"But.... Why??" Breaking Out of the Christian Bubble

Previously, I mentioned that I grew up in church. It could also be said that I grew up in a bubble.

A Christian bubble.

For the most part, my life and our family life revolved around church. Most of my friends attended church - some of them even my church. My siblings and I were rarely allowed over to friends' houses or to parties or things with non-Christian people. We were encouraged to listen to Christian music and read Christian books. We weren't allowed to date (us girls, at least). We didn't watch, for the most part, rated R movies or mature television. We were... sheltered.

It was perhaps not surprising then that I went to a conservative Christian college. Having still no clue what to do with my life, I majored in the vague Human Services program. I got incredibly involved at school and in the local church. Three local churches, actually, because I had a hard time saying "no". I had no idea what would happen after college.

It was partly my inability to say "no" and partly my obsessive need to answer every call-to-arms that led me to join every volunteer and outreach event that I could squeeze into my already jam-packed schedule. I went to Mexico (three times), to Skid Row in LA, to a Native American reservation in Arizona, and to Chile. I helped at food kitchens and homeless shelters, assisted with free car washes for the community, volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center, and provided childcare for outreaches to young moms.

And then there was Urbana.

The Urbana Missions Conference began back in 1946. My dad went when he was in college, though I didn’t know that when I first heard about it. Ran by InterVarsity, it is held once every three years. Originally, it was held at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, hence the name. It has since changed locations a few times. The conference is geared towards college students and thousands attend each event. Some of the most well-known church and mission leaders, teachers, and practitioners from around the world take part in leading workshops and teaching the plenary sessions. 

The year I attended was 1999. The end of 1999 – when Y2K was a real fear. No one knew what would happen at midnight on December 31^st as the calendars rolled into the 2000s. Some even predicted a massive technological meltdown.

As the clock hit midnight on Y2K, I was standing in a giant college campus stadium with over twenty thousand other students, worshipping. It must have been negative fifty outside in the snow (well, maybe not that bad, but for this California girl it was A LOT), but inside, we were kept warm by standing shoulder to shoulder with each other and by the palpable presence of the Spirit of God.

I was the only girl from our school to attend. Since the others were all boys, they were able to room together. My assigned roomie was from France and had come over solely to attend the conference. I don’t remember her name, but she was sweet. 

The conference was impactful. I got mind-blowingly sick the last day (again, it was COLD), so missed out on parts, but what I attended was amazing. What stuck with me and made the most difference on my life moving forward, though, was this...

One night, maybe it was Y2K night, I don’t recall exactly, we were given a challenge: Dedicate two years of your life after college in service to God. Doesn't matter where or how or in what way. But give two years to God.

I felt moved to accept this challenge.

Only when it came down to it, turned out that serving God for two years was incredibly expensive.

Every single mission organization I looked into required raising money to sponsor my trip. Something like twenty thousand dollars a year – and I was committed to going for two years. Where was a poor college student, dependent on state and federal grants and scholarships to get through college, supposed to come up with forty thousand dollars?? 

Discouraged, I prayed and prayed. I believed that God wanted me to honor my commitment, but I could not afford to. What was I supposed to do?

One day, my roommate popped into our dorm room in between classes to watch her favorite daytime soap opera. Not a fan myself, I was having a working lunch instead, eating in front of my computer while finishing a paper. Realizing she was about to be late for her next class, she dashed out – leaving the TV on.

As I got up to turn off the TV (remember when we used to have to do that?), a commercial came on for the Peace Corps.

Have you ever seen a commercial for the Peace Corps? I had not. And to this day, it's the only commercial I have ever seen. Something moved in me while I watched. When I went to the library later to get online (now I'm really aging myself), I found out the program was two years long and, bonus, government funded – no fundraising required.

That's when I knew.  

This was what I was supposed to do.

The application process took nearly a year. There were forms to fill out and fingerprinting to get done and an interview to sit through. I was accepted. They told me I could receive up to three different options of where to go but I had already decided I would accept the first no matter where it was. It turned out to be a Health Educator position in the South American country of Peru.

When I began to tell people, they were shocked. Many of my friends and family members had never even heard of the Peace Corps. I hadn’t either until that commercial. It was pretty far outside of our conservative Christian bubble. When I told church-people what I was doing and explained what the Peace Corps was, I got a lot of blank stares and responses like, “But… why??”

There weren’t many non-Christians in my circle back then. Nowadays when I tell people I was in the Peace Corps, I get mostly positive responses. “That’s amazing!” “I’ve always wanted to do that.” “Did you enjoy it?” One guy even said one time, “Thank you for your service.” I’ve met many other returned Peace Corps volunteers who have served in other places around the world, and it’s like being part of a private club. The only people who truly understand what it means to have been in the Peace Corps are those who have been in it.

It means two years of your life living in a “third-world” country, often in a small, isolated town, possibly as the only American the local populace has ever met. It means constantly being under the microscope and pushed outside of your comfort zone, embracing a different language, culture, traditions, holidays, and more. Everything is foreign to you, but you are the one who is foreign to everyone else.

They say the Peace Corps is the “hardest job you’ll ever love”. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but it was an incredibly impactful experience.

I spoke some Spanish before going to Peru. Daily classes and living with a Peruvian family created an immersion experience that helped my Spanish improve rapidly. I felt comfortable with the family I lived with. They were Catholic, as was much of the country, and their conservative values were familiar.

The culture shock I had been told to expect therefore didn’t come from the Peruvians, but rather from my fellow Peace Corps volunteers.

Though they were mostly my age and fresh out of college like I was, they seemed so much more... grown-up, than I did. More... world-wise. There were a few other Christians in the group, but many were not. And yet here they were, giving up two years of their lives to serve others and to make the world a little bit better. They did amazing work in their communities that positively affected many lives.

I was in awe of their passion and of their commitment. I learned a great deal from them about things I had never even considered before - about politics and social justice and corrupt systems and the meaning of poverty. Issues that were at play back home just as much as in Peru, though I hadn't truly noticed them.

They were a stark, night and day difference from the people in the bubble that I was used to. In fact, many of the things I saw and heard from them would have gotten them kicked out of my college back home. They drank. Smoked (sometimes cigarettes, sometimes weed). Went out clubbing. Hooked-up occasionally. Cursed like it was normal vernacular (maybe it was). Made sexual jokes and innuendos. Talked about topics my bubble considered taboo. And a few were openly part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Please please know I am not saying all this to judge them. Rather, the purpose of noting this is so you understand what a culture shock it was for me. I didn't know how to behave around them. I didn't know what to say to them. I was so hopelessly innocent and sheltered I honestly didn't know what to make of them at all. 

I don’t think they knew what to make of me, either. 

No one understood my "Christian-ese". After I turned down the first few invitations to go out clubbing or drinking, I stopped getting invited. They teased me – in a friendly way, at first – about my proper way of speaking and behaving and dressing. I think they thought I was judging them. And maybe I was, to be honest. But mostly, I was perplexed. They did not fit into the worldview I had been raised with.

Here's where my biggest hang-up was: in the black and white world of the Christian bubble, people were considered inherently sinful, and therefore needed God and the filling of the Holy Spirit in order to make good choices and follow His calling. By the same logic, those who did not believe in God or did not choose to follow Him, were incapable or unlikely to make good choices or to do His will.

But that's not what I was seeing. Sure, there were things they did to relax and have fun, but ultimately, that wasn't why they had come. They were there to serve. And I saw them. I saw them doing what I consider the work of God: loving neighbors, feeding the hungry, helping the thirsty find clean water, welcoming the stranger. Or as the Old Testament puts it: seeking justice, loving mercy, walking humbly. 

It made me question if the Church had it wrong.  After all, the Bible says we are all created in the image of God. All of us. So why should it surprise us when someone who doesn't even claim the name of God does something good? That's the fingerprint of God showing through.

This was the first lesson to create cracks in the glass house of religion. 

There would be many more to come.