KONY 2012, the White Man’s Burden, and the gospel

So, whatever you think about KONY2012 or Invisible Children or some of the articles calling into question Invisible Children as an organization, let’s not forget the situation here: there is bad stuff happening. I feel like we need Tony Campolo to cuss at us.

Let’s get a few things out of the way: If Invisible Children wants to spend their money making movies, fine. That’s what they decided they wanted to do, and what they thought would be most effective using what they were good at. If you want to donate to awareness through media, Invisible Children is doing a great job as well as using about a third of their budget for on-the-ground projects. If you want to give to an organization where more funds are put directly to projects, there are SO many great, gospel-centered organizations and individual missionaries who are always scraping for funds. I’ll put a list below of organizations with people who we know personally, have given to in the past, or give to currently. Donating to IC and these other organizations are not mutually exclusive.

A couple of things I want to discuss in more detail:

1. This KONY 2012 thing is a troubleshooting situation – it’s not a cure for the problems in Central Africa and many, many other parts of the world. More on this below.

2. A number of bloggers and journalists have been speaking out against some of IC’s methods (see articles from CBS and the Chicago Sun-Times that try to remain neutral), and some have been pulling the White Man’s Burden card – I think this deserves some discussion (see the really icky poem here), but I also think it unfairly and unnecessarily smears IC as well as stunts conversation instead of engaging meaningfully and critically with how to best use our cultural currency.

So.

Yes, as Americans we have the guilt of the privileged and we are the descendants (and arguably, through the fallout globalization, the economic perpetuators) of imperialism. This was the theme of the time I spent at liberal arts college. Yes, there is such a thing as the White Man’s Burden, and yes, in Africa (India, Haiti and the Caribbean, you name it) we’re working within a postcolonial framework. But whether the disadvantaged, the aid worker, and the advocate are white or black, the true is that bad, bad things are happening all over the world, and there are a lot of people who care, and who are giving their lives in a variety of approaches to try and dethrone warlords, eradicate malaria, feed hungry children, remedy unsustainable agricultural practices, and end sexual slavery and human trafficking.

The problem is that none of this stuff is going to get any better through “military intervention” or education or food or clean water or tolerance or understanding or any of it. We can capture Joseph Kony and there will still be the Ugandan government or a thousand other corrupt leaders to take his place. Corruption is present in every country, every society, every community. There isn’t a people or a form of government without it – we are all susceptible. I believe only thing that can resist corruption is something that’s incorruptible – and I believe the only incorruptible power and person is the Holy Spirit of God.

Unfortunately, we as people are ready to, at any turn, take what we want from the Spirit and “use” it for whatever we want. Thus, the missionary movement has historically been tied up with a lot of cultural imperialism. Contrary to Kipling’s sentiments (and those which were pervasive during his time and, if we’re honest, run through some of our missiology now) neither white people nor Americans are smarter, better, or more loved by God than anyone else, and God didn’t say, “Here, white people/Americans*, take Jesus to the ‘half devil, half child‘ people in Africa, the Philippines, the Caribbean.” (*I use both here because in the U.S., they’ve historically been one and the same when we’re talking about missionaries, but that’s clearly not the truth in our generation – PTL). From what I know of 19th- and early 20th-century missiology (which is admittedly more limited than I’d like), the ideologies often carried an amalgamation of whiteness and Christian-ness (Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga is a great novel dealing with the scope of this issue). If you’ve talked much with me, you probably know some of my frustration with a similar amalgamation in American Christianity, but that’s another story.

This brings us to the question of efficacy. Our desire to “save” people, so that we can feel like we’re good, often leads to us trying to make them like our own culture. At best, communities can end up with clean water and microfinance loans that make a different standard of living possible – but this isn’t salvation, for sure. To bring it back around to Kony, should war criminals still be tried and brought to justice? I think so. But will catching all of them get rid of the world’s problems? No way.

Enter Jesus. William Willimon has a really interesting discussion of what scripture means by “the body of Christ” in his book Why Jesus. The basic premise is – when Jesus was born on the earth, God had a physical body here among his creation, and he still does. Where the Spirit of God lives in the physical bodies of his people, God is physically among the world he has made. Isn’t this maybe part of why it’s “to [our] advantage” that Jesus physically leave the earth? – so that the Spirit can come and indwell, and the one body of Jesus can be in not just one place, but increasingly more and more places throughout the world as more people come to know him and join the spirit’s Ministry of Reconciliation.

The lives that are truly changed in the world are those changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, by reconciliation to their creator, and through participation in his ministry of reconciliation. Corruption is resisted when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we put to death the thing in us that wants our own way at any cost (Romans 8:13). The apostle reminds us that Jesus himself is our peace (Ephesians 2:14) – that there is no peace outside of the sacrifice of Christ (Isaiah 53:5). By his punishment peace is brought (not by Joseph Kony’s), and by his wounds healing comes.

If you want to see change, if you want to see healing in our broken world,

1. support a missionary.

2. be a missionary.

I really really believe this. Throwing money at it doesn’t fix it – yes, organizations need money, so give generously and sacrificially! Where your dollars go, your heart will be also. But beyond that, go to Uganda – go to Haiti – go to India. Go to visit, and see what Christians are doing there. It’s not as big of a deal as you think, and at the same time, it’s way bigger than you can imagine. There are a lot of good reasons to rip on short-term missions, like stewardship and offering a pat on the back for having “done something” when many times we’ve only led Christianized tourist trips. We have to be careful of this stuff, for sure -  but there is something tremendously powerful in meeting people, seeing what the Church is like, and what God is doing in other parts of the world. It’s a chance to step outside of our own syncretisms and see Jesus outside of our cultural context.

Is it bad to repost a video like KONY 2012? I don’t think so. But it’s just the start. These guys from Invisible Children got to this place now because they left the U.S. to go and see what the heck was going on in a different part of the world. And it changed them. I’ll leave you with this turn-of-the-century missionary man quote (some beautiful from the rubble, by the way):

‘”Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.” (William Booth).

———

Here’s a list of some people and organizations you can send your dollars (or yourself) to:

An individual missionary or missionary family – ask leaders in your local church; chances are they are regularly contacted by missionaries trying to raise support. You can ask me or Tim, too – we know a good number of people in different parts of the world working on different things. It bears saying here that the United States is increasingly becoming one of the less-evangelized places in the world. Mark Noll will tell you that where 100 years ago, the typical Christian was a white man in the US and Europe, today, a Christian is more likely to be a woman living in Africa or South America. My husband just did this fast math: US population is about 315 million – population of Uganda is about 32 million. If the high estimates in the US are true, about 50% of people in the US know Jesus. That still leaves 150 million people, or five times the population of Uganda, who don’t know Jesus right here in the US.

International Justice Mission – working with and supporting the integrity of local justice systems to prosecute human rights violations and walk with victims through the recovery process.

Wycliffe – Bible translations is one of the most pressing gospel needs – many many people are hearing the gospel but don’t have the Bible in their native language. Our friend Sarah Daubert has recently moved to Cameroon to help with Wycliffe’s translation work there.

Northwest Haiti Christian Mission – I’ve been to Haiti twice with friends here. Check out especially the Neighbors Project – I hope this model will be the future of short-long term missions.

Ignite South Africa – friends of our friend Jenna. Ignite’s model is to build up Christian leaders while they’re young, so they’ll shape the future of their communities.

World Vision is respected and trust all over the world for their work with poverty and children specifically. And they’re in Uganda.

charity:water has a fabulous 100% donations model – every dollar donated goes to a water project – they fundraise for staffing separately. You can track where your $ goes and see water projects with Google Maps. Awesome!

“i am filled with Christ’s love!”

I’ve been thinking this week about duty and love thanks to a Facebook post by Krystal Holt to this article by Donald Miller. I haven’t read Blue Like Jazz or A Million Miles in a Thousand Years but I do follow his blog (sometimes) and I found this particular entry to be both helpful and problematic in different ways.

Miller’s discussion is mainly about ministry – about where we serve and why, what motivates us: is it a sense of duty, or do we serve out of love? I think we can all agree that we ought to serve out of love and not purely out of a sense of duty; Dave (Krystal’s husband) brings in this thought from Lewis pointedly: we don’t want to interact with people who we sense are with us out of a sense of duty, in fact, “the mere suspicion that what seemed an act of spontaneous friendliness or generosity was really done as a duty subtly poisons it.” And, furthermore (also from Lewis): “Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits, etc.) can do the journey on their own.”

I think this is the crux: another wise man once said, “Sometimes desire breeds discipline, but more often, discipline breeds desire.” Sometimes the desires of our hearts are to serve others, to interact with them in a way that honors God, and yet, sometimes, our desires are really just about us: we want to sleep just a LITTLE longer, for our wishes to be heard (even if it means someone else’s are minimized), and, sometimes our desires are just to be able to sit in and listen to the sermon and worship together with everyone else (our spouses, our friends) and not to have to miss out to teach kids.

For Krystal and I, I think the main application of this discussion is in children’s ministry, but I think it can apply across the board to any area of “service.” I feel I should say immediately that the desire to be in corporate worship on a Sunday is NOT wrong (hopefully that’s understood), only that any God-given desire (like this one) can give birth to sin (James 1:14-15). And I think Miller’s conclusion that, “[i]f you are teaching Sunday school out of a sense of obligation, stop. Literally stop as soon as you can. Instead, find something that gets you fired up,” painfully leaves out the possibility of our sinful desires getting in the way of serving in what may be an area of our giftedness, and, for lack of a better word, duty (see Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 for why it’s our duty to use our gifts diligently).

Don’t we (occasionally) grow tired even of doing things we’re good at? Doesn’t our selfishness sometimes get in the way, weakening our desire to serve cheerfully in areas in which we’re gifted, and what we’re left with is the knowledge that we’ve said we’d be there with a smile on? Don’t we still need to show up, even if what we start with is “a sense of obligation”? Sometimes desire breeds discipline, but more often, discipline breeds desire.

I think of the disciples in the garden at Gethsemane (Mark 14, Matthew 26). Didn’t they love Jesus? Didn’t they want to stay awake and pray with him? I think we can say yes, and yet, they fell asleep. Their love for Jesus was not enough to carry them through to completion of what God had asked. Jesus says it succinctly there: “The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

I just think that sometimes, our love for God fails us, and we just don’t want to do the things he’s asking, or we do want to, but we also want to sleep (sit in service/say our piece/have our way). So what do we do? Go ahead and complete the task even though we don’t want to? Go up to our volunteer coordinator/boss/wife and say, “I just don’t have the desire to do this, I’m going to find something that really gets me fired up” (take that one to the wife example and you’re in a whole other situation). Our desire to do something is not always an adequate barometer of whether God is calling us to do it.

Krystal wisely wrote: “I believe that God does give us our desires, but Satan can easily twist them if we are not constantly checking our heart… I think that something [Miller] should have added when speaking on our desires is to be sure to check your heart to make sure those desires [1.] have not been twisted and [2.] are in line with God’s word.”

That said, if you’ve ever been in charge of scheduling volunteers, you know that at any one point, you’ve got several volunteers who are serving (usually cheerfully) not in their primary area of gifting, but because there’s a need, and they’re available. You may also know that sometimes these volunteers last for years, and sometimes they serve for a few months, become embittered, and find another church family. I have a few questions for those of us who are in leadership over volunteers and “ministries:”

1. Do we really not have enough people who are gifted in this area to meet the alleged ministry need? Or, to put it a different way, has God inadequate distributed gifts in his Church? I hope we can come to a resounding NO on this one (see 1 Cor 12:11, and really the whole chapter here). So, if God has given us people who have all the gifts we need to do all the ministry he asks of us, the next questions become:

2. Are we each being obedient in using our gifts? Peter puts it intensely: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Are we stewarding the various forms of grace God bestows upon us in a way that honors him and honors one another? And, finally, maybe the toughest one for those of us who are on staff or in leadership in the local church (especially in church plants trying to get off the ground):

3. Are we asking things of people that God is not asking of us? If God hasn’t wrongly distributed gifts, and people are stewarding their gifts faithfully, and still no one is filling this volunteer position we “need,” do we really need it? Is there something wrong with our program, with our system?

Could we consider building our systems and “ministries” around the gifting of our people at that particular time? Instead of saying, “we have to have this many small groups, and this many children’s classes, and this many people on a worship team,” could we say, who do we have? What are they great at? What has the Spirit brought us in this particular season, and how can we as a body use to it glorify God? What if that means we have no children’s ministry? What if we have (gasp) no guitar players? No drums? Small group at a Starbucks rather than at someone’s home? What if God’s varied grace gives more variation than fits in our church plant package?

With plants especially, I think we want to resemble the congregations that have planted us, and as quickly as possible. We want eight vibrant small groups with mature leaders who have large warm homes and can feed delicious snacks to our unchurched visitors. We want different classes for each age group of our kids, each with two teachers who each only have to serve once a month. We want guitars and drums and harmonies and four fabulous sound people who each only have to serve once a month. And by my count, that’s 62 people right there – and many of us would be thankful to have that many people show up on a Sunday, let alone be serving and involved in a small group (I should say this is a problematic way of looking at Being The Church, too, but that’s another discussion).

What should our vision be of a vibrant, growing, local church community? A system of small groups, music people, and (let’s be honest) women wearing t-shirts and nametags diligently chasing our children, filled with Christ’s love? Or a group of people, a gathering of individuals, that may not fill out all the ministries we’d like to see and believe will “grow our church,” but who God has chosen to gift the way he wants to, for his purpose, to bring him glory and reflect his heart uniquely?

Thanks for getting to the bottom of this post.

a voice of one calling in the wilderness

Isaiah 40:6, 55:8, 1 Sam 7:12

I drive each breath through the green fuse these days,
these words heavier every few weeks as
who I am firms up.  How to write a line?
each thought and green word names me, and I can

not leave a stone.  Let then the word that goes
out from your mouth sow in me and raise these
stones of help, saying, ’this far,’ and this far
again.  Let the beautiful uncut hair

of graves, let my thoughts and ways be now shorn,
coming up mornings, in old age fresh and green.

Let me grow up out of you, when shadows fall
to rest there and wait, open to the till.
You cut covenant and in the valley I am still,
a moss drawn out from the water-rock.

let what we do in here fill the streets out there

me and PB singing Thursday night

we had a long layover in miami on the way back

13 nov 2010 – Port au Prince

Airport at Port Au Prince.  Bethany is crushing us at rummy.  Gregg and Kelly can’t remember the rules.

We rode in the bus to Port de Paix this morning with our team, Heather + Janeil + kids, Gail, and Melonnie.  I’m sick this morning – I think I may finally have picked up a bug on the way out of Haiti.

My voice has been hoarse the last three or four days – we are singing our little hearts out this week.  Two nights ago we had worship together with the Haitians – which was (again) one of the most special things of my life, maybe.  At lunch on Thursday, Leo or Fritz (can’t remember) asked if I could come help Johny sing a song that he had a sheet to – it was “Madly” (which I didn’t know was by Steve Fee!).  That song reminds me of CpR, but when we sang it later that night at the mission, the lyrics locked into this time and place:

Let what we do in here fill the streets out there
Let us dance for you, let us dance for you

As we sang from within the relative safety of the mission walls, having gone in and out to St. Louis and to the cholera clinic, with the streets full of the bracelet bandits, clinic spectators, people who just live in St. Louis and every now and then a mourner for someone who has died, it means something different and special and powerful to say, let what we do in here fill the streets out there, to say, let the ragged and dark places be filled with joy and singing.  A lot of songs mean something different or more in Haiti.  Here there is peace like a river, and this week I think I saw a glimpse of what sorrows like sea billows rolling is like.  And then to say, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say it is well, it is well with my soul – this is the Christian life.  Learning to bring our hearts around and align with what is true, and to confess that out loud, this is the work of the Spirit in our hearts.

Sunday at church, as the Haitians sang a song I don’t know, I wrote this down:

“the melody rises in fervent longing to be with the Lord – I can’t understand the words, but the song is neither a reaction to joyful circumstances or suffering, but a reaching of the heart towards the Lord, towards eternity.”

The only way to survive is to confess what is true, and to bring out hearts around to that, to fall in line with it.

Side note: Payton and Josiah (Heather + Janeil’s kids) climbed up on the bar stools at the airport bar (I wonder how many blanc kids come through the airport at Port au Prince!).  So it’s cute enough already, then of course Payton asks (in Creole) the Haitian bartender for some cherries.  It was hilarious – all the bartender ladies are cracking up and giving them cherries for free and speaking Creole with them.

a little boy, an old lady, and a lot of singing

this is us getting ready to go down to the clinic, day two

Thurs Nov 11

Yesterday – day two for me in the cholera clinic.  Worked hard all day with the nurses, translators, one doctor, and a few other non-medical, non-language people like me.  Many people have been working from early in the morning to late at night, even after the “night shift” people come in.  It’s easy to make friends with everyone – nurses, the patients, the translators.

One of the Haitian translators, Neph, was a student – I think she just graduated this year.  She is one of the best translators and a good friend here.  She is so hardworking and patient and always has a steady, good attitude.  She was the first name the doctors learned because she’s so good.  Last night one of the cholera patients died, an older woman, and her daughter-in-law wailed in the street just inside the clinic gate (this is about how I imagined it would be – a very raw kind of loud mourning song – there is a reason you hear it called “wailing”).  After about fifteen minutes, the Haitian pastor arrived to pray with her, and Trish, (one of the American nurses), Neph and I sang hymns, maybe more for me and Trish than anything else (Neph is more used to it, I think).  There has been a lot of singing this week.

… Later that night I sat out with Gail I think, and the god son of the woman who had died – he was also being treated for cholera and about to be released.  That was wild – his aunt had been the woman who was mourning, and his mom had come to pick him up (at least I think those were the relationships).  The older woman had died in the late afternoon, before the sun was all the way down, and later that night, once it had gotten dark, in the same family this little boy was sitting out on the porch with me and Gail and his mom, waiting to finish his IV bag, and to go home not sick anymore.  We sang “It Is Well With My Soul” (this one kept coming back) and sat quietly and looked out into the evening, as people walked by outside the gates, this woman having passed, and this child having been made well, and I’ll tell you, it was peace like a river.  I went up to worship that night with more joy somehow, not sure what the transaction is there but it was definitely a moment of quiet streams during those ten days.

what to say? christ is king!

taken from the mission rooftop our last night in haiti

Not sure if this is from Tuesday night or Wednesday night…

Tonight we had a much smaller devotional time – just our team, minus Gregg, who has a high fever, and some of the staff, and a few of the nurses who’ve been working all day in the cholera clinic.  We sang It is Well, read from Revelation 21, sang Forever Reign, Awesome God, Rescue, and Amazing Grace.  From Psalm 68, we read verses 19 and 20:

Praise be to the Lord, to God our savior, who daily bears our burdens.
Our God is a God who saves; from the sovereign Lord comes escape from death.
and verse 28:

Summon your power, O God, show us your strength, O God, as you have done before.
and from Psalm 27:14:

Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord.

What do you say to encourage people who have been fighting death all day?  I have gotten to lead all kinds of different groups in worship, but this is the most special, I think.  These people have been running around on a concrete floor all day, trying to put IVs in people’s arms who are too dehydrated already to get a vein, sticking them again and again, watching kids just go downhill, while their parents watch them not really knowing what’s going on because of the language barrier, not knowing if their kids are getting better or dying.  There were families who had brought sick kids, only to have another kid or even the mom start to get sick once they were already at the clinic.

What to say?, I’m asking myself.  That phrase was being tossed around at one of the meals this week, and one of the staff people, Grant, said something like, “I don’t want to hear, ‘there’s nothing to say.’ There is something to say!  Christ is King!” and he said it jokingly… but there is a truth about our sinful hearts there – we can be defeated by circumstances, or we can fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Not sure what else to say here.  Christ is king!

we who are many

boats along the beach in Berger

Tuesday Nov 9

Yesterday was our first day in Berger (you can see where it is here – it’s that little cove between Desgronge and Cap Rouge).  We took a truck through town up to the big river – you drive the truck right into the river and across, there’s no bridge.  On the other side there’s what feels like a mile of mud…

…and that’s as far as I got with Berger.  I think I was sad waking up Tuesday morning to an empty house.  Here’s what I ended up writing:

Our friends from California + Canada left yesterday – it is empty and more sad today.  It’s raining, so we can’t go to Berger – you can’t get across the river and the roads are too muddy to drive on.  It is very different with just our team + some of the doctors here.

I think that Haiti was easier to handle with so many people to talk to and eat with and worship with and just be together with, all carrying the thing together.  Now it is just us and it’s like a lot of the light and warmth has left.  People are still dying in the cholera clinic, all the people we met yesterday in Berger still have all their gardens washed away from Tomas, their babies still have no clothes on, it just keeps going as American teams come and go.

I’ve been thinking a lot about barriers – how in the US, we have all these things to keep us from coming face-to-face with pain, sickness, suffering, aging, death, the natural world, storms, heat, cold, isolation, distance.  In Haiti everything is just raw – if you are hurt, you will have pain, if you’re sick, you might die, if time keeps going, you will look and feel older.  If it’s hot outside, you will be hot, if there’s a storm, you and your house will get wet and the roads will be washed out.  If you live far from a clinic, you will have to walk, or carry your sick family member for hours, unless you have money to get on a tap-tap.  No one just has a car to go places.  If you live far, you can’t go there.

Kelly brings up a point that what we see here more closely resembles the community + society of Jesus’ life than anything we have in the States.  It is easy to picture him walking through the streets, healing a man with a shriveled hand, or just preaching in the street, with people following and listening,  This is what it’s like so many times when we are outside the mission, especially in Berger – whenever white people show up, everyone wants to know what’s going on, and they follow us around asking each other what’s happening.  Yesterday in Berger our translator Fritz told us that rumors were already going around that we had brought medicine for cholera, and this is three minutes after we’d gotten on the truck.

Maybe this together-ness that I am feeling the loss of with California gone, maybe this is part of why Haitians all stand and sit and talk in the street – why they spend their time all out together, why as we went door-to-door with surveys in Berger, each house had not just the family who lived there but neighbors and friends all standing around together to listen as well.  Even our team of six people, among them some of my closest friends, has less safety and warmth than a family of 60 Californians with us.  Maybe this is the “barrier” in Haiti – the barrier of the tribe that can absorb more shock than the sum of its individual parts.

Our new friend Chad shared this passage from Romans 12 last night:

Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.  Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.