Recently I took place in a huge event known as Displace Me. Displace Me was an event staged by Invisible Children Inc. on April 28, 2007 to raise awareness of children suffering in Northern Uganda. It is the follow-up to the Global Night Commute, another event put on by Invisible Children on April 29, 2006.
Displace Me was a demonstration that was meant to bring attention to the war in Uganda and to get legislators to notice and take action. The emphasis of the demonstration was to travel a long distance to a host city, and spend the night in a mock displacement camp. This was done to replicate the long trip to, and the poor conditions of, the displacement camps in Northern Uganda. Among the fifteen cities participating, over 67,000 were in attendance.
It was amazing. I cannot truly describe how unbelievable it was to experience. Gathering in the Soldier Field parking lot in Chicago with over 6,000 others, my friends and I set up camp and began to build our cardboard hut. Everywhere I looked I saw groups of people working together to construct these temporary homes. Smiles on faces and laughter in the air almost made it seem as though we had forgotten why we were there in the first place. But we hadn't forgotten. We couldn't. We, along with everyone else, had gone to Chicago to raise awareness of the horrible conditions in Uganda right now as Africa's longest running civil war continues to rage on. I had bought the film Invisible Children back in the fall and was weighed down by what I had seen. I researched the war and became enthralled by it. But what could I, a 23 year old American guy, do to end the war? The Displace Me event was action and it moved us all. As we watched personal testimonies of individuals in the displacement camps and experienced the life of a displaced person as much as we could, it moved us. It broke us. We slept on the concrete. We ate rationed crackers and drank rationed water. We were uprooted and changed, if only for a day. But that day lives on in all of us now. Any person who was at Displace Me holds a personal connection to the people of Uganda and the lives being destroyed through the civil war there.
I'm a passionate person, so I get easily upset and reactionary when someone criticizes something I love and feel deeply about. Last week, this came full circle for me. I reacted out of passion and emotion and anger, when I should have reacted out of wisdom and love. A guy I knew decided he wanted to raise more awareness for the displaced people and night commuters of Uganda by setting up a screening of the film and was asking people if they were interested in watching it. I was glad he wanted to raise awareness, but I immediately became angry when I read some one's response to his request. The response went something like this: "I think it is good you want to raise awareness about the plight of the people in Uganda, but I'm not sure if Invisible Children is a Christian ministry, so I don't think we should be supporting it. We need to ask God where He wants us to use His money and if it is not in support of Christian ministries, we should not spend our money. There are people suffering everywhere and we can only do so much. What we really need to do is pray and God will take care of it. If we trust in Him, He will do it."
I got angry and I regret my response to this comment, for I mocked him lightly for saying it, but to some degree I stand by my frustration behind my comments. Now, I agree we need to pray and to trust God completely, but where does our responsibility come in? We, as Christians, are called to action, not inaction. We are called to use our gifts, our talents, our love, our money, everything we have to spread the love of God to the world. Never in the Bible does it say we should only be supportive of Christian ministries. If this is our belief, do we follow it? When you go to buy groceries, is it a Christian grocery store? When you buy clothes from the Gap, is it a Christian clothing line? When you purchase a movie, was it directed, produced, and acted in by Christians? No I think not. So why is it we find it so easy to give our money to non-Christians for menial things, but when it comes to saving lives and spreading love, we have to ask if we're giving our money to a Christian group? This seems to stand completely controversial to what Jesus did in His life. He spent time with prostitutes and tax collectors. He surrounded Himself with sinful men and rejects looking for acceptance. And He gave it to them. He accepted and loved all. Many would see this as being soft, but it was in fact His high, difficult demands that drew crowds to Him. People wanted to be challenged and to live on purpose and that is the life following Christ brought. To believe in Jesus is never enough; He demands us to follow Him. And to follow means to walk in one's footsteps, to mimic the life of the one you follow. Christ's life is the example and His example does not show concern for being cool or belonging to the right group or supporting the right cause. Instead, His example shows a life that poured out to whoever and where ever it was needed. That is what we are called to be. That is who I want to be. That is God's will for our lives. We are called to more than apathy. We are called to be revolutionaries.
