September 23, 2008: One Way To Test Your Goodness

"I thought I was a good person until I had Indians living in my house."

A missionary told me that around 1990. She and her husband were working with a South American indigenous group whose small villages were off limits to foreigners due to guerrilla activity. In order to have regular contact with the indigenous people and learn their language, they invited three Indians to live in their home, which was about 50 miles from the tribal area.

The indigenous guests behaved well, but the simple fact that they were around proved burdensome to the missionary. She confessed to me that her desire to be rid of them revealed a shameful fact about herself, a selfishness never previously suspected. "If you had asked me a couple years ago if I were kind and hospitable, I would have said 'Sure.' Now I know that I'm not."

That's the price, or part of the price, of trying to do a good work. You realize to your horror that you're not up to it. Your conscience had been giving you a pass only because your virtue hadn't been tested. Think you're a good person? Take three Indians into your home and get back to me in a year. Then, rather than professing "I'm a redeemed child of the King who loves me just the way I am" you might be saying, "I am a worm. God have mercy on my selfish little putrid soul."

Some time ago I ran across an essay that my son Peter wrote where he expressed how much in awe he was of his Aunt Grace, who with her husband took in dozens of difficult foster kids over the years and adopted several of them. And Peter has no idea how hard that really is! He can only guess from afar. Perhaps some day he will attempt such hospitality himself, and the effort will reveal faults that will humble him and move him to be more dependent on God.

But of course it is possible, upon being awakened to one's selfishness, to decide to love it rather than repent of it. That is what happened with the missionary eventually. Overcoming the shock of painful self-discovery, she learned to embrace her narcissism. She abandoned Christian service, renounced Christ, left her husband and neglected her children. Welcoming Indians into her home to show them the love of God is now a distant and suppressed memory.

I never tire of repeating my answer to a question asked of me in March of 2003 when I assumed the pastorate of Faith Bible Church: "What do you want from us?" - and I responded with one word: "Hospitality." Open the doors of your homes to guests.

Certainly there is risk in that. A guest may track dog dirt onto your floors (I've had worse on my floors!). You may discover that you really don't like people that much, and, if you are reprobate, may eventually conclude that you don't want Jesus in your heart any more than you want a stranger in your house. But that is the worst case scenario. I choose to think better of you. Climb the high Himalayan peaks of hospitality, and some day not only will God smile on you, but, maybe, even some smart-aleck niece or nephew will hold you in awe.