The Very Worst Missionary Quotes

“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.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“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.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“Like, did anyone else notice that you can follow all of the good Christian rules and still be a huge dick about it? Seriously. I can say things right to your face that’ll make you want to slit your wrists, and I can do it with church-approved language, dripping with sweetness and an air of concern. I can lead you to believe God hates your guts and I can make you wish you were never born while I claim to “speak the truth in love,” promising that I only want what’s best for you.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“to this day we use it as a litmus test for our mental health and spiritual well-being: Are we connected to others? Is our home a place of respite? Does our work matter?”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“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.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“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 the whole deal.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“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.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“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.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“Strangely, the longer I have walked with Jesus, the more strongly I feel that to align myself with the so-called good Christians is to stand in stark contrast against his teaching.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“In the spirit of self-preservation, I could sit here and say, “The truth is, I saw a lot of unfit missionaries doing unnecessary stuff, which made me uncomfortable.” But the whole truth is that I wrestled with the broad practice of Christian missions, in part because I was a hot mess of a missionary, a perfect example of at least a dozen things that are wrong with the system. And I knew that if I were to expose the ugly truths I’d seen, I would have to acknowledge that I’d seen a lot of them in me.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“needed someone to tell me, “Do the next most practical thing after careful exploration of the facts, so that even if it turns out to be the wrong thing, at least you can say you made a solid decision based on sound research, and if after a period of evaluation you find out it wasn’t the right thing, then you can try something else. God will handle the rest.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“Was I called to love and care for the poor? Most definitely. Was I equipped to love and care for Costa Rica’s poor in respectful, sensible ways that went to the root of the problem? Like, not even close. As hard as I tried to apply all the feel-good Christian clichés we use as permission to descend on impoverished communities, I couldn’t keep pretending that it was actually accomplishing significant change.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever

“I think anyone who has experienced a major personal or theological shift can understand exactly why book writing freaks me the fuck out. It’s because our beliefs tend to change over time, so much that in many ways I’m not even the same person I was when I first fell in love with Jesus. I mean, if I met 1998 Christian me, with her gold-cross necklace and her mom bob and her cheap, cheesy platitudes today? I’d probably give her the finger. That’s the inherent problem with writing a book centered on life and faith. It’s that, in the end, my own perception of God is subjective and insufficient and ever changing. I’m still in the middle of this process and I will undoubtedly continue to change, but this book won’t be changing with me. In ten years this is all just gonna be a big fat public record of how dumb I was when I wrote it, so I might as well just get the apologies out of the way right now.”
― Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever