How Long, O Lord?

As a middle-class, urban, citizen of the U.S.A., I have led a very sheltered life. This time I’m not talking about the cultural sheltering, though I was that too. I’m talking about being sheltered from the hurt and pain, from the needs and hungers of the vast majority of the world outside the comfort of “home.”

Sure, I lived in China for more than six months and saw people who swept the streets, probably as their only source of income. But I was only 12 at the time, still pretty happy-go-lucky. I don’t remember it ever affecting me very deeply. Sure, I’ve seen homeless people on the downtown streets of Hollywood, Washington D.C., and Dallas. That can definitely be a picture of true need, and I have wrestled with how to respond. But here I’m talking about something more.

Here I’m talking about living in the African bush, in the rural setting of a third-world country. Where life is so immensely different than what I enjoyed growing up.

Even in China, I only thought it was inconvenient that the washing machines were on the first floor when we lived on the second floor. I only remember one day that the power went off—and we knew it would be off ahead of time. I was sometimes annoyed that I had to use a squatty potty when we were out and about.

The past three months, I have learned to live in an entirely different way. When nature calls, I usually have to walk to a pit latrine—no seat to sit on there. I haven’t seen a washing machine or microwave in the time I’ve been here. Power is off around half the time. Almost everything—plowing, mowing the grass, shelling maize—is done either by hand or with simple hand-powered machines.

But these are minor inconveniences compared to what I really sat down to write about.

Two weeks into my stay here, a friend sent an email asking about disease and illiteracy here. At that point, it made me mad. I was almost exclusively seeing the beauty: the beauty of a culture which remembers how to live in community so much better than most Americans; the beauty of living again out in the countryside rather than feeling somewhat stifled by the big city; the beauty of feeling at home, even in a new place with new people, because it is a common Love which brought us together; even the beauty of the fantastic variety of birds I observed within days.

And it is true. There is an amazing amount of beauty here. God is at work here, of course, and He naturally has people here who seek to love and serve Him. I definitely believe there are so many things the people here “get” that our comfortable lives (or at least mine) “back home” make it easy to lose sight of.

In the subsequent 10 weeks, though, it hasn’t been all a bed of roses.

I have heard people at meals talking about how they had to run, run, run when soldiers came to their villages and started shooting.

I have seen a mother and daughter who come to church every Sunday in the same clothes…perhaps because they have no others. Their hair is not black, but a reddish color that I have read is evidence of malnutrition.

I have heard that parents here simply expect to lose one of their children to death by disease.

I have seen a toddler, usually full of life of laughter, lying almost motionless on a couch. His body, burning with fever; his breath shallow and labored. His parents stand by, seeming unsure of what to do because they have already taken him to the clinic and what they were given hasn’t helped.

I have heard stories of boda boda accidents, where men have been lying on the ground obviously injured badly. That sometimes people just keep driving by them, because if they stop and try to help they may just get blamed for the accident.

I have seen a ja ja (grandmother/elderly lady)—who can walk only slowly, slowly—gently lower herself to sit in the slim shade of a telephone pole to try and get out of the hot sun.

I have heard about the superstitions that are so deeply ingrained into peoples’ minds, even Christians. That if an owl perches in a tree over your house, somebody will die. That if you step over a pile of items arranged for witchcraft, something bad will happen to you.

I have seen masses and masses of people going about their daily lives in Kampala or even in Luwero and wondered on a deeper level than ever before if they have heard about the love of Jesus. {In the States, it’s easier to assume that the general population has had the chance to hear the Good News, in some form or fashion.}

I have heard stories of the death of parents or grandparents, or of poverty from widowhood, or of abandonment, or of broken families. And it could possibly be because I live at a ministry dedicated to helping those who have experienced losses such as these….but I can’t recall hearing a single person’s family history that didn’t include some sort of loss.

I have seen a young lady who wanted to go into the medical profession. But her parents died, and she had to drop out of school halfway through secondary school (high school) and take a low-paying job working at a hotel to maybe get enough money for tuition to go back.

I have heard a Ugandan say it’s true that if you’re in a boat that sinks you’ve got to dive down, swim as far away as you can, and wait until everybody who can’t swim has panicked and drowned before you swim back to find something to float on. Because if you try to help, they’ll just pull you down and you’ll die too.

I have seen that life here seems cheap. That death is easier to talk about plainly than in the States. That there is less sugar coating. No guarantee of treatment at a clean hospital with even basic modern equipment. Here, serious disease and subsequent death are a part of daily/community life, as contradictory as that sounds.

And as I have seen and heard all these things, my heart has wept and cried out to the Lord. “God, don’t You see this????? Don’t You hear the suffering of Your creation?” In my sheltered, developed-world upbringing, I have never been confronted with such a widespread view of the effects that sin and evil have brought into the world.

But in one of the moments of crying out late in January, I sensed the Spirit’s voice speaking truth back into my heart: A reminder that…as strange as it seems to us…God’s withholding of the end of time and suffering is actually part of His mercy. That even the pain that occurs is not yet put to an end because He is still calling people to Himself.

The call is to trust Him and His goodness, even when our human minds don’t see that goodness or grace in the pain.

In the past month or so, I saw this quote posted on Facebook: "Underneath our anger is a certain mistrust of God. Somewhere along the way we stopped believing that God is a God of love and justice. If we truly believed that our lives, our hopes and our dreams were in God's hands we wouldn't be quite so shocked when imperfect people hurt us or let us down."[1] It actually comes from a book about marriage, and it’s referring to a more specific pain than I’m writing about here….but the truth of it remains.

Whether I can understand it right now or not, God IS a God of love, and His character is as the One who is “just and the justifier,” even when He passes over sin in His forbearance (Romans 3:25-26). It is only through confidence in the One who brings beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3) that I can face the brokenness of the world.

And as I prayed for the youngest member of our Institute family, that little boy lying there so sick, I felt God asking me to pray with confidence and yet also with humility. Because in the end, He is the one who knows all things. He is the only One who knows what is eternally best for each person. And yes, I am immensely thankful that God brought healing to the little one. But God would be just as sovereign and just as good, even if He had called that little child home.

Several weeks later, this is one of the puzzle pieces God brought together with some others to create a picture calling me into deeper trust of Him. You can read about that here.

So I don’t have answers to the questions about what I am supposed to do about the hurt and brokenness I see. I do know I am called to love and service for my Lord. But even if I did everything I possibly could…even if I were a real-life superhero…I could not eradicate poverty or suffering. Only God can do that, and right now He is not finished with the world yet. Which means there is still greater good and glory which can come from it.

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[1] Susie Larson, Alone in Marriage, Moody Publishers (2007), pg. 24.

To Walk Humbly

A little over a year ago, I took part in a labyrinth walk as part of the “Capstone” class at JBU. My intention of posting my writings from that class on this blog failed after about a month…but I wanted to go back and post the response I was asked to write about the labyrinth walk (edited a bit). This is because a couple weeks ago God put together several puzzle pieces in my life, including this experience from last March. To read more about the picture I saw take shape from the pieces, check out this post on my other blog.

A bit of background: The Capstone class primarily looked at six “streams” or traditions of Christian history/practice.[1] I’ll have to do a post some time with a bit about those. As part of our examinations into these types of orthopraxy,[2] we also had speakers come in or outside experiences. The latter included the labyrinth walk.

Labyrinth response                        written March 6, 2013

                I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the labyrinth experience. To be honest, I was apprehensively looking forward to it. {The apprehension part came from preconceptions I had and opinions I had heard expressed about such things.}

                I am really glad you {Dr. Burch – a great teacher!} went over the idea of the labyrinth some on Wednesday before we went out there {on Sunday, March 3}. I had expected it to be more structured, for Ben Hill {the homeowner who had built a labyrinth in his yard} to give us more specific “how to” suggestions so we would do it the right way. Of course, looking back, I realize that idea deals with one of my misconceptions…that things such as this are some sort of magic charm that you go through the right steps and get the perfect result. It makes sense that he did not give us specific guidelines, because this is more of a personal experience. At the same time, I appreciated the basic suggestion you had given us about going in with our hands closed and coming out with them open.

                Going into the experience, I had a good bit on my mind. On Thursday, I had a very low-point, sad experience and a more exciting, happy occurrence. With the former, there were questions of “why did this have to happen this way???” and with the latter, there were questions of “how will this application turn out? Will I get the internship that seems so perfect to me?” I knew that in both, God had a plan and had His reasons, even if I couldn’t see or understand them. But I always tend to question why—I always want to know what it is that will happen.

                So that’s what I was holding onto as I entered the labyrinth. God has been asking me a simple question over and over throughout the past year and a half or so: “Do you trust Me?” Usually my mind jumps to the “yes” answer, and then I try to align my emotions to that truth. But at other times I honestly have to say “no,” and then try to surrender whatever it is that I am trying to hold onto control of.

During the first few minutes {of the labyrinth walk} I was thinking through all of that. Then a verse “just happened” to pop into my mind: “What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before your God” (the Esther paraphrase). My mind latched onto the “walk humbly” bit, wondering what that really meant in practicality. I continued thinking about other things, and then suddenly right as I was making one of the turns I nearly stood stock still – because the truth of that really struck me.

Thinking that I deserve to know why things happen the way they do—or wanting so badly to know what will happen ahead of time—is a sign of pride. God calls us to walk humbly before Him – that includes trusting Him and surrendering our “right” to know why and our ideal plans and dreams.

For most of the rest of the walk in, I was reflecting on that and confessing the sin of pride that I hadn’t really recognized before then. In the center—and then coming back out—I mostly prayed for the willingness to learn more of Christ’s humility. And I was able to just spend some time worshipping too, singing songs of praise in my mind. As I neared the exit, another thought came… “This is not the end goal, this is simply the preparation.” The fact is, I don’t know what’s going to happen in my life. What I do know is that God is transforming me to fulfill His purposes. And I truly am thankful that He’s the one in charge of all that and not me!

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So so true! And still such a lesson I need to be taken back to and reminded of over and over again….

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[1] The six, in the order we covered them in class, are: Contemplative {think monks/meditation}, Holiness {think Methodists}, Charismatic {obvious}, Social Justice {think “liberal”…to some extent}, Evangelical {what I considered “the best”/“mainstream” five years ago}, and Incarnational {think Episcopal}.

[2] “Orthopraxy” has to do with what a group of people views as correct religious practices. It can be compared/contrasted with “orthodoxy” – what a group of people views as correct religious beliefs.

The Likely Disciple

I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze. A few minutes ago, as I write this, I finished reading a book. A book that I am still processing. It’s a make-Esther-stop-and-think kind of book. So what do I do in response?? I write.

Imagine this: a young college journalist from Brown University—the Ivy League school, not “my” JOHN Brown University—decides to spend a semester at Liberty University, a Christian school founded by Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority. No, the student is not a Christian. He doesn’t believe much of what Liberty University exists to teach. But he goes as an experiment, to see if these conservative evangelicals are as crazy as the secular world thinks they are.

And, like any good journalist, he writes about his experience. The result is the 300-page book (in the Kindle edition) that I finished reading this evening—The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. My mentor and high school teacher/boss told me about the book and then sent it to me as a gift. Over the past week, in my down-time (sometimes just waiting for something on the Internet to load, or just for the Internet to work again) I dove in.

As I said above, the book made me think. In some ways, that is to be expected. Like the author Kevin Roose, I have practiced journalism. I attended a Christian college. But those are the similarities, not what made me think. What tickled my brain and made me feel the need to do some processing-writing were the differences.

He came at his project as an outsider. He did everything he could to blend in at Liberty because he wanted to get the real flavor there—but he did not naturally buy into any of it. And by the end of the book {SPOILER ALERT}, his experience failed to convince him that he needed to become an evangelical Christian.

If he is the Unlikely Disciple, that makes me a Likely Disciple. Not only did I grow up in a Christian home, I was homeschooled in a conservative Christian home. In all my 23.5 years, I’ve only been outside of the Christian bubble for about nine months—seven months living in China when I was 12 (though the type of community I was part of there makes it hardly count) and two months in a secular study/internship program in Washington, D.C. I attended a Christian college (that was actually less conservative than me), had a second internship with a Christian organization, and now find myself in the African bush with missionaries because God called me here when He shut the doors I had planned on.

So while we have a couple similarities, Kevin and I are worlds apart. What stopped me in my tracks tonight was the fact that he went through all the motions of being a good student at a conservative Christian university—one that was a lot more strict in its rules than where I went! The only thing he admits to getting reprimanded for is falling asleep in the chapel service. He tells about some of the Christian students there who were doing worse than he did during his “study abroad” semester at Liberty University.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that his book made me stop and think about what it is that makes me a Christian, and why it is that I do the things I do. It’s unnerving to think that it was so relatively easy for Kevin’s dorm-mates and class-mates to assume that he was a believer because of where he was and what motions he was going through. No, his book is not making me question my faith or doubt my salvation. But it certainly serves as a reminder that sometimes only God knows the heart, and that no amount of outward good deeds or rule following makes one a child of God.

It was enlightening to read his book because of his outsider-passing-as-insider status. He wrote his tale very well, tailoring it to be accessible to any audience. As he tells of struggling through taking Bible classes and learning the ropes of an evangelical community, he explains things that we Christians just take for granted. He did not naturally approach things with “biblical worldview glasses,” so his book is a chance to see my comfortable environment the way a non-Christian would. He’s honest—sometimes brutally so—about what bothers him; about where his real views clash with the persona he took on for a few months. He doesn’t pull punches, but at the same time he went through the process with a fairly open mind and he came out the other side with a somewhat-revised view of the conservative Christian community.

What I read in that book ranged from convicting to embarrassing to exciting to discouraging. At times, I wanted to cheer as he talked about his dorm-mates who encouraged him spiritually, even when they didn’t know they were witnessing to an unbeliever. In other sections, it bothered me—as it often does—to read a secular opinion of conservative Christian views about homosexuality, creationism, or environmentalism. Those are things that even my Christian college education have made me wrestle with over the past four-to-five years.

Of course, there’s a difference between how I have wrestled with it and how he did. Unlike Kevin, I am convinced of the truth of Christianity. That naturally does not mean that I have everything figured out theologically, or that I always live out/apply what I believe to my daily practice. At the end of the day, our starting points do make a big difference on where we end up on things.

And when I finished the last page of the book, before the swirling thoughts took over my brain, I prayed for Kevin. Because whether he believes it or not—and regardless of the fact that I believe some of his critiques were valid—I know he needs a Savior. We ALL do because we are all sinners. He spent a semester doing all the “right” Christian things. But that’s not going to save him, just as that is not what saves me. Whether unlikely or likely, Christ calls each of us to be His disciple. To follow Him on the path of spiritual transformation—to be conformed to His image. And like it or not, it’s a journey that never ends in this life.