slow changes in perspective

Last night I ended up finding the blog of a friend I went to Nepal with. He's back in Nepal with Word Made Flesh as a full-time missionary. As I was reading about his work on his blog, it reminded me of some of my old (and current, but dormant) perspectives on missions work.

I used to be way more socially conscious, way more into social justice. I used to cry all the time about poverty and the suffering in the world - and somehow I felt that that was a good judge of how compassionate I was. The more I studied these things and "fixing poverty" seemed more and more impossible I became pretty disillusioned. I think the turning point for a lot of my thoughts happened when I met up with the Hinzel in January, 2007. He said something that really shocked me and I remember thinking "is he really saying this?!" After asking me what I was doing right now to help solve the millions-of-orphans-in-the-world situation, and after I started talking about reaching leaders to change policy etc., he was like "it's more than just policy! Jesus said: 'You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me' (Matthew 26:11)." When he said this, I seriously thought he was crazy and was just very not socially-conscious or one of those right-wing republican americans. But as we continued the conversation, I realized that he wasn't crazy and his politics didn't matter.

I was afraid that the poor always being poor meant hopelessness. In devs at Queen's, it does. Never have they offered us a solution or even really a hope for a solution aside from Marxism, but let's be serious - as marxist as I used to be (ie: semi-marxist? or something?) - even I admit that Marxism is impossible and hopeless. It is an ideal that can only be achieved without sin, otherwise it will always break down into totalitarianism or pain of other sorts. So when Gregg said this about poverty, that it will always exist, I knew it must be true because Jesus said it, and I knew that because Jesus said it, I needed to come to terms with it.

What I found was that I need to focus my energies not on 'solving poverty' but ensuring those in poverty are able to live with purpose, joy and the abundant life that Jesus came to offer to us. This is part of the reason why I'm joining staff instead of working with an NGO. Do I feel less compassionate because I've decided to work with C4C rather than a more mercy-related mission organization like Word Made Flesh? Yes, actually I do. But I don't think that my decisions of what I should do with my life should be based on how they make me feel.

Anyways, I've been reflecting on how I am actually less development-minded and socially conscious coming out of my degree than going in. I think what I've realized is that social justice is really incredible and wonderful and part of God's plan extend grace and mercy to people, but right now I need to be mobilizing people to make disciples.