A Show-Off by Any Other Name...

I recently had a discussion with a Mozambican brave enough to make himself vulnerable to me. And wise enough that I want to share his insight with you. At great risk to someone born into a relationships-based culture, he leveled the following criticism towards me and my kind: "Missionaries," he asserted, "are show-offs. Sometimes I think the only reason they come here is to show off."

Our conversation was interrupted, which gave me nearly 12 hours to think about what he meant. To reflect.

And then, the next day, I shared with him the substance of my reflection. "I think I know what you mean," I said. "We come here, we feel like we've given up a lot to do so, but here I am with a maid who cleans my house one day a week, a car in my driveway, imported foods on my shelves. This is all showing off, isn't it? But," I added, slipping into a slightly defensive tone, "I don't think that missionaries come here in order to show off. I think they come here not realizing that they are showing off."

I was swiftly told that I had missed the mark. "We don't care about those sorts of things. Plenty of people here can afford them. Maybe 'show-off' wasn't the right word."

But the confidence to confront that he had wielded the night before was gone, leaving me again to search for the meaning of his words. This time, I found that meaning on my bookshelf, and it turns out that 'show-off' is appropriate, though in a more spiritual sense than I had been thinking. These are the reflections of Donald C. Posterski:

Missiologists are now referring to "the coming of the third church." The first thousand years of church history were under the aegis of the Eastern Church, in the eastern half of the Roman Empire; the second millennium, the leading church was the Western Church. But in the third millennium the church will be led by the Third Church, the Southern Church--the church in the Two-Thirds World. Samuel Escobar reflects, "There is an element of mystery when the dynamism of mission does not come from above, from the expansive power of a superior civilization, but from below, from the little ones, those that do not have the abundance of material, financial, or technical resources, but are open to the prompting of the Spirit" (Enemies with Smiling Faces, pp. 164-5.)

Just because I come from the West does not mean that my relationship with these people in Africa can be unidirectional. We often learn that giving is generous and that taking is selfish. That's true of material wealth, but the reverse is often true of things less tangible, such as knowledge and understanding: to be constantly the giver of knowledge and understanding is not only selfish, but also arrogant. There is nothing greedy about sitting down and trying to take -- to listen and learn -- a thing or two as well.

Bryant L. Myers, veteran of World Vision and professor of transformational development, expresses the idea that we Western missionaries need to work on developing bidirectional relationships in this way:

The non-poor, and sometimes development facilitators, suffer from the temptation to play god in the lives of the poor, and believe that what they have in terms of money, knowledge and position is the result of their own cleverness or the right of their group. ...[A]fter all, it is fun playing god in the lives of other people (Walking with the Poor, pp. 14-15, 115).

However "fun" it might be, I don't believe that missionaries in general suffer a deficit of good intention. Most make a huge personal sacrifice in an attempt to build the Kingdom of God. The trouble is, despite the silly advice given from a mother to protect the fragile ego of a child, it's not always the thought that counts. Intentions are hidden. They're invisible, and the result is that harmful acts, backed by good intentions, are still harmful acts.

This young African was trying to tell me that we Westerners have become spiritual show-offs, inflicted with a powerful dose of spiritual superiority. We've become the Pharisees of our day, off on a mission to point out everyone else's flaws, liberated to share our vast knowledge and understanding, but without realizing that Jesus beat us to Africa.

Some of my African colleagues have a far superior understanding of theology than I do. And they have a closer walk with Jesus than I do. They know that those who try to walk by themselves in Africa quickly stumble and fall. In the West, we have the crutch of consumerism to cushion our fall, so we often don't even notice when we're flailing in the dirt.

They don't always agree with me on the finer points of theology, but didn't the apostle Paul accuse the wealthy people of the church of Corinth that their understanding was "but a poor reflection as in a mirror"? That the reflection is poor is important, yes, but equally so that it is a reflection. Reflections are backwards. Those words always sting me back to humility whenever I think that I've been bitten by a bout of spiritual superiority.