From a Turkish Bus
These are some thoughts I wrote down after a day of riding a bus through Turkey.
While riding our tour bus through the ancient Turkish town of Selucia today I saw a poster with the famous black and white image of Che Guevara on it. As we drove past homes that were half finished, or less, I started wondering what life was like for the people living here. Not in the sense of if they know they are poor by western standards or what they think of living in homes with no front wall, but what do they do in every day life. What do they do for work? Several of the homes we drove past had small stores at the ground level. Who shops there? The western part of my mind then wonders how they are able to survive without computers and the internet. Do they wonder what goes on in the world outside their immediate surroundings? What are their goals and aspirations? What do they do for fun? The kids seem to just run up and down the streets but they seem happy. That made me start wondering about why I was so mad that I haven’t had an internet connection for three days. It is like I somehow figure that without a constant connection to the rest of the world it would somehow break down. That without my having access all of my friends will start having huge parties and not telling me. Finally, I wondered if these people consider themselves blessed. It is a question I have been asking myself a lot lately. What does it mean to be blessed? I went to a conference recently where we talked about the concept of blessing and where it comes from and what kinds of blessings there are.
For the most part we talked about what our leader called Deuteronomic theology. The idea that if you do what God wants, you will be blessed with greatness and wealth. This was how the nation of Israel operated, they believed that if they only obeyed God and worshiped in the proper fashion, then he would bless them with great wealth and political hegemony over their enemies. There is still a lot of this in the church today. How often have you heard about the Prayer of Jabez? I read that book once and hated it. I try not to hate things. I realized a while ago that hate is a very powerful and very dangerous word, but I hate the Prayer of Jabez. For some reason, I am supposed to believe that if I simply ask God to give me a Mercedes and a high paying job he is somehow entitled to give it to me because he loves me. For some reason God has become this galactic Santa Claus who has nothing better to do with his time than hand out goodies to greedy girls and boys. Since when did people gain the power to make demands of God? Sure we all do it every day when we make deals with God (I promise not to lie anymore if. . .), but since when was God obligated to fulfill our demands? When did he stop being God and start, as Donald Miller puts it, a holy slot machine? One of my biggest frustrations with the church today is the people who expect something tangible in return for going to church on Sundays. You know them, the ones who sit up front and wave their hands during all the praise songs and always look like better Christians than anyone else. The people who assume that because they go to church and give a little something in the offering (maybe even 10%) that God is supposed to mail them a check for $1000 or put a new car in their drive way when they already own three. I will be the first to admit that I am a technophile and love little toys and gadgets. When I recently gave my old computer to my Grandma I was freaking out for the three or four days I didn’t have a computer before my new laptop arrived. But even I know that we live in a world that has been over run by materialism and one up man ship.
While walking through Rome we kept coming across squares and plazas that had obelisks or some other kind of tall tower. Having read Da Vinci code I automatically assume that anything long and tall must be a penis. All these Roman emperors were trying to prove who was the gutsiest and manliest by erecting these giant posts to tell people their manhood was alive and well. I do not think we are so far different in today’s world of massive personal debt and the desire and ability to live beyond our means provided by credit cards and third mortgages. My roommate once told me that if you have paid off your house then you should sell it, take out another mortgage, and buy a bigger house. Why? Who says we always need to be moving on up in the great rat race? I look at the people of Turkey and they all seem quite happy in their multigenerational, never quite finished, apartment/homes. Is there maybe something we missed or forgot along the way?
