A missionary in a foreign culture

Oh, I don’t mean Hawaii as a location so much. We came to these islands about 30 years ago, burned our bridges to Alabama and adopted this place as home. I love it here. I don’t mean I love the sun, sand and surf (those are nice extras) — I mean I love the people of Hawaii and the place. I have failed and succeeded here, reared our children here, developed deep life-long friendships here and have invested our lives here. This is home, and these people are my people.

But the culture is still, in many ways, very foreign to me, and the election results last night pointed it out once again.

This week in my Fuller Seminary class we are dealing with living as if we are missionaries in a foreign place, and in our REUNION Church Leadership Meeting last night we talked about what that might look like in real terms, to live our lives as if we are missionaries in whatever context we work. We are looking for the natural bridges between those in the church and those in the community in which the church exists, the way an American Missionary to Nepal might do.

2 hours after that meeting I found myself experiencing a teachable moment when the election results from Hawaii came in. The young, attractive, nice guy, born-again Catholic, family-values, church-friendly, former judge, Lt. Governor, Republican candidate for Governor, Duke Aiona, was defeated by 17% by a 72-year-old, ultra-liberal, forner campus radical who favors same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and pretty much every position I find anathema. There are enough evangelical Christian voters in Hawaii to have easily elected Aiona, which tells me that many of them cast a vote for Neil Abercrombie because he has a (D) after his name, despite his moral views that hey might find repugnant. They voted on financial issues (citing the school furloughs) which are temporary, rather than on moral issues, which are eternal. That absolutely astounds me, and reminds me that in this culture I am a stranger, an alien, a foreigner… a missionary.

1st Peter 2:11 (NLT) reminds me, once again that we are merely “temporary residents and foreigners” — missionaries in a foreign culture.