drove him away, and hell, eventually they killed him. But Jesus was such a motherfucking badass, he just kept loving.

But depression is a sneaky son of a bitch. It creeps in behind your joy to convince you that to live a life you love isn’t worth the effort. It whispers and lies and manipulates, and pretty soon you’re certain that the hill from your house to the rest of the world is just too damn steep.

Our calling is not what we do as much as it is who we are while we do it.

See, God has this weird habit of bringing our lives around full circle, so that things we thought we’d forgotten, the stuff we thought was behind us, even the history we fear will always define us, can become the very thing we use to bring others into the fold, recycling the fabric of our lives into some form of redemption.

Our lives unfold in ways that are both plain and mysterious, because God’s equipping is practical, but His redemption is magical.

That God can redeem our garbage does not justify our churning out the same mindless crap over and over. The magic of redemption invites us to try something new. And in this we don’t need to feel ashamed or humiliated by what we didn’t get right the first time, for in His desire to heal the world, God wastes nothing.

God takes our crap offerings, our messed-up lives, our garbage, and turns it around on us. He makes it beautiful somehow. Against all odds, God redeems what seems hopelessly trashed and broken and refashions it into something different. And somewhere along the line, this God who will make all things new had become the centerpiece of our lives.

I am certain of only two things. The first is that when Jesus told me to love my neighbor, I’m pretty sure he meant, like, my actual neighbor—the person or people nearest to me at any given moment. At home. At work. On the subway. In the supermarket. On a street corner. Y’know, neighbors. And the second thing is this: The only way to know how to truly love your neighbor is to truly know your neighbor.

To bring light and hope, you and I must show up for life in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, and in our schools not as “missionaries” and self-proclaimed blessings but as imperfect parents, genuine friends, competent professionals, and messy people. We must show up as safe havens, not as mini saviors. We must bravely show up in our everyday lives to do our best with what we have, listening carefully, serving sensibly, and loving fully as active participants in the story of who God is and what God does.

How we speak to a waiter, treat a beggar, spend a dollar—with every action we take, we are creating the world we live in. We get to decide whether our contribution to this story is patience or exasperation, compassion or condemnation, awareness or foolishness, liberation or enslavement. We can’t go back and erase the parts we’re not proud of, but we can move forward different and better.

We don’t need to spend another second of our life wondering about our spiritual calling, because we’re already right here in the thick of it. We’re already called. It doesn’t matter where you live, whom you know, what you can do, or how much you have to offer; you were called into the fray on the day you were born, and your calling is love.

Love God and love others. That’s th...

Show up as needed to love your neighbor with your eyes wide open and your arms outstretched. Start by doing your best…and then, tomorrow, do better.