This week's 'thought' comes to you from a man who is not a Christian, and does not share the evangelical faith, yet feels he must at least set the record straight in terms of pubic sentiment and often overlooked realities.
It comes from an article written by Nicholas Kristof
(an op-ed columnist for The Sunday Review
-- March 28, 2015), entitled: "A Little Respect for Dr.
Foster."Speaking as one who is looking at the faith from the outside, I thought many of you might find his perspective interesting. He does say some things that I would phrase differently (ie: in the first paragraph), yet given where he is coming from I felt his insights should be seen by many more people. Enjoy.
"One sign of a landmark shift in public attitudes: A poll last year found that Americans approved more of gays and lesbians (53 percent) than of evangelical Christians (42 percent). That’s partly because some evangelical leaders were intolerant blowhards who give faith a bad name. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson famously blamed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in part on feminists, gays and lesbians, and doctors who perform abortions. After an outcry, both men backed off.
Today, among urban Americans and Europeans, “evangelical Christian” is
sometimes a synonym for “rube” [an uneducated person usually from the
country]. In liberal circles, evangelicals constitute one of the few
groups that it’s safe to mock openly.
Yet the liberal caricature of evangelicals is incomplete and unfair. I
have little in common, politically or theologically, with evangelicals or,
while I’m at it, conservative Roman Catholics. But I've been truly awed by
those I've seen in so many remote places, combating illiteracy and warlords,
famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lord’s work as they see it, and
it is offensive to see good people derided.
Dr. Stephen Foster, the son and grandson of missionaries, works in a
rural hospital near Lubango, Angola. On a recent trip to Angola, the
country with the highest child mortality rate in the world, I came across a
rural hospital run by Dr. Stephen Foster, 65, a white-haired missionary surgeon
who has lived there for 37 years — much of that in a period when the Angolan
regime was Marxist and hostile to Christians. “We were
granted visas,” he said, “by the very people who would tell us publicly, ‘your
churches are going to disappear in 20 years,’ but privately, ‘you are the only
ones we know willing to serve in the midst of the fire.’ ”
Foster, the son and grandson of missionaries, has survived tangles with
a 6-foot cobra and angry soldiers. He has had to make do with rudimentary
supplies: Once, he said, he turned the tube for a vehicle’s windshield-washing
fluid into a catheter to drain a patient’s engorged bladder. Armed
soldiers once tried to kidnap 25 of his male nurses, and when Foster ordered
the gunmen off the property, he said, they fired Ak-47 rounds near his feet. He
held firm, and they eventually retreated without the nurses. Oh, by the way,
this is where Dr. Foster raised his family.
One son contracted polio; a daughter survived cerebral malaria; and the
family nearly starved when the area was besieged during war and Dr. Foster
insisted on sharing the family rations with 100 famished villagers. This
created family tensions at times, but today the kids speak glowingly of their
dad. “For a while, I blamed my dad and his high-risk dedication to others,”
said Rob Foster, the son with polio. “Today, I no longer feel like that; I am
no longer bitter or resentful. “If me getting polio meant that thousands
of lives were either saved or immeasurably improved by my father’s work, then
so be it.”
One of the boys in the pediatric ward when I visited was Abel José, a
10-year-old whose malnutrition reduced his resistance and led to a bone infection.
That resulted in his left femur breaking and protruding through the skin. “It’ll be
another year before he can walk again,” Dr. Foster said, but, without
treatment, the boy would likely have died. With support from the
Fistula Foundation, Dr. Foster is also repairing obstetric fistulas —
devastating childbirth injuries that leave women leaking urine or feces.
Several other evangelical Christians work as doctors and nurses at the
hospital "Centro Evangelico de Medicina do Lubango" (or CEML) along
with a vast number of Angolan Christians. The foreigners, Dr. Foster included,
receive a paltry stipend of $35,000 a year if they are married, or $17,500 a
year for those who are single.
Most evangelicals are not, of course, following such a harrowing path,
and it’s also true that there are plenty of secular doctors doing heroic work for
Doctors Without Borders or Partners in Health. But I must say that a
disproportionate share of the aid workers I’ve met in the wildest places over
the years, long after anyone sensible had evacuated, have been evangelicals,
nuns or priests.
Likewise, religious Americans donate more of their incomes to charity,
and volunteer more hours, than the nonreligious, according to polls. In the
United States and abroad, the safety net of soup kitchens, food pantries and
women’s shelters depends heavily on religious donations and volunteers.
Sure, it puzzles me that social conservatives are often personally
generous while resisting government programs for needy children, and, yes,
evangelicals should overcome any prejudice against gays and lesbians — just as
secular liberals should overcome any prejudice against committed Christians
struggling to make a difference.
So the next time you hear someone at a cocktail party mock evangelicals,
think of Dr. Foster and those like him. These are folks
who don’t so much proclaim the gospel as live it. They deserve better."
In our culture's rush to
slight Evangelicalism (which has admittedly done wrong and will continue to do
so) it has overlooked the tremendous force for good it has been throughout the
world -- schools, orphanages, clinics, feeding programs, hospitals,
agricultural programs, alcohol and drug rehab centers, rescuing people from
human sex-trafficking slavery, housing programs, and much, much more -- which
many who critique it have never lifted a finger or given a penny to
alleviate in any way.
Years ago I heard a
statistic which stated that 85% of the schools, orphanages, clinics or
hospitals in Africa were originally started by Christian missionaries and funded
Christian denominations or by their supporters.
It's food for
thought. It doesn't excuse or compensate for our flaws, but
it should balance off the criticism. Remove the influences of Evangelical
Christianity (or Christianity period) from history, and much that we
consider "good" today would simply not be
here. To paraphrase a quote shared by one brother: "Though our secular culture would never admit it, it has built a
house with lumber (ideas of goodness, virtue and justice) that it borrowed from
Christ and Christianity." He was right -- as any rightly informed person would have to concede.
James once said, "Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, so deceiving
yourselves. Do what it says." (James 1:22). The faith must involve both.
Where might you personally make a difference in this regard?
In the Service of Jesus,
Pastor Jeff
