Thursday, March 09, 2006

Dieing: families at a time.

Right now there are 3.5 million people in Kenya whose food supply is about to expire. The reason? Drought. That number grows to 11 million when you add Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and some from Tanzania. What did they ever do to deserve it? But the numbers don’t have faces; they just have a string of zeros on the end and some relating facts: they are easy to forget. Its Africa after all, they die over there all the time. The news story will end and our life will move past it.

But will their life move past this drought? Will they expire with their food supply? Why would God let this happen? I don’t know. I’ve been studying the suffering in the book of Job and finding it to be an amazing time.

The theology of Job’s comforters was as follows: God rewards righteousness and punishes sin. Job is being punished, therefore he must have sinned. In studying the book of Job we see that Job did not sin, and thus the theology of the comforters is wrong. A theology truly reflective of the book of Job could go like this: “God punishes and rewards as he pleases, he is God. It stinks to be Job.” There are factors and events which we cannot see, but which affect us. For Job is was a wager by God on how loyal Job really was. We must simply accept what seems like injustice, and cry out to God for mercy in hope that he will change the things that only he can see.

This starvation is one of those events in which some supernatural arrangement is being played out on dusty plains. Have these 11 million committed some group sin worthy of punishment? I hardly think that the child in the picture deserves anything but the food he begs for. But we should become beggars on his behalf, begging God to send relief. Jesus came to proclaim freedom for the captives not just in a spiritual way but also in a physical way. Christ was an extension of God’s character. God can bring rain, hope, and a future to east Africa. And if we care at all, we will ask Him on their behalf.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

After Jobs suffering he was blessed mightly, was this because of his rightousness thru his trials ??

The Garbers said...

It's hard to say. His wealth was given back double, but his children were simply replaced. If I was Job, I wouldn't consider the extra wealth to have been worth the suffering. In the theology of his day, there was no afterlife. So any repayment would have to have been done before he died.

Not everyone who suffers has a happy ending. It might be better say that few who suffer get to experiece an ending as pleasant as Job's

Anonymous said...

"This starvation is one of those events in which some supernatural arrangement is being played out on dusty plains." eh? Could it have anything to do with over-population-->over use of the ground? Could it be connected to global warming (which is possibly an effect of the mis-treatment of the environment by humans?, which expands deserts? If the "starvation" is a result of a "supernatural arangement", then why should we bother to try to change/make better it? I'm not one to rule out accidents, but I also think 'natural disasters' are effects of human decisions, which us as a society should face.

abu said...

Here in consumer-friendly North America, it is hard to wrap one's mind around people starving to death. And dumpster diving, while it doesn't usually help starving children, it does highjack the wasteful system here, and make a statement about our lifestyle.

abu said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Your original teacher says "I think that would be 'd-y-i-n-g'."
Besides, comments about spelling are a great diversion from the painful truth.

Anonymous said...

Your original teacher says "I think that is spelled 'd-y-i-n-g'".
Besides, commenting about the spelling is a great diversion from the painful truth.

Anonymous said...

Mother Yoder stutters.

Anonymous said...

hmmm jo lolla,as we said in the 70s, all that it take for evil to trinmph is for enuf 'good' people to do nothing (there being none righteous)one can only light a candle but it is better than cursing the darkness.. perhaps there are those who were called to pray/go/drill/teach/give/invent/etc and now the total is devestation that can hardly be attributed to the almighty,, who gave us all free will. now the solution is not for us all to have a collective fit of guilt but for each of us to beseach and ask the almighty to give us our own set of instructions on how to play our own little part..
and thank you zack for the challenge momdi