Mon 17 Apr 2006
When the lady from News 8 was recently interviewing a few of us artists at a gallery here in Lancaster for a news story on an auction to benefit disabled Chinese orphans, she asked me why I chose to become involved. I told her I got involved because I did nothing to deserve the life I have, being able to afford a camera and being able to take pictures that people might bid on and all. I said that the kids in the picture I donated did nothing to deserve their living hell, which means living in a garbage dump in Cambodia, picking through piles of trash for scraps of plastic that can be sold for pennies a day. And I said that disabled orphans in China did nothing to deserve the physical and emotional hardships they face every day, and that being a Christian, it was the least I could do to donate a picture. I didn’t say that to brag or to sound ultra-spiritual. I said that because I think I believe it to be true. I hope I truly believe it.
Of course, when the piece was aired on the news, they left that part out, instead choosing to feature the dumbest thing I said during the whole interview, something about how I made the kids’ day by taking their picture.
*****
I went to Kenya a couple of years ago with a ministry focusing on children who have been orphaned by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Most of the people I talked to here in Lancaster were very supportive; at least they said they were. It is easy to be supportive in that way, you know, as long as it doesn’t cost you anything, like comfort or money or peace of mind. Of course, there were also those who were less than supportive of the whole thing. Some came right out and said it, while others beat around the bush with their words, but the prevailing mindset among those who were not on board was that basically, we were wasting our time bothering with Africa.
One guy told me it was cool if I wanted to do something but that as far as he was concerned, Africa has brought AIDS and poverty and famine and turmoil upon itself, and they must therefore deserve their suffering. Someone else lectured me on how sex-crazed Africans are, and how they sleep around like animals in heat and that this is why the situation over there is so bad. I said he was wrong and that the reason America isn’t being decimated by AIDS has less to do with our remarkable chastity than with our basic knowledge about how STD’s are transmitted and our access to protection. Of course, I said that abstinence is the answer, but it doesn’t seem to be the norm anywhere anymore, and it is certainly not the reason AIDS is not currently wiping out America.
Shortly after returning from the trip, I heard that Bono had been on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the dire situation in Africa, so I got online and looked up the transcript. I knew that Bono had been using his platform as the biggest rock star in the world to put Africa and AIDS on the map and I had a fair deal of respect for him because of that. I had never really watched O’Reilly’s show before, but several of my friends watched regularly, and they told me that O’Reilly was such a brilliant alternative to everyone else and that I had to watch because he was right on the money. He may very well be brilliant, but in reading this transcript he struck me as one without a heart. He may be a very kind and generous person to his neighbors and to the impoverished people he passes on the street, but it doesn’t translate into his politics or the things he says on his show on cable television. He was highly critical of Bono’s passion for Africa, and he echoed the attitude that I found in some of my friends – that Africa brought AIDS upon itself and that it was not our problem. I wondered if my friends who said those kinds of things felt that way because O’Reilly felt that way and no one ever taught them to think for themselves.
*****
If you think I am going to get into politics here, rest easy. I don’t think the situation in Africa with AIDS and all the children without parents is primarily a political issue. Sure, it has political implications we need to wrestle with and work through, but I think that we need to remember that these are people with personalities and senses of humor and unique gifts and talents that they may or may not be able to leave on society, depending on whether anyone takes notice of their plight.
*****
I went down to New Orleans a couple of weeks ago as part of a team from my church. I didn’t think this would have anything to do with what I learned through my experience in Kenya, but I think it all ties together amazingly well, as if God has been trying to teach me something.
While in New Orleans we were gutting houses, hanging drywall, working on roofs, doing electrical work, and talking with whomever we came across, but trying to do more listening than talking.
New Orleans is known for Mardi Gras and Southern Decadence. Voodoo parlors are everywhere. The demographics and the culture of the city - predominantly African-American, Catholic, poor - stand in stark contrast with what we are used to here in Lancaster - white, evangelical, rich. A couple of people on our team said that for them, New Orleans was their Nineveh. They had no desire to ever set foot in that God-forsaken city, and one even said he remembers thinking last fall that it wasn’t all bad that the city was hit by Katrina, on account of all the evil there. Good riddance, right?
But that attitude didn’t last. It can’t last when you go. It can’t last when you meet the people and you realize that a good deal of what you thought you knew about the situation from the vantage point of your leather recliner in the den was way off base.
We spent two and a half days gutting the home of Chris, an African-American man in his fifties, born and raised in New Orleans, who lost everything in the storm. Throughout the course of the project, Chris reinforced many of the stereotypes we have of black men in places like Louisiana, and I’m sure we did the same in regards to his perceptions of white folks from the north, to one degree or another.
But by the end of the week, any cultural walls that existed had come down. He was calling us blood, which is the choice term of endearment among those in New Orleans, generally reserved only for good friends. He taught us other slang words, like motor-scooter. He said these words were exclusive to New Orleans, but I asked him if I could teach a bunch of white people in Pennsylvania to speak some jive and he said it would be a real good thing, and that color didn’t have anything to do with it.
He talked about how his wife was going through radiation treatment and that he prays for her all the time because “Lord knows I need her like a blind man needs eyes.�� He told us that his mom was going in for surgery a few days later and that seeing her walk out of that hospital standing upright again would make him the happiest man in the world.
He told us he was blessed that the storm had come because he never would have had the opportunity to meet people like us otherwise.
He actually said that. And I think he even meant it.
*****
It is an interesting thing to me that those I meet who are most critical of ministries to those in places like Africa or New Orleans are those who have never actually been there. Those who go always seem to come back changed, ready to tell others all about how God is at work in these most unlikely of places. The armchair quarterbacks, meanwhile, are the ones who aren’t so sure it’s worth it. Naivety seems to breed cynicism, especially when it comes to these sorts of things, and I have personally grown quite weary of backseat drivers who are sure they know what to do and where to go but never actually put their hands on the wheel or feet on the pedals.
Those who say that Africans are sex maniacs who deserve AIDS have not sat in a hospital room in rural Kenya with a woman dying of AIDS, singing “Blessed be the name of the Lord�� and praying for her recovery. Those who say that God is punishing New Orleans and that they don’t deserve our help in their time of need have not met those actually affected by Katrina, people like Charlie and Pam, a Christian couple who lost their house, their jobs, and their cars, and are now burdened to reach out to others in their time of need. Those who go to these dark places and meet these wonderful brothers and sisters do not have the option of turning away and living life within the comfortable bubbles of mediocrity they had dwelled in for so long.
But let’s assume for a moment that everyone in Africa who is affected by AIDS and poverty – all the men, women and children, including the orphans – are to blame for this pandemic. Likewise, let’s assume that every person in New Orleans when Katrina hit was a practitioner of voodoo who prostituted themselves in the streets during drunken orgies every day of the year. Assuming that not one person in Africa or New Orleans is an upstanding, respectable citizen (meaning, of course, upstanding like ourselves) – we must answer one simple, paradigm-shattering question. We can’t shrug this one off. God will not allow us to look the other way, not forever at least. Because the question I am going to pose is not a question pertaining only to those along the Gulf Coast or on a continent on the other side of the world. This question is for all of us.
Is anyone beyond the grace of God?
Are sex addicts in Africa and voodoo practitioners in New Orleans beyond the grace of God? How about Satanists and prostitutes and homosexuals? Be careful how you answer. If these people are beyond the grace of God, are you suggesting that you are somehow any different? Were you any less sinful than they when God in Christ forgave you and called you His child? And if not for God’s grace, where would you find yourself now?
If, on the other hand, you believe that even those we deem most undeserving of our love and service are somehow within reach of the grace of God, you know what this means, don’t you? It means that we have a job to do. It is not for anyone else, until we take it up as own own responsibility and reach out to others with the love of Christ.
Don’t count on the government to do it. Don’t count on the Red Cross to do it. Don’t count on the church down the street or even those within your own church to do it. If you recognize that it is by grace that you have been saved, and that this salvation is a gift no one could ever deserve, and if you have come to believe that those in New Orleans and Africa, and even you and I, are not beyond the grace of God, it is a no-brainer to take to the world this rare, relentless grace.