Contradictions

In my few travels I have seen the cardboard city of Juarez Mexico, housing over a million in shacks built of cardboard and shipping pallets, the townships (squatter camps) of South Africa where one in three is an orphan of AIDS and one in two carries this terminal disease, the red light district of Amsterdam filled with experiences that last but a moment as an attempt to remove us from reality, people living in caves in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, poor in rotting sinking homes in the Mississippi river delta, the bullet riddled, still untamed streets and mountains of Afghanistan, pilgrims bathing among dead bodies in the Ganges River of India, Hospitality from those that despise America, Andean sunsets that will take your breath away, Himalayas ignited with a touch of sunrise school children full of joy playing in dirt streets with no worries, healing in a country that has known only hatred, meals served from a place of poverty, dangerous Chai, toothless smiles, and rancid hugs. My life is one of contradiction. Do I accept it or attempt to reconcile the broken and the beautiful? I have heard it said that it is brokenness that makes the beautiful. I find this unacceptable. Christ said “I have come that you may have life and have it to the fullest” not “I have come that you will know your life is better than all the rest.” Recently I have begun to question what does life to the fullest mean? Is it spiritual or is it physical? As one with a desire to see this “life to the fullest” come to fruition I wonder what does it look like, what should I pursue? If I seek reconciliation then it must be hearts and bodies that need healing. Which comes first? For a century or more missionaries have focused on saving the souls of those in Africa. From the outside it seems a great success story. By some estimates sub-Saharan Africa is 80% Christian. At the time of the terrible genocide in Rwanda it too was considered 80% Christian. Africa is dying, from disease, war, poverty, corruption and apathy. This says to me that saving souls does not heal a land. Especially when the medication is western Christianity. This mentality is a carry over from Gnosticism. Save the soul, the physical is not important because we have heaven to look forward to. This completely separates the physical and the spiritual, which is exactly what the early Gnostics did. Healing must take place in both the spiritual and the physical. It is the way we as humans were created. To operate in both realms, not discard one for the other. If God is a god of relationship, not religion, then we must study this relationship between physical and spiritual. Christ said that taking care of widows and orphans was the one true religion. Religion based on the relationship we have with one another. Not focused on the worship of a supreme being. Religion is a system of values by which we live our life. With a system in place life becomes simple, for every occasion there is an answer. However, in a world of contradictions religion falls short. Only in relationship with a supreme being in whom the contradictions can be confronted can physical and spiritual coexist.