We've read about George Mueller, Cameron Townsend, and Nate Saint among others.
We just finished reading about David Livingstone.
The famous "Dr. Livingstone I presume?"
He is famous for opening up the interior of Africa.
Discovering & naming Victoria Falls & various other waterways.
He befriended & shared the Gospel with native African tribes deep in the interior of the continent.
He is revered as a hero.
And yet...
His writings & speaking engagements back in England were instrumental in the British extermination of the Boers.
He essentially abandoned his family for years at a time.
Sent his wife & children to Scotland from their native Africa to live with family they had never met.
And then didn't have contact with them for almost 5 years.
He didn't lay eyes on his youngest child until she was 5 years old.
And then spent 1 year with her & never saw her again.
So how do you reconcile the person doing the Lords work with the man who abandoned his family?
How do you admire a missionary for his zeal for sharing the gospel while simultaneously being appalled at how he treated the woman he married & the children he fathered?
You have to ask yourself~ why?
Why did they marry?
Why did they have children?
Why did they commit to a lifestyle they couldn't live out?
Why did they bring children into the world they weren't willing to raise?
It's hard to read these stories & separate the missionary from the man.
It's hard to appreciate the time & effort they put into working for the people they felt they were to 'save' while basically ignoring the people they voluntarily became responsible for.
In the Bible Paul speaks about it being better for men to remain unmarried but if you can't be sure that a husband & wife not deprive one of the other.
Do you think forcefully sending your wife to another continent to live with strangers constitutes depriving?
I want to admire these people for living for the Lord. For being willing to live a life of hardship & deprivation to help others.
But as a wife & mother I just can't get passed how I would feel to be left? To come in second place for whatever people group my husband chose to put into first place?
To raise a family alone & at the mercy of strangers because my husband would rather be somewhere else?
I don't know.
I just don't know.
Do you?
Blessings.
Now concerning the things of which you wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
Let the husband render unto the wife her due: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.
The wife has not power over her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife.
Deprive not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your lack of self-control.
But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment.
For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.
1 Corithians 7:1-7
