Missionary Trips
It may seem a bit crass to say that I can’t stand missionary trips, but I really feel that they are horribly wasteful. The reasons I’ve heard from people wanting to go to Africa, Asia or South America is to help the children with education and try to do something about the welfare of people in other countries. I wonder if these people realize that the US isn’t as great a country as it seems to be from the inside of your car or apartment. I have more respect for people that take time out of their day to volunteer at a local hospital or after-school program, than a person that goes to Gambia to spread the word of God and teach the people about clean water while on their spring break or summer vacation.
I’m not saying that I’m against helping a group of humans that aren’t in my crowd. I’m just saying that if you are wanting to help out a poor kid that needs the attention of someone who cares, just drive about less than 7 miles from where ever you are and spend 30 minutes with him/her. That was the main thing that I saw while tutoring in BESTT, children that just want to be noticed and receive one-on-one attention. The schools aren’t giving them that, the schools are doing nothing more than shuttling the children from grade to grade only focusing on getting the child to score better than the previous year on some standardized test.
On the healthcare issue, a good percentage of the country isn’t insured and there are deaths due to that fact. Sure it would be nice to know that no more children in the world are starving or dying of dysentery, but they are just casualties of bad management. They are living in an environment that cannot support more children. That happens. People Die. It’s not a very nice thing to think, but children die, and will continue to die. I can’t think of any solution other than letting the population go back down a little, and even then that’s a sticky idea to present.
I agrees with you that there are children in America who need (and should receive) help. However, I think that the difference in mindset is that most missionaries don’t make a distinction based on country–they just want to help out people in the world in general. Unfortunately, in the United States and other Westernized countries, there’s a lot of red tape to jump through in many cases AND the cost of living is really high when you aren’t being paid for your work (or being paid very little), so for missionaries who don’t have much money, joining a program that goes overseas can be a better option, at least to gain some experience. Most continue their missionary work at home when they’re back in the US. The bottom line is that they are doing good in the world and a lot of people aren’t!
The good that they are doing in the world can be done in the prospective missionary’s hometown. What kind of red tape is involved other than a background check? All the times that I’ve gone volunteering, I’ve just gone in, told them that I’m a college student with some free time and I got right to helping out.
Right now, I’m attending Baylor University, where going on a missionary trip is seen as a rite of passage. The way that people talk about going to Kenya is pretty similar to bragging, along the lines of “I’ve helped out poor people”. It’s like a billionaire having a $2million show letting people know that they just gave a hospital $1million. And the attitude that I’ve gotten from some people make me think that they only went on mission trips to go somewhere. When I was living in a dorm my freshman year, a guy told me, “Hey, I just came back from Mexico, and boy are your people poor and dirty.” That is the kind of people I would like to get some humility at home, rather than feigning the disguise of a humble christian.
I agree with you in regards to the hypocrisy and nonsensical nature of “missions”. There are certainly people that need help in this country. Waco is a perfect example of this.
However, children starving in the Third World are hardly just starving because they live in an environment that cannot support them. It is a matter of resource distribution, not simply too many kids. That can factor in, but much less so than you might think. A fraction of this country’s military budget could end world hunger tomorrow, and create a sustainable global economic system that could meet everyone’s needs until this planet is consumed by an expanding sun, and we wouldn’t even have to suffers a drop in our standards of living (which you correctly identify as pitiful for many). People are poor in the Third World, chiefly, because it is good business for the Industrial world to have a huge supply of cheap labor to exploit for a pittance. This stuff didn’t “just happen”, and is in no way inevitable. And places such as Africa are just skipped over entirely, with whities having already raped to resources it needed and split.
As there are no utopias that I know of there will be needy people in every community. It seems foolish to criticize someone for going to another community to help just because there are needy folks in their own community. Of course you are assuming that missionaries only do their ministry in whatever field they are working in, but that is not the case. No matter where you are you are who you are and if it is in your nature to help those who need help you will do it.
It is time we broaden our definitions.