Why I Go

I have a mailbox load of emails from people who have written asking why in the world I would go to Nukuru, Kenya, (see previous post) where close to one hundred people were recently killed in the riots brought on by the allegedly rigged elections. The short answer is this: Because I can.

If you had family members there, wouldn’t you want to go help in anyway possible? If you couldn’t go help, wouldn’t you tirelessly ask around to see if you could find someone who would go? Wouldn’t you pray ceaselessly that someone would go?

People are suffering. I can go help. Why wouldn’t I?

The longer answer is a bit more complex and I am not sure I can communicate it clearly.

As I see it, God created me so that when I am in the middle of a war zone or crisis, I feel the most incredible peace and sense of purpose. It is situations like these where I sense God’s hand on my life. Don’t get me wrong here: I experience anxiety like anyone else would, but it never overwhelms the peace I experience. While I have no desire to be a martyr, I trust God knows where I am (God: “Michael, where has that Wilson wandered off to, now?”), has led me to these places, and so believe he will use my life in such situations ... however he sees fit.

I am not an adrenalin junkie. I do not go out of some craving for adventure. And, believe me, there is no glory seeking involved: anyone who thinks differently has never been in such situations for long. Very few glory-seekers last longer than a few years, as the circumstances beat such sentiments out of you. All there is is a sense of calling to Be There for people who are suffering such terrible things.

It is not so much the relief (food, medicine, fishing gear and the like) or trainings that matters to me, as wonderful and necessary as these are for people, but the ability to communicate with people: “You matter. I see you are suffering, more importantly God sees.” And when you do this, you can see in people’s eyes and in their demeanor, that this acknowledgement—this visibility—touches them deeply.

I have never spoken of this publicly but believe it was the most formative experience of my life, within this context.

Twenty-one years ago I was in the Philippines preaching my last Evangelistic Crusade. Why it was my last doesn’t matter here. I was in a village that was controlled by the communist insurgents. Each night they would send word that if I stood to speak they would shoot me on the spot.

The main pastor hosting these meetings told me to not speak. My translator resigned the first night. The mayor came and told me that he would have some local militia close by, and that, when I was shot, they would kill the man who shot me. How’s that for a word of comfort?

Yes, I was frightened. Yes, I was anxious. Yet, as I looked out at the people and saw bullet wounds, faces disfigured by brutal beatings, a man missing an arm because he refused to stop preaching, how in the world could I say, “I am here to share God’s love,” if I walked away? How could I say, “O, you guys matter, your lives matter,” and then run?

The meetings lasted four nights. Each night was pretty much the same, with one difference. The previous year I had decided to stop “preaching” and simply share, usually for around 15 minutes. Amazingly, the crowds doubled. “What? An evangelist who doesn’t preach for an hour?” And most of the time there were no altar calls: not until the last evening. Anyway, I decided that if I were brief in this situation, it would appear that I was succumbing to fear … so, while I still simply told stories (bouncing off of Christ’s parables), I did so for around 45 minutes each night.

If you have ever seen one of these crusades, when the speaker stands to deliver his message, he has around 20 or more ministers on the platform with him. Every one wants to be seen! Not this time: there was just the new translator and Monte. However, each night all the ministers from surrounding villages and towns would later gather at the little hut where I was sleeping and talk for hours about how wonderful it was that God had spared my life. It was a crack up. And believe me I needed the comic relief.

When the meetings were over, an elderly man came to me and asked if I would have coffee with him. As we sat there, he told me of his despair, of how he cried to God every night asking him if anyone knew of his sufferings, if any one cared, if God cared. “Your being here tells me God sees and cares, it also tells me the church in America sees and cares for us. I don’t want their money. All I want is to know that they know, and are praying for us. (Can you hear his need for visibility and empathy?) I have never experienced such a sense of God’s love as I have this week. Thank you for being here, thank you for seeing us, for coming to see what is going on here, and for caring. Thank the church in America. Please go back and tell them that we are standing true to the faith, even in the face of such persecution.”

I was not a famous minister. I did not have a high profile. No one there had ever heard of me. I was just a guy who cared, who went because he could. And it made all the difference in the world to these people. Someone cared. Someone came. Someone said, I see your suffering; God sees your suffering. You matter to me; you matter to God.

After 35 years of going-because-I-can, I am still amazed at how deeply it touches people to be acknowledged, for another human to demonstrate that he gets who the other person is (relatively speaking), and what is happening in their life. I think part of it is how suffering so often isolates us from God and others: does anyone see? And if they see, do they really care? Another part of it—I believe the most significant aspect—is that in acknowledging the other person’s existence and circumstances, with respect and empathy, we affirm their inalienable dignity: this is especially so with those who are being oppressed.

So--

I go because I can.

I go because my own sense of dignity and self-respect would decrease if, knowing I can go, and seeing the dignity given every human being by right of having been made in the image of God being disregarded by men who only want to oppress and abuse, I did not do what I most certainly can do: for their sake, for love’s sake, for God’s sake.

I leave March 11 for Kenya and will be gone pretty much the rest of the month. Subsequently, there probably will be no more posting here until I return.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2008