It’s one month ago now. Two conversations. One in which I participated. One which I heard about second-hand a couple of hours later. But there they are – both running around my mind ever since … and annoying me. So it is back to the purge-by-posting strategy.

The first conversation was with a bunch of Christian university graduates. It was about the ongoing presence of caste in Indian society, including the church. Caste had reasonable vocational origins, but now it is a way to keep people separate and then to value some much more than others. A student related to me that when his denomination gathers for it’s annual assembly, they divide up according to caste. What?! Haven’t these guys heard about Ephesians 2, Galatians 3 – and a bunch of other passages?

It makes me combust. It just does. But when we are about to combust, it is always good to pause, stop the flow of oxygen, and ask ‘why’. Self-awareness is always a friend. For me, it is more than a biblical-theological issue. I can see this. As I approach leadership and community and mission, 1 Corinthians 12 may have taken on creedal proportions – but there is more to it than this.

As a child, stuff happened that makes me sensitive to nonbelongingness. It will always be that way. I am from New Zealand. We are so flat and egalitarian. Hierarchy is hated. We have a thing called the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. As soon as someone grows too tall and excellent, standing out from the mediocre crowd, we have ways and means to cut down that poppy – or just wither it into lifelessness by a welter of sarcasm. Plus I now work in a UK-based organisation and I see a bit of caste in this class-y society. The era of Downtown Abbey did not rid it of all vestiges of the upstairs:downstairs way of life. I feel it – just as my Dad felt it when he went to work in the UK at my age, three decades ago. Self-awareness? These are some of the factors that light-up my combustible contribution into any conversation on caste.

But then there was a second conversation. I didn’t hear it myself. Barby, my wife, heard it and related it to me. Again, a Christian graduate student. She has lived life in multiple places around the world. One simple observation. ‘You guys in the West spend a lot of money on leisure.’

Boom. Hmm. Wow. Ugh. Ouch. As you can see, a highly articulate conversation has been triggered inside me.

Is she saying that leisure is wrong? I fantasize about sneaking a week here and there with Barby in some oddly exotic place. Is that wrong? I don’t think so. Next month we are having our first ‘longer-than-one-week’ holiday in four years. Do I feel guilty? Of course not. Truth be told, I feel guilty that it has taken this long a time! Leisure. Rest. Lying fallow. These are good things.

What this woman couldn’t understand is the amount of money we spend on leisure – and, I guess, this reflects the huge space it occupies in our imaginations and dreams, our goals and priorities. What I hear her saying is that ‘in a world where there is so much need and inequity, how do you justify spending so much money not just on legitimate things like an education and a home – but on your leisure?

Is she onto something here? Of course she is. What is wrong with my self-awareness that I can’t see this as clearly as she does? While I’ve been combusting over Ephesians 2 and Galatians 3, she has been reading much of Luke’s gospel and a whole lot of the prophets. And out she comes with disturbing stuff, exposing blindspots in my reading of the Bible and my following of Jesus.

Nah – I don’t really want to purge-by-posting. Filling, not flushing, is what I want. I want to get close enough to people like this that they tell me stuff that annoys me, triggering conflictual conversations in my head that help me be more faithful to the gospel with my life. I am asking the Spirit to help me combust as much over leisure’s overspending as I do over caste’s undervaluing.

nice chatting

Paul