should i stay or should i go?
I was recently told by someone close to me that the pressure that they feel to provide has become extremely overwhelming. Due to financial circumstances and cultural differences, the responsibility of providing for his entire family will one day fall on his shoulders, and although he is trying to live the life that he wants for himself, it is impossible for him to ignore the burden that has been placed on him. It is right to be a provider and to take care of the people who need you, and in this specific case, he nor the family have another option. Of course he loves his family, but because of that love, the weight of the responsibility is even heavier when he chooses to do what he wants wants for himself, knowing that so many people rely on him.
I have never been faced with such a responsibility. I have never been in a position where the mouths of every one of my extended family members, even those of the members who are more capable that I am, are the mouths that I am expected to feed, so in response to him sharing this with me, I had no clue of what to say.
While I am a missionary and a representation of the Church, during my month of service so far, I have not been drawn to read my bible. When I began to concern myself more with the trouble of my friend, reaching for my bible was my first instinct. I am in no way a bible expert, and as embarrassing as it is, my starting place was the back of the Bible where there is a list of scriptures titled: Great Stories of the Bible. Many of these stories I was not familiar with, so I began to flip back and forth, reading chapter after chapter, searching for a biblical icon that I could use as a reference that applies to the situation that he is in.
I had no luck.
Again, expressing my lack of knowledge of the Bible, I turned to the section following Great Stories of the Bible that lists keywords and themes of the Bible like peace, responsibility, and provide, and their corresponding verses, and I searched many books and read many chapters, again trying to find something to share with him. I searched for an example of how God helped one of God's children who were suffering below the same pressure of having a responsibility that they could not walk away from.
But just as before, I had no luck.
Growing up in a Western culture, individualism is a concept that has been instilled in me. It has many good characteristics and encourages people to discover themselves and make their own decisions, but I have also seen how it has been damaging. In some ways seeking self-discovery can tiptoe on the line of selfishness. As an individual who is a missionary, I am completely self-sufficient. Every bill that I have to pay is no longer the responsibility of my parents, and in that way it is a blessing to them, knowing that they only have to provide for themselves, but what if that wasn't the case? What if they couldn't provide for themselves? What if I was in the position of my friend? I still want this opportunity to grow as an individual but taking that liberty may be posing a risk to the well-being of my family. This situation, of trying to balance the dilemma of managing both an individual and a community-based life, is not one that is thoroughly described in any story that I found.
The Bible is filled with stories of each of those concepts, but it is not so often that they are present, let alone in competition with each other, in the same story. It is our call to live in community with other people while we maintain an individual relationship with God, but what are the details? I spent about an hour and a half reading and searching for something to give me the right words but I found nothing that I thought would fit this exact situation, in fact it only led to more questions.
Did people not have responsibilities equivalent to one person carrying the financial and emotional weight of 50 or more members of their family in 2017? Were people made to sacrifice their family or their own dreams, even if they were both godly calls? Were there times that Jesus just said, you are following me by just staying where you are? How did people manage when Jesus said that they were called to do both, to stay and to go?
In seeking a response to the concerns of my friend, I realized that what I was searching for was an exact scenario. I was trying to use the Bible as a car manual that tells you what page to turn to with a problem, where you are instructed to turn to another page to specify the problem, and to another page to specify a little more, until you arrived at an exact solution. Aside from being inefficient, if the Bible were as such, it would greatly limit the relationships we have with God and the relationships that we have with each other knowing that all relationships have a finite framework.
I do not have an exact answer and I cannot say what I would normally say which is, "you've got to do what's best for you" because in this situation, that is not the only priority. In many ways it challenges me in all of the other times that I have said that to question if one's personal goals should every be the only priority. My response is that what we must take from the Bible is that people struggled. People were put under pressure. People had impossible burdens that they could not walk away from or throw their hands up and say, I don't want to do this anymore. Regardless of the specifics of these struggles, the solution was never found through relating the situations, it was found by relating their trust in God. The solution to those circumstances and this one is found in knowing that when life isn't good and when life isn't just, God still is.
The answer is not, "X is the best decision!" or "Follow these steps to figure out how to navigate the issue!", but rather that no matter which one you choose, or if you choose both, God will provide for you what you need both physically and spiritually, and your job is just to trust. God is concerned about our needs as a group of individuals, and while I don't know how God will use my friend or me to provide for ourselves or the other people that we are responsible for, I know that God will not leave it to us to do alone.
I have never been faced with such a responsibility. I have never been in a position where the mouths of every one of my extended family members, even those of the members who are more capable that I am, are the mouths that I am expected to feed, so in response to him sharing this with me, I had no clue of what to say.
While I am a missionary and a representation of the Church, during my month of service so far, I have not been drawn to read my bible. When I began to concern myself more with the trouble of my friend, reaching for my bible was my first instinct. I am in no way a bible expert, and as embarrassing as it is, my starting place was the back of the Bible where there is a list of scriptures titled: Great Stories of the Bible. Many of these stories I was not familiar with, so I began to flip back and forth, reading chapter after chapter, searching for a biblical icon that I could use as a reference that applies to the situation that he is in.
I had no luck.
Again, expressing my lack of knowledge of the Bible, I turned to the section following Great Stories of the Bible that lists keywords and themes of the Bible like peace, responsibility, and provide, and their corresponding verses, and I searched many books and read many chapters, again trying to find something to share with him. I searched for an example of how God helped one of God's children who were suffering below the same pressure of having a responsibility that they could not walk away from.
But just as before, I had no luck.
Growing up in a Western culture, individualism is a concept that has been instilled in me. It has many good characteristics and encourages people to discover themselves and make their own decisions, but I have also seen how it has been damaging. In some ways seeking self-discovery can tiptoe on the line of selfishness. As an individual who is a missionary, I am completely self-sufficient. Every bill that I have to pay is no longer the responsibility of my parents, and in that way it is a blessing to them, knowing that they only have to provide for themselves, but what if that wasn't the case? What if they couldn't provide for themselves? What if I was in the position of my friend? I still want this opportunity to grow as an individual but taking that liberty may be posing a risk to the well-being of my family. This situation, of trying to balance the dilemma of managing both an individual and a community-based life, is not one that is thoroughly described in any story that I found.
The Bible is filled with stories of each of those concepts, but it is not so often that they are present, let alone in competition with each other, in the same story. It is our call to live in community with other people while we maintain an individual relationship with God, but what are the details? I spent about an hour and a half reading and searching for something to give me the right words but I found nothing that I thought would fit this exact situation, in fact it only led to more questions.
Did people not have responsibilities equivalent to one person carrying the financial and emotional weight of 50 or more members of their family in 2017? Were people made to sacrifice their family or their own dreams, even if they were both godly calls? Were there times that Jesus just said, you are following me by just staying where you are? How did people manage when Jesus said that they were called to do both, to stay and to go?
In seeking a response to the concerns of my friend, I realized that what I was searching for was an exact scenario. I was trying to use the Bible as a car manual that tells you what page to turn to with a problem, where you are instructed to turn to another page to specify the problem, and to another page to specify a little more, until you arrived at an exact solution. Aside from being inefficient, if the Bible were as such, it would greatly limit the relationships we have with God and the relationships that we have with each other knowing that all relationships have a finite framework.
I do not have an exact answer and I cannot say what I would normally say which is, "you've got to do what's best for you" because in this situation, that is not the only priority. In many ways it challenges me in all of the other times that I have said that to question if one's personal goals should every be the only priority. My response is that what we must take from the Bible is that people struggled. People were put under pressure. People had impossible burdens that they could not walk away from or throw their hands up and say, I don't want to do this anymore. Regardless of the specifics of these struggles, the solution was never found through relating the situations, it was found by relating their trust in God. The solution to those circumstances and this one is found in knowing that when life isn't good and when life isn't just, God still is.
The answer is not, "X is the best decision!" or "Follow these steps to figure out how to navigate the issue!", but rather that no matter which one you choose, or if you choose both, God will provide for you what you need both physically and spiritually, and your job is just to trust. God is concerned about our needs as a group of individuals, and while I don't know how God will use my friend or me to provide for ourselves or the other people that we are responsible for, I know that God will not leave it to us to do alone.
"And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others."
2 Corinthians 9:8
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