Is it wrong of me to expect different treatment?  Maybe.  But I have no problem with asking people to get off my lap.  Or, in tonight’s situation, getting out of the taxi because I refused to be driven by a man with a woman sitting in his lap at the steering wheel since the back was so full.

“God and business.  Do they have anything to do with each other?  Today I’d like to talk to you about an idea for ministry you may not have considered.  Many students come up and ask me how they can balance the pressures of school and life with the call to ministry that they see in scripture.  Many of you are about to take exams and even for some of you, this will be the last semester at Ntare school, but you have also heard some kind of call from scripture union over the years to continue with your faith and get involved in some kind of ministry.  I want to send you away with the thought that you don’t have to separate ministry from working life.  There is a way you can combine the two, and that’s why I’m calling this message “God in the marketplace,” after this book I have here.

Let me tell you a story, share some scripture, and close with another story.

There is a story I know of a certain Ntare boy who was taking Entrepeneurship and Economics for his A levels.  He was also very active in the school fellowship as a chairperson for scripture union.  He was excited about the chances he might have after he left Ntare school to study business at university and to meet some of his fellow OBs already successful in the business world.   He was so excited especially because he had a vision for his home village that his business studies would help him accomplish.  You see, in his home village in Bushenyi, electricty has not yet reached and the water is also fairly poor.  People live happily but he knew that if he could bring power and better water and other types of industry, the community would improve significantly and would be able to sell their crops and goods with much higher profit.

So the Ntare boy goes to university in Kampala and takes his business classes.  He is fortunate enough to have some very successful business professors with great business advice, and he is even able to socialize with them outside of class.  His professors are gregarious and witty, always the life of the party, saying things like “Am I poor?  No, I’m rich” to crowds at dinner parties followed by thunderous laughs.

On the advice of his professors, he starts to market his idenity as his business.  A good business, they tell him, is a confident personality that sells its own lifestyle.  He starts small by purchasing and managing a few shops, then is able to purchase a few bodas and rent them out to boda drivers.  With smart investing and steady income stream, soon his account is on the rise.  Would you believe it, a beautiful young lady from his university also begins to take notice in him, telling him how smart and strong he is.  He is glad to feel confident enough to provide income and a house for a woman, who soon turns in to his wife.

Not long after, he meets another business man in the area who takes notice in him and asks to partner.  They combine businesses and their profits sky-rocket, knowing how to provide services that the market demands.  Thanks to his business partner who socializes with MPs, a district MP brings the young man to his house and asks him to serve as his financial advisor.  What a blessing.  How can he turn this opportunity down?  His income more than doubles, and the offer also comes with a car.  Before he knows it, two kids are on the way and two cars are in the driveway of their private compound in Kampala thanks to his new job as business advisor to the district MP.  And more money is on the way, the MP promises, if he will simply hold certain information and documents for the MP in this “new” house, promising not to release this private, secret information to anyone.

This is a story that is happening today to university students who are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, and to many, it would look like a blessing from above.  However, what has happened to the young man?  With good intentions, he went out into the business world hoping to generate enough funds to re-shape his home village and support his friends and family.  It’s not impossible for him to do that, but as you can see, he’s been sucked into the business world and is likely even dealing in corruption without knowing what happened.  It happens so fast it can his head spin.  He has lost his vision because the cares of the world became too great.

Let’s turn to Isaiah 58 to take a look at what God says about the good work we can be involved in here on earth.

vs. 6 “Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not the share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yoursle from your own flesh?
The shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily.”

He even goes on to say in verse 14 that if we delight in the Lord, that he “will make you ride of the heights of the earth.”

I like that phrase.  Riding on the heights of the earth.  What does it make you think of?  A winged chariot flying through the clouds?  Or how about a president sitting at the top of his business tower in a big city, literally sitting on the heights of the earth.  We can agree that most humans long to be important and in some ways to ride on the heights of the earth.  It’s funny that the same thing we often can get lost looking for in business is the same thing God wants for us.  It’s just he has a different path for us to take to get to the heights.

In the passage, God calls these activities “fasting.”  Many of us fast possibly to get more blessing from God or to prepare for ministry, the way Jesus did.  It’s interesting that God considers the actions that Christians can get involved in as “fasting.”  He even says that when we call out to him, he will respond quickly to our requests due to these fasts.  But let’s look more closely at exactly what kinds of fasts these are.

The bonds of wickedness.  The yokes and straps that oppress people.  Working for the poor, the homeless, the naked, and the abused.  Do you know any injustice going on in your own area?  Did you know that some children who come from poor homes are often picked up by strangers and promised great jobs in the city, only to find themselves forced into labor in a rock quarry, a cave, or even worse, sexual slavery.  Did you know that things like this go on around us and we don’t even notice?  Is it right?  Should the strong be preying on the weak like this?  So who is going to stop them?

The answer to that is me.  And the answer to that is you.  All evil needs to succeed in the world if for good men and women like us to do nothing.  God is giving us a charge to get involved in making the world a better place, to sniff out corruption, and to make sure that the oppressed are set free.  How amazing this work would be!

This is a very different idea from business, isn’t it?  It is, but it’s not so different after all.  First of all, this young man from Ntare can still keep his vision.  It’s not wrong to make money, and the bible even goes to lengths to instruct the rich in this present age not to be arrogant, but to set their hopes on God and be rich in good works, using their money for generosity.  1 Tim 6:17

Second of all, let me give you a second story that illustrates how exactly you can bring a ministry into your business, allowing you to be in business and working for justice and ministry at the same time.

Raise your hand if you have ever enjoyed a coc-a-cola?  I thought so.  Did you know the current CEO of Coke in the United States is a Christian?  Let me read you some of his story that he published recently here in my university magazine, and it will show you how he lived his life for a long time without “seeking first the kingdom of God,” and how he made a great switch late in his life to start using his business for ministry.

Read the story here!

There is nothing wrong with having your child on your shoulders in a parade.  It’s a great thing.  I’d like to think I have a future of a family with smart kids and beautiful wife coming somewhere down the line, and on that saturday in December we go to the Christmas parade and have an idyllic family moment you could take a photo of and put in a scrapbook.

I wonder if we dream too small though.   I wonder if the parade gets in the way.

Lots of times, we can settle for good things when there is the possibility of amazing out there, and while there is nothing wrong with a successful life of careerism (making money, doing good for your community, giving back) and family-ism (having the 2.5 kids, beautiful wife, do people have white picket fences anymore?), maybe they aren’t all there is.  Maybe what’s good gets in the way of what’s best.

What do I mean.  I think we should have families and successful careers.  But if you’re a dude like me, or a dude-girl, who dreams of doing something epic with their life, of doing all we can to make the world a better place before we run out of breath, then there must be more and we’re settling.   Your job can be your dream, actually, and I’m glad for those people.  Starting a restaurant or shop of some kind and adding to the community is big.  Plus, your family is like your kingdom, and it’s good to be a queen or king over something at one point in your life.

The question is: what kind of kingdom do we want ours to be?

Have we thought it through?  Many people have not.  They choose business school or law for many reasons, but one of the large ones is it gives you the most prestigious degrees there are, which comes with status and money.  We’re all complicated people, I can’t reduce us to one motivation, but let’s admit it: status is in the mix.

Is status keeping us from a better and bigger life?  From a bigger and better status?

I wish we could all go to law school or business school, but to go there with a sense of purpose.  A mission.  Take what you know and go back home to fix a broken business, to repair a community torn apart by conflict, to do justice in an area that lacks it.  First that requires a sense of mission.  It requires seeing a need in the world, seeing your talents, and matching the two together.  Is that what we’re doing with our futures?

I wonder if our God is too small.   Why would we need the bible when our lives are good enough?  We have enough money, enough success, enough status, enough ethics even just from being an American.  We’re not bad people.  Why do we need church?  Why do we need the bible, it doesn’t really fit in with those things.

The answer is because it’s true.  We settle for too little.  If there is no search for truth, no curiosity about the world, no love of justice and mission and doing something that counts, not hearing someone say:  “you have the strength and the power to fix this problem – go do it”  —- then we’re settling.  The bible has more reliable sources and manuscripts than any other historical document ever, and jesus is the most famous person in history.  Why do we ignore this?  Why do we settle for what everyone else is doing.  Are we ashamed of what it might mean?  Are we afraid to give up the pleasure for a better one?

What if we thought about what Jesus was up to?  What if the best man in the history of the world knew something we don’t because we’re blind to what the best life is?  And what he went around doing was the most fulfilling and life giving thing you could do.  It might at first appear to be a complete suicide of status – after all, he was killed for saying what he said.  But what if status was something much more eternal and lasting than what we think it is here on earth?  What if we are settling for far too little, but God had an epic life for us that we didn’t bother to consider.

We are far too easily pleased.  CS Lewis knew that:  why do we settle for mud pies in the slums when there is the option of a holiday at the sea?

I say a resounding NO.  From Piper:

“As Christian Hedonists we know that everyone longs for happiness. And we will never tell them to deny or repress that desire. It is never a problem to want to be satisfied. The problem is being satisfied too easily. We believe that everyone who longs for satisfaction should no longer seek it from money or power or lust, but should come glut their soul-hunger on the grace of God. We will bend all our effort, by the Holy Spirit, to persuade people

• that they can be happier in giving than receiving (Acts 20:35);

• that they should count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus their Lord (Philippians 3:8);

• that the aim of all of Jesus’ commandments is that their joy be full (John 15:11);

• that if they delight themselves in the Lord he will give them the desire of their heart (Psalm 37:4);

• that there is great gain in godliness with contentment (1 Timothy 6:6);

• and that the joy of the Lord is their strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

We will not try to motivate anyone with appeals to mere duty. We will tell them that in God’s presence is full and lasting joy (Psalm 16:11) and our only duty is to come to him, seeking this pleasure.”

So yeah, we have fun.  We do our duty too, but we actually enjoy it.

Somewhere near Bushenyi.

S5 Prefects / SU Leaders from Ntare

I get to live here.

One of the best meals I’ve had in Uganda.  Beef tenderloin cutlets.

Ntare Prefects standing next to their “innovation” – word art in the dirt.

The young folks minus connor.

“The Sheep”  (aka, the entama, aka the boda of death)

What the boys eat for lunch.

I am set free from sin.  The chain is cut.  Where I used to struggle I don’t have to struggle anymore – I used to be a slave with no way out.  Now I have been released, God makes a way out.

There is no condemnation for me when I do sin / stumble.  Although I feel my life may be cursed or a lightning bolt is coming for me, it’s not.  God is just happy that I’m walking.  When I fall, he tells me to get back up, try it again.  I like to think that I won’t be able to speak or do ministry because I sinned this week.  God laughs at that.

All things are lawful for me.  There is freedom in whatever I do.  God paid the price for that sin.  But not all things are helpful or beneficial.  Some of the “freedoms” lead me back to my old self.  Christ died for that, why do I keep returning?  That’s like a jewish man wanting to go back to a concentration camp.  It’s because I forget.  My mind is not always on God so I forget and the old self calls me back.  It doesn’t disqualify me though.  My sin can’t stop God.

So far at the breakfast table, I wasn’t seriously caught off guard.  However, I dropped my spoon into my cereal when they said:
Falling in love after years of building wealth can make life complicated.  Cohabitation with a partner can often prevent this complication.  Tying the knot can sometimes make it worse.

Make what worse?  Marriage might raise your taxes?  It is likely to decrease your usable income?  It is likely to increase your liability and stunt your career plans?  Cohabitation with how many partners?

God help us.  When did career become the holy-grail of life?  That line of thinking is completely based on the assumption that what people say about me is the best pleasure life can afford.  That my photo on some wall or my name on some plaque or my company’s stock on some Forbes list is the marker of success, therefore, the aim of life and the source of happiness – is a HUGE leap of faith  (the same type as a religious leap of faith for the record.)  Or that a permanent commitment to someone else won’t help me in my life goals but instead get in the way – just as big of an assumption.  As if “earning it” is more important than “living it” or “loving it” – thanks Game of Life.

Prov 4:23  “Guard your heart, because the heart is the wellspring of life.”  Heart being in the family / relationships category.

Or this new line of thinking is also based on the assumption that men are only boys that can shave and get in the way of a woman’s future.  Where are the men with integrity, the knights that we were told we would marry when we watched disney movies, they ask?  The men with a masculinity for good, not just for chauvinism and getting a loaded house with an NFL man-cave?  Well we don’t see any, they say, so let’s move on without them.

Let’s not get this career-prioritizing confused with the often sacrificial community-driven social-change careers for the good of your city.  Feeling a calling to something (doctor, nurse, social worker, teacher, urban planner, school administrator, police officer) is a noble pursuit and I’d argue leads to much more job satisfaction than your typical start-up / business career.  I’d also argue if you’re truly sacrificing money or time for this job, you will need a spouse to help you and make ends meet.  I’m not sure these women were talking about that.

There seems to be no harm in cheering for singles.  There are also times and situations that call people to be single, before marriage, or even good reasons for a divorce although it is a sad tragedy.  But what was alarming to me was that they were trying to create a norm that marriage wasn’t necessarily better for our country, and that it’s becoming obsolete.  Being alone is better, these women were saying, because it gives a horizon of freedom to a woman’s future they’ve never had before.  Marriage can lock someone down.  They ask, why did we believe in these happily ever after endings, because reality has never given a story like that.  Freedom can be found in pursuing our natural desires for career and sex with multiple partners, they implied.

This argument is not a far cry away from “if it feels good, do it.”  This is the naturalist argument, the argument that says it must be the way of nature, and how can nature be wrong?  Just like your natural, hormonal sex-drive increase in teens and twenties must mean there’s no reason to save sex for marriage.  Bible chimes in and says “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick…” (Jer 17).  Some people also say: why does the church have to make us feel like sluts when we are doing something normal and natural.  Well, we don’t mean to guilt you, but free sex with anyone is not God’s plan: we are trying to help you, not hate on you.  We are trying to help you have a theology of the fall.  The fall says: there is something wrong with the world.  There is something wrong with the things that you and I desire because it leads to chaos and destruction, not to mention open sex leads to actual death through STDs and HIV.  There is something wrong with you and me, and if you’ve missed that, you’ve missed basic christianity.  Let’s not move on abstinence when people are unaware of that basic foundation of sin.  The fall is the foundation for building a house, abstinence is like the paint or the front door.  You won’t have a door if you don’t have a house.

So no, what’s natural is not always what’s right.  Unfortunately, following the call of nature leads civilizations to become like ancient Egypt, Babylon or Rome.  Pursuing pleasure, power, strength, but sacrificing love civility and peace along the way.  The bible again says: the way of a man seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to folly and destruction.  Death.  (Prov 14:6). This is why the bible so often call us sheep: we don’t know the right way to go.

Not to mention the breakdown of the family structure will always lead to the rise of individualistic, competitive, rational-only, cold careless citizens interested in their personal satisfaction.  Why have families?  Because they prevent that kind of society.  They are what have made America the super-power and the serving-leadership-model that it is.  They are the nucleus of love for the individual, teaching us how and why we shouldn’t be assholes.   Can teachers teach that?   Should they have to?  I guarantee you’ll never see that or other strong morals on public school curriculum.  (Lesson plan: stop them from being assholes.)

We all know kids and friends who come from broken homes: it’s their souls that are damaged (mind, heart, will.)  You can’t put your finger on it by looking at them or even testing them scholastically.  Some will still have the school-smarts, but is THAT THE ONLY TEST WE HAVE FOR OUR KIDS?  When did heart stop mattering?  When did we become this cold-sleek steel-producing machine of a country that is only interested in the bottom line but not in people and the success of relationships?  Profit before people?  Commerce before compassion?

I am seriously afraid for America.  We need the gospel.

My other problem would be in the category of what I call “lack of looking at our presuppositions.”  Our culture has a way of changing our habits based on our changing desires, not based on what is true or testable.   Some innocent, some not.  If we work late, coffee shops should stay open late and even have drive thrus.  (Why must we work late, not asked.)  If we are constantly traveling, we will need a smart phone that can tell us everything we need to know that we wouldn’t know since we’re on the go all the time.  (Why are we jet-setting for business so much, not asked.)  If we aren’t happy with our attraction to the opposite gender, let’s go with what does turn us on.  (Why is our attraction unnatural, not asked.)  If we don’t think homosexuality is wrong, let’s change marriage.  (Why is homosexuality on the rise, not asked.  What does the bible, the source of the church, say about marriage; not asked.)  If marriages don’t work, why can’t we have multiple short-term marriages in our life spans?  (Why is marriage not working, not asked!)

Like this.  “Marriage:  Let’s call the whole thing off.”  This is one of the most depressing articles on marriage you could ever read.  Divorce happens for a myriad of reasons, but can we all start to see what happens when we have lonely hearts?  When hearts are lonely hunters, finding something else to go after in life that the marriage doesn’t provide, happily ever after won’t do it.  What makes our hearts seek something else besides what we find in our spouse?  First of all it’s sin.  Our hearts deceive us and we need a savior.  And also, possibly it’s that we expect our spouses to do something a mere human could never do:  complete us in some way or be the hero for our best interests they could never be.  Jesus said “he knew what was in man,” that we gravitate towards selfishness in every way and away from selflessness.  He also said “have no other gods before me”, which would include our wife or our husband.

What about cohabitation?  Does that help the marriage trend or weaken it?  This first article shows the sociological trends changing our country in the last ten years.  No longer is it taboo to be living with a partner to whom you’re not (yet) married or not planning to marry.  Everyone is doing it, so it must be right.  Don’t be the fish against the stream.  Well here is why Cohabitation isn’t the best plan.  It can devalue your idea of marriage, it can damage you emotionally, and it is an open door to compromising your sexual values.  By cohabiting, you’re telling someone to whom you say “I love you” that they can live with you, but they don’t have to marry you.  Where is the love, the commitment in that?  Love isn’t just a feeling, it’s an ability.

Love and Finances:  Is Marriage a Dumb Move?   Just more logs on the fire that money is more important to a majority of America than Love.  But I though Paul said all we need is Love?

We need Love himself.

At the end of the day, I take hope in the fact that I have young friends who are happily, sometimes even blissfully married.  Everywhere from 23-33.  Not to quote them here, but they have told me things time and again, or written on blogs, about how unbelievable the sex / companionship / luminosity of a christian marriage can be.  While never perfect or Cinderalla, God’s design for a marriage seems to be a great one.  I’ll argue the best one.  Yes, there are fights and breeches of trust and temptations etc.  But by confessing to God and the power of grace, they can move past it.  And by living by God’s biblical design, they find happiness because the happiness is not the holy-grail.  When people see outside themselves and serve one another, having hearts grateful to God and pointing to God, happiness comes because personal happiness is not the point.  When they wrestle with their identities and desires, finally reaching a place where they are not seeking some other island in the west of “if I only have that, then I’ll be happy,” healthy marriage and family seems to be more than they could ever think it would be.  Certainly more joy than success can ever give you.  At least four young couples I know have told me how great it is, and obviously I look up to older godly families as well, but the trick is they worship God with their joy and have their hopes set not on their own bliss, but on something bigger:  the source of all joy himself.

39% of Americans polled believe marriage is becoming obsolete?  Let me be part of the 61%.

“Let marriage be held in high honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”  Hebrews 13:4

Things I forgot about / appreciated / or saw in a new way about the US:

• texting with t9word.  amazing
• grocery stores that are organized and clean
• traffic lights that people obey
• nobody honks that much.  in africa, a honk can also mean hello, we are family
• cars that are spotless.  people don’t mind dents over here as long as it works.
• roads without potholes = less adventure
• fancy dinners
• digging through old clothes in the attic i hadn’t seen in years
• back in the halls of my highschool seeing old teachers as peers with more experience, not just teachers
• the mac store (probably the supercomputer HQ that runs the world)
• outdoor malls
• arbys, subway, and chipotle
• everything’s amazing but nobody notices
• today show with crazy feminists talking about how less people are getting married these days and how much better that is?  you should forget about men for the sake of your careers, sleep around til you die.  how deluded are we?

  Visceral things about Africa when you land:

• the heat.  no seasons (for temperature)
• micro-advantages .  taxi drivers and bodas and cars will do anything to get ahead.  same at the checkout counter
• people boarding public transport with large poultry (a turkey this time, which I bought)
• goats walking into your house when you leave the door open
• strapping a week’s worth of groceries to the back of a motorcycle
• not caring about power outages
• eating with your hands
• people go out of their way for you when you don’t know them
• women kneel in front of you when they serve you food
• ant invasions
• floods of mud-water (up to 2 feet recently in Jinja)