Perspective
I'll never forget when I was 11 my church youth group when to Baton Rouge to work at a mission summer camp for a week in the heart of Scotlandville. Scotlandville is like many poor, urban communities in the United States where the environment is tense, the resources are few, and the levels of aggression are high. The climate was so hostile the mission building had to be wrapped in barbed wire fence and have an alarm activated at all times for certain areas. We slept at the mission during the night and during the day helped lead a religious based camp for the children. These kids were dirty, malnourished, many illiterate from ages 4-17. At the time I didn't understand it all, I could only think how uncomfortable I felt in witnessing their blight. As an 11 year old from a middle class family living in a small town, I had no perspective of need. Scarce need. Needing food, needing safe shelter, needing a space to grow and create without fear of violence. I had all of those things so there was no basis to relate. The only tool of relation were provided was Jesus and it didn’t seem to compute. Years later now I think I know why.
The community gets so wrapped up in teaching and preaching about Jesus and how a better life is waiting on us but how about now? Is it wrong to ask about now? When we are dying on the streets and five or more generations deep into the cycle of poverty and lack of education, is it wrong to ask about NOW? NO! All we did was minister. We did facilitated religious games and activities but did the ultimate disservice. We did not provide a solution to their real world problems. We didn't tutor them, we didn't talk about the community’s needs, and we didn't teach them how they could be better young men and women to break generational curses. Nope. The narrative was Jesus. No discussion of what was going on outside of the barbed wire fences. No talk about how when they went back outside those walls, they could be the active agent of change in their society. No talk about how educational pursuits in math and sciences would catapult them into places that at the time they could not even fathom. No discussion about how through God your abilities to excel in every human endeavor are given and your rent on Earth is to be an active educator in doing the work—regardless of how messy, real and unapologetic it was. And that was the issue.
To juxtapose that imagery I remember at the conclusion of the week we went to the house of one of the ministers of the mission camp. Up until that point it was the finest house I had ever seen. Pool in the backyard with private driveway where their kids could play basketball. The house was so expansive at the time in my 11 year old eyes. The interior had oak and cherry wood all throughout. Granite countertops. Big yard. Five bedrooms. It felt like we had been transported into another world from where we had been the entire week. That even though I had only been at the mission for 4 days, I somehow forgot where I had come from. I had begun to felt that all of what I saw at the mission was my new reality. When you ingest an environment and culture day in and day out, it’s hard to imagine a world outside of your surroundings that could be converse to your reality. We ate, played games, socialized, and in those moments I felt as though I was a galaxy away from the mission. Removed from all their problems and issues. I felt like this was a reward for a job well done. We had ministered to them right? We told them about how keeping their heads down and following the good book would get them to a better life right? Yes, we had done a good job I told myself. Yet, even as an 11 year old I wondered if those kids would ever experience this world. Could they ever see it? Touch it? Come into its orbit? I felt a million miles away—but we were only 15 minutes away from the mission. We had for 4 days promised of a better life and aspirations to grandeur to only be had when they died. When they DIED. How crazy is that? Not many of us are charged with doing the work. We’ll say pray for it, on it, and through it, but can’t critically think enough to actually solve a problem. God has given us to tools to uplift one another, USE THEM. The tools for uplifting them and ministering to THEIR needs was in all of us but instead we chose the normative route. No solutions, no education, no vision. All we could give was a concept.
That's when I realized that must be what it feels like to be trapped in your experiences. I had only been in the neighborhood for 4 days and I felt like I had be transported to an unfathomable world. I had and still have a sinking feeling that none of those kids, now mostly grown adults, would more likely than not ever get to that “other world.” And perhaps that was made by design.
