Thursday this week (Dec. 1) is World AIDS Day.

While the devastation from HIV/AIDS spreads its poison and pain equally through every day of the year, it's helpful for us to devote a special day to being reminded of the scope of this pandemic, and evaluating what we are doing and what more we can do to meet the challenge.

We all are capable of sacrificial love because we're made in God's image, and if we're followers of Jesus, we can also love out of the extent that we have embraced God's amazing love for us. God's love for us begets our love for others, above and beyond "natural" human compassion.

We are motivated by compassion; or if we find that we're not, this is a prayer that God will readily answer: Lord, give me more compassion and give me concrete opportunities to serve and love people who are affected by HIV/AIDS. 

The church, while initially late to the game, is becoming increasingly involved in addressing the challenges of HIV/AIDS. In many places the church is at the very center of how communities and nations are addressing HIV/AIDS.

InterVarsity has just posted a short video about HIV/AIDS on urbana.org, watch it here. 

A conference called The Church and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic was held in February 2005, with about 450 people from around the U.S. and over a dozen other countries. You can listen to the audio of most of the presentations from the conference at this website: http://www.hivaidsconference.com. There's also a list of publications, websites, and an interactive map showing where HIV/AIDS is in the world.

There are some interesting challenges that are uniquely faced by the church as it deals with this pandemic. One is the fact that the use of condoms is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. However, the use of condoms is often associated with sexual activity outside of marriage. Many churches understandably hesitate therefore to become involved in the distribution of condoms, not wanting to condone or encourage behavior which is contrary to Biblical teaching, even though such distribution would prevent the spread of the virus and the toll it will take.

The same dynamic happens with intravenous drug users and the initiative to provide clean needles so that shared needles do not continue to spread the virus.

If someone is going to engage in a given activity anyway, and providing a low cost product (eg. condoms, needles) would prevent them from spreading a deadly disease to others, one could argue that Christians should be willing to do this even if it is a difficult place to be ethically and morally. 

One could also argue that there are reasons not to encourage morally wrong behavior. 

I can't think of situations in the gospels where Jesus engaged a parallel situation that could provide us with a clear principle for our situation today. Suggestions, anyone? (see the "comments" link below)

The closest I can think of is in John 8, when people are about to stone the woman caught in adultery (btw, where did the man end up, who presumably would have been caught at the same time?). Jesus says whoever is without sin can be the first to cast a stone, and the crowd leaves one by one. He then says to the woman, "Go now, and leave your life of sin."

He rescues her first (not after she repents), extends acceptance to her, and then instructs her to change her course.

I'm not suggesting that on its own this incident translates to a principle that Christians should hand out condoms and needles. But I know it is one piece that should inform our dialog.

Honest, open, prayerful dialog across the spectrum of Christian faith and across cultures and Christians of different economic means is essential if we are to arrive at healthy conclusions about how the church should participate in the prevention of further spread of HIV/AIDS. The church in wealthy places needs to listen to and collaborate with the church in poor places, in engaging this issue.

It is not enough to close our eyes and ears and repeat moral mantras if there are things we, the church, should also be doing to participate in effective prevention. May God be our guide and give us wisdom.

In my opinion it's also not OK to have this dialog only in the sanguine protection of church basements. We need to have this dialog in the context of and including the perspective of Christians in affected communities, family members, Christians who are HIV positive. We need to work out our faith (our theology, doctrine and ethical positions are only a subset) with fear and trembling, among and along with the people who are being devastated. Not in a safe, remote location.

And it's not as if the only solutions for prevention are condoms and needles. The church and community and government in Uganda have together reduced HIV/AIDS prevalence from 14% to almost as low as 4%, largely from encouraging abstinence outside of marriage and faithfulness within marriage.

The most realistic path in many countries that are most affected may require multiple approaches at the same time, some of which are less comfortable for Christians.

The church's response to the suffering from HIV/AIDS is a lot less complicated than issues of prevention. The scope of this suffering is vast (over 40 million living with AIDS, and many millions of orphans) but the calling of Christ on those who follow him is clear here: care for the sick, suffering, the dying, and the widows and orphans, regardless of the reason for their predicament.

If this pandemic seems a bit far removed, you might be surprised to find that there are people living with AIDS tucked away in low profile places in almost every city, and one of the beautiful opportunities is to befriend and love them, build friendships and trust, serve them in small ways, and learn from them. I want to do this in my city but I confess that I have not done so yet. It will involve time, and going out of my way.

 

Who could help but have a few reflections (no particular order) about thanks giving in a week like this?

First, let's get this out of the way: what is thanksgiving NOT about? It's not about the turkey, cranberries, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, stuffing the bird or stuffing the humans. It's not about overindulgence, football, sales the next day, or shopping days until Christmas.

Those are ingredients of the American cultural associations of this holiday season, be they wonderful or despicable or neutral. Food can certainly be a wonderful cultural expression of celebration, appreciation, friendship, and a great thing to share with others.

But here's what I think thanksgiving is really about.

Thanksgiving is a time set aside for celebration and appreciation, but it shouldn't be all that different from our mindset on MOST days of the rest of the year.

Giving thanks is a state of mind, but not passively so. It is a determined choice of attitude and gratitude for what we have received, however great or small.

Thanks giving does not require abundance, it's not based on quantity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
- Colossians 3:15-16

Thanks giving is worship: giving credit to God, which is where credit is due. God takes pleasure in worship. Worship is putting God in God's place. This is no small feat for easily distracted humans.

Thanks giving is not a duty, a prescribed code of conduct, like when parents prompt their kids, "what do you say?" to a kindness received. Thanks giving comes from a truly thankful heart (which does need training), and scripture reminds us to align our inside outlook with a view to God's kingdom on earth, and God's creative handiwork behind what we have often tainted.

In this Colossians passage, we are encouraged to first have this perspective (which grows out of the peace of Christ ruling in our hearts) and then to express it to God in worship, using the tools of knowledge, wisdom, art, music, all on a platter of "gratitude in your hearts to God."

I think that the "word of Christ" helps train thankful hearts. I think that being a stranger to God's Word -- whether written or become-flesh or living-spirit Word -- is a recipe for ungratefulness.

But unlike gratefulness, which by itself can be merely internal, giving thanks requires some communication to another party. Giving. It's not an internal thought process, or an emotion. It involves telling someone who has offered grace or mercy or love or kindness.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
- Philippians 4:6

Grabbing in prayer
at God's power
especially without gratitude
is basically greed.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
- Colossians 4:2

Thanks giving is one of the foundations of prayer, and comes easier when we are watchful for the layers, often just under the surface, where God is at work all around us.

Giving thanks is not meant to be a solo sport. Sure, we can and should give thanks individually, but one of the beauties of thanks giving is when we gather in community to express our gratitude to each other and to God. I know that not every Thanksgiving family gathering is blissful; for some, it may be more stressful than most other days of the year. But it is a chance to look for ways to express thanks that is due, opportunities that elude us most of the time.

We can choose to whom we direct our thanks. Like some of our other initiatives as humans, even our thanks giving can be misdirected. We might "thank our lucky stars." We might "thank heaven," a lazy way of implying we aren't sure we believe in God but want to cover our bases. For the extremely unsure, there's always the plural "thank heavens."

Thanks doesn't have to be personal. I don't have to be the recipient of something good to give thanks to another person or to God. Thanks giving is not about "me," it is about recognizing and appreciating the giver. Celebrating sacrificial love, extended by God or by other people created in God's image.

I think our thanks should be directed to God first and God's creation second.

Sometimes we give thanks narrowly, singling out a few things we notice and appreciate. That's understandable, but there is a lot we take for granted until it is risked or lost, or until we are reminded how many amazing gifts are woven through so many parts of our lives.

Thanksgiving is the fruit of sacrifice. That might sound a bit macabre, but look: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16)

Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, in spite of knowing what was coming, gave thanks...

And so do we, in remembrance and gratefulness for his greatest and undeserved sacrifice. 

Thanks giving acknowledges God's goodness in a world that is struggling, a statement of faith if there ever was one. It can be hard to be thankful to God if we are aware of recent reminders of the suffering, poverty, injustice, greed, hatred, intolerance, and selfishness that is far too abundant in our world.

Even CNN tones it way down for Thanksgiving Day, tilting the "happy story" ratio out of its usual kilter.

It's OK to live in tension and honestly articulate our faith struggles to God, along with our thankfulness and appreciation. Anything less would be dishonest, or maybe carelessly ignorant.

We aren't called to be bystanders either. Beyond learning and expressing thankfulness, another choice available to us is THANKS LIVING: the choice of actively living out a corporate extension of God's generosity in whatever lives and places God has put us.

Thanks be to God. No, really.

May God give you safe travels, and grateful hearts.

In Uganda, a nation plagued by a brutal war for the past 18 years, tens of thousands of children walk into towns to spend the night on the streets or in makeshift shelters. "Night commuters." They do this so they will be safer compared to staying at home, where they face the risk of abduction by rebel forces --  the girls as sex slaves or  the boys as military recruits.

An estimated twenty-thousand children have been abducted by the LRA, often forced to kill their own parents so they have nowhere to go.

In makeshift camps for children or under the shelter of business verandas, those who can try to do their homework at night so they can be ready for school the next morning. Many of these kids stay in town all week since their homes are several kilometers away, and they might see their families only once a week.

What kind of life is this for a child? Or for thousands of children? It is very hard for me to imagine myself or my kids living in a situation like this, and effectively having no recourse in sight.

Pray for God's power against the LRA, the so-called "Lord's Resistance Army." Any group that kidnaps and brutalizes children is illegitimate. And to do so in the "Lord's" name is obscene. I find myself praying for God to strike down the leaders of organizations like this. To make them sick; to remove any good things from their life; to thwart their plans; to reward their efforts with failure and frustration.

Pray against Joseph Kony, the brutal leader of the rebel army in the north. This telling profile based on interviews conducted by the Ugandan Refugee Law Project explains the apparent strategy of this man's evil.

At least some Ugandan church leaders believe that the best solution lies in talks, not primarily a military response to the rebels.

Uganda is not a nation without hope. In fact it is a model of hope throughout Africa in its aggressive and largely successful efforts to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS. These efforts reduced the prevalence rate from 15% in the early 1990's to around 4% at the end of 2003.

This troubled nation needs our prayers. Pray for the church in Uganda, as a political and influential force, but also for the body of Christ, made up of individual believers, who can on a daily basis, in the grass roots, act and speak truth to power in this place; chasing evil wherever it lingers -- usually in the heart -- so it has no place to stay.

Pray for FOCUS (Fellowship of Christian Unions) in Uganda, the student movement that has groups in over 60 of the approx. 100 colleges in the country. The largest group is around 1,000 students at Makerere University.

Pray for development NGOs who are working to enable and empower the people of Uganda to help themselves and improve their lives: food security, health care, education, employment, and a secure environment for families. All this is in the face of devastating effects of AIDS and the insecurity caused by the rebel groups.

Pray for new leadership to emerge for the nation of Uganda. After 20 years in power, President Museveni was to voluntarily step down, and elections are set for next March. But now he has changed his mind; and the leading political opponent has coincidentally been arrested for treason and rape. This looks suspicious, and it sparked off big riots in the capitol Kampala. Pray for a fair trial for him, and a fair election process leading up to March.

While there is a significant population (over 10%) of Christians in Egypt, the majority Muslim population tends to dominate over the Christian community in public life, and most Egyptian Christians face economic discrimination and are among the country's poorest citizens.

Three people died in Alexandria last month, after Muslim demonstrators attacked a church which had put on a play (two years earlier!!) that was eventually determined by someone to be offensive to Islam. Reasonable or not, it's clear that some strong religious tensions exist.

In spite of persecution and strict limitations on the church's freedom of speech or construction of new houses of worship, and although there are certainly some nominal Christians in Egypt, at least some of the church in Egypt is alive and well.

As of this week, the first Christian satellite channel in Egypt began broadcasting, established by the Coptic Christian Church.

• Pray for our brothers and sisters in Egypt as they seek to follow Christ in everyday life.
• Pray that this new satellite channel will not  exacerbate tensions between Christians and Muslim, but on the contrary, will facilitate understanding and respectful dialog.
• Pray for protection for Christians in places like Egypt where there is persecution and discrimination for simply following one's faith in Jesus.
• Pray for Egyptian leadership to wisely and effectively lead the nation in fairness and peaceful living together.
• Pray for producers and editors of the Christian programming on this new channel, for wisdom and care in making the most of the opportunity to serve the Christians who will tune in.
  

Jesus was adept at strategically using the communication vehicles of his day that were most effective. Speaking in the temple; in the town square; drawing a crowd; going to where a crowd was gathered; pushing off a little ways from shore in a boat to create a natural ampitheater.

If he were walking the earth today he'd probably make use of the internet, the cellphone, satellites, and DVDs; and I bet he'd also still push off a little ways from shore in a boat now and then, to speak directly to people, "unplugged."

The experts say the center of gravity of the church is moving from the north to the southern hemisphere; from the "developed world" to the "developing world."

This is the world God designed and developed, with a capacity for incredible innovation and prosperity, and in our sin, with a capacity also for incredible inequity, such that the gap between rich and poor ever widens. While this takes place, an increasing number of the people on this planet who follow Jesus are among the poor rather than the rich or even middle class.

For the record, I believe the gospel of prosperity is a heresy, an offensive stench in God's nostrils -- that to follow Jesus is somehow hardwired to becoming materially rich in this world. I won't spend more kilobytes on this for now.

There are thousands of passages in scripture, both testaments, that talk about God's concern for the poor and in many different ways instruct those who tune their hearts to God to be aware, concerned, and active in meeting the needs of the poor, wherever and whoever they are.

The poor: "they, them."

One of the things I have noticed in recent weeks was that many of these passages as I have come across them (not by any thorough study on my part, just to make that clear) have a feeling of being written with an assumption that the listener/reader is NOT poor, asking him or her to serve the needs of the poor -- those OTHER people, who are poor.

This struck me just recently as a point of curiosity and made me wonder if there might be a presumption in the tone of Biblical passages about the poor, that followers of Yahweh/Jesus would somehow not be poor themselves.

Just one example, in Luke 12:33... "Sell your possessions and give to the poor." These are not the instructions you would give to people who are already living in poverty. (Granted, it is only those with more than they need, not the poor, who need to hear these instructions in the first place.)

Today a large number of people who follow Jesus are among the extreme poor - living on less than $1 to $2 per day, as do more than HALF of the people living in our world today. As far as I know, most of the Christians in poverty in the world continue to live in poverty while they follow Jesus. There are exceptions, but most don't get magically plucked out of poverty.

Among those in extreme poverty who suffer and even die from hunger and malnutrition are some who follow Jesus as the central thing in their lives. While their allegiance to God may bring spiritual eyesight, eternal hope and eternal life, in reality it doesn't appear to always (or even often) alleviate the suffering that in some cases is so severe that it leads to the death of the body, for lack of basic needs like food, water, shelter, or cheap medical care.

These are people who follow the same Jesus who said in Luke 12:7, "The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

This prompts questions of God that venture into some of the deep mysteries of our faith. The questions don't nullify or negate our faith; but neither can a case can be made for evading these questions.

Sometimes along the path of thinking about difficult questions and God's mysteries, various light bulbs will go on (sorry, electricity isn't a very biblical metaphor), illuminating a part of the path, a portion of the answer.

This happened for me recently. I was in Rwanda with members of my church, visiting some World Vision projects and communities that our church is partnering with. We witnessed some powerful ways that God is at work there.

One of the things our church is doing, as we try to follow Jesus' call for us, is to help people in other communities in the world, people made in God's image, who are struggling. This is hopeful, and obedience is rewarding, but there are many communities that indefinitely await such partnerships that might help them slowly move out of poverty and daily struggle for survival.

We saw some beautiful examples of the poor serving the poor, in Jesus' name. People with very little means, and more than their fair share of hard knocks, people who by any definition are living in poverty themselves, serving others in need around them in significantly sacrificial ways.

One example is the 5 year old girl who fled with her family to the Congo during the 1994 genocide. The family was separated in the chaos; later with the help of the Red Cross, all four young children returned to their home in Rwanda. The parents never returned, and are presumed dead. So this girl and the oldest brother who was 9 years old at the time became child heads-of-household, caring for their younger siblings, finding food and shelter and raising the family.

"Sell your possessions and give to the poor" was not spoken by Jesus to children like these. But the essense of sacrificial service behind those instructions is exactly what they have done.

A few years after the 94-95 genocide, a woman with a baby visited the home of these 4 children. She left her baby in their home and disappeared. Rather than taking the baby somewhere else, these children began to care for the baby as a member of their family, and incredibly, they gave her a name which means "Gift from God." The little girl was now 4 years old when we met this family last week. Her bond to her now 15-year old "mother" was obviously strong, and her smile showed that she knows the security of a mother's love.

Word Vision was just completing construction of a new home for this family of 5, the oldest of whom is 19 years old. Some of the children are now in school.

The new home has solid walls and a good roof; 4 small rooms; a separate structure for a kitchen (so the wood fire smoke doesn't fill the house); and a separate structure for a latrine. About 500 square feet in all. No electricity or running water, but a safe home nonetheless.

Two more things sealed this story in my heart.

When we asked these children some questions, one question for the 15 year old girl (the "mom" of the family) was what her hopes for the future might be. Her answer was that she wanted to care for other orphans and vulnerable children, just as she had been herself. Her aspirations focused on the needs of others, not her self.

When it was near our time to leave, we sang a song and then asked if any of these children (many other neighborhood children had gathered by this time) would like to sing us a song. They began a song, and the translater explained that they were singing "Jesus is faithful." It was a beautiful song.

My faith in this faithful Jesus was informed and expanded by the story of these children -- children in poverty, following Jesus, serving others in poverty, and choosing that life of sacrificial service as the very dream for their future. I would not be surprised if a few years from now there is an even bigger orphanage being run out of their new home.

This small glimpse of the Kingdom of God and God's will being done, right here on earth, as it is and will be in heaven, is beautiful.

Thanks be to God.

Give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much
and disown you and say,
'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
- Proverbs 30:8-9