What About Mentors? More Thoughts on the Book of Judges

"Then Micah said to him, 'Live with me and be my father and priest, and I'll give you ten shekels of silver a year, your clothes and your food.'" - Judges 17:10

My pastor (and associate pastor) are continuing their ongoing Judges sermon series. I have no idea what week they are on ("year 29", as the pastor said on Sunday). This week's sermon was part 2 of the story of Micah and his idol in Judges 17. Micah not only hired a silversmith to make an idol for him; he made his own ephod and hired a priest. Talk about DIY religion!

Reading Micah's story got me thinking. The role of the priest in OT times was to serve as a mediator between God and humanity. For us living in post-NT times, Jesus is our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14). Here's where things get sticky for me. Maybe I don't have any idols in my house or a priest on retainer, but I can understand the appeal of such a thing. How awesome would it be to have a representative of God in your guest room whenever you need him?

Person: "Marissa, what are you going to do about this really difficult, complex situation you are in?"
Me: "I'm not sure. Let me go ask my priest what God wants me to do."

Person: "Marissa, what are you going to do with the degree you have worked so hard to earn after you graduate?"
Me: "I'll just go ask my priest what God's will is for my life."

Person: "That goal that you are trying to achieve looks really difficult. Are you sure you can make it?"
Me: "Let me ask the priest to inquire of God if my efforts will be successful."

Seriously. Awesome, right? Ten shekels of silver a year, clothes, and food is a small price to pay to have someone like that around all the time!

Here's my question, though. Do we put too many people on the same level as Micah's priest? Do we expect pastors to tell us what God wants us to do with our lives? Do we expect our mentors to tell us if we will be successful in our endeavors? Do we expect our Christian friends to respond with profound wisdom when we present our complex problems to them? And even more importantly, do we treat these people like they are on a retainer? Do we expect them to drop everything and come running when we need some advice or encouragement?

I started thinking about times when I have been blessed to receive profound wisdom from a friend or mentor, and as I reflected on my post-college life (lots of people want to mentor students...I feel like I did have people who were more or less on a retainer in my life when I was growing up), I realized that most of the people who have spoken profoundly into my life have been chance encounters. I was blessed to work for some really good bosses, but I didn't take the jobs because I thought the boss would make a good mentor. I've been blessed to find some really good friends. But I often befriended them because they were funny and we had shared interests. And sometimes I was surprised by who stepped up to support me in times of difficulty.

I would especially like to share this crazy story.

A few years ago, one of my best friends went through a devastating crisis. She lost not only her job and a good number of friends, but also her sense of justice and understanding of how the world should and does work. Her world came crashing down around her. I had no idea how to support her in such a crisis.

Another friend had recently divorced his wife and wanted to sell the house he and his wife had bought together. Before he could sell, though, he needed to do some work on the house. He put out an all-call for help, and I agreed to spend an afternoon painting.

I showed up to paint along with two other girls I had never met. We talked as we painted, and somehow we got to talking about what happens when you experience a crisis. One of the girls had gone with her husband to serve as missionaries in another country. They researched various mission organizations, raised money, and took a step out on faith to serve God in a new place. As soon as they arrived, they were kidnapped and held hostage by the mission organization. They were kept in a small room and fed nothing but Snickers bars for almost two weeks before they were released. Fortunately they returned safely home, but her experience affected her in crazy ways that she was still dealing with even at the time we were painting.

The other girl had recently been hiking on a mountain and fallen nearly twenty feet. She was only saved by a ledge that jutted out from the side of a sheer rock wall. She was barely injured but was shaken by how close she had come to death. A few weeks later, she was driving when a moose suddenly appeared in front of her car. She hit the moose and her car was totaled, but again she only incurred minor injuries. However, those two brushes with death shook her to her core and she subsequently battled depression and anxiety.

I will never forget those stories. And I will never forget the generosity of those two strangers to share their stories with me. They talked about how trauma changes you fundamentally. They talked about the importance of relatively minor things like eating right and sleeping regularly. They talked about composing an answer for all the people who ask you questions. Then, when someone unexpectedly asks why you aren't serving as a missionary or what happened to your old car, you can answer without reliving the whole scenario all over again. They helped me understand how deeply trauma can affect you, and gave me a greater sense of compassion and willingness to be present for my friend. I was there because I wanted to help my friend paint his house, and I listened because I wanted to know how to help my other friend. As I followed God's leading, he was faithful to give me what I needed.

When we serve the living and active God, we don't have to install priests to always be present in case we need to ask God a question. We serve a God whose name is, mysteriously, "I am who I am, I will be who I will be." But we also serve a God who came to live among us as a man, Jesus. He is our great high priest who understands our weaknesses and our struggles. We can trust this God to send people our way when we find ourselves desperate for advice or encouragement. We can trust this God to understand just how worried or lost or discouraged we are because he's been there. We can trust him to show up in unexpected ways in our time of need.

I don't think mentors are a bad thing. I don't think pastors are a bad thing. I don't think Christian friends are a bad thing. But I do think that we can easily begin to think that we own these people, that they are there to serve us, to encourage and advise us when we ask it of them. When we think that way, we are just like Micah, building our own idol, hiring our own priest, and creating our own religion in opposition to service of the one, true God.

Hidden Holiness

Image source: http://www.adventure-journal.com/

"'Spiritual path' is the hilarious popular term for those night-blind mesas and flayed hills in which people grope, for decades on end, with the goal of knowing the absolute. They discover others spread under the stars and encamped here and there by watch fires, in groups or alone, in the open landscape; they stop for a sleep, or for several years, and move along without knowing toward what or why.
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The planet turns under their steps like a water wheel rolling; constellations shift without anyone's gaining ground. They are presenting themselves to the unseen gaze of emptiness. Why do they want to do this? They hope to learn how to be useful." - Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard has such a way of saying things. If you haven't ever read any of her writing, stop reading my blog right now and go to the store (or other places on the internet) and get one of her books. I highly recommend For the Time Being, from which the above quote comes, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won her a Pulitzer Prize and is another great book, or An American Childhood, a memoir of Annie's childhood in Pittsburgh.

Anyway.

Last Sunday our church celebrated Compassion Sunday. (I just Googled "Compassion Sunday" and the internet says the official date is May 4th, but I guess we celebrated it yesterday.) I'm not sure if Compassion Sunday was started by Compassion International or if it's a real thing in the church calendar. Regardless, our pastor preached a stirring message asking the question, "Where is love leading you?" and urged the congregation to consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International.

Mike and I do sponsor a child through Nazarene Compassionate Ministries. (Incidentally Nazarene children are cheaper than Compassion children.) And according to a June 2013 article in Christianity Today, child sponsorship really does make a difference in the lives of the children and their families who are sponsored.

But, I left church not quite sure what to do with myself. "Where is love leading you?" Well, love led me to marry my wonderful husband. Love leads me to feed and clothe the baby. Love led to the baby in the first place. Love led me to spend three hours shoveling snow over the weekend so my poor, sick husband could stay home and rest.

But I want to do more. I want to be, as Annie wrote, "useful." I want to not kill time or spend my time willy-nilly joining and quitting clubs and activities. And I want to do things that I'm actually good at. Or get good at something that matters. I want to do something that requires more skill than is possessed by the average teenager. But what? Where is love leading me?

I was encouraged when Annie went on in For the Time Being with these words:

"But what distinguishes living 'completely in the world' (Bonhoeffer) or throwing oneself 'into the thick of human endeavor' (Teilhard), as these two prayerful men did, from any other life lived in the thick of things? A secular broker's life, a shoe salesman's life, a mechanic's a writer's, a farmer's? Where else is there? The world and human endeavor catch and hold everyone alive but a handful of hoboes, nuns, and monks.
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We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious--the people, events, and things of the day--to which we as sophisticated children have long since become oblivious. What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color."

Maybe that's part of the answer. It's not about pursuing holiness; it's about seeing how holiness is pursuing me. It's not about chasing down love and tackling it; it's about following love wherever it goes.

I was told once that the reason there are no straight roads in Indiana is because they follow wagon trails, which followed walking paths, which followed animal trails. Maybe I should stop trying to build straight roads and just follow the meandering path before me.