Last week we had someone accuse us of forcing our white privilege and religion on “tribes who have been just fine and happy for thousands of years without you.” We were told we needed to educate ourselves. That’s fine; this has happened before. But I’d like to offer a little bit of education myself after studying tribal people groups for several years:
Do you know what it’s like to live in a country where the major, advanced cities are considered third world, yet you live in the remote jungles?
Where women die all the time during childbirth?
Where newborn babies are gently placed in high branches on trees outside the village and left to wail and starve and be eaten by predators because there’s not enough food in the garden for another mouth in the family?
Where twins are strangled at birth because one of them is believed to be an evil spirit, but the shaman can’t discern which one, so both must die?
Where mothers listen to their children cry themselves to sleep every night from hunger because the jungle and their small gardens don’t provide enough food?
Where a father can’t give the pig that his clan killed and the fish that they speared to his family to eat, but must sacrifice them to his gods to satisfy their anger?
Where girls are public property of men starting at six years old to be raped at impulse by anyone in the village until they’re married at twelve?
Where people bury their fingernails every time they cut them and hair every time they find a strand that’s fallen out for fear that an enemy will find a piece of their “life-source” and work black magic on them?
Where no one in the entire village steps foot outside their house after the sun goes down for fear of evil spirits?
Where you can’t ever wander outside a geographical boundary because your spirits don’t have dominion over there to protect you?
Where great great grandpa is angry with you and he’s the reason your 2 year old son is dying of malaria so you kill and you burn plants to try desperately to get him to forgive you?
Where children’s bedtime stories aren’t Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, but, ”Hush! if you cry too loud tonight an evil spirit will perch on the thatched roof above us and suck out your insides”?
Where wife beatings are expected and healthy and honorable in marriage?
Where there is no literacy?
Where the government treats you as a piece of trash outcast?
Where all you do every day is try to scavenge what food you can, tend your garden, wail and plead with the spirits to spare your children, listen to your babies cry themselves to sleep at night and wake up and do it all again?
Does that sound like a people living happily ever after just because they don’t have GMOs and artificial dyes in their food? What if I told you that some of these tribal elders in Papua New Guinea have spent decades just BEGGING for people to come help them? BEGGING to hear of a God who is so very different from theirs who’s not just bent on punishing and maiming and killing them. BEGGING for a chance to escape the abject poverty they’ve been born into? BEGGING for someone to give up their privilege?
I don’t expect everyone to agree with what we’re doing. But please don’t have the callous disregard to say these people are fine and perfectly content. You are harming them SO MUCH when you say that; you don’t even know. They are illiterate, poor, depressed, literally starving and asking for help. We’re not assuming they want us there. They’re begging us for help. The problem is we don’t want to face true global problems. We want to pretend we care as long as it involves expendable income or expendable time on our days off or painting signs or spray painting our cars or wearing t-shirts or posting on social media. These things make us feel good and make us feel empowering
But moving to Papua New Guinea doesn’t feel empowering. I’m giving up my power! I’m giving up my house, my car, my savings, my parents, my siblings, Thanksgiving Dinner, Erin waking up at 4 a.m. Christmas morning too excited to sleep. I’m giving up ballet for her, a normal education, pool visits in the summer, snowball fights in the winter, trick or treat in the fall, autumn festivals with the cute pumpkin patch photo ops, sleepovers with BFFs, homemade ice cream, soccer and the Y. Do you think I’m giving up all this because I want to shove my white privilege in a small, forgotten corner of the world? It’s the last thing I want to do! I want to stay here and keep my privilege.
But God said to go to the most abandoned areas of the globe.
God said to give up your house and your parents and your roots.
God said I care about these forgotten people that no one else cares about.
God said they’re made in my image and I love them.
So go tell them.
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