Part 13 (1/2)

As I pondered up those promised blessings-blessings of G.o.d's constant guidance, of satisfaction and strength-I sensed G.o.d handing me a dose of hope: ”Bill, you can opt to live this way. The choice is yours.”

EVERY HONEST PERSON OF MEANS I KNOW CAN POINT TO A half-dozen moments along life's journey when G.o.d opened up a door or brought along the right person, the right creative idea or the right opportunity, and it saved their financial hide. It was certainly true for those of us who started Willow. From 1975 until 1980, both personally and corporately we lived within one week of financial extinction. You don't forget an experience like that. You don't forget the feelings of constant shortage, the worry over lack of provision, the stress of payments you can't make, the embarra.s.sment every time the church phone rings and another angry creditor waits for you on the line.

We didn't get through those days on our own power. G.o.d whispered to some adults in our congregation-people who actually wore suits that fit and had ”real” jobs and homes that they owned-and moved them to pitch in and help us keep Willow financially viable.

During those years of being under-resourced, I experienced time and again how it felt to be on the receiving end of help. I developed a deep level of grat.i.tude-a humble realization that my life would not be the same, were it not for the doors G.o.d has opened for me and the people who responded to his whispers on my behalf.

n.o.body reaches well-resourced status alone. It always takes the help of another.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus announced that a distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of his followers would be their concern for those who were hungry and naked, shelterless and impoverished.10 As a young pastor, I wanted to bear this distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of Jesus. But what was ”concern” supposed to look like? What was my role supposed to be?

As opportunities presented themselves, I began traveling to parts of the world where life seemed unbearably broken. I had witnessed poverty in American cities, but this level of societal decimation cast the term ”poor” in a whole new light. G.o.d began to reveal to me the difference between poverty and extreme poverty, and that the latter was something I could actually help fix.11 Let me explain what I mean.

Of the more than six billion people alive today, three billion-approximately one half of humanity-live on less than two dollars a day. What's more, these people have virtually no access to capital that would allow them to start a business or buy an acre of farmland that would dramatically change the trajectory of their lives.

That is what is called extreme poverty, something most Americans know nothing about.

I watched a short doc.u.mentary recently about a reporter from CNN who was studying the effects of hunger on the poor. During the creation of the film, the reporter interviewed a man who had lived with pervasive hunger his entire life, a reality that inspired the reporter to boldly state, ”Well, I'm going to live your life with you for thirty full days.”

The reporter planned to eat exactly what the impoverished man ate-and no more-for one month straight. By day twenty-one he had to bail. The CNN reporter was so dizzy that he nearly fainted and so lethargic that his mind all but shut down. His body began wasting away until finally, he said, ”I'm done.”

Imagine living your entire life in that kind of poverty.

Once a year at Willow, during the Celebration of Hope experience I mentioned to you earlier, our entire congregation is invited to eat nothing but rice and beans for five days-a full work week-and to drink nothing but water from the tap. It gives you a whole new respect for poverty's devastating effects when you start to cave on the morning of day three.

People in extreme poverty experience a constant state of hunger, but their plight certainly doesn't end there. Another tough reality they juggle is not having a place to call home.

I was in Cairo, Egypt, some time ago, and as I walked down the street, I took in the atrocious living conditions all around me. I saw a burned-out automobile lying upside-down on the sidewalk and fleetingly wondered why city workers hadn't come by to drag the eyesore away-until I saw the answer, plain as day: an entire family was living inside. I shook my head and fought off tears that were determined to flow.

While in India a short time after that, I noticed that a construction crew was putting in a new sewage system in one area of Mumbai. Giant pipes, probably eight feet in diameter, lined the road, waiting to be installed. And until those pipes were laid in the ground, they served as home to hundreds of families in need. When a temporary sewer pipe serves as the best shelter around, we can be sure G.o.d's ire is stirred.

One night recently I was watching another doc.u.mentary, this one on worldwide homelessness. In addition to detailing troubling statistics, the film explored what happens in people's psyches and souls when, for whatever reason, they are forced to exist in a tragic, shelterless state. It was a difficult ninety minutes to take in.

Images of gaunt, desperate people enduring cold, windy rainstorms that washed right through their stick huts-and of children who didn't know what it meant to not be muddy and wet-flashed across the screen. And then there was a commercial break.

During that four-minute interlude, I channel-surfed through a few stations and stopped when I saw the camera panning a multi-million-dollar mansion. The host introduced the show-Cribs, it was called-and then began enumerating the overkill features of the fifteen-bedroom, twelve-bath celebrity home being featured on this week's episode.

The juxtaposition of those two images nearly did me in. More than one hundred million people will sleep huddled on the earth's dirt floor tonight while others rattle around in their nearly empty but luxurious ”cribs.”

The next day, when I pulled into my own driveway, I stopped and considered my place on the privilege pyramid. ”G.o.d, I don't understand all of the reasons why blessing has come my way like it has,” I prayed, ”but by your grace I'm among the most privileged people in the world, especially as it pertains to having food and shelter. Thank you for blessing me this way.”

I opened my eyes after praying and caught sight of a torn window screen that had been nagging at me for some time to be fixed. Somehow in the light of that moment, a little tear in a window screen didn't seem like a very big deal.

EXTREME POVERTY INVOLVES OTHER ISSUES AS WELL. SANITAtion is a vital concern-how would you like to wear the same dirty, threadbare clothes each day and never take a warm shower again in your life? The need for clean water is among the top issues on the extreme poverty list. A child dies every fifteen seconds from water-related diseases,12 some of the easiest maladies to prevent and cure.

Limited access to medical treatment and education top the injustice chart in many parts of the world. With governmental corruption at the highest levels, and violence, abuse and dissension at every turn, I often feel overwhelmed by the level of need. It can be tempting to become numb to these problems because the need for change is staggering. How can I make a difference when the challenges are this complex?

”Spend yourself on behalf of the hungry,” that verse in Isaiah had said. ”Spend yourself...” I decided to start here.

I began to ask G.o.d to show me ways that I could spend my talents differently by leveraging relational networks on behalf of the poor. He brought to my attention people who could net big kingdom gains in the battle against poverty. I began challenging construction guys who could build affordable housing, medical people who could staff free clinics a few times a month and computer wizards who could head to Africa and teach entire villages how to navigate online tasks.

I asked him to show me how I might spend my time differently. What prayers did I need to pray on behalf of the poor-both in the United States and in far-off lands? What books did I need to read? What service opportunities did I need to invest myself in, so that my eyes and my heart would be further opened to the plight facing so many people around the globe?

I also wanted to know how to spend my money differently. Even little expenditures could make a difference. If I'm going to drink coffee every day, for example, it might as well be coffee of the fair-trade variety.

As G.o.d provided definite promptings for large and small ways I could effect change, I began sharing those insights with the broader Willow family, who quickly caught G.o.d's vision for justice among the poor. And with each stride made-orphans rescued from loneliness in Africa, ministry partners.h.i.+ps forged in Latin America, food banks stocked to the ceiling in the Chicago area, earnest prayers uttered, offerings collected, heartfelt songs sung in thanksgiving to G.o.d-I marveled a little more at the incredible people and means and circ.u.mstances G.o.d has used to make good on a whispered promise to a Dutch teen in a Nairobi slum, forty-something years ago.

James 1:9a10 says, ”Believers who are poor should take pride that G.o.d has made them spiritually rich. Those who are rich should take pride that G.o.d has shown them that they are spiritually poor” (NCV). As I look back on the first fifty-eight years of my life, one of the things I'm most thankful for is that G.o.d has revealed the power of this truth. I may be well-resourced compared to the vast majority of the world, but am I ever spiritually poor! But for the grace of G.o.d, I'd be a sinner left to fend for myself.

The next verse in that pa.s.sage says this: ”The rich will die like a wild flower in the gra.s.s. The sun rises with burning heat and dries up the plants. The flower falls off, and its beauty is gone. In the same way the rich will die while they are still taking care of business” (NCV). Even as I read those words now, I am refreshed in my belief that given the brevity of life, there is no better way to spend my days than on behalf of under-resourced people who desperately need care.

It was in the midst of my doing a deep dive into the subject of extreme poverty that G.o.d began to rock my world on another front as well. I began to sense his whisper on the topic of racial injustice.

It was April of 1999, and I was ready to head out on what was sure to be a picture-perfect vacation-just Lynne, the kids and me; ideal sailing conditions; and the prospect of countless hours of uninterrupted snorkeling and windsurfing. Even as I reflect on it now, the words sheer bliss come to mind.

I was more than ready to unwind from what had been a taxing season of ministry. I expected a relaxed pace, agenda-less days and hours of great conversation as I caught up on what was new in my kids' lives. What I didn't see coming was that I was about to be the direct-hit target of a ma.s.sive spiritual tsunami, courtesy of G.o.d himself. What you read in the coming pages may be a spiritual tsunami for you, as well, as I invite you to walk alongside me on an eye-opening journey that still leaves me shaking my head.

The day before I was to leave for my vacation, one of Willow's leaders handed me a book and mentioned that if a rainy day snuck into the scheme of things-perish the thought-at least now I'd have something to read. Thankfully, it didn't rain. But there was a night when everyone else went to bed early. I wasn't sleepy, and having no one to talk to and nothing else to do, I reached into my briefcase, found the recommended book, leaned back in the c.o.c.kpit of the small boat we were borrowing for the week and turned to page 1 of Divided by Faith13-a book written by a couple of sociology professors.

Fifteen pages into the book I realized this would be no light read. I had done research on racism before. I had been to seminars and even had given a talk on the subject once. But for some reason the content of this book sneaked into crevices of my consciousness in new ways. I flipped page after sobering page and, for the first time in my life, saw my country's history for what it really was. Now, I absolutely love my country-there is nowhere on the planet I'd rather live than in the United States. But as the authors exposed the historical truths of the early days of America, I couldn't help but feel embarra.s.sed and saddened by the ugliness of it all.

FOR MANY DECADES, MOST WHITE GRADE-SCHOOL KIDS HAVE been fed a glorified notion that when the British came over to occupy American territory, they befriended all of the Indians and then bellied up to a giant Thanksgiving table to enjoy a feast. But the truth, according to historical doc.u.ments from this era of U.S. history, is a far cry from that.

When British citizens first settled onto American soil, they did so by annihilating the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who rightfully owned all of this land. The overtakers intentionally introduced smallpox and other deadly viruses into certain Indian villages with intent to kill, even resorting to distributing blankets from virus-infected people to Indian children and then essentially telling them to go home and enjoy a good night's rest.

Once the genocide was successful enough to free up sufficient land on which to establish this country, our ancestors went in search of strong backs. They built s.h.i.+ps and sailed them to the Ivory Coast of Africa, where entire clans of families-men, women, grandparents, even children, in total numbering more than ten million people-were kidnapped, chained, dragged to sh.o.r.e, packed like sardines onto boats and s.h.i.+pped off from their homeland to the colonies of America, today proudly referred to as the ”land of the free and home of the brave.”

About one-third of these first ”African Americans” died en route in the holds of those s.h.i.+ps. Their inhumane treatment even in death was an indication of what was to come. Rather than being given a proper burial, they were tossed overboard in full view of their spouses and families, left as shark bait in the dark seas below. The two-thirds of that original population who made it to the other side didn't fare much better. Upon arrival, they were cleaned up, sprayed off, stood on auction blocks and sold to the highest bidder. I cringe even as I type this. Who would allow injustice like that?

I found myself thinking that if this abhorrent scheme had lasted a few months, a few years or even a few decades before being righted, then perhaps I would feel less shame than I did. But in reality, the slave-trading practice, which was started elsewhere but was really ”perfected” on American soil, lasted more than 350 years. With G.o.d's eyes watching the entire time.

G.o.d saw white men working black men into a state of exhaustion on their farms, beating, maiming or even killing them if they slacked off. As night fell, G.o.d saw white men rape the wives and daughters of the slaves they had abused all day long. G.o.d saw slave owners-our early forefathers as well as many pastors of local churches-salve their consciousnesses with lies: African Americans were ”less than fully human, did not possess souls, and were incapable of learning.”14 In short, G.o.d saw as abhorrent injustice pervaded his beautiful earth-and his Bride, the church.

The raging injustice before his eyes kindled his pa.s.sion. And the more I read, the more it kindled mine.

IN THE c.o.c.kPIT OF THAT SAILBOAT, I WAS REMINDED OF A portion of Scripture in Mark 11 that I'd read dozens of times before. As the story goes, one day Jesus decides to travel all the way to Jerusalem to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in the temple. He enters the temple area, expecting to find people wors.h.i.+ping the living G.o.d. Instead, he sees slick salesmen who have turned the holy place into a shopping mall. Understandably, Jesus is incensed. He overturns the tables of the moneychangers and the benches of those selling trinkets and doves, and then he forbids anyone from carrying merchandise through the temple courts.

According to the text, he wrapped up the events of the day with these well-known words, ”Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'”

When I was young, I was told in Sunday school that Jesus cleansed the temple because he didn't think greedy people's practices had any place in a church setting. But with an increased awareness of racism floating around in my mind on the boat that April night, I began to reflect on the pa.s.sage with new eyes. It became obvious to me that there was another form of injustice that needed to be resolved in the temple that day. In addition to the economic corruption unfolding before Jesus' eyes, biblical scholars describe a subplot to the story that involved the Jews squeezing out people of other races-people from ”other” nations. Their arrogance and superiority complex didn't sit too well with Jesus, who said in response, ”My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

For all nations.

The One who wore justice like skin essentially said to the Church, ”Mono-cultural, mono-ethnic and mono-racial do not fit the dream my Father and I have for you. I want my house to be a house of prayer for all races. For all cultures. For all ethnicities. For all nations!”

On that night of my ”picture-perfect” vacation, more than enjoying the gentle rocking motion of a boat anch.o.r.ed in a moonlit bay, I experienced a powerful, divinely appointed world-rocking experience I won't soon forget. In a flash of insight G.o.d brought to mind everything I had learned throughout my life on the topic of injustice-and of racial injustice in particular-and said, in effect, ”Bill, it's time to up the ante on your involvement in this regard.”

People matter to G.o.d. All people matter to G.o.d. And there are structural injustices in our generation that need to be torn down in order for G.o.d's love for his people to flow through those of us who claim the name of Christ. In not-so-subtle terms G.o.d was whispering to me a challenge: ”I want you to step up, Bill. And preferably, to do so now.”

The reason G.o.d's whisper was so jolting to me is that I've never before considered myself racist. For as long as I can remember I have had friends of all ethnicities and backgrounds and have made a point of embracing people for who they are, regardless of the color of their skin.