Last night Audrey and I were playing badminton with some of our Thai friends for about two hours. I have to admit our first game we got worked all over the court---embarrassed by two Thai girls who showed no mercy. But later we found our sync and Audrey and I had a few mini-dynasties (winning pair keeps their court) ending with a dramatic victory over the two girls who beat us so soundly earlier.
Amidst some serious sweating and laughing and competing, I thought how different God’s way is from everything we typically imagine. Take power for example. Now if you want to influence a large number of people with your ideas or products or whatever, what do you do? You look for money, and ways to reach and get your message or product to large audiences. In other words marketing is power and money is power.
But here is the rub, power may give influence, but it cannot transform. You can bribe a man, purchase his services, or influence his actions, but you cannot transform the man into a different sort of man. You can get him to buy your iPhone by appealing to his vanity, pride, and boredom, but you can’t make him into something else. In other words, you have a degree of power but there are limits that traditional powers, such as money or marketing cannot cross.
No matter how you may feel about problems like global poverty, global warming, and global human trafficking; they have a common core: they are all essentially individual problems. You can give people money and help increase personal incomes, you can live more simply and consume less, you can rescue people from slavery, but the real question and challenge before us is can we change individuals from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution (first and foremost myself)?
And that’s where badminton comes in. What does badminton have to do with power and transformation? More than you might think. It has always been God’s way to go after individuals and transform them, so they become agents of transformation in His world. Historically, as Christians we have not got this right very often. But when we do, no one really notices---and that’s a good thing. Jesus said the kind of world He came to create was formed the way leaven works in dough. It wouldn’t come through coercion or political force but through the gentle inspiration and influence of lives well lived in love---one life to another.
At Faithful Heart, we want to help people in need, and especially those most vulnerable such as orphaned children and poor families with limited access to resources.
In our first year here, one lesson I have come back to again and again is just how little we are capable of doing ourselves. The needs seem like mountains and we feel like ants. But that is where badminton brought a refreshing reminder. The transformation of individuals is at the heart of the gospel and the Christian faith. And that happens most often in relationships and friendships formed in the midst of life: working, playing, eating, and laughing. (Not that anyone of us transforms another, but we who have found ourselves transformed, introduce others to the One who transforms---God).
Suddenly a badminton court becomes a training ground for people to become agents of transformation in their families and communities. A conspiracy of love taking over the world---not with coercion and power, but with service and friendship.
We are not called to save the world (God does that), but to love our neighbor. That is more than enough to keep us busy each day. And it is God’s way of healing the world. Someone has pointed out that if we each kept that command, the worlds problems would be solved.
For us right now, that looks like learning Thai so we can communicate more fully with our neighbors here. It looks like badminton outings and English lessons and Bible studies. It looks like learning to farm and sharing resources. It looks like playing basketball with our neighborhood kids and eating noodles with new friends. Our neighbors may look different from yours, but I bet loving them looks just about the same.
Thank you for loving us, your distant neighbors! May we stir up one another to love and good works wherever we are! (Hebrews 10)
Love in hope,
Matt & Audrey
