Redemption

When I was walking to my little pharmacy to purchase yet another antibiotic—I have been on so many during my short duration here—I realized—that is, I really felt—like I was walking in my neighborhood, in my home.

Perhaps it took so long for me to feel this way because sometimes you have to leave a place for a bit and then come back to be able to say, “I’m home again. Where I was was not home. But this is home. I can feel the difference.” You need the contrast, sometimes.

Late Thursday night I came home from the clinic. I was there for 3 days and 2 nights. I have never before been under the care of medical personnel for more than a few hours, never before needed an IV, never before been so continuously drugged up to make my body function. Yay for new experiences.

While in the clinic, I longed for home. I had the thought that perhaps home—the thing we are always trying to define—in its truest sense is a longing. After all, my truest home is a place I’ve never been, and thus a place I can only long for day and night. Here on earth, then, home is a longing. In the clinic, I wanted to be back at my home with the fruit trees; but I admit that often through these months I have longed for my birth country.

I’ve been an expat for almost 4 months now. For comparison, the longest I was ever in Europe was 90-some days. It’s normal to miss your familiar people and places, but for me it’s an admission because I’ve contained such a good deal of contempt for my country, her citizens, and her church. But now that the tropical rains have beaten down the smoke and I can see more clearly for the first time in a decade, I realize that God is more just than I knew.

What I mean is, for a long time culture and I, along with deoxyribonucleic acid, were in a 3-way battle. If so much about one is controlled by those twisty strands of 4-letter code, and the mirroring, monkey-see monkey-do of our families and communities, how can one feel like anything but an unjustly incarcerated prisoner? How can God hold me accountable to a life that not I, but my culture and genetic makeup, are writing? If the culture trap were legitimate, then American culture was not something I wanted any part of. But, also, as I spent more time in more cultures (affluent, impoverished, Amish/Mennonite, European, Hispanic), I came to the realization that no culture was a culture I wanted to be a part of.

This was a somewhat shocking revelation to me, especially in the case of Italy. It’s true that I still talk about Italy the same way I talk about Cloud 9, but that’s because I’m talking about it in the vacation sort of way. When you are there, really mixed in with the people, you are in a culture of darkness and despair—just like all the other cultures in the world.

The thing is, in the search for a better culture—which turned out to be a unicorn hunt—I always found Jesus. Every time. No matter where I was or who I was with, he was always there too. And he always told me something. He always told me I was redeemed. He redeemed me and my DNA and the whole kit and kaboodle of my upbringing and all my mental perceptions.

He said he is in fact redeeming culture, is in fact redeeming the world.

But it’s one thing to be told; it’s another to believe.

I finally—or as they say in Spanish, al fin—believe. And thus, I am free. Free from the bitterness that stemmed from my determinism; free from wishing things had been different; free from the clammy clasp of despair; free even to miss my American people, my coffee shop, my streets, my doctor, my waterfalls; free to revel in the beautiful aspects that are a part of each culture, free to despise and pray for and press for reform in the despicable aspects of culture.

I’m free to follow the old New Commandment, “Love one another.”

If God is the God of the evangelical Christian Bible, then we can trust that when he says he is making “all things new” he means he is making all things better. Far, far better than we could ever imagine.

And all the ways that you got done wrong by your DNA; or your family; or your school; or church; or job; or your own mind...will be justified. Will be beautified.

That’s redemption.