For quite a while now, I have been reading A Practical View Of Christianity by William Wilberforce, who is famous for campaigning the abolition slavery in the British Empire in the early 1800′s.
William Wilberforce
In his book, he sought to (and was successful in) present a clear, no-frills picture of what the Christian life ought to look like; it’s quite convicting, some two hundred years later. We still need to be reading this book.
I was just reading through the third part, Defects Of The Religious Systems Of Confessed Christians. In part of this chapter, Wilberforce responds to a proposed “Opponent” in a “Consideration of the Reasonableness of Affections towards an Invisible Being”.
In this section, Wilberforce argues (and he is quite long-winded at times) that it is not seeing or hearing that most affects our affections (emotions) but the closeness of contact. Wilberforce quotes Adam Smith’s Theory Of Moral Sentiments:
“It would occasion a man of humanity more real disturbance to know that he was the next morning to lose his little finger, than to hear that the great empire of China had been suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake. The thoughts of the former, would keep him awake all night; in the latter case, after making many melancholy reflections on the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labors of men which could thus be annihilated in a moment; after a little speculation too perhaps on the causes of the disaster, and it’s effect in the political and commercial world: he would pursue his business or his pleasure with the same ease and tranquility as if no such accident had happened; and snore at night with the most profound serenity over the ruin of a hundred million of his fellow creatures. Selfishness is not the cause of this, for the most unfeeling brute of earth would surely think nothing of the loss of a finger if he could thereby prevent so dreadful a calamity.”
The point that Smith and Wilberforce were making is that the things that happen directly around us affect us more than things that happen at a distance. I don’t care even a bit if the flat next door moves their furniture around or redecorates, because that doesn’t affect me hardly at all; if my own flatmates move furniture around or redecorate, I have quite an interest, as I have to exist and function in this space.
Immediately upon reading this and the surrounding comments from Wilberforce, this seemed to apply to my role in missions.
ywam.org.au
ywamships.org
Here at YWAM Reef To Outback (Youth With A Mission Townsville) my main role at the moment is related almost solely to information technology. I’ve been building websites and helping people keep their machines running here around two years, now. In that time, I have rarely actually left Townsville… I have had two four-week vacations. I have not, however, gone any where on an “outreach.” The last time I went on outreach was to Thailand in March/April of 2008.
iwtl.org
ywamrto.org
With this in mind, it has been very hard (as you may have guess from my previous entries) for me to stay motivated and to keep perspective about what I’m doing. I have contributed to a few websites in the last couple of years, including http://ywam.org.au [above, left], http://www.ywamships.org [above: right], http://www.ywamrto.org [left], and http://www.iwtl.org[right].
Two of these (YWAM Ships and I Want To Live) are essentially the same campaign, and one that I have struggled long and hard over. Not because I disagree with them or anything of the sort… but because they are about things that I’ve never seen, heard, or experienced. Papua New Guinea is, to me, just another place, no different than China or England or Mexico or Sri Lanka or Greenland. I’ve never been there, never had anything to do with it, at all. Think about situations in your own life: are you satisfied simply hearing about good things happening, seeing pictures and videos of bad/good things happening? Do they hold your interest for very long?
For me, the answer is no. Missions is something I’ve been around for a long time, long before I was in YWAM. Older friends of mine had been involved in missions in various parts of the world, and I heard a lot of stories. I’ve seen a lot of pictures and heard a lot of stories from the missionaries that my church supports.
My first experience of missions was the outreach phase of my School Of Music in Missions, when we spent three weeks in Thailand. When I was there, I saw the contrast between rich and poor, between different religions, between different cultures. I would now return to Thailand in a heartbeat, given a chance, and still daily check up on a ministry that I worked a few times there.
So… coming back to our friend William Wilberforce, I’m finding his words in A Practical View Of Christianity very applicable to my life, and they seem to be shining a little light on why I have felt like the odd guy out with the Ship Tour that’s been going on, which has been a large part of all the questioning that’s been going on in my life, lately.
Please continue to lift me up in your prayers friends, as I need them as much now as ever.
