In this series, called "Postcards From Hawaii", British/American Michael Green reflects on what he is learning at the Kona, Hawaii, campus where he is a DTS student with his wife, Jessica, and two small boys, Elijah and Apollos. Michael is halfway through the lecture phase and here he considers his inheritance as the son of a senior YWAM leader. Read Michael's previous postcards by entering "Postcard" in the article search box above.

You know that the road is pretty rough when a 4x4 pick-up truck is scraping its axels on the rocks that you are bumping over. Unsurprisingly, this was in pursuit of finding a little known and almost inaccessible beach called Makalawena. Many of the beaches that I knew when I was first here 18 years ago, now have paved access - the tourists can zip down to them in their pristine hire cars, leaving the locals to tackle the lava rock tracks in their jacked-up, tricked-out 4x4s. As we bumped and wound our way over the rocks, my friend David spoke of growing up in Hawaii. Despite having many Hawaiian friends, his white skin meant that he would always be “Haole” or foreigner and consequently, a potential target. At school, one day a year was even called “Kill Haole Day,” when the whites were teased, called names and, unless you had the right connections, beaten up. David’s obvious love for the Hawaiians and life here, was tempered with the knowledge that for some of his white friends, growing up in Hawaii was filled with bitter and painful memories.

The enmity, seething under the surface, is not hard to understand. As we walked over the pristine white sands of the almost deserted beach, David spoke of the difficult and complex relationship that the Hawaiians have had with the white man and the missionaries that came with them. Today, some of the wealthiest and largest landowners are the descendents of the first missionaries to Hawaii. Unsurprisingly, many people believe that the missionaries were nothing more than the vanguard of a colonial movement. But to draw this cynical and superficial view of history would actually be to miss the real tragedy.

Our conversation continued as we sat out in the ocean waiting for the perfect wave – or at least one that I could catch. In an extraordinary turn of events, the Hawaiian people had dismantled their heiaus (temples) and had rejected their previous violent religious beliefs just months before the first missionaries arrived. The highest kahuna (priest), was the first to set fire to a heiau. He declared: "I knew the wooden images of deities, carved by our own hands, could not supply our wants, but worshiped them because it was a custom of our fathers. My thought has always been, there is only one great God, dwelling in the heavens." He also prophesied that a new God was coming and he went to Kawaihae (just minutes away from where we live) to wait for the new God . . . at the very spot were the missionaries first landed.

The first missionaries, far from being colonists and exploiters of the native Hawaiians, are credited as helping Hawaii become and remain an independent nation at a time when Hawaii was ripe for colonization. They established schools and introduced western medicine. Although it is true that they imposed aspects of western culture that I don’t believe are related to the gospel, they served and protected the local Hawaiians. Indeed, the frustrated traders actually turned their gunboats on the missionary settlements as these Godly men and women were frustrating their attempts to exploit the islands.

“So how did Daniel Dole the missionary of 1820 morph into the Dole plantations and agricultural empire of today?” I wondered. “It wasn’t the original missionaries,” David explained. “It was the second generation.” They went to the mainland to get their Ivy League educations and then returned to Hawaii. The tragedy is that they used their local knowledge, and traded off of their family’s relationships and connections, to acquire the best of the land and enrich themselves. Instead of continuing the self-sacrificing work of their parents, they built their own empires – controlling all five major exports from the Islands. The self-proclaimed “Missionary Boy’s Club” became synonymous with wealth and power.

You cannot serve both God and money and as recession hit the islands, following the imposition of tariffs on imports into the U.S., the plantation owners sought to overthrow the monarchy and achieve U.S. annexation, thereby removing the tariffs. In a final tragic twist to the story, it was Daniel Dole’s son, Sanford Dole, by now a prominent pineapple planter, who led the revolt against the outspoken and devoutly Christian Queen, Lili’uokalani. While she was under house arrest she wrote, “The people to whom your fathers told of the living God, and taught to call “Father”, and whom the sons now seek to despoil and destroy, are crying aloud to Him in their time of trouble; and He will keep His promise, and will listen to the voices of His Hawaiian children lamenting in their homes.”

As we headed back to the truck for the rough ride home, it struck me with incredible force that I have walked a very similar path to the children of those first missionaries. I have been given an extraordinary inheritance – simply through family relationships, I am connected all over the world and have access to incredible opportunities – and yet, I have primarily used this privilege to serve my own ambition and to seek my own glory. Whilst there was almost always a Christian veneer over the top of my decisions, underneath I had a heart attitude that desired my own glorification and recognition over and above glorifying the God who my father and mother have so faithfully served. In many respects, choosing to come to Hawaii to do a DTS is for me a deliberate decision to walk away from the selfishness that has characterized my life.

The speaker last week spoke of three levels of life. The first was “living under the curse.” My wife, Jessica and I can relate to this one. Over the last few years, as I have chased success in business, it has actually often felt as if we have been living under a curse - for 100% effort that we put in, we seemed to only get 20% back out.

The second level he spoke of was reaping and sowing. I have lived periods of my life where I reaped what I sowed i.e. for the effort that I have put in, I’ve seen positive results of a commensurate level. Whilst this is good, I want to walk into the final level of life . . . inheritance. An inheritance is something that you receive that you did not work for. Or to put it another way, we receive much more than the effort that we put in. I am not talking about finances (although I wouldn’t be adverse to that!), but rather fruit that is of eternal value. In what feels like another Kingdom paradox, as I let go of trying to use my earthly inheritance for my own gain, I walk into my spiritual inheritance. I can honestly say that as a family we are experiencing more peace, joy, and fulfilment than we have ever known previously. Now that can’t be a bad thing.

So what’s next after DTS? Fortunately, we are only 7 weeks in and still have a lot of time to think about that, but I am left with one overriding question - what am I going to do with my inheritance? Am I going to chase my own glory and by doing so actually come out from the blessing of my inheritance, or am I going to seek the Kingdom first and not worry about the rest? I have a feeling that I’m not going to be joining the “Missionary Boy’s club” any time soon.