One reason America is making you a bad Christian
I write this three months post my integration back into the land of the free from my temp home in Northern Uganda. I still miss picking mangoes from my tree in the front or being slowed down by the rain. It would be an understatement to say the reverse-culture shock is humbling me. From the pace of life to the way the lines between friend and family lose their rigidness, Ugandan culture is in so many ways contrary to many of the things we deem as "right" in America.
And yet, those same things I find may be the most right.
I journal my way through adapting back to the states, I’ve found one imparticular stumbling block for what I’ve come to know about faith:
America's inclination towards self-sufficiency
American confronted me with two things upon my arrival home. 1. air-conditioning is very cold. 2. Everyone here seems obsessed with knowing exactly what we were all "going to do now". "What are you doing now Emily?" "What's your plan now?" I'm not saying this is wrong. I am saying I would have never been asked this in Uganda because the doing isn't as priority as the being. Coming back was stepping out of a world where hospitality was less of an attempt and more a lifestyle, and into a world where we try to learn hospitable concepts to offset our natural existence of busyness.
In this new land, Atlanta, Georgia to be exact, “high-capacity” leaders and clickbait how-tos are self-care are the lay of the land.
It was all beginning to feel a bit backwards to me, and if you think I'm crazy, or complaining, here are the numbers. And newsflash, it's not just Uganda that’s moving a more comfortable pace than America.
“Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.” ILO
The U.S. remains the only industrialized country in the world that has no legally mandated annual leave.
And then you can look at this fun graph for how we stack up against other industrialized countries on paid leave.
The impact of work, put weight on the spirit, especially when the spiritual believe that so much is a gift.
My personal faith that is based on receiving.
Something free.
That I didn't earn.
And can't pay back.
Proverbs tells us often to put our hands to work. To care for what is ours. But it's likely these verses breathed in the context of the slowness of sewing, harvest and actual seasons (not the ones we make up to describe how we feel). It's likely this kind of work had rest and community built right into it while they watched the rain fall.
In my experience, the American Christian finds it difficult to relate to God as a loved son or daughter. And it could be because our culture teaches us to do the opposite. A culture that keeps track of what someone has cost them, a culture that hates to offer anything unearned from government to personal interactions, and a culture that is often too busy to invest in personal relationships is not building into us dependency on anything. But interconnectedness is actually what we were made for.
