Poverty and Suffering

I’ve waited until the end of the semester to talk about poverty and suffering and a Christian response because these are the most difficult and complicated issues I’ve been faced with all semester, and so I’ve found it necessary to take in all I can this semester before being ready to write a truthful and adequate reflection on the subject. Poverty and suffering are difficult and complicated both in terms of the depth and magnitude of human suffering and in the complexity of seeking and implementing effective solutions. But along with that, they are probably the most important issues I’ve faced this semester, and my blog would be grossly incomplete without a reflection on poverty and suffering.

I certainly haven’t lived among the poor of Uganda this semester; the program couldn’t put us in such conditions. According to American standards and ways of living my family is certainly poor, but here in Uganda they are definitely middle class and have all they need to live. But I’ve seen a bit of the slums and the appalling conditions many people live in and have read a lot about the world’s poor.

We’ve read Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger to facilitate our discussion about poverty and a Christian response. He discusses what the Bible has to say about poverty and economics – which is a whole lot! The model of the Old Testament Israelites and that of the early church is economic sharing around the communion table breaking bread, where all those who were in need were provided for by their brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of the verses must cause us to question our cultural values of earning and wealth - do they truly embody economic, social, and political practices of grace as Christians are called to exemplify? Truly all we have belongs to God, and he commands that we care especially about the weak and the vulnerable and their needs. I could say a whole lot more about this, but to summarize an incredibly important issue: As Christians we MUST care about the poor of this world.

To complete the rest of my reflections, my personal reflection on my semester here in Uganda and how I see it impacting my life follows. The question was posed as: "How do you see your semester in Uganda affecting your life in the future, from 6 months to 60 years from now?"
I find it difficult to look at my life six months from now, nonetheless 60 years from now, largely due to the fact that I can’t imagine the life changes I’ll have undergone in the intervening time. Six months from now I’ll be a college graduate, embarking on the “real world” with a diploma and high aspirations of what I can contribute to the world in one hand and college loans, car payments, and living expenses in the other. Sixty years from now, should Christ tarry and God grant me those years, I hope that I will be a healthy 80-year old woman who has faithfully served God and people in whatever stations of life I found myself, which at this point I’m unsure what those may be. Maybe I’ll have been a missionary serving overseas, building relationships and with the help of the Holy Spirit along with the indigenous Christians doing the difficult work of trying to best contextualize the Gospel to a culture much different from my own. My experience in Uganda this semester has certainly given me the assurance that I’m well-fit to live overseas and made me aware of the challenges I would face were I to do so. Or maybe I’ll have been a successful prosecutor who made a mark on the American legal system. Or maybe I’ll have been an “average Joe” who lovingly raised my family but in the way I interacted with and served others was anything but ordinary. Time will tell which vocation I’ll pursue, but wherever life takes me I purpose to strive to faithfully glorify God and serve others.

It would be really easy to say that my semester in Uganda has changed me forever and I’ll never be the same again, but this seems unrealistic, especially based on the facts that I’ve not returned home yet and it takes a lot to effect true change that will remain through the ups and downs of life. A more realistic statement would probably be that I’m more likely to forget the things I’ve seen here and the issues I’ve been challenged by and rather settle back into my comfortable American life. However, I’m determined that this will not be the case. I’m convinced that I’m responsible to respond to what I’ve seen and learned this semester in a constructive way. This semester I’ve struggled through and learned a lot about important issues such as poverty, conflict, development, the AIDS epidemic, debt, foreign aid, trade, and missions. The things I’ve read and the perspectives I’ve developed will serve to inform my worldview and will affect career decisions I make and how I contribute to this world. I’ve also developed incredible relationships with my host family especially. With them I’ve shared so many memorable experiences and learned a great deal about following the way of Christ, loving others, and about what truly matters in life. But while the knowledge I’ve gained and the relationships I’ve developed are significant, neither will leave me forever changed, and I doubt they’re enough to make me look back on my semester in Uganda 60 years from now and be able to reflect on the change that was forever wrought in my life. Rather, the things which I hope will leave a lasting effect on me are what I’ve learned about the character of God and the way he relates to His people, rich and poor alike, and the implications of this for how we should live towards others.

People from home are amazed at my willingness to live as I have the past four months and willingly embrace the discomforts – bucket baths, pit latrines, the same food everyday. But when I realize that this is how the majority of people in the world live, it doesn’t seem like me living like this should be so difficult for me. If billions of people do it all the time, surely I can. We know such incredible luxury in the U.S., and most of us don’t have the slightest clue what a privileged minority we are. At a huge 50th anniversary celebration this past weekend I sat next to the wife of Bishop Nkoyoyo, the man who had the vision for making Uganda Christian University not just a theological school but a university and who served as the first vice-chancellor of UCU. He is an incredibly wise man who’s never had any schooling past Secondary 1 – the equivalent of 8th grade! He and his wife have traveled to the states, and my conversation with her centered on where I live in the States and where she’s traveled. One of my first questions to her was “What did you think of the U.S.?” Her immediate reply was, “You take everything for granted.” Tears immediately welled up in my eyes as I acknowledged the truth of her statement. I humbly replied “We do; we don’t know any better. We’ve never known anything but luxury.” How true this is. The world is the most interconnected it’s ever been – we hear about news across the world seconds after it happens, the news reports as much war and bloodshed as it can, which so often desensitizes us, and we don’t blink. And we don’t realize that what we have the vast majority of the world doesn’t.

All of us ask the question of why people suffer – of how a good, loving God could allow his creation to experience pain. This is the timeless theological question of the problem of pain. During my time here especially I’ve prayed about this, delved into Scripture in search for answers, and talked with my fellow Christians. The conclusion I’ve come to is this: The Bible doesn’t provide an answer for why we suffer, but rather presents us with a God who loves us so deeply that he willingly joins in our suffering. This is especially pertinent at Christmas time, when we celebrate the Incarnation of Christ. We celebrate the fact that a perfect, loving God came to live among us, sinful man. But so often I think we miss the real point: that God’s coming to live among us isn’t just some “get out of hell free” card that if we only accept we’re guaranteed a better life in eternity where we’ll live in the Kingdom of God, but the miracle of the Incarnation is that Christ participates in human life – he shares in our joys, sorrows, and in our suffering. “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are; and being as we are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8). Christ’s coming to Earth is not something that is just relevant to the spiritual world and the life hereafter, but the fact that in joining in human existence Christ has not simply become a bridge by crossing the gulf separating man from God, but he has closed the gulf. The implication of this is huge: Christ is relevant to everyday, physical existence! We speak so often of a characteristic of God being His transcendence, and to define this we multiply our human attributes by infinity to describe how great and mighty is God. But real transcendence, the real character of God, means that Jesus lives only for other people – truly this is contrary to our human nature! And this is the new life to which we are called in Christ – to life in existence for others, in participating in the being of Jesus.

What does this life and way of “participating in the being of Jesus” look like? Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters five through seven give us instruction in how we are to live, and the Gospels present us with a way of living that is contrary to our competitive, self-centered, and retribution-seeking nature. Christ commands us to love our enemies, that we “not repay anyone evil for evil,” “never avenge ourselves,” “if our enemies are hungry, feed them,” and “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17-21). As Camp explains, following Christ in this way is not easy: “The way of the cross is a costly, sacrificial way of dealing with injustice, conflict, and rebellion against the ways of God.” The way of Christ is that of the suffering servant, and somehow in joining in His suffering as He calls us we become more like Christ.

Following the way of Christ is participating in building the Kingdom of God here on Earth in this life. Some Christians, in their looking forward to the New Jerusalem which is to come, wonder why we should seek to reform this present fallen world and work against injustices. Rather, they say, the New Testament tells us that this present, evil world is hopeless and that a world free of injustice can only be given by God. As Christians in this present world we are to be hopeful, prayerful, and patiently waiting for the New Kingdom. I have come to know that there is something drastically wrong with this line of thinking. While on earth, did Jesus teach that the Kingdom of God was to remain unseen until the coming of the New Jerusalem – that the holy, just, and peaceful reign of God must continue to be waited upon? Certainly not! Following his baptism and time in the dessert, Jesus returned to Galilee declaring, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel”. Jesus declared that his arrival and ministry were the fulfillment of Israel’s messianic expectations, which included the expectation of shalom – that in his person and work the long-expected reign of God was decisively breaking in. Jesus did not tell his followers to patiently await the sight of justice and shalom; rather, he marked the breaking in of God’s kingdom, justice, and shalom to transform this world! Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, the first day of the week, is significant: it marked a new order of being and possibility – the start of God’s new creation! Jesus sought to change the very social structures which hindered the flourishing of shalom, and as his followers we are called to do the same, walking with the knowledge that while this world will never reach perfection, the kingdom of God is here, it has defeated the earthly powers and principalities, and God’s shalom can be worked for and experienced! So by the way we live we can stand with hope for man and this planet because far from abandoning this world, the faithful God has made a covenant with this planet and has not forgotten his creation, breaking into the kingdoms of this world, declaring that the gates of Hades will not overcome and that Christian hope is for within history, not just beyond it!

Especially when faced with the gross realities in which people live and struggle to survive, it’s easy to feel paralyzed by the magnitude of the problem, both out of feeling inadequate to make any effective change and out of responding in disgust and seeking to erase the pictures and realities from your mind because they make you so uncomfortable. I’ve come to believe that compassion is not the natural human response to the suffering and poverty of the world, but that it is our response to hide from this and try to erase it from our minds because it makes us so uncomfortable. So this is what I hope and pray has made the biggest impact on me during my time in Uganda: that I would forever be unsettled by the poverty and suffering that my fellow people, my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, experience around the world and in my backyard. And that by the grace of God I would be willing to share in their suffering if necessary, whether by struggling in prayer for them or giving what I have that they may simply live. And finally, that this discomfort would always drive me to action and that I would constantly be seeking how I may best improve their plight.

It’s been said that “only change is guaranteed,” and while it seems ironic yet true that one of the only things that remains is the surety that life is about constant change, I firmly believe there is someone else who is guaranteed to remain through all circumstances and changes in life. I think of my final dinner with my friend Judith during our Kapchorwa homestays. I was saying my goodbyes to her and her family and thanking her for her hospitality and graciousness to me. Just before I walked out the door of her thatched-roof mud hut, she grabbed my arm and looked me in the eyes and said, “I may not know much about your life in America, but one thing I do know: hold onto Jesus for all of your life, and never let go. He’s the only thing that really matters.” With tears in my eyes and a determination in my heart to faithfully heed the words she had spoken, I left her home. I’m not scared to leave Uganda determined to willingly remain unsettled by the pain and suffering in this world and to seek to participate in it and seek to resolve it because I’m not embarking on this journey on my own. Rather, the community of believers walks with me on this journey, and the God who calls us to follow Him and to love and care for His people walks with us through times of joy, heartache, and pain and strengthens us. So along with the community of the people of God and by His leading, I purpose to always willingly be unsettled by the pain and suffering in this world, and to join in it. And this is how I hope my experience in Uganda will change my life forever, for six months to 60 years from now.