We lack a holy rage - The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world… To rage when little children must die of hunger when the tables of the rich are sagging with food… To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God.

-Kaj Munk (quoted in Irresistible Revolution)

It’s always interesting whom you may encounter in a laundromat. In that world that seems to have been almost removed completely from time and space. You pass in and then out of those doors, piles of fabric in tow; days, weeks or months could pass, and yet when you depart from whence you came it is as if the world stood still.

This is where we met. Instantly bonded by the shared experience of this ‘other world’, Christian and Atheist. It was interesting hearing her take on life, hypotheses for raising four children, and just a glimpse into her heart and the resolutions she’d reached which left her at a crossroads: to believe in a God of wretchedness, or to believe in nothing at all.

This encounter proved to be less of a conversation and more of a monolog. I found myself intrigued, staring silently into her heart as she spoke, squinting to try to see around all of the pretty, distracting decorations we hide ourselves in, interested to understand. But the part that dismantled the conversation, that knocked the breath out of my lungs and sent shock-waves up my spine was a simple phrase that I’d heard countless times. As we shared a sadness for those infants whose parents carry them into the scorching summer heat to beg for money, the babies, barely able to walk, who are pushed out into traffic with their hands out, the children who have hand or foot chopped off by their own parents in order to get more sympathy money, she said, “Well, that is their lot in life. Everything happens for a reason.” Wow. I was baffled and horrified. I had heard this my entire life from Christians trying to make sense of a broken world, and honestly I’m sure I’ve even said it myself. But this time it blindsided me, an uppercut to the jaw that knocked me on my tail… because this idea, when taken to it’s logical conclusion, brings us to the same verdict that this woman had reached.

She had denounced this God that was supposed to be loving and yet forced His son to come to earth and die, that allows so much horror to take place in this world because He has some ultimate hidden purpose. What broke my heart is that this lady in her genuine quest for truth seemed to have thrown in the towel at the most crucial point, and contradictorily regurgitated a pithy Christian phrase. She had given up at the cliff’s edge as she lumped all things unresolved into “This is your lot in life, you were broken and maimed, molested and abused by those people who were supposed to above anyone else take care of and love you, but well, everything happens for a reason.”

I do agree that everything happens for a reason, but the reason is that we live in a world full of broken, hurting people who choose sometimes horrific and unthinkable things. God is behind it, but only because He gave us this beautiful, powerful gift of choice, which many times I wish He wouldn’t have. We choose to burn out the eyes of our own children so we can get a few more coins. We choose to sell drugs to children because we want to make money and feel in control.We choose to take up a gun and kill our own brothers and sisters because we are angry and want revenge. We choose to sell our innocent young daughters into sex slavery because we need the money to pay our rent. We choose to shut up our windows and close our doors to the hurting and shattered in this world, we choose to ignore those things that have gotten so utterly broken. And to ease the tension of our choice we say, “Well, everything happens for a reason.” Yes, everything does happen for a reason, and that reason is us.

All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don’t tiptoe.

-Irresistible Revolution

In my research to find statistics for what is really going on here in this bloody city, the most dangerous city in Mexico which seems to be fighting for the top spot in the world as well, I ran across a humorous, yet sad article about the lethargy, the pacifism of one of the safest cities in the US, just across the border from it’s fatal opposite. In short, it found in studies that there was a significant amount of lithium in the water supply which was apparently sedating the city. Who knows if this was true, but it made me think about how this same lithium affect seems to be running rampant in our American society today. It seems to have crept up on us and we don’t even realize it. I wonder, if someone did a study of our water across America, what would they find? What are we being sedated by? Are we overdosing on the false hopes of the American dream? Is it our own placidity that has come to be the drug we cannot live without? We have been slowly hypnotized into a coma by the singsong lullaby of our culture, little by little becoming addicted to our own type of lithium.

We have successfully constructed so many layers of separation between our lives and the anguish of the majority of the world that it is difficult to feel the pain of those so desperately hurting. We’ve effectively padded our lives with the soft feathers of opulence and we are scared to ruffle even one of them, petrified of the uncertainty that lay outside. How can we possibly take on the pain of the world when it would overwhelm and crush us? We know that things must be different and we cry out for change, but if we are frank with ourselves do we really want change? How many of us could honestly say, “I am going to give my vacation savings to the homeless family downtown”, or “I will take a cut in pay so others can keep their jobs”. We must wake up and do something, whether we know what that something is or not; and if we don’t, and we choose to go back to our beautiful houses and storybook lives, and barricade ourselves in to our safety with chains of fear and despair, who is it that is truly dying? When we are able to open our eyes to the pain of those around us, when we begin to feel through all of the layers, the desperate pain of the world, we are compelled to do something to help.

So often when people hear about the suffering in our world, they feel guilty, but rarely does guilt actually motivate action like empathy or compassion. Guilt paralyzes and causes us to deny and avoid what is making us feel guilty. The goal is to replace our guilt with generosity. We all have a natural desire to help and to care, and we simply need to allow ourselves to give from our love without self-reproach. We each must do what we can. This is all that God asks of us.

-Desmond Tutu

So after living here for eight months, we are still trying to wipe that familiar sleep from our eyes and to find what the something is for us. We are adjusting to this very different life and culture, and trying to figure out how to make our voices heard as we speak out for the marginalized multitude. We sometimes feel overwhelmed by the need, shattered by the pain and hopelessness swirling around us, and desperate to have hands to hold through this process, but this is our “something”. Every day we will wake up and do something, and eventually we will have ushered in freedom, beauty and life to this country, an ocean of water to this parched desert, even if it is drop by drop. We know that this burden is too big for us to bear alone; it gets a little lighter as more and more people decide to carry it together.

When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not – should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.

-Basil the Great

Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.

-James 4:17

Recently I have been challenged to look at my life, at what I have not as my own, not as my right or entitlement. It was only by chance that I was born into an American family, have freedom and opportunity, can get a job, have a nice house, have food on the table at every meal, take vacations, buy a new car, change jobs and houses and cars, have hobbies like skiing climbing and jewelry making… I did not merit this blessing, but because of it I have a responsibility to give out of my abundance. Recently God has rend my heart, turned me upside-down, broken me and put me back together, and broken me again, shaken up everything I thought I knew, and challenged me to step into an uncomfortable beauty.

The early Christians said that if a child starves while a Christian has extra food than the Christian is guilty of murder.

-Irresistible Revolution 

How do we live truly transformed lives? We have to seek out the poor and destitute, we cannot remain in our insulated lives where the poor are nowhere around us. We have become such a sterilized society, scrubbed clean of all of our poor and unseemly; we look around and see everyone smiling, looking just like us. We have removed the gnawing reminders of the destitute poverty that most of the world is drowning in every day. We have stuffed our untouchables into the dark cold gutters and walked back out into the sunshine, proud of how we have squelched the problem. These are our brothers, our sisters, our family who are hurting, and we have the resources to help them. We are called to go out to those in need and to love them with the love of Jesus, who ate with tax collectors, befriended the prostitutes, and embraced the leper. But instead of going out, taking steps into this broken and scary world we don’t understand, we throw our money at institutions who are, in our place, being the hands and feet of Jesus, the active, grimy, heartbreaking love that cares for and embraces the untouchables. We toss our money and then go about our lives, living in so much excess that it rots around us while our brothers and sisters are alone, hungry, cold and dying. Where is the church, the body of Christ who is called to be the hope of this broken world?

Ask the poor, they will tell you who the Christians are.

-Gandhi

Our culture, in addition to instilling in us the ridiculous and false priority, nay necessity, of independence, the every-man-for-himself ideology that leaves you in the dust if you don’t fight and scratch your way to the top, has blockaded us in with an overriding and blanketing fear that if we do reach out, open up our doors, go out and find the poor and invite them to eat at our table, that we are in danger of something awful happening to us. We’re petrified. We are caged up by our fears, chained up and locked in, and the world is locked out.

God speaks to this fear that we have of man in Luke 12:4-7, “My friends, do not dread and be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom you should fear: fear Him Who, after killing, has power to hurl into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And yet not one of them is forgotten or uncared for in the presence of God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not be struck with fear or seized with alarm; you are of greater worth than many flocks of sparrows.”  His intent is not to scare us into serving Him, but to point out how ridiculous it is for us to fear man, and how much value that we hold. God’s love is powerful. It created life, died at the very hands of its beloved, and always welcomes us back in no matter how many times we walk away. This same love can cast off fear, go out and find the broken, and give them dignity and hope.

Once we conquer this fear, we must tackle the daunting task of getting past ourselves. It is uncomfortable to love as Jesus did. It takes our stepping out into sadly neglected and unchartered waters, and hearts pounding, sticking our hands into someone’s brokenness, someone’s poverty and pain, and most certainly getting their mess all over us. That is loving with abandon, loving till it hurts, loving your neighbor as yourself, that is perfect love.

It is easy to hide, and much more comfortable. Even though we have moved here to one of the most dangerous and hopeless cities on earth, plopped ourselves smack dab in the middle of poverty, destitution, corruption, brokenness, powerlessness and pain, even though my heart is breaking, crumbling to pieces for my brothers and sisters, my flesh and blood, and I get more passionate every day that this must change, I find as I read the words I’m writing that I am still hiding. Hiding behind language and cultural barriers, behind our metal gate and razor wire, and behind my wall of hard questions. How on earth can my actions truly make any difference? And even if they could, how do I even begin? What will this cost me? Even in the magnified simplicity that we are now living in here in Juarez, I feel like a gorged pig, reveling in my plenty and wealth while our next door neighbor just yesterday was wondering how he was going to feed his wife and children that night, while little Abby comes to our gate inquiring if we had eaten, saying she is hungry, that once again her parents couldn’t buy food and she and her 9 siblings went hungry. So we give her something to eat, and walk back through our gate into our cozy little house where the cupboards are stuffed with food, tripping over the shoes that fell off the pile by the door, we sit down on our giant beanbag sofa in front of our large screen computer, we put in a movie, grab our overflowing bowl of popcorn, turn up the volume, and forget where we are.

 

True generosity is measured not by how much we give away, but how much we have left…

-Shane Claiborne