of math, millennials, and the mission field

My sister Hannah is a mathematician.

She’s the only mathematician I’ve ever actually known personally. You just don’t meet that many people who go to grad school to learn things like real analysis and partial differential equations with the hope of spending their careers doing research in the area of “pure math” - and I’m still not fully sure what that means. Even less often do you hear someone exclaim, while writing proofs in what appears to be another language, “It’s so beautiful!” (Hannah has said things like this on multiple occasions.)

Far more common? “I hate math.” “I can’t calculate the tip - I’m terrible at math.” “Why don’t we stop teaching kids all this stupid algebra and just teach them useful things, like how to do their taxes?”

Every now and then, you meet a one-in-a-million, like my sister. Someone who has found the beauty and the wonder that others may never appreciate, due to their deeply-held baggage of fear, confusion, inadequacy, or ignorance. Sadly, they grew up learning mathematics as a series of formulas to memorize and complicated steps to master, but no one ever taught them the logic of it; they never got the opportunity to problem-solve, to think critically, to ask why.

So they struggled through twelfth grade, or maybe as far as the undergraduate requisites, and then said goodbye to math forever. After all, we’ve got calculators for that.

The same thing has happened to the Christian church in America.

People are mystified at the numbers of the millennial generation who are leaving their Christian faith upbringing behind. Many of them, like me, were raised in Sunday school and AWANA, active within their youth groups, and never missed church. They went on mission trips and had records of great spiritual transformation. They loved Jesus. And now they’re gone.

And it’s for the same reason so many people hate the beautiful thing that is mathematics: because all they ever learned was the rules. They learned how to look, act, and speak like a Christian. They learned the Ten Commandments and all the other Biblical rules that their church considered important. They learned verses and stories and could sing the books of the Bible in order; they learned the formula for a salvation prayer (“Jesus, please come into my heart”), and how to categorize people into the ones doing it “right” and the ones doing it “wrong.” They learned how they should vote and how they should dress and who they should associate with. They learned the black and the white.

But no one ever taught them the logic of it.

No one gave them the chance to problem-solve, to think critically, or to ask why.

No one led them past the rules and into the relationship that their hearts were crying out for - beyond the formula and into the beauty of Christ and His love.

And no one gave them permission to consider that maybe it’s not all black-and-white, after all. Maybe some things are gray.

Why wouldn’t they bolt as soon as someone offered them the freedom to think outside the box, to be loved for who they are rather than what they do, or to ask the questions they’ve been dying to ask all their lives?

It’s not a mystery. They know the Bible, they know the Gospel, and they know exactly why they’re no longer part of the Christian church. If we’re listening, so do we.

And I hope we’re listening, because to steal my sister’s words - it’s so beautiful. What God has done, the story He is writing, is so beautiful. The love He has offered is so beautiful. The desire of His heart to draw His created image-bearers back into relationship with Him, and to give them an inheritance as His own sons and daughters, is simply breathtaking. What a heartbreak to imagine that many will reject that truth because of deeply-held baggage like fear, confusion, inadequacy, and ignorance.

But we can’t share this beauty and freedom with others until it’s a reality for ourselves. Just as we’re the product of an education system that taught math as something you’re either “good at” or “bad at,” so many of us are the product of a church culture that has diminished Christianity into a list of rights and wrongs. Hannah has put in years of hard work and persistence to find and celebrate the beauty in mathematics; likewise, this issue can’t be solved by making churches more “relevant” - it has to be solved the hard way, which is by example.

The mission field of America, in many ways, starts inside of us. Even if we have never walked away from what we know to be true, most of us still have some callouses from clinging to the rules at the expense of the relationship. And our friends and peers who have abandoned their practice of faith very likely know just as much Bible and Christianese as we do - so they know how to spot a fake. They won’t be fooled by a religious show.

Only when we ourselves rediscover the beauty of the Savior, the genuine delight of walking in relationship with Him, and the blessing of counter-cultural unity with the His body can we possibly hope to recapture the young hearts in this nation. And truthfully? Some of the hearts that most need recapturing are our own.

starving, yet satisfied

My favorite part of everything I do is what I learn along the way. So it’s a little weird to me that it took me so long to realize that I’m not an entrepreneur… I’m not a blogger… I’m not an artist… I’m not even a writer or photographer.

I’m a student. And these other things I’ve dabbled in, pursued, or wildly loved have all been means to my favorite end, which is learning.

Maybe I didn’t notice this sooner because out of all my adult siblings, I have the least formal education. I have two brothers with four-year degrees and my sister is going for her PhD to be a mathematician. I, on the other hand, went to one year of Bible school and have half an associate’s degree. But I’ve never stopped learning, because the world is my classroom, and though I’m never going to be a rich CEO or a starving artist, I am always going to be a student of God and life.

One of my favorite places in Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. The whole city holds so much to learn!

When I went to Israel last month, I was reminded how much I hate the act of traveling. I know that’s not a popular thing to say, but I really don’t enjoy packing, flying, living out of a suitcase, getting on and off a bus, or sleeping in hotel beds. That stuff does not excite me - it stresses me out.

But I was also reminded how much I absolutely love to soak up the immense learning opportunity of being in a foreign land.

I love to see unfamiliar sights, hear unfamiliar voices, smell unfamiliar scents. Travel, to me, is the most saturated and all-encompassing form of learning available. You can’t travel and not learn - that would be like plunging into a lake and not getting wet. The learning material is all around you. Every breath is a lesson. Your comfort zone, where you already know what you need to know and feel confident enough to get by, is miles and miles away.

Couple that with the fact that we chose a study tour of Israel rather than a “vacation” - consisting heavily of sound Bible teaching and incredible archaeological sites - and the trip felt, to me, like coming to a rich oasis of as much learning as I could consume, as quickly as I could take it in. Even now, weeks later, I still feel full and satisfied - and also, somehow, starving for more.

My sister took this picture of me editing the Bible study curriculum I’m currently working on. :)

I think I’m finally coming to terms with the idea that for me, success (or perhaps a better word is “satisfaction”) is found in learning. For a good chunk of my life, success could only be measured by getting an A on a test or by making someone else happy (and I definitely still have residual perfectionism and people pleasing that I deal with on a daily basis); for a lot of the people around me, success seems to somehow relate to money, milestones, or prestige (and I’ve often fallen prey to thinking that’s where I need to find my satisfaction, too). But deep down I know that God made me a learner, and that when I’m learning (or helping others learn, which is a learning experience all its own) I’m becoming more like the person He intends me to be. That’s not very glamorous, and it doesn’t help me figure out an answer for my most-hated question (“So, what do you do?”), but it is good.

It’s why I still love photography, after thirteen years behind a camera. Every time I shoot, I learn something new about how to capture truth, how to find light, or how to express the beauty I’m seeing with my own creative eye.

It’s why I love to write and have never given up blogging, even when I could count my readership on two hands. Writing is how I process information so that I don’t just hear something new and then forget it - I learn something new and understand it.

And it’s why I chose Bible school instead of traditional college, and still love to study and teach the Bible. I know I’ll never close that Book and say, “Okay, I’m done. I’ve learned it all.” Ironically, I feel the most satisfied in this life when I’m hungriest for more than just this life. My God is a fathomless mystery, and I’m pretty delighted that I get an eternity to learn from Him.

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Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42

because he lives

It’s so loud.

It’s too loud to hear God’s voice here.

That’s what I thought as I walked the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, trying so hard to concentrate on Jesus’ walk to the cross but finding that a nearly impossible quest in the face of incessant interruptions - people, voices, languages, vehicles - all screaming to be heard and bouncing off ancient stone everything, with nothing to cushion, nothing to quiet. All I wanted was a shred of peace to cling to and an inch of brainspace to care about what my Savior accomplished for me so many years ago.

I found it in a cistern.

We walked into a tiny, unassuming Coptic church a few steps off the beaten path, and stooped down into a tight and steep underground stairway. It opened up into a partly-full underground water cistern deep beneath the clamoring city, cut into the side of the hill we call Calvary. Its location, so near where Jesus died and was raised, makes it a likely sanctuary for the very first Christians who sought to worship together in some degree of safety from the loud, God-hating world.

The inside of the cistern

There, our voices echoed off the water and the rock, enriching our a cappella versions of “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Because He Lives,” remembering the longstanding heritage of our faith - the great cloud of witnesses that has gone before us - and remembering that this call is a hard one. A death sentence, even. Sometimes physically, but always spiritually.

But because He lives, I can face tomorrow.

That’s what my Savior accomplished for me - a future and a hope. Life everlasting.

Because HE lives.