Can man save himself? As a first-hand observer of a developing country, I’m given evidence each day that man alone has no hope of saving himself. In his book State of Africa, Martin Meredith points out that in the first 50 years of independence on the continent of Africa, over 500 billion dollars has been given to support the fledgling countries. But as Meredith chronicles the histories of those countries, he highlights the reversal of fortune in the majority even with generous outside support. Uganda is a hotbed of international NGO activity due to its relative stability and security in comparison with a few of its neighbors. Each organization has its own category of aid. Some are focused on health care, others on infrastructure, some on education, others on alleviating poverty and so forth. Truthfully, there are needs in each one of those categories. But studying relief organizations reveals an astonishing fact. We deliberately shy away from the question that is basic to solving any problem we encounter. When your vehicle begins making a strange knocking sound and you take it to a mechanic what does the mechanic do? When you visit the clinic and present yourself to your doctor with a runny nose, high fever, and swollen glands, what does your doctor do? They ask the why question. What is the cause of this knocking sound? Why does this person have a fever and congestion? Only when they’ve satisfied themselves with the answer, will they decide on a course of action. Most relief programs ignore this question. Why would they do that? Because the answer has serious implications for people, implications that most would rather not deal with. We treat HIV with ARV injections to protect the immune system. We build orphanages to care for orphans. We support education projects to alleviate poverty, but without asking the all-important question, why do these things exist? The way aid is given is essentially like your mechanic responding to your engine sound by saying, “we will increase the capacity of the muffler so that the sound gets quieter.” Can that solve the problem? I am undergoing treatment for my 12th bout of malaria, since first coming to Uganda in 2012. Malaria is an interesting illness. It is caused by a parasite. The parasites invade and multiply for a number of days before you begin to have any symptoms to alert you that something is wrong. Typically, a patient will present with fever, vomiting or dysentery, terrible body aches, headache, and loss of appetite. A doctor can treat each of those symptoms individually, and sometimes I’ve made the mistake of taking pain relievers instead of immediately being tested. The pain relievers make you feel better, so you begin to live life normally again. Soon after however, you are struck with serious consequences for your delay in proper treatment. Poverty, HIV, high crime rates, promiscuity, child-abandonment, and the others I mentioned, are symptoms. They are evidence of a cause. But here’s the ugly word that no one likes to mention, and the reason aid organizations continue to pour money onto a fire that only continues to blaze stronger, sin. Sin is the cause of each of these symptoms. Let me prove it to you. Committing a sin means you have fallen short of a standard set by God. What is God’s standard for us to live by? Matthew 22:37 “And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it” You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” ESV
Jesus’ statement says that if you truly loved everyone more than you love yourself, you would never sin. You see love would always choose to suffer harm rather than do harm. It always places the needs of others above its own. Consider this example – I know a man who was married to a woman and both contracted HIV through promiscuous living. The man’s first wife left him, and the man married another woman. He didn’t inform his new wife of his HIV status and he gave her HIV. When asked how the man could so something so despicable, the answer was that he had fallen madly in love with his second wife. Now ask yourself, did the man love his second wife, or did he love himself? That is the issue we deal with around the world. Each of our problems stem from this common source – we love ourselves more than anyone else. That is the issue that must be dealt with for aid to become effective. It’s a comfort to me that I’m not alone in my observations. Matthew Parris, a British journalist born and raised in Africa, wrote for the London Times about this very issue. The title of his article grabs one’s attention, As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. I encourage you to read the whole article here: http://www.hopeinview.org/files/As_an_atheist_I_truly_believe_Africa_needs_God–Matthew_Parris.pdf
For my purposes, I will just quote one section from Parris’ statements –
“But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The
Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.” (emphasis added)
I appreciate the writer’s honesty as he admits his observations contradict his own worldview. It is astonishing to me that his observations wouldn’t lead to a change in his worldview. This is a person with an atheistic perspective acknowledging that the Christian rebirth is real. And another very interesting point is that Parris goes on to make a distinction of which type of Christianity creates this transformation –
“Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and insubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.”
You’ll notice that Parris has excluded Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches (and any other church with an ecclesiological hierarchy) in this group of Christian transformation. Again, it’s fascinating that an atheist notes and highlights what is so much in support of the Biblical Christian perspective. God’s Word through the prophet Ezekiel emphasized the need for this solution. “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” – Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV. It’s impossible to fulfill the standard of God while a heart of stone beats within us. We need a new nature that beats according to a different condition – the condition of love, which is God’s condition, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” 1 John 4:8 ESV. This is the aid that people need, and this should be the thrust of all Christian ministry.
We receive occasional visitors to our organization from the west. It’s always interesting to listen to their perspectives. Many have been influenced by such works as Radical by David Platt or The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. The unfortunate thing that I’ve noticed is that Christians are trending towards a perspective that aid in the areas of education, orphan care, and healthcare provide the transformation that, as Parris already pointed out, only the gospel brings.
We have had young people complete our high school program and go on to university or trade programs. Their lives give strong evidence in support of the point I’m making. The ones who really know Jesus and are serving him have come back seeking ways to support the younger students and the ministry. They tend to be stable, independent, and active in their communities. There are others who have left the program never to heard from again, or only in a financial crisis. Their input on social media tells of lives lived for themselves. These ones who have never given their lives to Christ blend back into all the negative statistics of Uganda, while those born again stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of their generation.
History speaks of it on every page. Man can’t solve his problems, because he is the source of his problems. He needs a new heart that only God can give. And God gives us that new heart through his Son – John 5:24-25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
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