Jesus Olympics!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, won't you be mine?

Hello, everyone, and welcome back from fall break. It's Tuesday afternoon, and if you haven't sobered up by now you may need a trip to your friendly-neighborhood ER.

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering, "How is Daedalus going to take a plea to help starving children in Africa and turn it into something bad?" Shame on you. I'm not a damn nihilist.

A few posts ago I made the following comment about organizations like Compassion International and the work that they do:

"Sub-Saharan Africa, to take one example, does not need you to sponsor a child through Compassion International. What they need is for you to go build a school or go teach a sex-ed class for teenagers. If Christians actually took their scriptures seriously, this wouldn't seem like such an outrageous suggestion."

I would like to take this opportunity to clarify this statement, as I'm not sure I expressed myself adequately the first time.

You're right, Hannah, Compassion Intl., and organizations like it, are capable of doing a lot of good for less-fortunate people throughout the world. And sponsoring a child through Compassion is not necessarily a frivolous investment. However, it does seem like the lazy-ass way out.

It is often difficult to understand the world that people on the other side of our planet wake up to while we are soundly asleep. For me this is true not just of Africa, but of France, Russia, Iran, and basically any nation besides The United States and US Lite [I'm sure you know I'm talkin' aboot Canada, eh?]. Our culture, our society, the way we have been socialized is so divorced from that of these other countries that, often, when someone speaks of the horrors of the AIDS virus, human trafficking, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [muffins], or a nationwide shortage of food I find it difficult to connect with their message. The genius of organizations like Compassion Intl. is that they have recognized this disparity and sought to provide an easy way for those of us living plush, comfortable lives in developed countries to assuage our guilty consciences while still doing some good in the world. But, and this is what I was trying to say when I first commented on Compassion, throwing money at the problem is neither, by itself, a solution, nor does it guarantee that a solution will be found. Often money is little more than a band-aid used in attempt to heal a broken femur.

For people like the McRoberts, Compassion's system is functional because they have the time, and money, to write, visit, and interact with the children they sponsor. They are doing more than simply throwing money at the problem. However, for college students in Bethany, Oklahoma, the dream of being able to interact with children on the other side of the world is ever so slightly less realistic. So, while it might make us feel good to know that we are thirty-two dollars poorer at the end of each month, from the outside it doesn't actually seem like we are doing anything besides placating ourselves.

I would like to take this moment to make an appeal to human decency.

Can we not simply work to redeem this world in the name of morality? Organizations like Compassion and World Vision are primarily supported by churchgoing, Bible-toting Christians who feel that by donating a small amount of their paycheck to a needy child, whom they will never meet, every month they have done their duty to "feed [his] sheep." [John 21:17 NIV] [Oh my God, look! Daedalus just quoted scripture!?] I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with trying to do some good in Jesus' name [Lord knows the world could stand to have a few more people doing such], but why must we summon Jesus to the scene every time there is a situation that needs attention? Why can one person not help another, without summoning forth the divine, based entirely on the fact that they breathe the same air you do? I know this is a tangential issue, but come on people! We're humans first.

"If you ever get close to a human and human behavior, be ready to get confused . . . . There's no map and a compass wouldn't help at all."

[20 gold stars and a glow-in-the-dark pencil to anyone who can correctly identify that quote.]

"Keep near me and you will be safe."

Daedalus