"How come America is more blessed than Africa?" a young Rwandan school girl asked me as we sat together on a grassy hill sharing conversation last summer. I think this is probably the hardest question I have ever been asked.
I just watched this short video clip (http://www.altervideomagazine.com/2011/07/13/the-worst-place-on-earth/) of Lynne Hybels describing the disgusting tragedies happening in the Congo. She goes on to say: "in so many places where you see the church really being a Church, it is the poor caring for the desperately poor and it is the sick caring for the dying..."
Sometimes I can't help but think Africa is more "blessed" than America. Sometimes I can't help but wonder how much more generous I would be if I had less to live on or how much more compassion I would have for the dying if terminal cancer was destroying my own body.
Sometimes I get so frustrated because I simply don't know.... I don't know how much culture has influenced my theological view....or how to even begin to try to un-tie these two...and this scares me. How much do I really let culture decide what is "God's will" for my life? I don't understand why I was born into much materially wealth that has provided me with countless resources -both necessary resources to sustain life and completely unnecessary, selfishly excessive resources that I would probably be better off without. I don't know what to do with this constant, heavy frustration.....I often feel all I really have to offer God is this humble state of utter confusion.
I don't know how to just simply trust that where I am in life is exactly where God wants me without somehow feeling like I am forgetting a little bit about all the little African children I met last summer walking the streets with dirty, torn clothes and swollen bellies. My heart longs to be with these children or the people I met living in a garbage dump in Guatemala. Sure I am probably guilty of romanticizing poverty to some degree or another...but isn't it also so true that it often takes living among the sick and the dying to get us to remember that we are the sick and the dying? Sure the more academic degrees I earn might help me to make an even "greater impact." I love the work I am learning to do and am eager to continue to develop as a professional. I can always bring my line of work to Africa but this frustration, uneasiness, discontentment, distrust, or whatever you want to call it goes beyond Africa. Admittedly, I am probably still dealing with some reverse culture shock but when did we start classifying reverse culture shock as some sort of pathology? It is culture itself that is pathological.
I have become quite weary of Christian culture over the years...you watch this following clip and want to throw up because of this uneasiness we have created in ourselves in terms of how we integrate theology and culture: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/12/30/art-conscience-and-theological-mccarthyism/ -the media, theologians, authors, speakers, and bloggers (myself included) who think they know the exact interpretation and application of Micah 6:8, who think they know exactly what it means to be a follower of Christ in suburbia America or maybe they are a bit more humble and admit their limited understanding but you still desperately want to believe everything they say because they are John Piper or John Calvin or Bethany Webb :) Well, maybe you can feel safe believing everything they say if they are one of my favorite Taylor University people, Ken Taylor, whose personal translation of Galatians 6:4-5 is this: "Let everyone be sure that he is doing his very best, for then he will have the personal satisfaction of work well done, and won't need to compare himself with someone else. Each of us must bear some faults and burdens of his own. For none of us is perfect!"
How often I am told if I just do my best wherever I am, doing whatever I am doing then that is all the Lord asks of me....maybe this strong desire to go back to Africa is more than just an emotional pull at my heart strings, maybe it is one of the signs of what it means to "be called"...but what I can't understand is how any person of faith can go to Africa and not want to go back there for a more permanent stay...sure there is a lot one can do to make that seemingly "bigger difference" without actually living there but how can one not want to have consistent, personal contact to be able to frequently hug the sick and dying? Yes, Jesus refers to the sick and dying as meaning those who are poor in spirit as well (who are everywhere) but I just can't shake -and don't want to -this desperate longing to live among the real sick and dying in order to just maybe become a little more sick and dying myself.
"How come America is more blessed than Africa?" I don't know.
