Africa: Pondering

i'm reading "blue like jazz" by donald miller.  he just summed up the war raging within me right now as i ponder everything i experienced in south africa.  here's what he said:

i think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself.  i hate this more than anything.  this is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with.  the problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

the thing i realized on the day we protested, on the day i had beers with tony, was that it did me no good to protest america's responsibility to global poverty when i wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry.  i started feeling very much like a hypocrite.

my than questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives.  do i want social justice for the oppressed, or do i just want to be known as a socially active person?  i spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway.  i don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, i only have to look at myself.  i am not browbeating myself here; i am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual.  i was the very problem i had been protesting.  i wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!"

sobonana...

Comments

[Judie Shahbazian]

I felt like this post when I came back from Haiti. I kept asking God "What am I to do with this?" I really had a hard time for a couple of weeks and my own family did not want to hear my stories. Am I more about social injustice or do I want to be know as someone that is involved in social injustice. Big question. But at the same time, God is still in the miracle business and He can use His people to make it happen (even us). Good work faithful servent! Loved the U-tube video.