Humility
Humility is, I think, one of the hardest virtues for humans to master. We all have pride issues about at least one little thing. Just now, as I am writing a post about humility and doing my best to multitask, I caught myself thinking "I'm really proud of that email I just sent". It probably wasn't even that great of an email...
One of the staff members at Maria's told us that while he has never seen another country that has as big of a heart as America does, he has also never seen another country as ignorant as we are. Ouch. That stung me when I first heard it as much as it might have just stung you, and it isn't something I wanted to believe. But he made us realize that if we aren't taking the time to build relationships, learn about the people we serve, and help them get to a point where they can help themselves and no longer need us, we are doing them an injustice. We tend to give handouts a lot, for example: sending food, clothing, toys, money etc. to victims of a natural disaster and then wiping our hands and saying "We've done our part" without taking into account that there is so much more that needs to be done. While those things are important to provide immediately after disaster strikes, they eventually run out and create dependence on the providers. Over time, the providers could also run out, give up, or move on to another cause, and then the victims of natural disaster become victims of our carelessness and are back to where they started. This is stuff that I realized happens on a small scale, but I didn't realize it was an international issue.
At this point in our discussion, I was getting pretty hopeless. How are we supposed to help people if the stuff I always thought was helping is really just hurting in the long run? Is there a "right way"to serve people? Have all the serving and mission trips I have done in the past been all for nothing? Thankfully, most of my questions were answered. But the answers aren't the short and sweet answers that we want to hear. Creating sustainable service is a lot harder than giving handouts. It takes more time, work, commitment, and it means we have to actually get to know and TRULY LOVE the people we are serving.
A community of people who are suffering don't just sit there and watch themselves suffer, waiting for help to come from strangers from another country. The ones who are able are already trying to find ways to survive or make life easier. We have to take a look at the systems that people already have in place and help to make those better. If not, we are inviting ourselves into people's lives, tearing down their own ways of sustaining themselves, and setting up our own ways that may or may not work or may or may not last. Another benefit of gracefully asking for entrance into people's lives and working with them is having the opportunity to share with them about Jesus. This isn't something you can share through an impersonal handout. This whole concept of service is really hard to explain, but I finally got it after all the examples and hypothetical situations we were given to prove that the way we serve does matter. I can't include all of those in here because it would take me the rest of the day, but if you are still unsure of what I mean and want to learn more, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Another (not-super-related-to-the-rest-of-my-post) thing is that before this day, I had always thought of Christian community as being important to our own spiritual development and helping others to develop spiritually. But there are some big problems in the world that can only be helped by big groups of people, so that's another reason coming together under God is important--to pray big prayers and to accomplish big things.
In relation to orphan care, service, and missions in genral, humility is such an important attribute. We have to be humble enough to realize that even as we travel across the world to serve people that don't have as much money, opporunity, or freedom as we do, we are not the answer to all of their problems. We aren't even the answer to a fraction of their problems. We are not their "savior", and we have no right to have the savior complexes we tend to have while on mission trips. The only person to ever exist that could bear the term "Savior" is Jesus Christ. We have to realize that our short term and seemingly long term fixes aren't always the best for the people we are serving (even if they are the best and easiest option for us).
To say it in a shorter and sweeter way: If we aren't serving with our whole heart AND our whole mind, we aren't really doing our best to serve. I just think about what God wants. I really think He would want us to meet people where they are, get to know them, love them, and help provide for them in a way that would sustain them, physically and spiritually. I also think He would want us to keep remembering that we are not capable of anything worth much without Him.
One of the staff members at Maria's told us that while he has never seen another country that has as big of a heart as America does, he has also never seen another country as ignorant as we are. Ouch. That stung me when I first heard it as much as it might have just stung you, and it isn't something I wanted to believe. But he made us realize that if we aren't taking the time to build relationships, learn about the people we serve, and help them get to a point where they can help themselves and no longer need us, we are doing them an injustice. We tend to give handouts a lot, for example: sending food, clothing, toys, money etc. to victims of a natural disaster and then wiping our hands and saying "We've done our part" without taking into account that there is so much more that needs to be done. While those things are important to provide immediately after disaster strikes, they eventually run out and create dependence on the providers. Over time, the providers could also run out, give up, or move on to another cause, and then the victims of natural disaster become victims of our carelessness and are back to where they started. This is stuff that I realized happens on a small scale, but I didn't realize it was an international issue.
At this point in our discussion, I was getting pretty hopeless. How are we supposed to help people if the stuff I always thought was helping is really just hurting in the long run? Is there a "right way"to serve people? Have all the serving and mission trips I have done in the past been all for nothing? Thankfully, most of my questions were answered. But the answers aren't the short and sweet answers that we want to hear. Creating sustainable service is a lot harder than giving handouts. It takes more time, work, commitment, and it means we have to actually get to know and TRULY LOVE the people we are serving.
A community of people who are suffering don't just sit there and watch themselves suffer, waiting for help to come from strangers from another country. The ones who are able are already trying to find ways to survive or make life easier. We have to take a look at the systems that people already have in place and help to make those better. If not, we are inviting ourselves into people's lives, tearing down their own ways of sustaining themselves, and setting up our own ways that may or may not work or may or may not last. Another benefit of gracefully asking for entrance into people's lives and working with them is having the opportunity to share with them about Jesus. This isn't something you can share through an impersonal handout. This whole concept of service is really hard to explain, but I finally got it after all the examples and hypothetical situations we were given to prove that the way we serve does matter. I can't include all of those in here because it would take me the rest of the day, but if you are still unsure of what I mean and want to learn more, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Another (not-super-related-to-the-rest-of-my-post) thing is that before this day, I had always thought of Christian community as being important to our own spiritual development and helping others to develop spiritually. But there are some big problems in the world that can only be helped by big groups of people, so that's another reason coming together under God is important--to pray big prayers and to accomplish big things.
In relation to orphan care, service, and missions in genral, humility is such an important attribute. We have to be humble enough to realize that even as we travel across the world to serve people that don't have as much money, opporunity, or freedom as we do, we are not the answer to all of their problems. We aren't even the answer to a fraction of their problems. We are not their "savior", and we have no right to have the savior complexes we tend to have while on mission trips. The only person to ever exist that could bear the term "Savior" is Jesus Christ. We have to realize that our short term and seemingly long term fixes aren't always the best for the people we are serving (even if they are the best and easiest option for us).
To say it in a shorter and sweeter way: If we aren't serving with our whole heart AND our whole mind, we aren't really doing our best to serve. I just think about what God wants. I really think He would want us to meet people where they are, get to know them, love them, and help provide for them in a way that would sustain them, physically and spiritually. I also think He would want us to keep remembering that we are not capable of anything worth much without Him.
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