Myth Busters

“… Jai-saun, nuestro misionero.”

I only caught the words because they mentioned my name. Sitting in a classroom observing a Paraguayan teacher teach, my mind was completely somewhere else where the thoughts were English and disinterested in the outside world. Then I heard the words, “Jai-saun, nuestro misionero.” “Jason, our missionary.”

The phrase wasn’t addressed to me. Instead, I was being used as an example for the children’s lesson. I was something special -- a model for them to look up to, somehow related to the Bible story being taught. A missionary.

Being in Paraguay generally, and hearing my name in the classroom specifically, has gotten me thinking much about what being a misionero means. What’s the significance of being known as a missionary? What does it mean for me to actually be a missionary?

There are many gratifying elements to being labeled a misionero, although not all are quite so spiritually edifying. Before I left home, for example, I heard so many people tell me just how brave I was to go to a foreign country. They thought out loud about how they could never do it and how it must require some special sort of person to travel half a hemisphere away. And my pride grew a little. Then there were the admiring looks from the Christian girls, who (and I may be/probably am just imagining this) were thinking, “Wow, what a special, very handsome, Christian missionary guy.” And my ego grew a little, too.

There are also some elements to being labeled a missionary, though, that don’t feed my ego or make me feel great. It seems as if I’m under many microscopes and am having most every aspect of my life inspected for narrowly-defined and culturally-conservative orthopraxy. In some ways this is good, as it helps me to stop being a hypocrite and to “keep my conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak evil against me as an evildoer, they may see my good deeds and glorify God.” In other ways this is bad, though, as Satan often uses it in my life to intensify my already strong, and wrong, desire to please men. I become less concerned with what my Heavenly Father thinks, and more concerned with what people think. I fear those who can kill my reputation and talk badly about me, but never “Him who can destroy both body and soul in Hell.”

The good and bad elements of being labeled a misionero, however, all seem to point in one direction: missionaries are different, somehow special, and completely unlike everyone else. There is a high standard, some grand calling, and perhaps even an extraordinary manifestation of God’s holiness in the misionero’s life.

Unfortunately for everyone else’s expectations but fortunately for my own sanity and good sense of Christian humility, most of the stereotypes I’ve been carrying around of what a misionero ought to be (that often feel heavier than the luggage I brought to Paraguay) don’t always fit the reality of my life.

For example, I am a sinner. I have let down God and other believers countless times in the past, I will surely do it today, and, for as long as God allows, I’ll be a sinner tomorrow, too. I have constantly left undone those things I ought to have done, and have done those things which I ought not to have done; and there is no health in me. According to Old Testament law, I should have been stoned several times by now -- and that’s just under the statute of cursing parents. Christ’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount confirms my guilt: I am a murderer and an adulterer in my heart, wholly deserving eternal punishment in the fires of Hell. I am a fallen person, my attempts at right living being dirtier than filthy rags and my trespasses against a Holy God completely damning.

Yes, friends, I am a sinner misionero. I am wholly dependent on the grace of God for my righteousness, and anything positive that comes from my life – any manifestation of love or character or fruit of the Spirit – is completely foreign to me and is entirely a result of God’s mercy through Jesus Christ. I fail my friends, family, church, and God, but thankfully that same God never will fail them or me. I fall apart spiritually and some day soon my body will fall apart, too, but the God who knows my body and spirit together never will.

Thus, the misionero stereotypes just aren’t true of me. I’m not especially holy or strong, but am especially sinful and broken and messed up. It is only by the grace of God that I continue on and am able to doing anything of value, my own resources being of no worth and altogether consumed by weaknesses. So, please don’t look to Jai-saun, nuestro misionero, or put any faith in his so-called abilities. The missionary will fail you. Rather, if you’re looking for the Good and the True that never will disappoint, keep your sight set on God. Then, when my weaknesses are so plain to you (or even if they’re not and I’ve got you fooled into thinking I’ve got it all together), you won’t see me any more but instead the awesome God Who’s grace is sufficient for you and me and whose power is made perfect in weakness.