I remember the first lesson my dad gave me in speaking with a British accent. For years, he'd been telling my sisters and I stories full of characters with distinct voices. Bears often spoke in tones so low and gentle, they sounded like sleep. Rabbits, especially clever ones, had high, squeaky voices that sounded like laughter. My favourite voice, though, was my dad's British accent. This one made its appearance only in my dad's best stories and soliloquies; and I thought it was the coolest thing.
One day, when I was six, my dad suffered a horrendous lapse in judgement. It was a forgivable lapse; after all, I was cuter back then. My eyes sparkled more often, my head was covered in blonde hairs, and I was less bearded. This unfairly adorable version of me convinced my dad to teach me how to speak in the amazing accent that I had come to worship. My dad smiled as he walked me through the basics. Drop an "h" here and there. Pronounce vowels funny. Say "mate".
If I had to guess, I'd say that my poor father came to see the error in sharing that Deep Magic with me almost immediately. One story has floated around in the background of our family legends about an occasion in which my dad introduced me to someone of some import (I want to say a college dean or a pastor). Apparently, I stuck out my hand and said, "'Ello! Moy nayme's Oysaac! Wat's yoh nayme?" While I don't remember the event, I have no trouble believing it. I know that Isaac kid. He's unruly.
What I do remember is creating entire worlds and peoples in my head and giving them all funny accents. I remember that improving my accents and expanding my range of vocal manipulations became a hobby. I remember quoting the entire script of "Shrek" - complete with horrifying Eddie Murphy impersonation - to my classmates on a field trip sophomore year.
I don't know why; but the fascination never stopped. There was a girl at my school with whom I had a relationship that consisted solely of being asked to "do voices" whenever we saw each other. It stayed that way for a number of years; then one day, I shared some advice with her and we became normal friends.
A few years ago, I had an internal moment of crisis because I suddenly realised that I was a twenty-something-year-old man who had not outgrown funny voices. As I pondered it, I grew puzzled and somewhat worried. Not once, since my dad first explained to me the correct way to pronounce, "gov'nah", had I looked back. I wondered how it had never even occurred to me to stop. Part of me started to ask whether this might be something God meant for me to have built-in; but the more grown-up side of me put that guy in his place. "Don't be ridiculous!" I rebuked my whimsical self, "What possible use could God have for a grown man's fascination with silly characters and even sillier voices?"
...
As anyone who's spent more than twenty minutes in my presence since July of 2011 is aware, I went to Uganda once. I spent six months there and haven't been able to talk about much else since getting back.
During my stay in Uganda, I spent some time in a town called Namwendwa. While I was there, I was invited to speak at a few schools and a college. Prior to receiving these invitations, I had been spending my time in the area with some elderly missionaries from the UK who had taken their retirement money and adopted a small village just outside the town proper; so I hadn't done much talking with the locals. Instead, I'd been rather lamely tagging along to watch and help as the couple did truly awesome things (Like give a lady a new house. Or send a boy to Kampala to get help with a medical condition. Or bring ointment to a girl who'd been disfigured by a flaming mosquito net.) The chance to do something helpful that got me out of my hosts' way sounded like a step in the right direction.
So, I walked into an primary school (I think they were in 5th or 6th grade) classroom ready to share the Gospel and very promptly established that not one of the kids could understand a thing I was saying.
Now, Uganda has something like 45 local languages. I had been working on Luganda, which was the language spoken in city I lived in; but, not only did these kids not speak a lick of Luganda, it was actually illegal for lessons above 5th grade to be given in a local tongue. All older classes had to be taught in English.
But my English was unintelligible to them.
I spoke slowly. I enunciated. I tried to speak in the whitest Ugandan accent anyone's ever let slip from his mouth. I used as many monosyllabic words as I could muster. When it became clear that I was making no progress, the teacher stepped in and - I'm not kidding - "translated" my English into a version of English they could understand. Not surprisingly, I met this "solution" with a measure of exasperation.
"Hello, my name is Isaac."
"Good morning, class. This is Isaac."
"I'm here to talk to you about Jesus."
"He is here to talk with us about Jesus."
Sigh....
I prayed more than a few times while my every word was repeated to the class, effectively halving the time I'd have to share what God had put on my heart. Lord, help me be clear! Help them understand! Still, no one but the teacher could make sense of my words. As I explained the ramifications of Romans chapter 12, a small spark of an idea made me smirk. No way. No way that'd work.
What occurred to me was that my English was American English. Theirs was Ugandan English. These kids understood their teacher because they'd all learned English from Ugandans who had learned it from other Ugandans who had learned it from other Africans who, somewhere along the line, had picked up the language from... British folks.
Much to my chagrin, God had provided an answer to my prayers.
Blushingly adopting my cheesy, Simon-Pegg-ish British accent, I found that the students in the class could understand me perfectly. In that school, another primary school, and a Christian college the scenario repeated itself. I could only be understood if I spoke with that accent.
What's great is that, even with the accent, people were blessed by the things I shared in that village. No matter how hard it was for me to take myself seriously, the people I spoke to took the message of God's love for them very seriously. Really, wasn't that the goal? Not the Isaac would be cool and smooth, but that God would be glorified?
My dad's lapse in judgement when I was six became a conduit of God's Word in a small African village when I was twenty-four.
Now, my larger point should be pretty easy to figure out. If my unattractively dorky affinity for vocal calisthenics can bless people, I'll bet your embarrassing quirks can be awesome, too. After all, God made you for a reason. He made you the way you are for a reason. He's not some unintelligent sculpture or an unclever craftsman. He's masterful in His every creation.
Some people take this too far in one way or the other; but that's true of just about anything.
Your sin is not a wonderfully integral part of you the way your love for 90s techno is. Your knack for carving beautiful radish roses is not a damaging and blemishing facet of your broken humanity the way an addiction to porn is. Some want to use God's skill at wielding unexpected tools to excuse evil. Others want to use God's love for righteousness to suck the fun and beauty out of life. Fortunately, God is too big and awesome to be used by anybody.
His creativity is blatant in you; and He can do incredible things with you-could-not-guess-what.
He loves you. I love you. Let's talk sometime.
-isaac
