By Steve

How was your trip?

It should be expected that this would be the most common question people would ask me after returning from a 3 week trip to Africa. The trip was amazing, life changing in a sense...both in my life and in the lives of those I worked with in Africa. Only time will tell if the life change will last or if it will subside as I return to my normal life, but it is my hope that some things that influenced will leave me changed forever.

I was asked another question about the trip, I did not expect this one as much but it was profound and forced me to think (and I'm still thinking). I was asked if my views and perspectives of God had changed after seeing so much poverty and suffering and death. The answer is a frusterating yes and no.

It's hard, if not impossible to think of God and how he interacts with humanity outside of what we know. I know American culture and so I mostly think of God from the context of American life. So things like Gods blessing and provision and love for me comes from my understanding of what these things mean to me in my culture. But.

Take me out of my culture and place me in a foreign culture, such as Uganda and I must think differently of God. It's not that God is different, but the lense from which I now think of his love and provision and blessing have changed. What we think of as God's provision in America is quite different than what my friends in Uganda think of. Is God's love different for those in Africa than it is for me in America? Why are people suffering as they are in Africa if God love's them? The thing is, people ask the same question of God from within American culture too it's just that the circumstances (the cultures) are different.

So I cannot think of God through an American mindset while in Africa (though its hard not to and probably not even a good idea to do so while in America). I cannot say God is unfair or unjust because America is wealthy and Africans suffer. In the same way, I cannot return to America and say that we are apathetic towards God (even though I think we are, I just don't want to use African culture to make the point) because we don't sing like Africans do or we don't walk 5 miles to church like Africans do.

Still, something of the way I think of God has changed. It's like I have a new lense or second lense to percieve through. I have the experience of spending time with people who sincerely love and worship God through this other lense. It's helped me to see God more clearly and perhaps more of him. It's helped me to see that there is more to working out what God is like than what is going on in our culture...people all over the world, from many different cultures and circumstances are discussing faith and trust and worship and what it means to live as Christians. So I have a car and live in a city and have a comfortable bed and so on, and others walk and sleep on the floor and live in the slums and so on but at the core of who we are, our existence in the inner self...(quoting Samuel "Screech" Powers) "we are all so different, yet so similar!"

And one more thing. If each of us, every gender and color and nationality and peculiarity are created in the image of God, then the more you share life with others unlike you, the more you will come to understand what God is like.