Friends and Family,
I’ve been back in the States for about a week and a half now, so it’s probably high time I deliver my promised final thoughts on the trip.
As you probably sensed from my e-mails, this was a tough trip. While I saw much destruction and suffering on the tsunami trip, the overriding thing that stood out to me in that case was the incredible response I saw from the EFCA, from Christians, and from the world in general. To me, what I saw on that trip embodied hope: people all over the world seeing a need, and selflessly responding to it. Humanity at its best you could say.
Well this trip was different. I saw that same suffering, but it was not accompanied by humanity at its best, but humanity at its worst – for this suffering was in fact induced BY humanity. Whether it was the Arabs in the north bombing southern villages, whether it was the rebel army in the South forcing Sudanese to join their ranks or be shot, or whether it was the Lord’s Resistatance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda preying on refugees and carving them up with machetes. Everywhere I looked it was clear to me: humanity is fallen.
Lest I sound like a bigot, I must say that I saw that same fallen nature in myself too. Have you ever been thirsty, guzzled a liter of water, and then looked around you to see a handful of people gazing so longingly at your empty bottle that you can almost feel their thirst?
You may be thinking, “Yeah I have. No big deal. They just went and got some water from the faucet.”
Well that’s America. This was Africa. There were no faucets in site, nor bore holes, nor clean water of any kind. By guzzling that water, I was essentially taking care of myself with total disregard to those around me. I was thinking of myself, and not others, and that is the essence of a fallen nature, isn’t it?
Why do wars happen? In a lot of cases, they are simply the result of this on a larger scale. One country has water and won’t share it, so we kill them to get it. Another country has oil, and we want it, so we kill them to get it. When resources are short, and people are desperate, their fallen nature comes to the surface in physical and tangible ways.
Sure there’s not the kind of violence in America that there is in Sudan, but take away everyone’s money, safety, well-being, and food in America and see what happens. I have a feeling things would get a lot uglier than we’d like to admit. Sure Americans responded incredibly to the tsunami, but that response was in large part out of our abundance, not out of the less than dollar a day that 3/4 of the families in Kenya live on.
When resources are short, peoples’ ugliness comes to the surface. What do we as the inhabitants of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world do about this? Do we try to level the financial playing field completely? Nope, Communism didn’t work. Do we just ignore the problem? Well, that’s probably the easiest and most oft-used solution, but obviously that doesn’t work either.
I don’t propose to have the answer, but I do have some insights from Jackson, a very wise Sudanese pastor – who has been living the life of a refugee for more than a decade.
“People sometimes ask me, why does God make some rich and some poor? And I always tell them, “It’s because it makes the Church stronger and more united.” God doesn’t want all Christians to be self-dependent, and self-sufficient. He wants some to need help, and he wants others to meet that need. Life has been hard for us in Sudan, but that doesn’t mean that I feel we ought to possess all the wealth Americans do. By us having less, and being in constant dependence on those who have more in order for us to survive, it forms a sort of selfless glue that binds us together and makes us stronger.”
What if we as Americans didn’t simply look at our wealth and count our blessings that our children aren’t starving to death? But what if we instead looked at our wealth and counted it as a blessing that we have the privilege to give it away? Counted it as a blessing that we can thus help strengthen the bond that holds the Church, and even humanity at large together?
Jackson’s words really have resonated with me as I’ve reflected on them. In my opinion, hope and selflessness are practically one and the same thing. By viewing our abundance as something that can interact with poverty and form this selfless glue of trust, respect, and interdependence between the rich and the poor that co-populate the Church and the world – I cannot help but see how hope would be the result.
That is what happened with the tsunami. After the wave of destruction came a flood of mercy. The selfless bond between those with nothing and those with everything was so beautiful I couldn’t help but be brought to tears. But there are so many other places in the world that need that same selfless bond. Right now millions of people are starving from a severe famine in Niger. Right now millions are dying from AIDS in South Africa. Right now millions are living without a home in Sudan.
As the people of the most wealthy nation in the history of the world, how can we not but step up to the plate in all of these cases? We’ll never solve all of the world’s problems (our fallen natures will certainly reverse efforts we make in that direction) but we will strengthen in little ways the bond that holds us together.
Christ’s death on the cross embodied selflessness? How can we live out that selflessness to others?
-Dave
