"'Fifteen thousand Africans are dying each day of preventable, treatable diseases--AIDS, malaria, TB--for lack of drugs that we take for granted.
This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening to Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern and questions our commitment to the whole concept. Because if we're honest, there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not North America or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives--African lives--are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth.'"
I'm not sure that I have ever felt more challenged\gulity\angry all at once. I love Bono's boldness in this quote, and I've read it before, but when I came across it in a book I was reading tonight it struck me differently. The sentence that strikes me the most was "Deep down, if we really accept that their lives--African lives-- are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out." This is so much bigger than even the continent of Africa.
How do we view our neighbors? How do we determine who we want to befriend? Why do we choose to show love to only some people? I think we fail to find value in the lives of people who are outcasts of our society and people who seem to be far removed from our self-centered world views. I think this reigns true of how we view people living in extreme poverty or even as simple as people we proudly consider ourselves more intelligent than. How are we effectively using all that we have been given?
I don't have any solutions or answers, but I feel called/challenged with passion to make a difference. I'm not sure what this will look like, but I'm making it a point to seek out ways I can value people in a completely different way.
I want to live life differently and learn what it means to truly, completely love people. I think in this we find our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity to change or remedy the atrocities of this world. I don't think God intended for there to be poverty, inequalities, or an ever widening gap between the richest and the poorest of the world, but in these things we are able to live out His love and have an impact.
