On Holiness

I recently shared how much I love to read the Bible.  Since September, I've been part of a women's Bible study group at a local church and together we have read through the book of Exodus, which tells the thrilling story of Moses, Pharaoh, and God, and how God's people were set free from slavery.  The Bible study continues this month as we jump into Leviticus, which is the not-so-thrilling list of rules and guidelines for the newly formed nation of Israel.  Bo-ring!  I have read through this before and struggled to get from page to page, sentence to sentence.  Most of it no longer applies to modern readers, as we don't present animal sacrifices or live in a desert climate and have access to, you know, modern medicine.  And yet, this time, Leviticus seemed to come alive for me.  Instead of reading through a bunch of stuff I don't have to do, I saw each description as a picture of God.  God is not diseased, and so his people need to be purified from their disease to live with him.  God is incapable of sin, and so his people need to be purified from their sins to live with him.  God is honest and fair, and so his people need to be honest and fair so they can live with him and each other.

I think the Old Testament, and especially Leviticus, gets a back rap (I have personally complained about both).  But when I got to chapter 19, I had to stop and reflect.  The chapter is a list of rules and commands that don't necessarily seem to go together.  The chapter is titled "Holiness in Personal Conduct".  It includes:

• "Each of you must show great respect to your mother and father, and you must always observe my Sabbath days of rest." verse 3
• "Do not steal.  Do not deceive or cheat one another." verse 11
• "Do not defraud or rob your neighbor." verse 13
• "Do not insult the deaf or cause the blind to stumble.  You must fear your God." verse 14
• "Do not twist justice in legal matters by favoring the poor OR being partial to the rich and powerful.  Always judge people fairly." verse 15
• "Do not spread slanderous gossip among your people.  Do not stand idly by when your neighbor's life is threatened." verse 17
• "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself." verse 18
• "Do not defile your daughter by making her a prostitute." verse 29
• "Stand up in the presence of the elderly, and show respect for the aged." verse 32
• "Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land.  Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself.  Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt." verses 33-34
• "Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight, or volume." verse 35

I know what you're thinking...this sounds like every Christian I know, right?  We do such a good job keeping these commandments.  Oh wait, no, no we don't.  But like I said, Leviticus doesn't say as much about me and where I fall short, as it points to who God is.  What I learn about God by reading through this chapter is his commitment to equality.  Don't treat people differently because they are old, or poor, or rich, or blind.  Don't cheat each other.  Be honest.  Love each other the way you love yourself.  And I also learn that God knew what we would actually do.

If there is one thing that all people have in common, it's this tendency to constantly rank ourselves according to the people we know.  Like, they have a bigger house than me, her kids are better behaved than mine, but that person doesn't dress as nicely as I do.  We tend to bow to those we perceive to be "better" or "higher" than us, and to look down on those "lesser" or "below" us.  We derive our worth from our ranking.  I know striving to be better than everyone else characterized most of my teen years, and carried over a little into my twenties.

Take my friend Liga, for instance. She is much prettier than me.  She has a bigger house.  She has beautiful, special kids (and more than me).  Most days, I feel like she's a better mom than me.  She takes her kids on outdoor adventures and makes art with them on snow days.  She is more generous than me.  When we first met, I didn't think we would become friends.  I looked at how she was just so much MORE than me.  I felt self-conscious and inferior.  I needed to find some flaws to level the differences between us.  Instead, what Liga offered me was a grace to transcend our differences.  We became friends not because I was able to lower her to my level, but because she sees worth in the way that I do things.  And so I have found myself in this new kind of friendship where I tell her she is an amazing mom and then she tells me that I'm an amazing mom.  It doesn't matter what our houses or cars or clothes look like.  There's an equality that doesn't insist on all things being equal, but delights in the differences.  It's a blessed relief from the "mom-petition" (like competition, but when moms do it to each other).

It's a Levitical relationship when we stop trying to match up and accept each other for who we are.  For instance, there wasn't much that a blind person could offer to society at large, certainly not in comparison to someone whose vision was intact.  But we are told not to hurt them anyway.  A daughter wouldn't be worth as much as a son thousands of years ago, but parents were told to offer them the same protection anyway.  Foreigners have never had rights or power ever in human history, but we are to treat them with dignity anyway.  Jesus even taught about this in Luke 14:12-14 when he said, "When you put on a luncheon or a banquet, don't invite your friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors.  For they will invite you back, and that will be your only reward.  Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.  Then, at the resurrection of the righteous, God will reward you for inviting those who cannot repay you."

I think we should take Jesus literally.  Not only will God be pleased by opening our homes and sharing our meals with those who don't "rank" as our equals, but we can be pleasantly surprised to find new friends where we hadn't thought to look.  Because when we stop measuring a person's worth by what they can offer us, or by their sameness to ourselves, we can look at people with eyes wide open and realize that we are all equals as human beings and children of God.

Mother Teresa and Me

There came a time in my life, just about 10 years ago I believe, when I just got fed up with myself.  I took an honest look in the mirror and I didn't like the person there.  So I decided to change.  I looked around at what everyone else was doing; if I wasn't going to be me anymore, who should I try to be like?  I focused in on Mother Teresa (aim high, right?).  Although she passed away while I was in high school, I don't know if anyone has yet to cast their shadow over her reputation as a humanitarian and a living saint.

Okay.  So I sat on my mattress (it took getting married to finally start sleeping on a bed frame again) and tried to think where I could go and how I could be the next Mother Teresa.  She had cared for lepers in Calcutta, breaking the social mores of a society that cherished its hierarchy and really looked down on touching diseased, poor, unworthy folks.  Well then.  I could, I don't know, go to Africa and care for people dying of AIDS?  Except, um, I didn't know where exactly I would need to go, and I didn't know what qualifications I had or could get quickly to make myself useful.  And I was engaged.  I was pretty sure my fiancé wouldn't be excited about this change of plans (CORRECT!).

Okay.  So I planned my wedding and continued working and sat with this tension about who I should become and who I was.  A few months after I got married, I was hanging out with some friends.  One of them told me he was going to a poor neighborhood in the area every Wednesday and helping some people serve dinner to the families who lived there.  My husband and I were working different hours, meaning I came home four days a week at 5pm and sat around our apartment (reading, cleaning, napping) until he came home around 9pm.  I thought about Mother Theresa.  I thought about Africa.  I thought, maybe I can't be her and do great things, but I can do this thing right now and maybe make a positive difference right now.  The following Wednesday, I met up with my friend at the appointed time.  And I found out that he had left out some details.  Like that he went to this neighborhood with our church's youth group, and by showing up to go with them, the assumption was made that I wanted to help lead the students, not feed the neighborhood.

I kept going, even though my husband said "You went where?!" with a freaked out look on his face after the first night, even though I didn't want to be a youth group leader, even though serving dinner to strangers is kind of uncomfortable and I didn't really think I was making a difference.  After the summer ended, the Wednesday nights continued.  I was given a group of sixth grade girls to visit patients at the local hospital and organize stuff at Goodwill.  But some nights we just stayed at the church and talked about God.  Then it was my task to sit with the girls and generate discussions about whatever the youth pastor taught.  I remember facing a line of 11 year old girls and drawing a complete blank, so I just started babbling about baptism.  I figured out that I didn't need to stick to a script or ask the right questions, or even stay on topic.  I just needed to get them talking.  We got to know each other, and I was surprised to find myself kind of being a leader.  The next summer, I went with the girls to camp, and I found myself in a super awkward conversation with a girl from another church who had some pretty serious questions about boys and sex and, while I hope I handled it well, my 11 year olds did not prepare me for that.

When the girls were in 7th grade, I had my first baby.  I was still able to come on Wednesday nights (mostly), but I wasn't able to help chaperone trips and my priorities had changed a little.  Still, I wanted to do something.  So taking what I had learned so far, that I understood middle school girls and enjoyed spending time with them, I signed up to be a Big Sister.  I was matched with a 10 year old girl who liked to play basketball and didn't live too far away from me.  It was no Calcutta slum, but then again, Mother Teresa didn't have a baby at home.  So I spent a year picking D up and trying to find thing to do together.  She liked more active stuff, so we played basketball at the park and had a snowball fight after Christmas.  She came to my house and we baked cookies and we went to Steak and Shake and shared a plate of fries.  As our match year came to an end, I was about to give birth to my next baby, and she decided she didn't want to continue with the program.  I was relieved, because, although I liked hanging out with her, it was hard to make separate time for this girl and take care of my kids at home.  I found myself thinking that it would be easier if I could mentor a kid who lived with me instead.  And that's how I became a foster parent.

The idea had been germinating when I happened to meet a lady who had adopted her three daughters through foster care.  I was supposed to have a quick 10 minute meeting with her about a completely unrelated matter, but we ended up talking for close to two hours, as she described the process of getting licensed, told me the stories of how she'd gotten her daughters, and talked about life as a family.  I went home that night and told my husband we had to do it.  He wasn't so sure (but at least we didn't have to go to Africa...).  A few months later, our church arranged a weekend service trip to a local children's home for their annual fundraising carnival.  I used a little coercion to get my husband to come with me and we left the kids with my parents.  We drove out on Friday night, my husband gritting his teeth and not saying much, and we drove home Sunday overwhelmed with the desire to get licensed.  We just had to do it.  A year later, we were approved and our next son was born to another woman.  We brought him home and fell in love.

In the last year or so, I've been given some opportunities to speak and teach.  It's not something I've sought out or felt prepared to do, but it continues to happen.  I'm still not caring for the dying in a developing country on the other side of the world, but I look back at the past decade and I see the steps I've taken to distance myself from that selfish, miserable 22 year old.  Have I made a difference?  Am I getting close to Mother Teresa status?  I don't know.  I don't know how many people remember me after our time together ends.  I don't know whether I've influenced people to live better lives or care for the poor, but I know that I've changed.  I know that these experiences have transformed me.

And let me tell you something I learned recently about Mother Theresa:  it took her decades to become the woman serving the lepers in India.  She left home at 18 to begin her life as a nun, and studied and trained and spent the next two decades teaching in a school not far from where her better-known ministry would launch.  She was almost 40 when she finally left the safety of her convent and began working directly with the poor and sick.  She spent the last 37 years of her life building her Sisters of Charity from one person (herself) to a network of more than 5,000 nuns and priests operating more than 600 facilities for the "poorest of the poor".  I find this very encouraging.  There's still time.  I'm not Mother Teresa...but maybe someday I'll be known as Mother Rachel.

If we want to reap a harvest, first we have to plant.  If we want to be known for something, then we have to get off our butts and do it.  If we want the world to change, then we have to follow Ghandi's advice and be the change.  My heart breaks for orphans and vulnerable children.  My hands are itching to hold them close and keep them safe.  And my mouth can't stop telling people to join me.

Comfort and Poverty

Currently, I'm reading the book of Job.  I read this passage last night, "I broke the jaws of godless oppressors and plucked their victims from their teeth." 29:17  My first thought was, Ugh, the Old Testament.  Geez.  Why does it have to be so violent?  Every story has to involve severed heads on stakes and entire tribes decimated.  But I stayed there, thinking about that verse.  The whole chapter is Job listing all his worthy accomplishments, explaining why his current circumstances can't possibly be punishment for bad behavior.  He helped people, he had status in his community.  He was honest and fair.  And he rescued people.

Okay, so there's a reason we kept the Jewish history and law books as part of our Christian faith, right?  Because all of this stuff takes on new meaning if you look at it through the lens of Jesus on the cross.  So once a guy dies for the whole world (like everyone, not just the Jews, not just the Evangelicals, but EVERYONE), then who is a godless oppressor?  It's not really an individual, because each of us has the potential to turn, to change.  Everyone that might have fit the description of godless infidel in the Old Testament is just a soul looking for Jesus in all the wrong places.

But people ARE oppressed these days.  That hasn't changed.  So I ask again, who is a godless oppressor?  I think about myself, about growing up in the suburbs.  All the folks with their trim houses and green yards, the shiny cars and the good educations.  My high school classmates went on to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT.  I went to Kent State.  Were we oppressed?  Our houses weren't in foreclosure, but what about our families?  Glennon Melton says in Carry On, Warrior that "People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don't need help."  I believe that people are oppressed by comfort.  I think we convince ourselves that since we are able to satisfy our wants, that we don't have any needs, and we get on this conveyor belt and try not to look too closely at anyone.  When I think about what Jesus has changed for me, as an adult, I say he broke the jaws comfort and plucked me from its teeth.

What am I saying?  That Jesus calls me to be uncomfortable.  That just as Chris and I were starting our own little suburban comfortable family, we threw a wrench in the machine and signed up to be foster parents.  Nothing quite like the discomfort of being part of the most tragic and painful months of another family's journey, bringing home a sick, addicted baby.  Probably you would expect that I have some strong feelings about drug-exposed infants...that's true.  But it might surprise you to learn that while, yes, prenatal exposure is 100% preventable, it's long-term effects are nothing compared to the long-term effects of poverty.  This is really the oppressor that foster care has brought me face-to-face with.  And so I read that verse from Job another way:  because of Jesus, I broke the jaws of poverty and plucked its victims from its teeth.  It started with Michael, my beautiful son, but it kept going, and I LOVE going to my church and looking around at all the amazing people who shout this as their anthem.  Poverty has people in its jaws, it is chewing them up and preparing to eat them alive, but we say NO, not on our watch, not today. 

We spend time with kids and help people do their laundry and pass out food and toilet paper and always we say "There is hope that is real, hope that extends beyond our present circumstances."  And those words are just as important to say to the people who look like they don't need help.  That hope is for everyone.

So...what am I missing?  What other "godless oppressors" are out there, and who is breaking the jaws and rescuing the victims?