Bingua

gotta love xkcd

Before I could create this blog, the folks at google, in order to confirm that I am not a robot, asked me to recognize a word. This word was bingua. "Bilingual" was robbed of its l's and one of the i's ate the other. Or something.

Anyway, it made me think, "Too bad I'm not bilingual." People are always asking me (well, maybe they just ask me more than I would prefer), "How many languages do you speak/know?" I always say "Just one." I have seriously studied seven. I feel guilty saying that I know seven. I really don't know them...I just know enough to impress people and maybe translate some ancient documents with a lexicon near at hand. Also, are you still "bilingual" if you don't really speak a language, you can just read it? For instance, I've studied some Latin. If I had a fairly comprehensive understanding of Latin, but never spoke it, would I be bilingual? I think it makes me biscriptal. Or something. So I am septascriptal.

I have a friend that speaks Latin fluently. He tries to speak to me because the knowledge makes him lonely, I think. I can follow along, at least.

One time, my professor told me that there are thousands of Akkadian sherds that haven't been translated because it's a boring job. I thought, "Give me 6 months to learn. I will translate them. And it will be fun!" But then I thought, "Does that make me boring, or eccentric, or exotic? Or a snob?" So I decided not to learn it, just in case it was anything but exotic.

I think I just feel like a quirky knick knack that no one knows where to put in their house. Here is a very frequent exchange:

"What did you study in school?"

"Biblical Literature."

"What?"

"The Bible and dead languages."

"Wow. Sounds...smart."

What does that mean? It feels like an insult. I know it is not an insult, but I'm sensitive these days, because I'm a septascript working a McJob at minimum wage.

Well, I decided this summer that I am tired of living outside the box. Rather than get back in it, though, I'm going to expand its edges so that I fit inside. Okay, actually, I just spent so long away from language studies that I started to miss them, and decided to teach them and share the joy. Because it is truly a joy for me, even if you don't understand it.

But maybe you would like to understand? Or maybe you would just like to be a misunderstood multiscript. I'm offering Latin, Koine Greek, and Biblical Hebrew. Hit me up.

This rant brought to you by "bingua."

I am the problem.

I was reading Blue Like Jazz a couple of months ago. It made me cry like a baby more than once. Donald Miller is my hero, you see - I disagree with him politically, doctrinally, and who knows how else, but he is still my hero. He gives me an awesome picture of authenticity.

I think authenticity is hugely important. If God says, "My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9), then we need to be open about our weaknesses - we need to shout them out! "Hello, my name is Sarah, and I'm a terrible mess of pride and self-hatred...I hardly know how that's possible." As uncomfortable as it may be for some of us, it's important to be open about it, vulnerable. Paul only ever boasts in two things - did you know that? He boasts in Christ, and he boasts in his own weaknesses.

That's so hard for us, though. Well, it's hard for me. It's much more easy to get caught up in the weaknesses of others - in pointing them out, "helping" them out. It's easy to see weaknesses in the system: our school's organization, the nation's policy, our family's dysfunction. I'm not saying we should ignore those things, but I am saying we tend to blame "them," whoever they are, for most of the problems in the world.

Here's what Donald Miller says in Chapter 2 (which contains the best explanation of human depravity I've ever read. Read it sometime.):

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The thing I realized on the day we protested, on the day I had beers with Tony, was that it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite.

Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!"

I have since wanted to do this very often - step into a group of protesters and tell them it's me - it's them. We need to fix us.

I wrote a mission statement for my life one time. Part of it said, "I will be honest about who I am, and excited about changing into who God wants me to be." You would be surprised how difficult this is. You would be surprised how easy it is to pretend you're more knowledgeable than you really are, to act like the type of person you want to be known as, rather than the type of person you know you should be. Well, maybe you wouldn't be so surprised.

"I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley." Page 23.

Or like God says, "I give grace to the humble." Sort of. 1 Peter 5:5.

I intend to change the world. This sounds very big. Well, it is very big, isn't it? Because the world is huge, and, as Megan said (although I can't recall why), "I am very little."

But.

As I see myself slowly changing into the person God created me to be, I see the people around me change, too. A man at IWU said one time that we are like puddles of water, and God is the waterfall. Trying to fill each other on our own is completely draining...but if we place ourselves right under Him, we can't help but drench everyone around us.

I really think I can change the world. Back to 2 Corinthians 12:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

God already changed the world in a HUGE way. He's given me the chance to be in on it, to tap into this huge, world-changing power. "Just become weak."

Or, in my case, just be real about how weak you really are.

So here is Sarah raw:

I am a mess. Sometimes...I feel like changing into Your likeness is never going to happen. This is because I constantly feel like I'm regressing...and that is probably because I am. I have so much head knowledge of You that I feel like I could scoop it out of my brain with a shovel. It feels ancillary and cluttered. But my heart knowledge of You is so weak. I want to rest my head on your chest so that I can feel your heartbeat, live your heartbeat. I want to stop reading books about You and start writing them.

Semper reformanda. We say this because it was one of the battle cries of the Reformation - always reforming. They meant it about the church, but I mean it about myself - because I am the problem.

And God is the solution. And maybe, if I stop presenting the world with a cardboard cutout of myself, then the real me, the weak, God-powered me, can be part of the solution, too.

Next time I roll my eyes at you (I do this often), or lift an eyebrow in derision (I do this more often), remind me that I'm a punk, and that you love me anyway. Next time I get hypocritically...critical about something irrelevant, remind me that I should love my enemies, get over myself, and remember that passion without patience is annoying and ineffective.

I think I'm going to change the world in a big way, maybe something bigger than I've imagined. Maybe I won't even know it in this lifetime. But I can say with certainty (although I can offer no proof) that more world-changing is done in the small things, in the mundane, than in world-recognized greatness.

1 Corinthians 10:31. Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do - do it all for God's glory.