A question has been rattling around in my soul for the last few weeks. What follows is my first attempt at an answer, Answer One. In the next post I’ll try to articulate Answer Two. I should point out that each of these is just my own feeble attempt at an answer. I think each of us might answer a different way, and that each answer would still be valid and true in its own right.
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A few weeks ago Team Mhlosheni gathered for a retreat. At the Grey’s home in Corbett we immersed ourselves a bit in Swazi culture, moved towards an understanding of each other and what our individual goals and motivations were, and watched movies that depicted some of the tragedy and hope we might find in Africa.
We met with guides and teachers from our partner World Vision: Ruth Nottingham, our local church relations specialist; Mary La Tourelle, World Vision’s church to community coordinator in the US; and Ernest Fraser, the Church-to-Community coordinator in Africa. They were enlightening and open, and they connected us solidly to World Vision’s mission and vision.
At one point Ruth defined what she called the “Five Fingers,” the five things that must be done to effect transformation of a marginalized community:
· Establish clean water sources. Infant mortality rates fall by 50% when clean, safe water is secured.
· Establish basic health care services, such as prenatal care and standard immunizations against childhood diseases.
· Secure food sources. Through partnerships, community-level planning, and through enhanced agriculture.
· Provide education, to both children and families.
· Effect economic transformation, building effective and sustainable micro industries
I think these points affected each of us. Here in Oregon we never stop to consider these things. We take these things for granted, and instead concern ourselves with mortgages, college educations for our children, the important work we do for our multi-million-dollar companies, the upcoming election.
It was Rod McCoy who asked the question that has been rattling about in my soul since that night. His question fell into the soft silence that came over us after review of the Five Fingers and challenged me, at least, to find my own answer: “Why don’t we dig a well?”
To understand the impact of this question on me one should have a picture of Rod in their head. He has the voice and stature and presence of a prophet, with a heart for God’s justice. He has been a missionary in Vanuatu and pastored churches. He’s tall, piercing-eyed, deep-voiced. “Why don’t we just dig a well?”
We could dig one well in one village in Mhlosheni, and our sweat and work would be a sign of our covenant with our new family. It could be a lasting reminder to them that we are in this together…
The folks from World Vision had very good answers for this. First, “transformation” occurs when a community learns to build and maintain their own wells, not when the sophisticated, wealthy, and well-meaning but overbearing foreigners come and build a well for them. Second we were to go there to observe and bond and hold out our hands of friendship, to let them know that we trusted them to build their own wells.
As a Chinese proverb tells us: "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."
These were good answers, even perfect answers. So why did the question not rest for me? I asked Joie, and she ventured the opinion that westerners, and in particular western men, were “fixers” at heart. Something broken? Fix it! Gate not shutting tight? Fix it? Children dying of diarrhea and fever? Fix it with a clean new well!
There’s an abundance of truth in this. But still I pondered the question for a long time. I went back to the bible, and I looked for answers there. The answers I came up with are in no way definitive. I think anyone troubled and kept awake by this question needs to adopt their own answers, whether it be the one provided by World Vision or another, and be reconciled.
Answer One
When I pause, reflect, and look hard at the life and ministry of Jesus, one picture jumps immediately to mind. He was a healer. Peter says of him in Acts that he “went about doing good.” The good he did consisted largely of healing the lame, of soothing the afflicted, of comforting the forlorn and the forgotten.
There has never been a better healer, before or since. It’s easy for me to imagine that Jesus could have spent a long and fulfilling life wandering the back roads of Galilee and Israel and healing the brothers and sisters that came to hear him.
At what point, I wonder, did Jesus realize that the suffering he eased, that the wounds he healed, were symptoms of a larger sickness? The leprosy, the lameness, the children possessed by demons, the sightlessness and dumbness... the people of Palestine saw these as the sicknesses that ruled their lives. But at some point Jesus began to see them as symptoms. Israel was infected by a disease so vast and pervasive that these illnesses paled beside it: the entire nation had been separated from the Holy. Between their Hasmonean governors and the Roman overlords and their own desire to give in to the allures of Hellenism they had lost their way.
And at some point Jesus must have faced a choice. He could leave the status quo intact and spend his lifetime providing healing and succor to those that were harmed by it. Or, he could cut his ministry short in a way that would shatter the status quo forever. He could cut it short in a way that would point toward universal healing and salvation for all. We know how he chose.
So my first answer: Progress on the Five Fingers will surely begin to reverse the life-threatening symptoms of the people of Mhlosheni. But there is a larger sickness that these symptoms point to. The people need to be embraced by a brotherhood of nations, by a belief that they matter. Every man and woman dying of AIDs, every orphaned child left to take care of their younger siblings as best they can, every young father unable to feed his children because of the merciless drought… every one of these souls needs to know that they matter.
The greater sickness is in the souls of the people. I imagine they feel as if they’ve disappeared off the map of humanity’s consciousness. Why won’t they help heal us? Why won’t they provide comfort? Why do the wealthy nations of the world stand by and watch us starve and die?
We need to let them know that what happens in Mhlosheni matters. We need to share with them what we’ve realized: what we allow to happen in Swaziland and sub-Saharan Africa defines us.
We could dig a well. Or we could let them know they matter. That we are all children of the same God, and that what happens to them matters to the rest of humanity. And in doing that maybe we could begin to heal their souls, as well as ours.
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