How to Catch a Monkey

Sometimes my English students help me carry supplies from my car to our classroom in the church. Last year, a new student tried to help me with a bag that I was carrying. Actually, I had two bags on that arm, both looped over my wrist. In the same hand I had my keys ready to unlock the church, and something in my other hand as well.

So it was no easy task for my student to extract the bag from my arm. In fact, the bag that he happened to grab was looped under the other, and my closed hand was making it impossible for him to remove. We had a momentary tug-of-war. I couldn’t explain what the problem was. I didn’t want to drop my keys. He was determined to help.

There have been countless times during my work in this ministry when I have experienced awkward moments. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but it just seems that there is so much more opportunity to look like an idiot when you are attempting to communicate across language and culture barriers. Or, maybe it’s just me.

Whatever the case, I am slowly getting used to it. I have begun to feel God’s presence more distinctly in these moments. And the awkwardness is becoming more instructive than destructive for me. It is in the awkward moments that I am faced with my true self. It is here that I am forced to laugh or cry, to go on or to give up. It was at this particular moment, held captive by plastic bags, that I recalled a story I had heard about a technique hunters were using to catch monkeys.

It seems that if you place a desirable object in a clear glass jar in the jungle, a monkey will attempt to retrieve it. To catch the monkey, the jar needs to be heavier than the monkey is. It also needs to have a neck barely large enough for the monkey’s arm. Placed where he can see it, the monkey will soon attempt to get the object inside. It won’t take him long to realize he must reach into the jar through the neck. And in no time, he will grasp the object inside. But in so doing, he will have made a fist. And his fist, which is too large to fit back through the hole, essentially locks him to the jar. His desire to have the object holds him in place for hours. Even the approach of the hunters does not persuade the monkey to drop his prize and escape.

In the end, I laughed as I remembered the story and realized the only solution was to let go of my keys. My student and I managed to extract the bags from my arm. We survived the awkward moment. He has become one of my best students.

But it was through this event, and my struggle with this awkward moment that I was reminded of the profound truth in the monkey’s folly. We are so often held in place by those things we refuse to give up. Sometimes they are obvious things, like cars and houses. But sometimes they are hopes and dreams, or even anger and bitterness. Sometimes pride, as we allow ourselves to suffer awkward moments. It is in letting go that we become free.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.
Luke 18:22, 23

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:21

The Heart I Want to Have

I prayed for a man in a grocery store parking lot this morning. It wasn’t what I set off to do, wasn’t on my agenda. But it was, I think, a God-ordered event that has pushed me a little farther along the path He seems to be taking me.

I have been giving quite a lot of thought lately to the loving of the “unlovable”. For me, at this moment, this has been the homeless. We all have reasons why some people are harder for us to love than others. For me, it’s not the threat of violence or even so much the idea of being latched-onto and taken advantage of. It’s the physical dirtiness and genuine likelihood of disease that I struggle with.

I watched a video a few years ago on refugees in Romania. The commentator was saying that genocides often begin when one group of people begin to see another group of people as less-than-human. In Romania, they began with various restrictions upon a particular people group that eventually escalated into complete segregation of these people from the rest of society. They were literally locked into camps within the cities. Of course, they could no longer support themselves or contribute to society in any way. They had limited access to water and food, and consequently became all that others claimed them to be—dirty, desperate, dependant. This scenario was compared with the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. And of course, the Europeans did much the same thing with the Native Americans.

It’s not that I subscribe to the idea that homeless people have been forced into that position, or that they don’t own most of the responsibility for living the way that they do. But I do see the same spiral of destruction in their lives: that, once dirty, desperate and dependant, it is a practically hopeless pursuit to climb back out of that hole.

I have heard it said of Mother Teresa that she came to a moment of crisis—feeling God’s call upon her to care for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. She said of a man on the street that she knew if she didn’t help this person, she wouldn’t help anyone. She helped him.
Jonah, too, faced a crisis when asked to go to the ones he despised:

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me. ...Jonah 1:2

Peter was given a command to go to the unclean accompanied by a vision:

He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” ...Acts 10:11-14 NIV

We know now that Peter’s struggle was not about food. He was being sent to an unclean people as an instrument of God’s grace and mercy. Peter was being sent to the very people that he had taken diligent care to avoid his entire life.

Why does God do this? Why does he ask us to serve those we find it most difficult to love? Perhaps it is because, while we (humans) may find some people more or less loveable, God finds us all pretty dirty, desperate and dependant. Somehow, He loves us beyond our condition. He loves us in a better way, with a gracious, overlooking-what-we-have-become kind of love. He remembers us from the garden, I suppose, and sees in us what He created us to be. And this, I think, is how I need to see others. Not so much according to their condition as to who they are, who they were meant to be in Christ.

I know it’s not much in the scope of the whole world, but for me, this small step to pray publicly with a man who had simply approached me for money was an uncomfortably positive step forward. I’m sure that prayer was the last thing this man expected or wanted, but I hope that God will apply it to his soul nonetheless. As for me, I am a little closer to having the heart I want to have. And a little more thankful to God for loving me beyond my present condition.

Like Friends

In our adult Sunday school class last year we were talking about why the world is so hostile to Christians. Someone shared about a bumper sticker they had seen, “So many Christians, so few lions.” Only a couple of us seemed to appreciate the humour. But what really surprised me was how so few of those present seemed to get why Christians are so offensive to everyone else.
From a Biblical perspective, we can explain it tidily enough. Our mere presence convicts them, the fragrance of Christ upon us is an offense before we open our mouths. But the heavenly realities are reflected in real causes in the material world as well. Christians are the spiritually rich living in a world of spiritual poverty. And the sad reality is that we are not so much different from the materially rich in their apathy toward the materially poor.
I watched a video this week about a popular outreach in our city. The sincerity of the speaker, the tenderness of the images were compelling. Many churches participate to bring food, hope, the Word to people on the street. I was completely captured until the tiniest phrase slipped out of the narrator’s mouth. He was saying that people recognize him now, that when he arrives, they call out his name. They are like friends, he said. Like friends.
And this, Christians, is why the world will throw us to the lions. He didn’t say “like” as an adjective. He didn’t say, “They are, like, friends.” He said, “They are like friends.”
You see, we Christians have this annoying habit of knowing that we are better than everyone else. Sure, we give, we share, we minister. But something is always out of balance. We are the giver, they the receiver. We are the good, the merciful, the kind. They are the unfortunate, the needy, the object of our kindness. We treat them well, pray with them, hope for them, but at the end of the day, we go home. Maybe we are fond of them, maybe they are “like” friends, but let’s face it, for many Christians they just aren’t friend material.
And when they realize this about us (and they will eventually realize this about us) they will be angry. Angry, because we talked to them about love, compassion and human worth as though we valued them. As though they were someone with whom we could become friends. But in reality there was never any intention of letting things get that far. These boundaries that Christians take for granted are a shock to those who take them at their word, who think that genuine friendship is being offered.
Friendship lends dignity because it assumes a mutuality of personality, enjoyment, and philosophy. One who thinks he is a friend expects a level of dignity that allows him to repay, to relate, to share equally. Charity, on the other hand, robs dignity through the one-way street of giver to receiver. Nothing is wanted, nothing expected, nothing valued the other way around. And when our tongues slip up and show the true intentions of our hearts (charity, not friendship) a seed of hatred is planted.
If we are going to involve ourselves in ministry where we are relating directly with people I think we need to grapple with this issue. Are we willing to risk real friendship? Or get real about not wanting them as friends? But if we don’t want them as friends, what are we doing there anyway?