Secret Knowledge, Preaching the Gospel, and the Burden of Obvious Superiority

 "You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

"Thank goodness!’ said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar.

~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

"She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”

~C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

~~~

When I was barely 21, armed my an online teaching job, a sense of adventure, and my ironclad faith in God, I set out on my third solo trip, a month-long journey to volunteer on two different family farms in the backwoods of Washington state. 

Unlike my first two journeys, which had been in urban areas at hotels and youth hostels, I would spend the next four weeks working four-to-eight hour days in the dirt with a range of young volunteers, getting to know them in the intense sort of way that only comes from focusing on a common goal together. For the first time in my years of comfortably living in a nice conservative family in a nice conservative community, I found myself thrown into a counterculture of young leftists learning farming to survive the impending apocalypse. 

It was the first time that little patriarchal 21-year-old me had spent any amount of time with people who I fundamentally disagreed with, and the first time I had actually hung out with communists, trans people, pot-smokers, polyamorous people, anarchists, and (gasp) even some feminists! 

I recently unearthed my diary from that trip, and as I paged through the pocket-sized notebook (which has Hebrews 1:11 emblazoned on every page), two themes jumped out at me: 

1. I gawked at the sky a lot.

2. I was incredibly drawn to the people I volunteered with, but also deeply entrenched with a sense of my own superiority.

The diary is nostalgic but also sometimes difficult to read. One moment my past self is gushing about how much I love the people I'm working with, how much I admire them… but then I always check myself, throwing in a phrase or sentence or paragraph about how sad it is that they are walking in darkness and don't have the Light and Hope and Love that I have in Christ Jesus. 

Consciously, I would've told you that it was not my job to save anyone, but only to show people the joy and peace that I had found in God. My parents raised me to "preach the Gospel continually, and if necessary use words," which was a huge relief to my shy, socially-awkward self who couldn't imagine walking someone through a "salvation conversation" like the ones featured in the Christian publications I had read.

And yet, despite my good intentions, I had internalized the idea that I possessed secret knowledge that could give people worth, hope, and meaning— shining a benevolent light into their pitiable darkness. 

Original sin was the first and the final word. Without God (specifically, God as portrayed in the Bible and interpreted by the ones who called themselves Christians— except the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses, obviously, so basically just Protestants and Catholics and probably the Eastern Orthodox church), people were dead in sin. A book I've been reading recently, Frederich Bonhoeffer's Life in Community, sums up this idea well: "The basis of all spiritual reality is the clear, manifest Word of God in Jesus Christ. The basis of all human reality is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind. …. The essence of the community of the Spirit is light… The essence of human community of spirit is darkness… It is the deep night that hovers over the sources of all human action, even over all noble and devout impulses."

Light and dark. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Selfless and selfish. Noble and basic. Knowledge and desire. Either/or. 

I acknowledged in humility that I had done nothing to earn this light, goodness, rightness, selflessness, nobility, and knowledge. But I was still light, good, right, selfless, noble, and possessor of the crucial knowledge. It was beyond just thinking that I disagreed with others, or a conviction that I was correct— it was the bedrock belief that I was wholly separate from Those People. 

I had the answers to life's toughest questions, and by virtue of my religion I was wiser than they were. I was happy to learn carpentry and blueberry-cobbler-making from them, but I didn't think I had anything to learn about life or faith or meaning from their "heathen" perspective. (Yes, I did literally refer to them as heathens in my diary, only half-jokingly. Multiple times.) 

What did they, groping in darkness in the futility of their minds, have to teach me, a beacon reflecting the light of the Creator of the Universe?

Unlike me, who merely thought I was superior, cats actually are superior.

Of course, in practice, this fell apart a bit.

The people I met on that trip were some of the most kind, open, loving, caring, morally-motivated people I had ever met. I quickly realized I couldn't "out-nice" them. I was young and awkward and intimidated always stumbling over my words; they were strong and self-assured and full of passion and extremely gentle with me when I would blurt out something stupid. I felt like a tiny little kid (who was somehow twice as tall as everyone else) running after them with my teddy bear bouncing behind me. 

This was deeply unnerving. I thought I was prepared for this— I would've gladly told you at the time that many atheists are kinder than many Christians— but I had never experienced it in such an intense firsthand way. I fell in love with their conviction and their fierce love, their sense of fun and their fuck-you attitude toward the oppressive systems of the world. 

I tried to brush it off, to remind myself that good deeds done for the wrong reasons (not for God) were still wrong. Yet that seemed feeble in the light of the real kindness and love that radiated from these "heathens."

One day I wrote in my diary,

"These girls [one of them was a guy— I was far too conservative to acknowledge his gender at the time] are crazy. They camp, they volunteer, they swear, they love. They leave their legs and armpits hairy, they wear piercings and delightfully raggedy indie clothes. They leave the toilet unflushed to save water and go dumpster-diving for food. They are fierce, weird, unstoppable. They are strong and wild and beautiful. They claim that humans are the scourge of the earth, and yet they contradict that in the way they boldly love everyone. They are passionate. They can convince me that building a composting toilet is the best thing ever. They are actors and musicians, they are dreamers and anarchists. They are my opposite in almost every way, and I am shocked and inspired by them."

Then the next sentence sharply checks my gushing:

"Would that more Christians had their adamant enthusiasm, their daring way of running headlong through life. The world needs people like them, [but these people should] know Christ, and have a source for their wild joy."

My heart knew how amazing these people were, but my intellect was there to curb the enthusiasm of even a diary entry, to remind myself that they were not beautiful as they were, but only a shadow of how amazing they would be if only they were Christian… if only they were more like me. 

The common thread running through my diary entries is pity. I often throw in Victorian-novel-esque exclamations ("God, help me reach these poor lost people!") or scheme how I could have a Conversation that would plant a seed that would point them toward Jesus (I would sometimes sit in the common room stewing about how to begin a conversation. It never panned out). 

Of course, little me believed, with every ounce of her body and soul, that this pity was the most loving thing she could feel. After all, here I was on solid ground while everyone around me was drowning! But I couldn't see that my "solid ground" was a perch where I sat and handed down judgement (not mine, of course, it was clearly God's— anyone could see that) on the world.

And I was so busy trying to figure out how to "be a good witness" that I missed the chance to truly be curious about what they believed and why. 

I was so busy trying to convince myself that I should pity them that I stunted my ability to admire them and learn from them.

I was so busy trying to "be Jesus" to them that I didn't see the Image of God they already reflected.

And yet, grace comes through.

These beautiful people affected me more than I would've ever guessed at the time. When I looked at my diary entry from above, I'm struck by how many of the things that I said were "opposite" are now things I do. They taught me to question the myths of American conquest, to ponder the utility or futility of political involvement, to be bolder with expressing myself, to challenge cultural norms, to consider the possibility that I was (perhaps) not the ultimate authority on gender identity, to read more critically, and to ask myself daring questions and see where they led.

I'm thankful for the way they influenced me, despite myself. I'm grateful for the kindness and gentleness that they showed me. 

In their own way, they preached their own good news to me without words, and over a decade later, I still feel the groundbreaking effects of how they shifted my compass. They helped point me toward a worldview that was more expansive, more humble, and more willing to look for Incarnation in places I didn't expect. Instead of God's lighthouse, I could be a little fellow in a wide world, without all the answers, without secret knowledge, without knowing what everyone needed.

Thank goodness!

~~~