There were plenty of things interesting about President Obama’s trip to Africa last week. A black man standing in the place where people were once kidnapped from their tribal homes because of the color of their skin. A black President of a country that once held quite a bit of stock in the business of the buying and selling of those kidnapped people. Or when Obama spent time on the island where his hero, Mandela spent decades of his life fighting in shackles for the kind of equality in his own country that would eventually lead to his election as a global leader. 

Interwoven into those two stories, the subplot of Obama’s time in Africa was a new perspective on how best to help the continent of Africa in the coming years. In his speech to a crowd in Cape Town Obama shared his hope that the U.S. would seek the kind of "partnership that empowers Africans to access greater opportunity in their own lives." If those words failed to be clear enough, Obama continued, "Ultimately I believe Africans should make up their own minds about what serves African interests."

This language of “empowerment” is a healthy turn for American policy, particularly as it relates to historical U.S.  relationships with the poor in the global south. What Obama’s speech alluded to was putting an end to the kind of “charity” that can oftentimes become crippling for those who receive it.  

It brought to mind for me the work of Robert D. Lupton, founder of FCS Urban Ministries (Focused Community Strategies) in Atlanta, the voice of the Urban Perspectives newsletter, and the author of Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life. For 40 years Lupton has served on the frontlines of urban ministry activism and has seen more than his fair share of “charity-gone-awry.” In his book Toxic Charity he writes, 

“In the United States there is a growing scandal that we refuse to see and actually actively perpetuate. What Americans avoid facing is that while we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or actually harms the people it is targeted to help.”

Speaking specifically of the Africa which Obama recently visited, he adds statistical data to our President’s anecdotal evidence of the damage of hand-outs. 

“In the last 50 years the continent [of Africa] has received 1 Trillion in benevolent aid. How effective has this aid been? Country by country, Africans are far worse off today than they were a half-century ago. Overall per-capita income is lower today than in the 1970’s. Over half of Africa’s population of 700 million lives on less than $1 a day. Life expectancy has stagnated, and adult literacy has plummeted below pre-1980 levels.”

This is not “God helps those who help themselves” theology. It is not a call for dis-compassionate individualism, or support for survival of the fittest. What lies behind the statements of Obama and Lupton is a fundamental understanding that whenever we do that which someone is able to do for themselves we rob them of their dignity and humanity. Again Lupton observes:

“For all our efforts to eliminate poverty- our entitlements, our programs, our charities- we have succeeding only in creating a permanent underclass, dismantling their family structures, and eroding their ethic of work. And our poor continue to become poorer.”          

Perhaps most sinister of all is that our primary motivation for doing so, even as Christians, is to feel better about ourselves, or to improve our standing with God. Subconsciously, many of us are thankful the poor don’t ever seem to disappear because we need someone to serve in order that we may continue to justify ourselves. Admittedly, this is a hard word to hear, and it causes me to reevaluate exactly why I do what I do, and for whom. Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with these issues deeply in his WWII Germany. Watching the suffering of billions he concluded in the end that it would not do to simply tend to the effects of injustice when he could spend himself, literally spend his own life, fighting against its causes. It is my prayer that his convictions might become my own, and those of the Church.    

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I grew up in a small town near the seacoast of New Hampshire. It was the kind of town you might expect to see on a postcard bursting with fall colors, dry-staked stone walls and one room schoolhouses; the stuff of Robert Frost poems and Martha Stewart magazines. My home life in that town, however, was not always a like a postcard. My parents divorced when I was young and I grew up with a distant stepfather and a biological father who was often too busy battling his own demons to make sufficient time for his two sons. Years later I can say with certainty that my parents loved me, and that they, truly, did the best that they could. I am, after all, exactly who I am today because of them, and I wouldn’t change a thing about my past. But that is not to say that I don’t have very intentional plans to change my future.

When I married a beautiful Southern Belle named Carrie, our college pastor once shared with me that he sensed God was calling me to “break the sin cycles” of my family history. His words touched me in a place that had been barren for years; the place of dreaming, the place of vision, the place of hope.

And so it was when God gave us our first son, Luke,  that I remember a very specific sense of awe and confirmation that maybe God actually intended to accomplish through me what I had considered the impossible, the reversal of history and the redemption of a messy storyline.   

When God blessed us with our second son, Andrew, the feeling of grace and responsibility was overwhelming. Again, God whispered hope and blessing into our lives and an eternal sense of purpose to raise the next generation of Woodworths to be a generation of men who loved the Lord, and stayed with their wives.

Then, for a third time, my wife became pregnant. This one was not planned, not for this time in life anyway, when work, and children, and marriage, and graduate school seemed to be pushing in on every side. So it was that one morning I found myself on a long walk in the woods praying to God for guidance, and wisdom, and protection for the little one now growing in the womb of my bride. And as I rested on a nearby log the spirit of God spoke to my own spirit saying, “it will be a boy, and his name will be Zachary.” Such divine conversations were far from the norm for me.   

I shared the experience with my wife and we both agreed that in true “better-safe-than-sorry” fashion we should simply call him Zachary if he is indeed a boy.

We visited the doctor on the day of our scheduled appointment after my wife had consumed an extra measure of caffeine to ensure the little bean would move enough to give us a clear view. The ultrasound technician moved the electronics over her smooth tummy until the screen of static before us slowly cleared to reveal to us, for the first time, our child.  “It is a boy.”

The words echoed in my mind as my wife and I embraced with the clarity of God’s redemptive purposes for us, for all of us, for the magnificent way in which he graciously offered us not just one, or even two chances, but now even three times as many opportunities to bless the future of our family name, His family name.

I met each of my sons for the very first time at 20 weeks. And in that moment I heard their heartbeat for the first time, I watched them suck their fingers, and caught them responding to the sound of our voices. They had eyes, noses, feet, legs, arms, lungs and all the potential necessary to utterly transform the pictures in the family photo album of my mind.

20 weeks. That is when I met them for the first time. And while I do not wish to politicize this story, their story, I will say that to suggest that in that moment it was my wife’s “right” to have a “choice” to end their story is, arguably, one of the greatest injustices that our world has ever known.   

As the national election day in the United States draws increasingly close, I have been pondering with more frequency some words spoken by pastor-theologian-activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer. National elections almost always make me think about Bonhoeffer, whose WWII Germany has become the historical symbol of everything that can go terribly awry when patriotism gets in bed with religion. With Evangelicals classified as a substantial voting demographic, one must take a bit of pause and consider what role Christians should play in politics. Many people have written about this very topic throughout church history, and almost all of them are far more eloquent and qualified than I am. I am not attempting to write something entirely new here, but I would like to stand as a small voice amidst all the noisy politico clamor of the season and repeat some important thoughts that Bonhoeffer penned from his prison cell while he awaited his execution. He wrote: “Our church has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if that were an end in itself. It has become incapable of bringing the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and to the world. So the words we used before must lose their power, be silenced, and we can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action.” Regardless of who wins the election, the mission of the Church, the purpose of the redeemed doesn’t change. The goal of the Church was never to fight for religious freedom, create a moral society, define marriage, extend healthcare, or reduce taxes. The Church, Jesus’ bride, was rescued for one purpose – to join the Kingdom of God. To bend a knee to the true King and swear our allegiance to his reign and rule, and to spread the message of his love to the darkest corners of the world. I am not suggesting that it is unimportant to vote, but I do believe that the results of the election can never be an excuse for Christians to live faithfully in this fallen world. Jesus promises that the gates of hell can’t stop the Kingdom, never mind Republicans or Democrats. Our call as Christians isn’t swayed by unemployment rates, mortgage rates, social security, or national security. I agree with Bonhoeffer that perhaps the most important thing for the Church to do these days is pray and work for justice. Kingdoms will rise and fall. Only one will be standing into eternity. I want the Church to spend their time and energy building that one, not our own.