God is not Impoverished

I admit that I struggled with and sometimes harbored judgment in my heart when I taught school at a wealthy US church.  Down the street, amidst old trailers and chickens in ill-kept yards, the formerly rural community on the marshy shores of a river delta posted their highest hopes for their neighborhood on a sign:  "Welcome to Snowden Community:  Stop the Killing and the Violence."  The locals went to church elsewhere, if at all.  But every Sunday, the church parking lot overflowed with gas-guzzling SUVs which ferried the fashionable elites from opulent homes to immaculate church - or so it seemed to me, barely able to afford an apartment in their town on my teacher's salary.

So I wondered how I would respond years later, coming back from the overseas life into this same community.  Yet after a few days, as the jet lag faded, I began to breathe a sigh of relief - the weight of angst did not descend on my heart, even as I worshipped among the saints in that big building, even when I learned they were preparing to build again.

What comforted me as I met and was ministered to by now-old friends in this place, was the simple knowledge I didn't know I'd gained, that God is not impoverished by their riches.  Sometimes they may be, but He is not.  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  Living among cattle and hills, I observed that money from the West is not primarily what the East needs, but I've also seen more clearly how the Father can redeem from real injustice and deep suffering, the kind that lurks behind the cultural veil of tightly woven communities in the East as well as in the West.

I already knew something of the dark underbelly of this beautiful community in the US.  There are deep struggles.  Marriages are torn apart, children's deepest needs are sacrificed to the whims of pleasure-seeking adults, bodies are bared and abused in the quest to satisfy the boastful pride of life.  Some of these struggles are associated with abundance and its attendant temptations.

But I now know first-hand that there are cultural and personal evils on the other side of the ocean, too, and that the Father is able to redeem fully in the midst of the debilitating evils people inflict on one another.  He cures the incurable wounds.  We must grieve the evil in the world, but let's not fail to hold fast to our hope in the Gospel.  No one, by embracing greed in the West or the simple idolatry of the East, can place himself or another beyond the Father's grasp.  And wealth is not a special case:  like misogyny, slavery, extortion and violence, it does not impoverish our Father's wealth or grace.  So I am free, at last, to rejoice in the evidences of His grace in the lives of those calling on Jesus in their beautiful homes, as I do in those who wash the feet of the saints in humbler surroundings.  I gratefully receive blessing from the Spirit in both of them, and I pray that they and I together will be freed more and more from service to the idols of our hearts to worship the true and living God, and to make him known.

Birthright

It was a cold February morning, and I was really glad to have a hot shower.  It wasn't long, but still refreshing.  I'll probably always feel like the water washes away more than it does; always draw a sense of wellbeing from the warmth and the steam.  I'm an American, after all.  It had been five days since I'd bathed, and my husband was coming home from a trip, but still I'm not sure I'd have braved it if the water wasn't hot.

But it was hard to forget that I'd just filled two old oil jugs with drinking water for a friend who lives down the hill, in a smaller house, with a smaller water tank and no hot water heater.  Their water tank would fill in the evening, most likely, but in the meantime they had a lot of day to get through on those 6 liters.  And I was taking a shower.

So many times I explain the discrepancies between my lifestyle here (still not what I was used to, living on about $40,000/year in the US) and that of my neighbors by reasoning, I'm not used to these particular hardships like the locals are.  I hear them say the same things - "You've left your home and come so far to help us.  You should live as comfortably as you can, as close to your own culture as possible."  We foreigners say this to each other, too, and talk about making "wise, sustainable choices" that will allow us to "make it here in the long run;" i.e., not become overwhelmed with the difficulties and go home.

Most of the things we say are true.  It would be easier to burn out quickly if I were living in 2 moldy rooms with my husband and 3 kids, washing all our clothes by hand, eating only local food cooked over gas or fire, and bathing in water heated over the stove, or not at all.   I wouldn't have much time left to serve anyone beyond my home.  But I'm concerned that there seems to have crept into my thinking some idea of a birth right to continue to live at the same level of privilege into which I was born.  I think of the likes of the Crawleys on Downton Abbey, and I wonder if I'd be as kind if they insisted they could brook no departure from their opulence because they were born to it.  I'm not as fond of this reasoning when it comes from those whose standard of living is significantly higher than mine.

I wonder what the long-term effects would be if, by the grace of God, I lived like my neighbors, and didn't burn out?  I wonder how precious this place and culture would be to me over time, and how precious my savior would be?  I wonder what my local friends would think: what explanations would they reach for if I didn't live as comfortably as I could?

This isn't meant to be a conclusion.  I believe that it honors God when my Western brothers and sisters sacrifice and give so that I can have energy and time left over to serve the people on this side of the world - something I wouldn't have nearly as much time for if I were subsistence farming and washing clothes by hand for a family of 5.  Likewise, I am so, so, grateful that my pastor is sitting in his office praying and studying while I grocery shop, cook, clean, and care for my children, so that I can go and be fed on Sunday.  But I do want to settle in my mind that my birthright does not come from the country and status of my birth; it comes from Christ.  And though the circumstances of each life look different, my rights are exactly the same as all those of His brothers and sisters across the world.  And I want to keep these questions of how to live among my less wealthy siblings always open...