A Look Back at Zambia 2007

When I was in college at Trinity, I was heavily exposed to the importance of social justice in the life of the Christian and the church body.  When I visited Zambia in 2007, I was exposed to a country that had huge social and economic issues.  In addition to being at the center of the AIDS crisis and a malaria epidemic, education in Zambia was not necessarily the ticket to success.  To place this comment in context, the United States is going through an economic crisis right now that for a time raised our unemployment to roughly 10%.  In Zambia 2007, only 10% of college graduates even got jobs.  There were scores of children living on the street because of necessity, or they had no parents.  The affect of aids on the culture was apparent, as the streets of Lusaka (the capital) were lined with people who were in their mid-to late 20s.  Seeing even one person who was as old as 50 was an aberration.

There are more things I could say that would describe the poor state of living within Zambia, but you get the idea.  Even so, I fell in love with Zambia.  Even amid the background of poverty, sickness, and death, the people we were with truly had joy and hope in Christ.  It was an awesome experience to worship with them on Sunday morning.  A small taste of that:

I loved seeing the ministries that worked with children, the AIDS clinics, and the hospice clinics.  I saw in a very practical sense that while the gospel that we are wretched creatures who cannot save ourselves from the judgment of God, and it is only through Christ's death and resurrection that we can have salvation through placing our faith upon him is the most important thing that could be given to the people in Zambia, there were many "felt needs" (physical needs) that needed to be addressed as well.  I couldn't help but feel a sense of compassion for them.

This was a huge week of learning, self-discovery, and reflection for me.  It was at this time that I realized that I wanted to add the component of working with the needs of people that extended beyond the preaching of the gospel.  I came away from that week wanting a better understanding of what God's Justice was, and how He wanted us to interact with society.  In Zambia, the preaching of the Gospel came with service and caring for the needs of people.  This just seemed right, and I wanted an understanding of whether this was a biblical approach, or something that just worked in Zambia because of the circumstances.

This week also threw me onto a different trajectory.  I felt totally inadequate to be involved in the realm of making a tangible difference in the social realm outside of personal contact with individuals.  The combination of wanting to learn something that would be helpful in this area and wanting to learn about justice was one of the strong factors that made me decide to pull out of seminary and was one of the significant factors in my decision to go to law school.

What have I learned?  That is a topic for another post.