God's Call in the World

Our world is full of unintended consequences. While we pursue one goal, unexpected events transpire with different and sometimes wholly divergent results from those we sought. Global communications and trade were to create a global village in which we were all neighbors and realized the oneness of our humanity as well as the boundedness, fragility, and specialness of our world. The unintended consequence is that we have found a lot of people that we don’t want as our neighbors while at the same time finding it as easy as the click of the computer mouse or TV remote to find people just like us whom we welcome as our neighbors.

Perhaps it is a sign of my naivete that I believe that learning about the ‘other’ is a good way to overcome our fears and anxieties that the presence of the ‘other’ on our doorstep or TV set or border can provoke. To that end, I would recommend The World Guide 2005/2006: A View From the South by the Instituto del Tercer Mundo (New Internationalist; 2005, $49.95). The Third World Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to information, communication and education and based in Montevideo, Uruguay. Think of this as the World Book put together by the ‘other’. There are general articles on children, the environment, development, international agreements, and globalization. Following are articles on every country tracing its history through highlights and greater detail in recent years. Statistics on AIDS, debt, life expectancy, per capita income, under five mortality are graphically presented. Even if you don’t buy this for your home, seek it out at the library when you need information on the ‘other’. It is a treasure trove.

For those who are less textual and more graphically oriented, I would suggest Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel (Sierra Club Books; 1994, $25.00). The premise is simple: select families from around the world and take their picture with all their belongings in what would be their equivalent of a front yard. Accompanying pictures and text share the scenes from their lives. The difference between this and other photo journalism of cultures is its intimacy. These are real families sharing their possessions and their lives with us, however fleetingly, and their personalities and personal idiosyncrasies show like brushstrokes over the background canvas of their culture. It helps us ask the question, “What would I have in the picture if I had grown up in that culture?”

To put stories of the other and our desire to help those in desperate situations into narrative, my suggestion would be Philip Caputo’s Acts of Faith: A Novel (Vintage; 2005, $15.95). While I highly recommend this book, I also have to warn that I give it an ‘R’ rated for violence and sex. But how can one write about the war in Sudan without violence and how can one write about relationships lived in the immediacy of death and suffering without sex? It follows the lives of aid workers, missionaries, and aid entrepreneurs who fly the supplies for the UN and NGOs. What decision do you make when there are no good choices? Do you decide that humanitarian aid is not enough for people with no defenses against mortars, bombers and helicopter gunships? The deeper I got into the book the more riveting it became. As a sideline, this book caused me to throw my world atlas out. I knew it wasn’t good, that it devoted far too many pages to the United States (one page per state), but when it had an index entry for my home town of under 5,000 people and no entry for the Nuba Mountains, it was time for it to go.

And to put this all into a theological context, my new favorite is These Three: The Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love by Elaine A. Robinson (Pilgrim Press; 2004, $24.00). Virtue is a word with wide ranging meanings in our time. Is it something given that can be lost but never gained (mostly used regarding women) or is it a quality that can be cultivated like good manners? Robinson argues from a Protestant, scriptural perspective that these three virtues—faith, hope and love—are gifts of grace from God in Jesus in the Holy Spirit. As such they are available to all and their cultivation is part of the process of our growing in faith. Just one of the kernels of wisdom I would share with you from this book is that the word “hospitality” in the Greek of the New Testament is “philoxenias.” Somehow this wonderful bit had escaped my attention before this. The last part is the same as the first part of the word very much in our vocabulary these days, xenophobia - fear/terror of strangers. We are called by grace, however humbly, whatever the unintended consequences, to love (philo) the stranger (xenia), the other.  

David Davies is co-owner of Soul Desires bookstore in Omaha NE with his wife, the Rev. Susan Davies.