demonstration

I live in a small grandmother’s house behind our main house. Outside my door is a tall cement wall topped with loops of barbed wire separating our peaceful compound oasis from the rest of the noisy neighborhood.

I don’t know my neighbors. I know that they have a cow (that wakes me up mooing most mornings), I know that they have a baby (that cries loudly most nights), I know that they like music (that plays from the radio almost all the time), I know that they use a fire to cook (that wafts smoke over the wall and makes me sneeze), I know that they are a part of a community (that is interactive and talkative judging by the conversations in Luganda that I hear but can’t understand); I know these things about them, but I don’t know them.

I’ve been reading a book called “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families,” a book that chronicles stories from survivors of the Rwandan genocide. I’ve always been interested in these types of books, yet somehow it is easier to read them now, being in Africa. It’s as if saying, “Hey, this happened in the country that I could drive to in a matters of hours” makes it more real than when I was half a world away.

As I read, even though I know it happened, I can’t quite believe that so much death and destruction in places like Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Sudan…occurred during my own lifetime. Shouldn’t such devastation register in my mind, even if I was only a child? Shouldn’t I have a memory of a newspaper headline, a TV news report, or a voice on the radio that spoke of the existence of the decimation of so many lives? I was alive, but I don’t remember, because these things never even entered into the consciousness of my life or the world, as it mattered to me.

The author of this book talks about actually physically being in Rwanda:

 

“I had never been among the dead before. What to do? Look? Yes. I wanted to see them, I suppose; I had come to see them – the dead had been left unburied at Nyarubuye for memorial purposes – and there they were, so intimately exposed. I didn’t need to see them. I already knew, and believed, what had happened in Rwanda. Yet looking at the buildings and the bodies and hearing the silence of the place, with the grand Italianate basilica standing there deserted, and beds of exquisite, decadent, death-fertilized flowers blooming over the corpses, it was still strangely unimaginable. I mean one still had to imagine it.”

(“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda” (1998) by Philip Gourevitch (p16,pp1))

 

Even though the evidence stared him in the face, even though he could see it, touch it, smell it, the reality of it was not something his mind could actually grasp – He had to imagine it.

We express this sort of dilemma in everyday life:

“It’s too good to be true.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Why do we say these things? When reality threatens to shatter what we have previously known, believe to be true, or want to be true. 

I wonder how much it is possible to really relate to someone, to really understand them without having lived a day in their shoes. My American self reads statistics about poverty, AIDS, and war and sees pictures of bright-eyed children living in filth and my mind immediately jumps to the solution without really stopping to examine the individual fibers that make up a complex problem. What does it feel like to go hungry most days? What does it sound like to fall asleep next to your 5 siblings and 3 cousins in your house in the slums? What do you dream about for your future?  If the aim is to affect lives for the better in the future, mustn’t we understand what it means to live as things are now?

I find this frustrating. I can live in Uganda. I can see poverty on a daily basis. I can touch those who are suffering. I can smell the work of hard labor with little profit. I can eat the same food, walk the same roads, breathe the same air, but at the end of the day I will still be, somehow, separate.  No amount of time, language fluency, or relationship will change the fact that I cannot wake up one day and be Ugandan and know how that feels.  Imagination will only take me so far.

I know of only one case in which one was able to dissolve all distinctions so as to perfectly relate, perfectly understand, and perfectly love those who were impoverished, sick, suffering, dirty, captive, and disenfranchised.

It happened when God became man and lived with us.

I’ve been puzzling over this. God created man and man ensued to get himself into a hopeless situation. Sin…war, sickness, death, disease…

 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26a)

It’s bewildering enough to think that God would still love us, but why choose to intervene in the way he did? I mean, if we are talking about all-mighty God, why not just say a few words to fix the whole problem? But that’s not what happened. Instead God chose to enter into the fray. The unfathomable continues. God didn’t choose to say the magic words and fix the problem of sin; instead, He sent his son to earth.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14a)

The crazy part is that when Jesus came he didn’t just wave a magic wand around to fix the problem. Here is what we cannot quite understand – 

Jesus didn’t just COME, he BECAME.

 “(Jesus) Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8)

He was God, He was qualified to fix the problem of sin, but he chose to become 100% human, like us, so that he could know what it means to live in a dirty, broken, hurting, and sinful world.

 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin.” (Hebrews 4: 15)

God (as God) could have chosen to fix the problem of sin from afar. Instead he chose to KNOW us, to the detail of breathing, eating, walking, crying, loving, DYING…

“But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

So, the only message I can give to those around me, whether they earn $1/day or $1000/day is this: “I will put myself on the line to understand you, to walk in your shoes, to know your story. But I may fail and almost give up because it feels like a hopeless cause of being “too different” or “too hard.” So I want to introduce you the ONE who walked with me when I was dirty, destitute, and hopeless. His name is Jesus and he already KNOWS you because he made you. He already KNOWS your every fear and pain because he suffered them for you.”

This has been long. I hope you will read through these lyrics to a song called “We Come to You,” by Derek Webb, as my parting thought.

 

As you came to us, so we come to you

Fragile as a baby hopeful and new             

But learning fast that to walk is to fall

Soon we’ve done it all

 

We come broken and we come undone

We come trying hard to love everyone

But we come up short in all that we do

Because we do

So we come to you

 

As you came to us, so we come to you

Dirty and hurting then dead in the tomb

But raised redeemed to show off the scars

‘cause you’ve brought us this far

 

You came to show the way not around but through

So through it all we come to you