April 5, 1999
Dear Friends and Family,
During the first week of February Phileena and I were traveling from Romania to India. Our routing took us through Munich, Germany. As we went through immigrations at the Munich airport, the immigrations officer took my passport and starting flipping through its pages. He called another man over and handed my passport to him. The second official also started examining the passport. When they were done searching through the passport, they put the German entry stamp in the document, handed it back to me, and said, “You have seen the world“.
That phrase stuck with me.
Phileena and I proceeded to spend the rest of that night trying to sleep – first in the Munich airport, then in the Frankfurt airport – as we waited for our morning flight to India. I couldn't sleep.
That phrase, “You have seen the world“, started to sink in and take a different sort of meaning than I thought was intended by the man who spoke it.
Over the years I've been able to travel in nearly 40 countries. In some ways maybe I have “seen the world“, or at least parts of it, but one thing is certain… it's not what I thought it would be.
As I reflect back on most of my travels I'm not left with an awe-struck sense of God's beautiful creation. I'm not left with an impression of how splendid the major cities of Europe are. I'm not left with an impression of the rich history and cultures of Asia. I'm not left with festive memories of the lively Central and South American cultures. I'm not left with an impression of wonder about the African tribal way of life.
As I reflect back on my travels I'm left with a sense of grief and pain.
My travels have brought me to the disfigured, underpriveledged, vulnerable, uneducated, marginalized, and oppressed peoples of the world.
I've traveled into the sewers with the street children in Romania, to the child-labor and sweat shops of Egypt, the leper colonies of India, the brothels of Kenya, the Palestinian refugee camps of Israel and Jordan, the prisons of Uganda, the opium dens of Hong Kong, and the red-light districts of Thailand and Peru.
Everywhere I go it's the same. I've “seen the world” and the only thing that's mysterious about it is the injustice that the Church seems to overlook.
It's our fault – it's my fault. The culture of the Western world with its mis-directed values and pursuits of financial stability, higher education, post-modernism, tolerance, feminism, materialism, and a culture of lust only contribute to the problems. Here in North America we are guilty of living above our means- so many are in debt and so many live on credit. We feel we need to indulge in the latest from the fashion, technology, and entertainment industries… hoping that these distractions will make us feel better about ourselves while blocking out the guilt as we try to ignore the cries of the poor of this world.
Justice seems to be a word only used in our vocabulary when our personal rights are infringed upon. Rarely do we concern ourselves with Justice for others. The Scriptures tell us that “Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it fully” (Prov. 28:5) and “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern (Prov. 29:7).
In light of the Word of God I'm afraid some of us might need to re-think what we understand “righteousness” to be.
Even today we're outraged at the “injustice” of the 3 American servicemen held as prisoners in Serbia… but what about the thousands who have been displaced in the Balkans? What about the thousands – no millions – of those held in captivity to the cruel master of poverty? Where is the Justice in that? Where is our concern and outrage at such an unjust reality?
Yes, I have “seen the world” and I am concerned. Concerned about the viability of the message of a Church who takes no thought or care about Justice.
I have seen the world and the only thing mysterious about it is that we can allow the suffering to continue without it affecting our faith, our lives, our prayers, our spending, and our vocations.
Please pray for those who suffer at the hands of injustice today. Please pray that God would show us in what ways we may be contributing to this global disparity. Please pray for Phileena and myself as we struggled to truly understand justice allowing God to cultivate His heart for justice in us.
We need your prayers,
Chris Heuertz