Thank you that I am not like THEM

I've gotta tell the truth. I am seriously afraid of offending someone with this post.  Or for coming across judgmental at least.  If it does offend you though, I am sorry.  If it challenges you, I am glad.

The thing is that we are all aware of the situation we are in.  We live in a world of injustice where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  As I see the injustice in income differences here and the little people are expected to survive on I am often disgusted. 

Many are apathetic about the situation and don’t want to get involved.  The images on TV of children hungry, alone and uncared for don’t penetrate past the TV screen.  Some, however, want to get involved and they risk life and limb to travel the globe into developing countries to help better the situation and fulfil the call to take care of the poor and orphaned.

 

We get to hang with people like this.  And we have been one of those people.  I like to call them short termers.  They are the amazing people who come for a visit for a short amount of time and then leave back to their home country. 

Different reactions to the short term experience emerge when people get back "home".  For me, New Zealand didn't feel like "home" anymore after I returned from Ethiopia in 2009.  While not getting into all the psychological reactions that I and others experience, there are definitely different responses that can either alter ones life or at least ones thoughts or worldviews.  An example that one of our old pastors used to use what that of Brooke Fraser’s after her trip to Rwanda- “Now that I have seen, I am responsible.”  

Hers is one of two responses that I feel are articulated in these verses below.  I believe that the heart for the poor, is the heart of God and essentially when we come to a place of poverty, we come to a place that is the heart of God and we worship Him there.  The context of these verses is in a place of worship.  It’s in a temple, but there are two attitudes that are expressed. Let’s have a look:

Luke 18:9-14

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

If we look at these verses not as a Pharisee and a tax collector but as two different kinds of short termers- there are those that can come here or to another country and leave back to their lives expressing this new attitude of gratefulness “God, I thank you that I am not like THEM!!”  And get on with their lives and be content with their own self righteousness and possessions. 

Then there are those who leave back to their lives who will say, “God, forgive me- help me to love THEM like you loved ME.” And go on their lives never again satisfied with what they POSSESS but what they can LACK now so that others might GAIN. 

God calls us to humble ourselves and to see others better than ourselves.  He has taken me through so many circumstances where this verse has been something I have had to struggle to BELIEVE and accept.  But it was my call to humility. He calls us to GIVE our lives so that others might live.  

The next few verses in Luke 18 sum it right up.  As you read about the rich ruler, remember that if you have a roof over your head, a car in your driveway, you would be called rich.

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Often I feel like we have it all messed up.  We hold on so tightly to things that this world values. We find it SO hard to give it away that we even disqualify verses like these as irrelevant to our current situation or cultural context.  But they are not. It's not that crazy to give it all away for the sake of following Jesus and residing in a place of worship with Him.  I mean, isn't that what He wants?