In college I studied sociology, the scientific study of society. I once studied a guy named Abraham Maslow. He was a psychologist and philosopher who died in 1970. Maslow is most famous for his theory, The Hierarchy of Needs. This basically says that humans have certain needs, basic ones are at the bottom and you cannot escalate to higher needs until you have succeeded at fulfilling the lower, more basic needs.
The basics are such items as food, water, shelter etc. These needs spiral upwards all the way to something called self-actualization. Right in the middle of his pyramid of needs is a segment titled, love and belonging. So basically once you have survival needs taken care of you move to needs of safety and then you can move toward love.
I realized the other week that I have been thinking about this idea for years now. The idea that people cannot pursue the next level of needs until their current needs are met has made me think, a lot. I have sought to prove this theory wrong for some time now.
Last month I stayed on a old lady’s property, we called her Gogo, which means grandmother in Swati, the language of Swaziland. Gogo is about 80. She is in constant pain from arthritis. She would come to us most days and hold out her hand saying, “pills, pills”. I didn’t have any pills to give her. That made me feel horrible. One day I was sitting in a hammock reading a book and Gogo walks by. She is singing at the top of her lungs. Ten minutes pass by, she continues singing as she bends down to pull weeds up from her homestead. She had to be in serious pain doing this. I finally noticed what she was singing. In her native tongue she was singing the same line over and over. “Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus.”
My jaw dropped. This old lady who lives in a shack, who lost 2 of her kids to HIV and one other was brutally murdered by their own teenage son, was singing thank you Jesus as loud as she could manage…
Days later I am reading a book by Donald Miller called Searching For God Knows What. He begins talking about how often Western Christianity is consumer driven. That our faith is causal. Essentially, when we do something good we expect something good in return. God is more or less seen as a genie in a bottle, rub him the right way and he will give you good things. Speak to Him in a certain tone of seriousness or emotion so that He will hear you and listen to your plea.
Miller began to talk about the hierarchy of needs. He expounded on the idea that Maslow articulated. This theory led Don Miller to question his religion and step away from it, it ended in a climax of Miller telling God that he did not exist. If the idea of God is something to make you happy, to bring you comfort, to explain all the crappy stuff that is happened in your life, I would have left my faith too, long ago. Miller began to realize something through his telling God he didn’t exist. I think the main thing he did through this time was killing the God that the world had created. God is not a genie in a bottle. Jesus is a person. It is a friendship, a relationship. Not something to use to get something out of it. Living a life in Christ is good, and it’s rewarding because you are doing something that actually matters. But nothing will make us fulfilled except for the real Jesus. Not one that we make up to get what we want.
God showed me a lot about faith through Gogo. Gogo does not have her basic needs met. She does not have adequate security in any way. Her story is crazy. She lives in the nation with the highest rate of HIV. She lives in a shack. But she is so very happy. She sings to Jesus not because He has given her things, she sings to Jesus because He is Jesus. He loves her. He is with her. Her happiness is not dependent on how her life looks. It is dependent on who Jesus is.
I am as messed up as ever. Evaluating a lot about how I do life. Thinking about what makes me truly happy. I am beginning to arrive at the conclusion that no matter where I am at. No matter where I am on the scale of needs. My purpose is to love God and love people with my life. Not in order to get something out of it. I think that many people in this world, like Gogo and so many others I have met this year, prove this theory wrong. There are people all over this world that trust Jesus no matter what happens. No matter if they have security or even their basic needs met, no matter whatever else, they trust Him and love Him. Not the genie.
This is Gogo the day before we left Swaziland. 
