America/Rwanda discussion, continued...

Of course my intentions to write on here are always so optimistic that reality has a hard time keeping up. This is continued discussion from my emails and more lengthy observations from my recent trip to Rwanda....

Like I stated in my email, I think the majority of Westerners that travel to less developed countries like Rwanda arrive thinking “those poor people.” However, as I depart, I return home thinking that more of Americans. Don’t hear me wrong, I am not in any way minimizing the atrocities that a lot of African countries experience such as genocide, starvation & epidemic. In fact, most of the people I spent time with here shared heart-wrenching stories of survival, loss, displacement, and destruction. But the flip side of that pain is they are a people of true contentment with what they have and their lives exude more joy than most American believers I know (including myself). They do not point fingers in blame, they take the pain that comes their way and remain committed. Our concept of commitment in America is motivated by reward. We commit because of what we will get out of something and once that which we have invested in isn’t giving us the returns we had hoped for, we move on to something else or find things to distract and entertain us. Take marriage for instance…one would only need to look at our divorce rate to see this played out.

We are a society in need of constant entertainment/distraction lest we face the realities of our hearts. Rwandans don’t have things to distract or entertain, so they are forced to face the Truth..not run from it. And they are better for it. We have everything and yet nothing all at the same time. Our suicide rates continue to climb. Our depression rates continue to climb. Prescriptions for depression medications continue to climb. Divorce rates are at an all-time high. Our youth is out of control with boredom created by a narcissistic culture. Our lusts for the proverbial carrot on the string leave our hearts discontent and unable to enjoy the God who saved us. We are so consumed with proving something to the world and providing for ourselves that we miss out on experiencing God’s daily provision and we rarely experience Him as Savior, though we claim Him to be. How can we see our need for a Savior when we busy ourselves (with neglect to everyone and everything around us) looking out for number 1?

The Rwandan society is communal versus the individualistic society which we are all familiar with. Things which we can find “frustrating” in cultures like this where “African time” is not quite the same as the rigid time-schedules most of us keep as Americans, I have grown to love and appreciate in my time here. It is beautiful to me that one can be on his way somewhere here and if he runs into a friend, the opportunity to engage in relationship just became more important than wherever it was he was going. A lot more of a picture of Heaven if you ask me. Logically, it makes sense that relationships would supersede schedules in this thing called life, but somewhere along the way the enemy convinced us otherwise and the effects of isolation are trickling out and slowly killing us. Our concern is not physical genocide… it is emotional, spiritual, relational genocide and its death is slow. Our bank accounts are full but the rest of our lives are mediocre at best.

The Word says, “where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.” So…where is your treasure stored up? Are you tossing in all of your chips in complete dependence on God, or have you bought the lies of self-sufficiency, self-dependency and nicknamed them “responsibility”? I hear a lot of American believers (when confronted with the reality of their unsurrendered heart) justify it by saying, “yeah, well God calls us to be wise stewards and afterall…he gave us a brain, right?” This is a well-articulated attempt to justify living in lies because deep down they know the Truth. The Truth is that God’s call for us to be “wise stewards” was never to the expense of relationship. Wisdom flows from Truth. And Truth is found in the light… in God. If then, we yoke ourselves to worldly institutions and call that “wisdom” than we are no longer living in the Truth and therefore can no longer be “wise stewards.” Any effort on our part to be so is merely religious…like the Pharisees, our hearts are far from him. Or like Martha, we neglect to sit at His feet but busy ourselves in His name.

I was discussing this with Celestin and he noted that because the concept of community is so foreign to most Americans who are raised to look out for number one, we are indeed poor. We have everything at our fingertips and yet our lives are void of the stuff in life that really matters. Materially rich yet emotionally, spiritually and relationally poor sounds a lot worse off to me than materially poor, yet emotionally, spiritually and relationally rich. Don’t get me wrong… I think there is much opportunity for Americans to be God’s hands and feet throughout Rwanda and around the globe and in fact it is our responsibility to hold loosely what God has blessed us with so that He might use us. But compassion for others is proportionate to God’s sovereignty in our lives. The less defined our lives are by the institutions of the world (economics, politics, religion) and the more our lives are defined by Jesus…the more free our hearts are to love others. I think that is why Rwandans…especially Rwandan believers lead such rich lives. They give of what they have b/c they see everything they have as a gift. In giving their lives freely they experience freedom. We seek to find freedom in retirement or financial success… but the quest to get us to that place nearly kills us along the way and it destroys the relationships around us. One by one we burn bridges and finally we arrive… on an island alone. That proverbial carrot is no longer dangling and it doesn’t taste near as sweet as we thought it would.

The Rwandan culture has also taught me much about committment, faithfulness, and joy. In America, I think we confuse joy with happiness and as a result our experience of God remains in the shallow waters of the kiddie pool. God is unconcerned with our happiness...his concern is our holiness. Pleasure and comfort have become the false gods of our day and because so much of culture worships them, their influence even creeps into our relationship with the One True God. Though we would hardly articulate it outloud, we often measure God's goodness in our lives as directly proportionate to our happiness. When we adopt this mindset, we tend to project a false notion of Christianity to the watching world b/c we make God out to be a cosmic rabbit's foot.

As I talked to Celestin further regarding the differences between American society & Rwandan society, a couple other things he said he has a hard time understanding about America was kidnapping & serial killers. There is no concept of these things in Rwanda. I thought about it for a little bit and told him that I think these things are pervasive in America because of isolation. In Rwanda, neighborhoods are communities and if you live in close proximity to each other that is a free ticket into eachother’s lives. In America, we hardly know the neighbor next door. People can’t get away with kidnapping or serial killing in Rwanda, because those around them would know. It is so easy to isolate in the Western world that people can get away with these extreme acts of violence and still remain unnoticed. And most of the time the people who perpetrate these acts are victims of isolation themselves.

This all is a little jumbled b/c I'm tired and haven't had time to edit and make it eloquent. If you've read all this, you are a brave soul indeed.

I guess I wanna wrap up by saying that there is not one right way. There are positives and negatives to both societal structures and cultures, so it is critical to remember that there is much we can learn from each other. The tapestry God is weaving is made up of diverse colors of thread and we get a glimpse of its beauty when we can appreciate the spectrum of hues that collide to tell His story.

RWANDA

Well... I'm off on the journey that I've been anticipating for so long. It's very surreal at this point, but I'm sure by the time I arrive in Nairobi tomorrow night, jet lag will have made it very real!

More to come. Stay tuned & journey with me.