on joy

I remember, in the deepest jungle village that we lived in, there was this village pastor. He too was a missionary, and was from another province of Indonesia. I remember him because he always seemed genuinely joyful. I don't think I ever referred to him by his name, instead calling him by the indonesian term 'pa,' a term of respect reserved for older men.

so 'pa' didn't really have much material goods. He had a tiny, though newly built, wooden house (with holes in it) perhaps slightly larger than my room. He didn't really have much furnitures. We always sat on the floor of his house. When he needed water to cook or flush with he'd have to fetch it from the brown river down a hill. To get drinking water he'd have to boil brown river water, then leave it under the sun for a day. Oh, and, his church's floor is made of dirt. Yah, you probably get the picture.

So here we have 'pa' the poor preacher, poor in the typical National Geographic sort of way, but constantly as joyful as a joyful person can be. I think this guy's existence - his constant joy, his perpetual smile - is a slap in the face of our idea that he/she with the most toy has the most joy.

For all the critical thinking that our education has taught us, we've somehow ironically missed out on the most important type of critical thinking - critical thinking on life. We seldom think critically about our value systems, where we get our sense of worth, why we want the things we want, etc....