Chapter 7: A Voice

“Whom shall I send?” God asked Isaiah.  “And who will go for us?”

The nation of Israel was in uproar.  The kings had all forsaken God.  The people had done no less.  Idolatry, poverty, theft, prostitution, and lies were rampant.  And God looked down at this nation He had chosen for Himself out of all the nations of the earth, and He said in affect, “I have something to accomplish.  Who will do My will?”

More than 2,500 years later, God is still asking the same question.

Have you heard Him?

He’s calling for teachers for the street children in Haiti.  He’s calling for nurses in the displacement camps of Africa.  He’s calling for advocates in the red light districts of India.  He’s calling for parents for messed-up social kids in America.  He’s calling for businessmen for the jobless in Mexico.  He’s calling for counselors for the drug addicts in England.  He’s calling for friends for the neighbor across the street.  He’s calling for a lot.

And the widow, the orphan, the homeless, the fatherless, the helpless - they’re calling with Him.

I’ve heard their voices.

Not all of them.  Not like God has.

But I’ve heard enough.

I read their words as recorded by Tresor Yenyi in his book Journey to the Heart of Darkness.  “We need prayers because people hate us.  They say that we are a curse to the community.  But we did not ask to be raped . . .”  The girl who wrote this was sixteen the day she was forcibly dragged from her school and taken into the jungle by the men of an Interahamwe group.  They shot two of the girls taken with her.

Another girl writes this: “People make fun of me because I am a rape victim.  I spent months crying because of what happened to me, and I am ashamed when I meet people because of what has happened to me.  I stopped going to school, even though I want to learn and hoped to become a tailor.  I wanted to be famous in the village for the good work I had done.  I pray that God will send people of good will to come help me.”  Her name is Grace.  She was fourteen years old when she was raped.

I pray that God will send people of good will to come help me.

I read that sentence, and I thought, “She’s praying for me.  She’s asking God to send someone like me.  Not someone.  Me.”

Do you hear her, or is it just a voice in my head?

They’re begging for people to listen.  They’re begging for people to care.  They’re begging for people to pray.  They’re begging for people to give.  They’re begging for people to come.

What are we doing while they’re begging?

Chapter 6: Looks Like Hell

I recently listened to a man who had been in a hostage situation in Africa.  He was describing his turmoil in wanting to help one of his fellow hostages, a woman and a friend, who looked like she was about to collapse during a forced march.  He was afraid if he tried to help her, their captors would see the woman as too weak and shoot her.  But if he didn’t help, she was going to die of exhaustion.  “I felt damned if I do and damned if I don’t, and, gawd, that’s a horrible place to be!” he said.

I hope you don’t know what this feels like.

But you probably do.

I’m sure you’ve had those bone-chilling moments when you look at all your options, and every last one of them looks like Hell.

I’m also fairly certain that you don’t live like that on a daily basis.

What if you did?

What if you did live like that on a daily basis?

Like a village girl in the eastern mountains of the DRC.  She’s poor, so she can’t afford much of an education.  Most of the women she knows spend their daylight hours in the fields, trying to convince the crops to grow.  She doesn’t know anyone in the city, and she can’t move there by herself anyway.  Her parents are already looking for a possible husband for her.  Every night when she goes to sleep, she knows her sleep might be interrupted.  The Interahamwes stalk these mountains, and they often invade villages and kidnap the children.  The boys are forced to fight in their battles; the girls become sex slaves.

Tell me, if this was your life, what are your options?

Do they all look like Hell?

Or perhaps you’re a child in Haiti whose parents are very poor.  So poor, in fact, that they can’t really feed you properly, and you never get clothes without holes in them, and you sleep on the concrete floor, and you don’t have any shoes.  One day your parents decide to sell you.  It’s not that they want to, you understand; they just don’t have a choice.  You will now be a restavek, a child slave in someone else’s home.  Perhaps you will carry water for this new family.  Perhaps you will find firewood.  Perhaps you will wash clothes.  But you will not be a member of the family.  You will not get to go to school.  You will not be loved.

Tell me, does your life look like Hell?

Or what if you are a boy in northern Uganda?  And you go to sleep one night, and the rebel army (It’s the LRA this time, not the Interahamwes, but there’s not much difference.) does invade your village, and you are kidnaped along with your little brother.  The two of you are dragged into the forest and beaten with sticks.  Then a man with a cigarette hands you a machete and tells you to kill your little brother.  “Kill him, and you will live,” the man says, holding a gun to your head.  “Refuse and we will kill you both.”

Tell me, do your options look like Hell?

I’m not trying to be crass here, and I didn’t write this with the intent of adding the word “Hell” as often as I could.  What I am trying to say is this: These are not theoretical situations.  These are not fictitious stories made up inside a sick, twisted mind.  These things are happening today.  That girl in the village, that restavek in Haiti, that boy in Uganda - they really exist.

Not a thousand years ago.

Not a hundred years ago.

Today.

They are alive today.  They have a name, just like you.  They have a favorite color, just like you.  They have moms who sang them to sleep when they were babies, just like you.  They have hopes and dreams and things they want to be when they grow up, just like you.

But unlike you, they oftentimes do not have the power to effect change.

Do you want to know what I think injustice is?  Injustice is the raped girl in the Congo, the restavek in Haiti, the child soldier in Uganda.  It is the poor, the helpless, the un-empowered who are taken advantage of because they cannot help themselves.

Injustice is us not doing anything about it.

Sorry if this is making you feel guilty.

There really isn’t any way around it.

Perhaps we wouldn’t feel guilt if we didn’t have anything to be guilty about.

So, what can we do?  We’re Americans.  We’re big fans of action and progress and forward motion.  We want more than just the problem here.  What’s the solution?  How can we fix this?

Well, we can’t.  Not really.  A perfectly ideal situation would be the entire world coming together to stop world hunger and end all wars and clothe the naked and fight off injustice and bring every last abandoned orphan into beautiful, loving homes.

Unfortunately, that is perfectly ideal.  Which means it won’t happen.  Even Jesus said it: “You will always have the poor among you.”  We can never do enough.  We can’t solve the problem.  We can’t fix it.

So, what can we do?

Do we invite a friend or stranger out for coffee and a donut?  Do we give half our paycheck to feed a family in China?  Do we take a trip out of the country?  Do we volunteer at the local homeless shelter?  Do we stand in the middle of the sidewalk and preach?  Do we start a soccer team for boys in the trailer park?  Do we intentionally befriend the nerdy kid at school?  Do we teach a Sunday school class?  Do we give away our extra clothes and shoes and cars and TV’s?

I’m not going to answer these questions yet.

I just want you to start thinking about asking them.

Chapter 5: The Power to Effect Change

I was 26 years old before injustice had any real lasting impact on my heart.  We were at an orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda, and it was our last day of a week-long VBS camp.  The kids had split into teams and come up with their own dance moves to Kirk Franklin’s “Revolution.”  Now, instead of a revolution, we were holding a dance off.

We had candy for the winners.

We had candy for everyone else too.

There were about 120 kids in this particular orphanage.  Many of them were over the age of 18.  Half of them had survived Rwanda’s brutal 1994 genocide.  Talk about injustice!  Some of these teens had seen their parents hacked to death by machetes.  They’d lost sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, friends.  And all because some were from a different tribe than others.  The orphans lived now in dormitory-style rooms.  They ate rice in a large, pink-walled cafeteria.  They didn’t have their own Bibles.

But they could dance.

And they loved candy.

Our translators told us these kids probably saw candy two or three times a year.  Mission teams brought it, but other than that, it wasn’t exactly on the menu.

Candy is a treasured possession when it’s that rare.

It’s arguably a treasured possession when it’s not that rare.

And then Karim, one of the orphan boys, approached me after the dance off.

I had just finished singing a simple song that I’d written and then had translated into kinyarwanda, the local language.  I’d sung it for the kids so they could hear that Jesus speaks their language even though I only know English.  To remind them that Jesus always loves them even though I had to get on a plane and fly back home.

And now Karim was standing in front of me with his hand stretched towards me and his newly-won white and red polka-dot sucker lying on his open palm.

He was trying to give it to me.

“For you, auntie,” he kept insisting.  “For you.”

It was the only way he could find to say thank you.

By giving up this one piece of candy that we’d just given him.  A piece of candy I could eat ten of every day in the States and not even begin to cut into the supply.  Possibly the only piece of candy Karim would see all year.

And he wanted to give it to me.

It broke my heart.

Here was this boy, I thought.  His parents are either dead, or they abandoned him.  I’m not sure which is worse.  He sleeps in a room with maybe fifteen other boys.  He doesn’t own a single toy.  He probably never has.  Sometimes there’s not much to eat.  The orphanage doesn’t have the money to send him to school.  He can’t read the Bible every day cause he doesn’t have one.  His father’s not there to teach him honor, and his mother’s not there to teach him kindness.

And here he is, this orphan, offering me his white and red polka-dot sucker.

Just because he wants to say thank you.

Who taught him this?

If I close my eyes even today, I can still see Karim standing in front of me, his hand outstretched, laughing so he won’t cry, repeating, “For you, auntie.  For you.”

After that, it was impossible for me to stay the same.  Injustice - its horror stories, its casualties, its consequences - had become a personal issue for me.  I couldn’t just casually say the word “orphan” anymore.  “Fatherless” was no longer a vague term.  Because of Karim, it now had a face.  It had a name.  It had the memory of one simple, selfless act of love.

That’s what it took for me to actually stop and look injustice in the face.  That’s when I couldn’t live with myself anymore if I didn’t do something - however small - about it.

Nearly four years later, I haven’t done much.  It’s depressing, really, to think how little I’ve managed.  Maybe I’m denser than most.  Maybe God needed to take it slow at the start to keep me humble.

I know more about injustice now.  I have more stories to share about families who have lost their houses, boys who have lost their childhood, girls who have lost their freedom.  I have faces.  I have names.

But I’ve seen something else.  Something that has terrified me as much - if not more - than the injustice, the chaos, the stark, raving cruelty that goes on in this world.  It is this:

Indifference.

I’ve seen it at my job where I waitress.  I’ve seen it in the classrooms of public and private schools.  I’ve seen it in the pews of very nice-looking churches.  I’ve seen it in the books we read and the movies we watch and the games we play.  I’ve seen it in our faces and words and how we spend our money.  I’ve seen it in our use of time.

We don’t care.

I mean, we’d like to if it wasn’t so much bother.  We’ll write a check if you ask nicely enough.  We’ll give up a week or two if that’s what you really want.  But day to day?  No thanks.  We’re a little busy here.  Preoccupied.  Distracted.  Indifferent.

But if you had met the girl in the village who had been raped - if you had talked with the boy who had once been a child soldier - if you had blown bubbles with the kid whose parents sold her into slavery - if you knew her name, and if you had a picture of you and her with your arms around each other hanging on your bedroom wall . . . could you still be indifferent?

Of course not!

No one’s that heartless.

Then hear my questions: If we will fight to save our friends, why will we not fight to save helpless strangers?

I am talking to Christians here.  I’m talking to those born again into the family of God the Father with Jesus Christ as your Savior and Brother and Friend.  And I’m not pointing my finger.  I’ve gone years being every bit as indifferent as you.  Take this as an exhortation, a warning.  Wake up faster than I did.  We can’t afford to remain where we are.  We can’t afford to leave the stranger on the side of the road while we pass blindly by.  We can’t afford to be too busy.  We can’t afford to look the other way.  It’s costing us our light, and it’s costing them their lives.

The Bible says, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Do you know what that means?  What is a sinner?  Come one, we’ve all been to Sunday school.  We know this answer.  A sinner is someone who has sinned.  Meaning we’re separated from God.  Separated like He’s living in Central City, Nebraska, and we’re living in Bideka, Congo.  Separated like we’re strangers.  Like we wouldn’t know Him if we passed on the street.

And He died for us.

While we were like that.  While we were strangers.

How dare we only die for our friends.  How dare we only give and suffer and weep and sacrifice for the people we know.  Even an unbelieving world will go this far.  Even a bully will go this far.

What makes us different?

What makes the Bride of Christ different from the rest of the world?

It is only when we will love those who are foreign to us, those who aren’t a part of our circle, those who are the least of these.  The forgotten, the invisible, the poor.

The strangers.

This is what Christ has called us to.

This is what we have not done.

This is why our testimony in America oftentimes seems to fall on deaf ears.  We’ve said it and heard it in so many different ways.  “Why are non-Christians in the States so hard to evangelize?  Why aren’t people more open to the Gospel here?  I’m telling the truth!  Why won’t they listen to me?”

I’m sure you could find lots of different answers for this.  Here is mine: They don’t listen because we are only telling them.  We are not showing them.  And our actions (or inactions) are speaking louder than our words.

What we are willing to give up for our friends we have not been willing to give up for strangers.  We have loved our brother.  We have not loved our enemy.  We have been generous in our small, healthy, safe circle.  We have not stepped out to be generous in a large, filthy, unsafe world.

The African boy we’ve never met.  The Brazilian villager we’ve never seen.  The Indian girl whose name we don’t know.  The homeless family whose house, we fear, is the cardboard box under the bridge.  The kid at school who’s so nerdy no one will sit by him at lunch.  The child soldier, the prostitute, the drug addict, the slave.

Why?  Why is it such a big deal when we ignore them?

Because we are the ones with the power to effect change.

We are the ones who could make a difference.

We are the ones who aren’t doing it.

America is one of the wealthiest countries in all history.  A larger percentage of Americans own cars than own houses in most other countries.  We can spend more per month on our pets than many parents can spend on food for their kids.  We make more in personal income than any other country in the world.

We are wealthy.  And because of our wealth, we are powerful.

If we use our wealth to feed ourselves, we are not doing a bad thing.  But if we do not use our wealth to feed the helpless, we are.

We’ve heard it before: “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Well, it’s true.  It’s frighteningly true!  Both for those of us in power and the utterly defenseless who are waiting for us to use our power for good.

But what can we do?  What can one pitiful little me do?  After all, there’s so very much need in this world.  So much suffering.  So much cruelty.  So much death.  How can I possibly succeed against that?

Well, I don’t know.  Maybe I can’t.  Maybe none of us can.  But it might be better to have never been born than for us not to try.

Success is not the goal here.

“I don’t care if we lose,” said Dr. Paul Farmer.  “I’m gonna try to do the right thing.” (quote from Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains)  Would you like to know who Dr. Paul Farmer is?  He’s the man who started possibly the single best hospital in the entire country of Haiti.  He lobbied for millions of dollars to be given to the pursuit of eradicating tuberculosis in Russia - and he won!  He’s doctored in America, Haiti, Cuba, and Siberia, to name a few.

He’s just one man.  But he decided two things: First, that he was going to do something.  Second, that it was okay if he didn’t succeed.

Did you catch that?

He didn’t set out to build the best hospital in Haiti.  At the beginning, he didn’t know he was going to be a doctor to thousands upon thousands of people worldwide.

He just decided to act.

To share.

To give.

To love.

One person at a time.

Chapter 4: Another Page From My Journal

another Sunday

They showed a video in church this morning that talked about Christmas spending.  And giving.  And slaves.

It almost made me cry.

I saw all the potential of the American church.  Forty five billion dollars we spend every year on . . . on what we call Christmas.  While the children in Haiti are being sold as slaves and having their organs sold on the black market.  And the homeless children in the Congo are being raped as they sleep on the streets.  And the children in Kenya are dying from hunger on the side of the road as they walk to town to find food.

Forty five billion dollars.

Do you see the potential there?  What an amazing opportunity we have to change the world!  What generosity!  What unity!  What brilliance!  That we over here might be given much so that we might give it away to those who are dying for lack of it.

And we won’t do it.

We won’t give.

Instead, we gorge ourselves and remain unsatisfied (not to mention the damage to our digestive systems) while they starve day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year.  And die of treatable diseases.  And drink water that will kill them.  And live under tarp and cardboard that washes away every time it rains.

And all the while, we give away a part of our excess and never think of surrendering so much that it costs us our comfortableness.

That is why the video in church brought tears to my eyes.

We have such beautiful, boundless, untapped potential.  Not just because of our money, but also because of our education, our influence, our talents, our time.  It’s potential that for the most part we’re not using.  And it’s killing us as literally as it is killing them.

Now let me try to be realistic here for a minute.  I’m not saying that I want every Christian in the United States to sell all their belongings, pick out a pair of flip-flops, and move to a foreign country.  Maybe it would do us some good, but I realize we can’t all do that.

What I do want is to see us all die.

I want to see the Bride of Christ pick up her cross and follow Jesus.  I want to see us trade our mansions here for a mansion there.  I want to see us invest in gold instead of chaff.  I want to see us get rid of a very large portion of our stuff (the junk we keep crammed in the garage), smash our TV sets, quit building bigger churches, wear clothes with a few more holes in them, stop talking so much, take off our make-up and our masks, and find the road that leads to Calvary.

I want to see us follow that road.

I want to see us climb up to the top of that hill.

I want to see us learn what it feels like to hang naked on a cross.

Why?

Because that’s what Jesus did.

And until we finally give up everything to Him, we’re not really doing such a good job of following Him as we like to think we are.

Our half-way measures aren’t enough.

He wasn’t being half-hearted when He suffered them to whip Him.  He wasn’t being half-hearted when He stood still as they pushed a crown of thorns onto His head.  He wasn’t being half-hearted when He let them drive the nails into the palms of His hands.

He gave it all.

He hasn’t called any of us to give less.

Chapter 3: The Lies We Grow Up In

I didn’t hear much about injustice growing up.  Most of my formal education took place in various private Christian schools.  I attended church every week.  I went to Sunday school.  I even took a missions trip to Mexico.  I still didn’t hear much about injustice.

When I was in first grade, my family lived in Senegal, Africa, for ten months.  You might think I’d have been greatly impacted by injustices in that context.  But I wasn’t.  Or if I was, I didn’t understand it until later.  Most of my memories from Senegal are of the delicious fruit, the fascinating trees, and the delightful terrors of the rainy season.  Real fear, abuse, inequalities, and poverty existed there, I know it.  But either my parents did an impressive job of protecting me from it, or I in my seven years of impregnable wisdom simply didn’t see what was right in front of me.

In junior high, I wrote a report on the Bosnian War.  I remember thinking that the people fighting seemed to be involving a lot of people who would rather not be involved, and it made for quite a bit of senselessness.  That and “Czechoslovakia” was a ridiculous way to spell any country’s name.

This is all I remember of worldwide injustices affecting me in my formative years.

However, if I missed the global crime scene, I recognized it well enough in my own environment.  It was quite simple, really.  I learned about it in junior high, like most of us do.  It all boiled down to bullying.  I saw it at school frequently, and I hated it.

Kids making fun of other kids because they’re different.  The football stars purposefully getting rid of the extra chair at the lunch table so the awkward boy can’t sit with them.  The name calling when the popular team beat the rejects on the basketball court at recess.  The chubby girl suffering the undisguised snickers of the cheerleaders.

It made my blood boil.

Sometimes I yelled at the offenders.  Yelled when I would much rather have punched.  But, honestly, most of the time, I didn’t do anything.  I watched and hated and cursed the tormenters, then retreated into my safe, silent shell and let the world drag itself to Hell.

As if I was going to bother stopping them!

And that is how I passed high school.

For the other six billion people on this planet?  Well, I didn’t read the paper all that often, so I didn’t really know much about them.

What was going on at that time?

War.  Famine.  Earthquakes.  Tsunamis.  Floods.  Suicides.  Starvation.  Illness.  Murder.  Rape.  Theft.  Death.

Pretty much life as usual.

While I drove to work and saddled up my horse for a ride and watched football games and played cards with my friends all night.

I was a teenager.  What did you expect me to do?

Well, apparently, no one really expected me to do much of anything.  It’s hard enough growing up in the American culture, turning yourself out all right.  Never mind about helping anyone else come out okay.

For six years after high school, injustice would remain a rather vague issue for me.

I don’t really map out my future very well.  I’ve tried it a couple times, but the map never seems to turn out in reality the way I drew it in my head.  I’ve decided that means I ought to save myself the trouble and quit mapping.

I didn’t really map at all after high school graduation.  What followed was a long string of highly unusual jobs and experiences.  Some of them I enjoyed; some of them I didn’t.  Teaching kindergarten at the age of 19.  Flying to Hong Kong for 18 months as a volunteer secretary for a Christian retreat center (They spell it “centre” over there).  Sorting packages for Fed-ex.  Counseling and giving riding lessons at a youth ranch in Oregon.  Being a para-educator for a special needs elementary boy.  Supervising roomfuls of hyperactive 3-year olds at day care.  Directing a full-length stage production of “Robin Hood.”  Waitressing.

Like I said: unusual.

In the midst of these experiences, I bumped up against examples of injustice.

Teens in depression because of their families’ destructive choices.  Missionaries being mocked and harassed for trying to help.  Children with obvious behavioral issues being ignored or, worse, spoiled by frustrated parents.  Teachers labeling preschoolers with a success level that will stick with them until graduation.  Spouses abused in manipulative relationships.

It wasn’t really anything shocking I was seeing.  Just life, you know, same as everyone else.  In fact, I’m pretty sure most people in their circle of friends see worse things than I did.  We bore it the best we could, we lost some on the way, and the sun kept rising every morning, so we kept getting up too.

But the injustices were still relative to my little corner of the world.

I do remember at one point after high school going to the Dollar Store and spending $100 on gifts for Operation Christmas Child.  It’s a part of Samaritan’s Purse that lets you give presents to children around the world who won’t get anything otherwise.  My sister and I were really excited because we were going to get the longest receipt we’d ever seen.

Did I miss that $100?  Did not having it hurt me in any way?  Did I have to go without food for even a single meal because I spent that money?

No.

No, it didn’t really affect me at all.

And that is my first point: What we in America give is not affecting us.  Not just in the realm of money, although that’s a big one.  In time, in resources, in knowledge, in skills, in long-term relationships.  Very rarely do we give any of these until it actually costs us something.  Skipping out on a night at the movies.  Staying at home instead of going on vacation.  Wearing the same two pairs of jeans for a year.  Not eating for a day.

And no one expects us to give more.

We are rich.  I know we don’t use that term.  When we hear “rich,” we think movie stars, politicians, and basketball players.  But most of us have the ability, like I did as a teen, to spend $100 at the Dollar Store and never miss it.  And our friends and family will say, “Oh, $100!  You are so generous!  I’m so proud of you!”

But are we really generous?  Should we really be proud?

Remember Jesus.  He saw the religious leaders lugging their bags about, clanking their coins, and hefting them into the temple treasury with as much attention as they could muster without seeming gaudy.  And Jesus said basically that their piles of gold were meaningless.  “They’re giving out of their wealth,” He shrugged.

And then a widow came and put in the sort of coins you find on the sidewalk outside Walmart.  And Jesus said she’d put in more than anyone else.  Why?  Because she gave all she had.

Hey, I’m just repeating here.  Jesus said it first.  It’s a little uncomfortable though, isn’t it?  When you’re poor and all you own in the world is a measly two dollars, it’s not so difficult to part with.  It’s only two dollars after all.  You can earn that at McDonald’s without even working a full hour.

But if you’re rich and own two hundred thousand dollars . . . oh, now that’s a very different story, isn’t it?  Suddenly, it’s much harder to part with two hundred thousand.  Very questionable.  Highly unreasonable actually.  You wouldn’t want to throw it all away, after all.  And, besides, no one really expects you to give up such a fortune.

Give a tithe to the church by all means.  Give twenty percent if that’s what you want!  I’m sure you’re very generous either way.  But no one’s asking you to give it all.

. . . Or are they?

Is He?

Now, I’m well aware that you are probably not on either extreme here.  Most likely you fall somewhere in the happy medium, slightly (eh-hem) less than two hundred thousand dollars but over the pitiful two.  I also realize that God does not call every Christian to literally write a check giving away their very last penny.  And I am quite aware that we will not solve all the world’s problems by throwing money at them.

The solutions get so complicated so fast, don’t they?

Let me simplify it for you.  We’ve been talking about money, because that’s arguably the biggest thing Americans struggle to give wholeheartedly to God.  But I want to ask you a question that includes money but goes way beyond that: When was the last time you gave until it hurt?

When was the last time you gave of your time or your talents or your resources until it really cost you something?

Do you remember the last time?  Was there a last time?

Now I want you to think about the poor.  The pastor in Korea who rides his bike dozens of miles a day at the risk of his life to preach the Gospel.  The teen in the Vietnam refugee camp who smuggles Bibles to friends, knowing the police will throw her in prison if they catch her.  The young student, fresh out of seminary, who takes his Bible in his hand and walks into the jungle, well knowing that he will probably never return.

These people don’t have a lot of money.  In fact, often they don’t have any money.

But they’re doing on a daily basis something we have a hard time doing here in the States.  They’re giving it all.

They’re counting the cost and lugging their crosses out to the road that leads to Golgotha and staring hard at the dirt until they see the bloodied footprints of their Savior who walked this way before them.  And then they’re following.  They’re following after Jesus.

Are we going to follow after Him too?

Or is it too nice being comfortable?

Chapter 2: A Page From My Journal

a certain Sunday

We were in church singing our worship songs for the morning.  “Holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!  Worthy is the Lamb who was slain . . .”

And all I could see while we were standing there in our fashionable, updated, incredibly convenient church was a child soldier, crawling on his belly through the jungle, an AK-47 strapped to his back.

Maybe I should stop reading so many real-life stories from Africa, eh?

Our churches so often talk about the joy, the glory, the majestic beauty we’ve been invited to share in - how awesome it all is.  And it’s very true.  It is awe-inspiring.  But does no one see the awfulness?  The weight, the terror, the great and dreadful responsibility.  They are literally starving to death while we redecorate our sanctuaries.  Their children are being kidnaped while we decide what color of paint to use on our Sunday school walls.  They are getting raped, robbed, burned, and hacked to pieces with machetes.  What are we doing?  Watching a movie, going out to eat, taking a nap, and playing cards.

I look at our shiny cars, our big churches, our overflowing closets, and I see their bare feet, their scorched villages, their empty stomachs.  I look at the comfort we’ve build for ourselves, and I see the blood that’s been spilled in another community while we built it.  While we didn’t know.  While we didn’t look.  While we didn’t care.

I look at our carefree, bored, self-centered teen culture.  I look at our church members who would rather hear entertainment than the truth.  I look at our gorgeous, crammed houses that sit empty while we work overtime.  What do I see?

I see another child being forced at gunpoint to kill his own family members in Uganda.  I see a teenage girl in Columbia getting raped in the jungle where no one can hear if she screams.  I see a 6-year old restavek carrying buckets of water up a hill in Haiti while all her friends attend school.  I see a 10-year old Congolese boy pulling the trigger and killing his first human being.  I see an 8-year old getting blown apart by a hand grenade in the middle of his first battle.

This is what I see when I walk through the mall.  This is what I see when I drive past our houses.  This is what I see when I go to church.

We have blood on our hands.

And for the most part, we’re too busy, too satisfied, too comfortable to do anything about it.

Why?

Because it’s too painful.  Because we’ve gone too long ignoring the problem.  Because it’s too far away.  Because it’s habit.

Because it costs too much.

It’s much easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.  We can do that after all.  We can stop reading the paper.  We don’t have to listen to the stories.  We can skip over the pictures of the starving children.  We can close our ears to the weeping and the screams.  Their blood doesn’t turn our rivers red.

Sure, it does over there.

But we’re not over there, are we?  We’re here.  In our comfort.  Spending what we have on ourselves.  Largely ignorant that there’s a problem at all.

It’s definitely easier this way.

Chapter 1: The Story That Started the Story

For those of you who have been pre-warned, this is the first "chapter" in a short series.  This is what I've been thinking about lately.  This is what God has been teaching me:

It all started the day I sat down to read Journey to the Heart of Darkness, a non-fiction book written by Tresor Yenyi, a man born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  After graduating from an American college, Tresor returned to his home country to research ways to help his people.  What he found shocked him.  Traveling through the countryside, interviewing former child soldiers, village girls who had been raped by rebel militia, men who had fought in the jungle wars, Tresor collected a series of horrific stories.

Torture.  Child abuse.  Slavery.  Terror.  Death.

Today.

All of the stories were happening today.

I read the following quotes from Tresor’s book as he fought to be a voice for the voiceless:

“I saw so many bad things when I was in the militia.  We were considered animals.  We were made to be criminals and murderers.  They made us evil, and we could not tell the difference between good and evil anymore.  Everyone thinks we are murderers and, therefore, we deserve death.  We end up becoming thieves and some are burned alive in the streets . . .” (written by a former child soldier; he was 10 years old when he joined the army)

“I still have my parents and they welcomed me, but my brothers were mocking me.  They were saying I called the Interahamwes [Rwandan militia] to come rape me.  I don’t know what illness I have, as my belly is swollen.  People think I am pregnant, but I am not.  As for my daughter [born of a rape], people accept her but I can’t feed her.  I am really worried about the fact that my stomach is hurting.  I am traumatized.  I have dreams of them raping us in the forest.  I sometimes spend a week without eating . . .”

“They tied my dad, looted everything we possessed, and raped me in front of my father.  I was fifteen when that happened.  I am still in primary school, and my grades are not good because I cannot concentrate.  I keep thinking about what happened to me.  I don’t have any peace in my heart.  At school, people laugh at me because they know what happened to me . . .”

That’s a very tiny sliver of what I read.  Are you starting to feel what I was feeling?  Is there a knot at the back of your throat?

And while I sat in my comfortable chair, sipping my hot chocolate and reading these stories, my dad ran across an article in the paper entitled, “Judge to decide if Sea World orcas are ‘enslaved.’”

“In San Diego,” the article began, “where what goes on in Sea World is more important to many than what goes on in the White House, a federal judge is deciding whether the famous orca whales are slaves under the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.  That, of course, prohibits slavery.”

I had just read about a 15-year old girl getting kidnaped by rebel militia.  I had read about a 10-year old village boy who knows what it feels like to kill a human being.  And now I was reading about the heroic efforts of Americans to free whales from slavery.

“The whale warriors argue that slavery does not depend on species any more than it does on gender, ethnicity or race,” the article declared.  It then went on to muse, “It would be kind of cool if a federal judge ruled that huge, magnificent creatures such as orcas or gorillas may not be kept in tanks or cages and forced to perform on demand.  It would be, well, very modern of us.”

Do you see the problem here?  The danger?  The sickening, twisted irony?  We can sit here in our comfortable chairs, listening to the clock ticking on the wall and smelling fresh-brewed coffee, while reporters tell us about the battle to free the whales in California.  And meanwhile a 15-year old is getting raped in her own home in front of her father.

The article ended with a joke.  A light, fluffy sentence not meant to be taken literally.  “Of course, there shouldn’t be protection for cockroaches or winged monkeys.”  In other words, save the whales!  But you’re still allowed to squash a nasty cockroach or two.

In the summer of 2008, I took a two-week missions trip to Rwanda.  While there, I visited the museum in Kigali commemorating the 1994 Rwandan genocide.  An estimated 800,000 people were killed (most hacked to death by machetes) in the span of 100 days.  Would you like to know what the murderers called those they were murdering?

Cockroaches.  They called them cockroaches.

Ironic, isn’t it?  The word a reporter uses to explain that there are certain species we don’t need to protect.  The same exact word the killers in Rwanda used to convince themselves they weren’t killing anything precious.

How many people in this world have no more protection than a cockroach?  How many girls are sold as slaves while we read the sports page?  How many boys march at the front of rebel armies while we stop in at our favorite drive-thru?  How many children know exactly what it feels like to be a cockroach?  Because of our inaction, because of our ignorance, because of our deadly, deadly silence.  Because we’re too busy arguing about the rights of animals at Sea World.

That article pushed so crudely into the midst of the horror stories from the DRC was a wake-up call for me.  This is not okay.  I am not okay with a 15-year old girl getting raped in the Congo.  I’m not okay with a 10-year old boy who knows what it feels like to kill people.

Now hear me.  I’m not pointing fingers.  I’m almost 30 years old, and I haven’t really done any more than the rest of you.  But that is going to change.  It has to change.  I don’t know if it’s going to change for you or not, but for me, it must.

They can do what they like with their magnificent whales in California.  I’m not fighting for them.

We have a world of people - live human beings created in the very image of God Himself  - who are dying because the people who have the power to create change are spending that power on comfort.  And personal gain.  And orcas.

Does that make you a little uncomfortable?

It made me uncomfortable.

But maybe that’s what we need.  Or just me, anyway.  Maybe that’s what I need.  To get uncomfortable with being comfortable so I stop using what I have on myself and start caring about the precious children in the Congo.  And Rwanda.  And Haiti.  And Columbia.  And the Philippines.  And India.  And North Korea.  And Russia.  And Cuba.

Start caring so much that I actually do something about it.

A Note to You

Dear reader,

Sorry.  I haven’t written in a while.  Apparently, I meant the title of my last blog quite literally.  If I have seemed slightly reticent, withdrawn, uncommunicative - what’s a nice way to put it? - alien lately, it’s because I have been.

I’ve been reading a lot.  Copiously.  It’s hard to read and write at the same time, so I stopped writing.  It’s also hard to write when you don’t have anything to say except “I don’t have anything to say.”  That gets a little repetitive after awhile.

Well, I’m still reading, but I have something to say now besides the above-mentioned phrase, and I thought if I told you, maybe I wouldn’t get so many questions about why I’m in Nebraska still.  Let me start out as bluntly as I can:

I am no longer working to get a team together to go to Haiti for two years and start a camp there.  I thought it sounded like a good idea.  Apparently, God disagreed.  He’s quite allowed to do that.  He is God after all.  He has impressed very deeply on my heart the plight of the children in Central Africa (most specifically, the child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).  I do not have an outline or a plan or a schedule, and I’m not looking to find one.  I do not know when I will be leaving the country.

So, what am I doing?

I’m learning French and reading.  Mostly books about Central Africa, although there have been a couple missionary biographies and an E. Nesbit story thrown in there as well.

You are welcome to ask me any questions you may have about my current hopes and future plans, but I will warn you, the answer will probably be, “I don’t know.”  What sort of Bohemian would I be if I did know?

God has very pointedly directed my wandering vagabond life for the last ten years, and I am convinced He is going to put me where He wants me when He wants me to be there.  But neither you nor I necessarily need to know how that will look.

At the moment, it’s enough to know this: God’s mystery is better than any plan I could manage to come up with.  “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

When was the last time you stopped planning?

Sincerely,God’s bohemian