Meet Tony

There the local Agape team was hosting an aperativo English practice session. There were only two participants, one from Azerbaijan, and the other from Guatemala. Tony, from Guatemala came in after Tamer, so he sat down where Elisha, Matthew and I were chatting. Elisha and I introduced ourselves and we got to know a little about Tony. He was clearly a brave young man about 26-34 years old who had a lot of life experience and seemed to be a good thinker.

After we chatted a few minutes, the Gospel came up in the conversation. Tony wasn’t ready to sign on just yet, and the conversation continued about the KEY elements of the Gospel and some of what Jesus had said about it in some of His conversations.

At one point we began talking about Loving G^d, and our neighbor as ourselves (Lk 10). Tony shared that he struggled with loving Himself. With my bad hearing I misunderstood him. Possibly because for my generation the challenge is to avoid loving yourself too, too much. It turns out that his generation struggles with loving themselves at all. After I had gone off track about Jesus wanting us to the point of Loving Him first and foremost, and how if we did that the proper high- and low- self esteem issues fell to the background, Elisha got us back to Tony’s statement that I had missed.

Somehow, I had never noticed this struggle with low, low self-esteem—possibly because I had trouble conceiving of such a thing. But, in the future, I hope to be able to use this new knowledge when I talk to college students.

Hey old-timers, it’s a whole new, and very different, mindset out there.  But, it sure is good to know—now.