Missions and Money" Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem

Here's my most recent book reflection. if you could read it like it sounds in my head there would be lots of run-on sentences, and "i'm running around like a gerbil on a wheel" moments...and don't take very many breaths either...just let the thoughts run together like they do when they swim around in my head...

When I first picked up this book I thought, “oh, this one is going to rip my face off.” But all in all I have to say the book isn’t what I expected, and I didn’t especially enjoy reading it. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I’m guessing it’s a lot of factors combined. It annoyed me that Bonk gave so many examples from the turn of the century, and statistics that were so old. In my self-righteousness I just thought, “well, of course I don’t think that, of course I won’t act like that” It could be that I’m just being hard-hearted. It could be that I’ve wrestled with my affluence a lot over the past few years, and during the time I’ve already spent in India, and what it means to be a good steward...and haven’t found a comfortable “resting place” It could be that I just don’t want to deal with it anymore right now, while I’m living in the US, enjoying myself and time with friends and family. Maybe I want to compartmentalize my affluence, and think “I’ll deal with this when I actually get back to Kolkata.”

At times I thought, “this doesn’t apply to me” (like when Bonk was talking about the walls our affluence puts up between us and “the poor.”) I think I’ve started working through what it means to “give up” my affluence. I’ve been trying to live simply. I have dear friends who are not “rich” like me. And then when I put it in the context of my friendships, I still wrestle with how uncomfortable and embarrassed I would be if they knew how much money and resources I have access to. I wonder how uncomfortable I will be when I invite them over to my home in Kolkata. I wonder about the imbalance of power that comes along with the affluence that I was born into (even the power of choice to “live simply”). I wonder what to “do” with the fact that I have access to enough resources to change the financial status of some of my friends – but what does that mean, and what would that look like and what is sustainable. And while I wish I could say “That’s not me” – the hard truth is that it is. I loved the analogy Bonk gives (114), “It would be foolish to imagine that the western missionary, no matter how disagreeable he may find the selfish excesses of his won society can escape entirely from its influences.” And then he goes on to quote Trevor Verryn, “[The Western Missionary] cannot help but carry something of [the west’s] atmosphere with him, like the smell of stale cigarettes clinging to the clothes of a nonsmoker who has been in a room full of people smoking.” I guess part of this whole thing is acknowledging how deeply my affluence effects who I am. I wish I could shake it (okay, parts of me do, when I’m at my best, really I probably cling to the “fruits” of my affluence more than I realize) – but I can’t (and who knows if I actually would if I could).

I think one thing that is hard is the relativity of affluence. In the introduction it talks about how the “mission compounds” were modest and sacrificial from the perspective of the west, but how they were still incredibly luxurious according to the standards of the places they are. This is what’s hard for me – the continuum of affluence. So I try to live simply. I give up a lot of comforts. The way I’ll live in Kolkata is “sacrificial” according to lots of people, and a lot of comparison, but not in comparison to the women and children I want to know and share life with. And what does that mean? What is expected of me? How much to “give up” or let go of? What does it mean to be generous? So I guess for me in some ways the only way I can make this whole thing work is to see that the state of my heart, and the way I view possessions/talents/resources/stewardship is really different than where I was 5 yrs ago, and 2 yrs ago, and 1 yr ago. And in another 6 months I want to have a new perspective, and 2 yrs from now, even more different. I don’t have it figured out – but I’m also not who I used to be. I need to keep asking these questions, taking another step forward in stewardship and obedience. And what that looks like in the future is likely very different from what it looks like today.

One quote I wrote down is, “Great wealth sears the soul, dries up the wellspring of the heart, thickens the sin, cauterizes the nerve ends and dulls the sensibilities to the pains and groans of all – save its own.” (89). When I read that I think, “I don’t want that to be me” yet I know it’s a long hard process moving away from this reality.

One thing I found incredibly encouraging was in the last chapter (my favorite by far) Bonk mentions how we are not alone as we ask these hard questions about resources, and incarnational living. I’m not the first person to wrestle with these things – I’m surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (115). So often my own experience consumes my view of a situation/topic – and it is refreshing to be reminded that I’m not doing this in a vacuum.

I need to look at all of this again, and again, and again. "In the final analysis, Christian stewardship is not something we do, but something we become" (131). I want to take the time to read the passages Bonk quotes in Ch 6. I know I’ll need to examine and re-examine the call to stewardship. And I think for me, that’s the point in some ways. It makes me uncomfortable to trying and figure out how to be a good steward – but I never want to stop asking the questions. To me that would be the greatest failure. “And so the missionary is urged to begin his lifelong wrestling with affluence – not with his nation, neither with his church or his mission society; nor even with his family, but with himself. If there is to be any repentance it must begin here. Jesus never called his disciples to a life of conformity to each other, but to himself.” (114).