I used to have a very serious vendetta against bananas.
Seriously. I hated their very essence. Even the smell of a banana would send me spiraling into a fit of conniption. Why these harsh feelings? I trace it back to an unfortunate experience at Sunday School long ago.
I was about five years old and fairly notorious for my picky eating habits. The time was snack-time, presumably after a stimulating Sunday School lesson filled with felt boards and coloring pages. The napkins were distributed, and the snack tossed haphazardly on top of them. A sinking feeling filled my growling stomach. Bananas? Bananas are the snack for today? I was thoroughly offended as my teacher continued to distribute our sub-par victuals. Really, lady? Whatever happened to animal crackers, the official Sunday School snack of the 90's?
Being the good sport that I am, I took a tentative bite of my banana. I then proceeded to suppress a gag, spit the banana out, and swear off bananas for the next 17 years.
But a 22-year-old fresh on the mission field doesn't quite have the luxury of being selective. When my parents and I first moved to the DR we hardly knew anything, and we especially didn't know how to find and make good food during our first few weeks. Our meals consisted mostly of eggs, noodle soup, and-you guessed it-bananas. At this point in my life my brain was developed enough to win the logical argument that bananas were good for me and I should eat them. I fumbled with the peel and begrudgingly tasted my first banana in almost two decades.
I wish I could say it was love at first taste, but my love for bananas was a slow process. We had to get to know each other, appreciate each other for who we were. It helps that island bananas are far superior to American bananas. By the time a month had passed I was completely sold on bananas, especially in the form of a smoothie.
And so we became regular banana purchasers. We found a banana vendor that we liked and made sure to stop by at least once or twice a week. The going price for bananas here is 3 bananas for 10 pesos. which is about 8 cents a banana. Our typical order was 9 bananas, mostly because that was about how many we could eat before they went bad (they sell bananas pretty ripe around here-there is no such thing as buying them to ripen at home).
One day as my dad was taking our bananas out of the bag he counted them and discovered something delightful-our vendor had given us 11 bananas. 11 bananas when we only paid for 9! Could we really be this lucky? Was there a mistake on his end? Should we take two bananas back? We decided he was just feeling generous that day and we celebrated our good fortune.
But then something strange happened: we continued to get bonus bananas. Sometimes it was one, sometimes even 3, but mostly 2 extra bananas seemed to become the norm. And so we fell into a pattern of ordering bananas and receiving extra. It was a good life, a happy life.
Then came the fated day I will never forget. My dad had returned from getting a fresh supply of bananas and he was taking them out of the bag and putting them on our banana plate (yes, we have a special plate for bananas. It's green and sits on top of the refrigerator so the ants can't get them). Suddenly he looked up, almost at a loss for words.
"They just gave us 9," he said incredulously. I reeled back, completely blindsided by the news. We shared a dumbfounded look for a moment as a deep sense of injustice began to rise within me. 9 bananas? Is that all we are worth to them now? They gave us 9 bananas? Is this some kind of sick joke? The horror, the audacity! I can't believe them! How dare they, how dare they-
-give us exactly what we ordered, what we deserved.
How dare they? How do I dare to get upset when they have treated us nothing but fairly? We paid for 9 bananas and we received 9 quality bananas. There was no crime, no act of sabotage. The only problem here was my attitude.
Do you see what happened? At some point in our dealings with our bananas vendor I began to expect those free bananas. I began to feel like I deserved those free bananas. I had become (dare I say it?) entitled to those free bananas.
The reason I am telling you this story is to show you just how easy it is to become entitled, and thus why we should be so careful in making sure we don't create opportunities for others to become entitled in our ministries. All it took were a few times of receiving something free, something I didn't work for and didn't deserve, and just like that my mind began telling me that I should expect these free things because they belonged to me. I have seen the same thing happen in the villages I work in. Someone receives a free service or material item, and after a few times they come to expect it from everyone who comes into their community. They begin to feel entitled to my material resources and become upset when I don't freely give it to them.
This tendency is not limited to people in impoverished communities. Obviously not, after sharing my own experience of entitlement. There is no such thing as a rich man's sin or a poor man's sin. Sin permeates every corner of the globe, and it shows no regard for class distinction. I can't judge someone for forming the very same attitude that I had in a similar situation, but I can learn how to stop contributing to the problem.
Do I think our vendor was wrong for giving us extra bananas? No, not at all. He can't help my attitude and it ultimately did not inhibit my ability to live a quality, independent life. This is also a slightly different circumstance because this man is running a business, not some sort of social assistance ministry. In this instance what I needed was a gentle shake and a reminder to pull myself together and view these extra bananas as a gift, not something I deserved.
But what about in the ministry world? We need to ask ourselves the hard questions and be humble enough to consider the answers. Will giving out this material item eventually impede the receiver from living a quality, independent life? Do my material possessions speak louder than my overall witness of God? Is it possible that my material things could somehow harm other ministries in the area who may not have the resources that I do and thus can't (or won't) use material things to bring people to God? When people look at me, do they see my stuff or do they see Jesus?
As I said before, it is very easy to become entitled. It is not easy at all to keep a healthy attitude about "things," regardless if you are the giver or the receiver. And remember, we can't continue to feed into a natural human tendency (entitlement) and then get angry at people when they express the very attitude we helped create. Sometimes on the mission field I feel like we treat people like beggars and then condemn them for acting the part. Let's move forward cautiously as we seek God's will in missions around the world. It only takes two bananas to get off track.
But don't let that discourage you from seeing the hope and potential that can be found everywhere you look.
No comments:
Post a Comment