My parents recently left for their 14th trip to Zimbabwe as volunteer medical missionaries. I confess that saying goodbye to them always involves a mixture of emotions. Certainly what they do on these trips is of vital importance — my father provides medical care at Sanyati Baptist hospital and my mother teaches Bible studies. Moreover, they really enjoy their work, the chance to see old friends, and the chance to experience the wonderful people and landscapes of this part of Africa. Still, I worry for them because the economic and social conditions in Zimbabwe have grown increasingly desperate across recent years.
Unemployment is now over 85 percent while the poverty rate has doubled since the mid-1990s. Although the nation was once able to produce food for export, malnutrition now kills thousands monthly. A staggering 45 percent of the population is considered malnourished. Life expectancy for a woman in Zimbabwe is 34, and for a man 37 (shorter than anywhere else in the world), a fact attributed to the economic crisis over the last seven years. Inflation has destroyed the national currency. Knowing all this sharpens my anxiety for my parents in a way that seems to be both self-centered and unavoidable.
The simple fact is this — the misery in Zimbabwe, or in the Sudan, or in Iraq is distant and it engulfs persons that I will never know. My mother and father are my mother and father. Furthermore, we are often left hopeless by the sheer enormity of the suffering that confronts us. What can anyone of us do in the face of such misery?
I want to suggest three strategies.
The first thing to do is to name the powers and principalities for what they are. Paul acknowledges that the powers, such as governments, have a role to play in maintaining order. Hence his claim that they are created good. Christians are to respect the powers as long as they require nothing that is contrary to Christian faith. And yet the powers are constantly tempted toward idolatry and sinfulness.
Certainly, we cannot ignore the history of British imperialism in Zimbabwe, a history that left whites in control of most of the country's land and resources (in the late 1990s less than 1 percent of the Zimbabwean whites owned 70 percent of the arable land). And yet President Mugabe has used land reform to shore up his own power, rewarding his supporters and attacking his opponents, with thousands of blacks losing out, suffering terribly in a country once called the “bread basket” of Southern Africa.
The second strategy is to remind ourselves that the care for the least among us is central to who we are. I noted recently an advertising campaign that promises a percentage of the revenue from the purchase of various “high-end” items — a wristwatch, a computer, etc. — will be donated to various relief efforts. The implication, of course, is that we in the West can help without any serious alteration in our lives or our patterns of consumption. The call of the gospel, however, is clear. Our lives are to be lived sacrificially.
The third thing to remember is that charity really does begin at home. There is more than a little of Dicken's Mrs. Jellyby in most of us, and the place to begin to practice that sacrificial life that is at the center of our faith is to learn daily what it means to see and to serve Christ in the vulnerable in our own midst.
Surely knowing how to pray and economically support our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe is an important step. Such steps become more possible when we are living in a way that responds to those in need around us, when we are, in other words, open to Christ (Matthew 25). Such responses are not simply extracurricular activities we must fit into already busy lives. Rather God calls and gives us all the time we need to live lives of faithfulness from day to day.
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— Beth Newman is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [email protected]