I read Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder lately. It's the biography of Dr. Paul Farmer who is world-renown for his work with TB in Haiti and other extremely poor places.
His philosophy, and method, for eradicating TB from these hotspots is simple: Share the money from the West, where these diseases are wiped-out, with countries that don't have the money to wipe them out. He is a master fund raiser and philanthropist finder, and this, plus genuinely loving each patient with the love of Christ, has led to immense success in Haiti. It says of Haiti in his biography
How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: 'Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe,' in literal translation, 'God gives but doesn't share.' This meant, as Farmer would later explain it, 'God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.' Liberation theologians had a similar answer: 'You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that's where He is.' Liberation theology, with its emphasis on the horrors of poverty and on redressing them in the here and now, its emphasis on service and remediation, seemed to fit the circumstances of Haiti. And it suited Farmer temperamentally because, for all his scholarship and interest in theories, his strongest impulses were pragmatic. He would tell me years later, with undeniable accuracy, 'I'm an action kind of guy.'
Tim and I went to a John Clayton apologetics seminar this weekend and listened to highly scientific lectures on Does God Exist? How Old is the Earth? The Symbiosis of Science and Theology, and finally, Why Does God Allow Evil and Suffering? You can read about most of these at www.doesgodexist.org. The simplest lecture was by far the last one. Why is there evil? Because there is good. If there is good, there must be an absence of good, which is evil. Why is there pain? Because there is pleasure. When pleasure is no where to be found, there lies pain. This is logical and true for everything from matter and anti-matter to cookies in the cookie jar. Any theologian (and most missionaries) have studied this in-depth. C.S. Lewis covered it in The Problem of Pain, and I actually wrote a final paper in a missiology class titled, "What to say when a non-Christian says, "I don't believe in God because of pain in the world." It's a question that baffles many, but the answer is really simple. So is the solution: SHARE!
So, since pain, suffering and evil cannot be stopped in a world where there is a living God, isn't it then the Christian's duty to share some of his or her pleasure, health and goodness? Or joy, empathy, love, food, time or money? I think Jesus had a word for this: Compassion.
Veronica Njeri lost two children to malaria. Kenya
This child is safe because of a $5-7 mosquito net donated by UNICEF
Published: October 9, 2007
We've been inspired lately to share more-more time, more knowledge, more truth, more money, more whatever we've been blessed with. Afterall, all the food, all the money, all the medicine, all the workers and evangelists the world needs are already here. They just aren't spread around for everyone to use them. Before I have the boys load up the truck with one more load of their toys to share with kids that don't have as many-using Goodwill as the go-between-we need to share some too. We've been convicted lately that sharing isn't a lesson just for children.
