Today is our final day of ministry here in Siem Reap province in Cambodia. Its hard to believe how quickly the month has passed. We live on a street on the outskirts of to, by a river where children bathe, people wash their clothes and dishes, where raw sewage drains to. In the mornings, Jenny D. and I have gotten up, headed out to a local church which doubles as a school. When we arrive at the church we teach English to a class of 20 students, ranging from 4 years old to 12 years old. All in one class. The students pay anywhere from $5 a month to $1 a month for school. We have all heard stories about people living on less than $1 a day, its different to see it with your own eyes and the mind-boggling power of the american dollar.
And it has hit me as we take this same bike ride every day by these same soot covered faces…poverty isn’t something that God created, its a man-made, sin-made thing. Its not about capitalism or party lines or communism. It was never God’s intent or in His perfect design. I remember walking the streets of Camden, NJ where I worked in the not too distant past. And all of my senses being assaulted by the reality of poverty. Seeing people on the streets of Camden and then just over the bridge on the streets of the financial district of Philadelphia. Imagining the homessless man in a custom made suit or imagining the woman in the power suit wearing rags. We don’t choose where we are born, what we are born into, but we can choose to live differently regardless of those things. I have attended a church in West Philadelphia for a pretty good part of my life. And it has affected me and I thank God for that. Every Sunday as a child, we would drive from our tree-lined streets in Cherry Hill, NJ to the concrete jungle of West Philly. And then the scales fell from my eyes one day in Ann Arbor, Michigan as I sat in my first Sociology class, “Inequality in Education”, as my professor talked about the irony of Cherry Hill, NJ being one of the richest suburbs, and also neighbors to the poorest city in America, Camden, NJ. And I dawned on me, that life wasn’t fair.
So whats the answer? What do you do? What do you do when you see a child washing her hand in a ditch in the road? What do you do when you see a person without legs dragging themselves along the sidewalk? How do we make a difference? I am no expert by any means. I’ve spent enough time in poor cities to know how to put my blinders up, so I can get from point A to point B without a penny leaving my wallet. But if we are to be Jesus, things are going to have to change. If we are not happy with the way that the world is, then we need to stop complaining, we need to stop reading about it and writing about it and talking about it and start being Him. We need to take our blinders off and stop being so fixated on going from point A to point B. Because point B was never the point. and if point B is Jesus…then it should mean we don’t need those blinders. But blinders make life easier, safer, insulated, unaffected, unaffecting. My teammate, Allison and I were talking one day, about how as trite as this may sound…the love of Jesus is the answer. This love that is not self-seeking, or proud, or boastful, that is slow to anger, that is patient, that gets upset over injustice, thats says its not ok that you are hungry, its not ok that sin is killing you, its not ok that you are sick, that you are an orphan. The world, people in this world can continue to invent ways around it. Things that look like love or atleast some distorted version of it, like communism and socialism and democracy. They still fall short. They are these shells, these structures so we can avoid actually caring about each other and being affected by each other. Its time for the walls to come down. Its not enough for money to be coming out of our paychecks to help support the welfare system. It hurts to care, its a painful thing, or it can be a dangerous thing.
So I’m reminded of 2 people who saw poverty and injustice and their reactions to it: Siddartha and Mother Theresa. Siddhartha saw it and his response was introspection, to meditate, transcend the pain, the hunger, etc. Mother Theresa saw it and her response was love. No act of love is too small or too trite. And seriously, when you think about music, novels, etc. Somehow it all ends up being about love in some way shape or form. Sometimes it is music that is created in the absence and lack of love, sometimes its a novel about the longing for love. What’s love got to do with it? Everything.
“Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. ” James 1:27
