Our Calling as Christians

After previously traveling through Afganistan, Guatemala and New Orleans, I walked along a street in India. Surveying the marketplace, I was offered beautiful jewelry, bowls, and garments for very low prices while the women selling the items told us Americans about their life and how lucky we were. Two of them even informed me that they had married young, that their husbands beat them, and that they couldn't do anything about their predicaments.

I then encountered one woman who had been burned by her husband, and, because of her scars, would have to work on her own for the rest of her life. She said that her culture would never allow her lucky enough to be loved again. She saw herself as cursed, as ugly. I couldn't stand it any longer: I told her flat out that she was beautiful, that she shouldn't rely on what other people think of her, that she was continually loved in God's eyes, that he would make her whole again in heaven. After clarifying that you only go one place when you die and that there is no reincarnation, I shared more of the Gospel with her. She intently listened and asked intelligent and yearning questions about the Christian God, wanting to know Him better.

I had just spoken about Jesus when they told us to move to the next room.

Leaving my friend who I see every day in my current history class, I walked out the door from India, into the sunshine, and prepared to step into the next classroom, deemed the Netherlands.

Welcome to Global Awareness. I had just shared the love of Christ with a Christian actor playing the role of a suffering woman in India.

I didn't know what to say.

I saw her today, however, and we chatted about the experience. I told her how I felt during the experience, how I felt so weird explaining the Gospel to a Christian who was role-playing.

She looked me in the eye and said, "Out of the two days that I acted as that woman suffering, you were one of three people who witnessed to me. You did a great job. I was trying to figure out how to get more people to share with me, because that was my job."

For the second time, I didn't know what to say.

I felt like saying, "You're telling me that I, me, played the part right and did what I was supposed to do?" But then, as I thought about it, the scene really wasn't about me, and I didn't even feel it was about me at the time either.

I remember the two girls from before, offering me jewelry, telling me how their husbands beat them, but at least they have a home. Even though Global Awareness was just a stimulation, remembering that I didn't even think about sharing the love of Christ, the true hope of happiness with them, troubles me.

But what troubles me even more is the amount of students who went through the stimulation and will just walk away. "Wow, that's really depressing... hey, I really want to go the beach, go shopping, and play video games: let's go!" Everything they just experienced results into nothing. And why so many people, Biolans no less, who shook the feelings of compassion off themselves as soon as their cards were swiped and they received their conference credit? Why did so few people witness?

If I am led to anything by these thoughts, its this: no matter what a Christian does, he leaves a mark on someone. Those who merely talked with the girls who were in painful marriages and walked on by left the women feeling hopeless. They portrayed to the girls that their situations "sucked," and then walked away feeling bad for them. How does that demonstrate the mercy, the charity, the love of God? If anything, the Christians actions just told the girls that the Christian God can't help them either. They were left in despair.

What an important job we have as Christians, giving hope and love to those who feel that there is nothing more to life than the suffering they have.