Abandoned-Orphaned

The Sum of the Parts

...In part, a portal that whisks you to exotic worlds and immerses you into the real cultures behind the curtains – the byways of life and the gritty existence of people struggling to survive against pitiful odds. Along the journey, children are found left in the wake, abandoned and orphaned by powers and principalities that seek to destroy them, to destroy communities and nations.

...In part, an exposition of the Biblical mandates of caution, judgment, justice, care and blessing regarding the "least of these." An intimate look at God’s truth and what it means for us today in the midst of millions upon millions of children that simply desire to be loved.

...In part, an acknowledgement and exploration of the mega-issues of our time and how they are all interrelated, interconnected – and addressed – through the rescue and care of parentless and discarded children. In short, a unified view of the greatest outreach opportunity of our time, an approach to shatter vicious cycles that ensnare humanity and to mobilize masses to attack the core issue of spiritual separation.

...In part, a plea to realize and engage the amazing front-line force that God has placed and mobilized for the most significant global task before us. A rebuke and encouragement to put aside personal motivations and to instead join the bride in all her radiance - to support her, cherish her and strengthen her – by "letting the little children come" to her.

...In part, a synergistic, synchronized framework of action to help bodies of believers - both near and far - to reach out in an organized holistic approach that will change the very course of history...by changing the children’s lives that will immediately and ultimately impact it.

...In part, a consideration that the One who became incarnate in poverty, thrust out immediately as a refugee, and adopted in love and obedience, would use such as these for the completion of the wondrous commission we have been given.

...In part, a treatise that puts forth the absurd idea that we, in affluence, need those, in physical and spiritual depravity, for our own sanctification...that the orphan, widow and stranger are indeed precious gifts to us.

The sum of the parts?

A literary adventure that I’m presently embarking on: a book that reflects upon my exposure to over two-hundred care contexts for the fatherless in over sixty developing-world nations; a book that draws upon lessons learned in leading a ministry that has helped to provide five hundred homes to orphaned and abandoned children; a book of transparent admission of the many mistakes along the way; a book to inform, engage and mobilize for the most powerful world evangelization and church growth strategy of our generation.

Stay tuned!

Turkey Posts

My trip through Turkey has had me staying in some rather 'earthy' places, from the basement of a 100 year-old church to cheap hotels that make most missionary guest houses look like five-star luxury accommodations.

I’ve also had an extremely packed schedule, involving early mornings, late nights and 1,491 miles of travel in a compact car during a three day period.

Needless to say, I haven’t had much Internet availability or computer time along the way.

I’m presently back in Istanbul after various meetings, the chance to preach at two church services (Russian and Turkish), and – bonus - the opportunity to see all seven cities of the churches of Revelation, plus Colossae, Hierapolis and other cities of Biblical significance.

I have some amazing stories to share – stories of wonderful historical encounters; stories of trafficked girls finding redemption; stories of near-death experiences; stories of churches waking up to the call to care for the orphan and widow.

...But I’ll simply have to share them with you later.

Thanks for your prayers!

Continuum of Care (mistakes of the past)

We in the West have done a great disservice to Christian ministries and pastors in the developing world.

Through many decades of missionary involvement, and an underlying history of imperialism and associated colonial rule, we have trained indigenous Christian leaders to believe that large orphanages are the clear solution to the burgeoning numbers of orphaned and abandoned children in their societies.

Multiple generations have now witnessed the model where hundreds of kids are crammed into large melancholy buildings that hold them for a time, only to churn them out unprepared into an unfamiliar world.

For most indigenous pastors, they now don’t know any different. They have grown up thinking that this approach is the approach. Unfortunately, they’ve also seen that it’s the approach associated with the greatest influx of western funding.

Even worse, so many of these institutions have been set up and run by foreign para-church organizations from the developed world, that many indigenous pastors have now shunned the responsibility altogether. They simply wait for westerners to build and oversee orphanages in their communities.

World Orphans is committed to great care in assessing the cultures it works in. Where culture is not contrary to the Gospel and teachings of Christ, we want to complement it, not replace, destroy or minimize it. After all, this is part of God’s beautiful mosaic and how He is most gloried – through a diversity of ethnic groups, languages and customs coming to together in unified worship.

As far as rescued children are concerned, their culturally-relevant teaching and socialization obviously falls squarely upon the shoulders of those who are part of the culture. We want to honor the forms and functions accordingly.

There is indeed a place for us (and it is incumbent upon us) in the West to share new knowledge about health and nutrition, helpful technologies, trauma counseling and psychological strengthening, spiritual development approaches, and discipleship methods in general, but we are not to impress our cultural preferences on others unless it’s part of a process of destroying indigenous cultural elements that are not honoring to God, according to His nature and word.

We do now have another responsibility, though. There exist many instances where we have to break what is now accepted by others cultures - and deeply ingrained within them - that are the result of our faulty involvements in the past. We have to retract the assimilated elements that we originally inserted in error.

This includes the acceptance and proliferation of institutional orphanages.

Institutional orphanages were very rarely a construct of the developing-world cultures we now engage. More often than not, this model was an export of developed-world societies during the industrial revolution and age of colonialism. We have therefore replaced "it’s takes a village" scenarios with "it takes the Westerners" or "it takes institutions."

It’s a wrong that we now have to right. We have to use or withhold funding for the opposite intent and purpose - to help pastors identify other points of entry and involvement in the full continuum of care for children.

This concludes the series of Continuum of Care entries that I wrote last year in Burundi. The Continuum of Care posts that follow contain material that has been written since that time.

Continuum of Care (silos and islands)

I keep thinking of those sheets of paper on the wall. Each representing what a specific Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) is committed to, the only fields where they desire to put their stakes into the ground.

Each a visible reminder of the limitations of visions, mission statements and strategies.

Each a horrible directing and channeling ofministry to meet organizational slants and objectives.

You see, the front line of ministry here in Burundi, and elsewhere in the developing world, is typically very malleable. A wholesale lack of resources means that impressionable funding recipients acquiesce easily to the forms and functions imposed upon them by western benefactors.

Pliable indigenous churches brought into compliance to others’ visions because that’s where the money is?

Christians being "one in heart and mind, sharing everything they have with each other" wasn’t supposed to take such an ugly turn.

It happens in sister-church relationships, para-church partnerships, and mission agency joint initiatives. It occurs with long-term missionaries, short-term teams and everything in between: Western visions imposed on indigenous partners, or projects initiated simply based on the category of funding available.

For the purpose of our discussion here, we’ll focus on the indigenous church as the recipient of training and resources and the actual implementer of the ministry. After all, that’s way that it’s supposed to be.

But if that indigenous church is unhealthily swayed to tailor its programs according to where the preponderance of funding is, or based on what a current or potential western partner is willing to fund, we have a problem, a serious problem.

Obviously my specific area of interest is orphaned and abandoned children, so let’s use them as the example.

A church the Golden Triangle region of Thailand wants to address the growing orphan population in its vicinity. It is introduced by a friend of the ministry to a NGO that provides funding for the building of orphanages. In order to participate in the opportunity afforded by the introduction, and to tap the potential resources that can obviously come with it, the church decides to put together a proposal to build a large orphanage on the hinterlands of town. The NGO, happy to have a project that meets with its funding criteria, subsequently approves and invests in the project, providing $200,000 for full infrastructure and start-up needs. On opening day, the orphanage takes in over 100 children.

Too bad that a fraction of that $200,000 investment could have kept all 100 of those children with close relatives while providing direct ministry opportunities into those same families as part of a church-sponsored home visitation and assistance program.

Meanwhile, a church in sub-Sahara Africa decides that it has to do something about orphans who are left with no extended family options to provide residence and care. Through a visiting short-term team, the church becomes aware of a para-church organization that funds foster care programs that enable the placement of children into community families. One of the short-term participants, who has a friend in the para-church organization, tells the church that she’d be happy to make a recommendation.

Soon, the arrangement comes to fruition. The indigenous African church receives funding for the sole purpose of seeing orphans placed into community families.

Families, motivated by the financial reward and the opportunity to have a domestic servant, sign up to participate. As a result, dozens and dozens of healthy children are provided to them, along with sizable monthly checks.

Seem implausible?

It happens each and every day...in a variety of geographical locations and cultural contexts.

Most ministries champion and protect a limited scope of engagement, often an expertise that they deem to be the best - and only - solution. They only fund according to a narrow spectrum of options and, in most cases, fund one thing and only one thing.

This is tremendously damaging to a continuum of care options and often causes one of the least effective options to be employed.

Lives are destroyed. Money is wasted.

As my good friend and colleague, Mike Vinson, frequently says, "Most ministries are silos," independently-operating organizations that are totally disconnected to or disinterested in alternatives, especially if those alternatives require the involvement or credit of other organizations.

We can’t have non-integrated, islands-unto-themselves, lone ranger approaches that don’t take into account a plethora of other good solutions...better solutions.

Funding should never be used to limit those options. Everything has to be evaluated according to the continuum of care possibilities for each church, each community, each child...using God’s ultimate instrument of ministry that He has set in place, the local church.

Continuum of Care (enablement/intake)

Let’s face the facts. Many orphanages have been started with children that have existing or remaining family.

Part of a dinnertime conversation here in Burundi concerned this reality.

In Africa, there is a broad cultural acceptance of having other people raise your children for you. It’s not uncommon for a parent to ask a more well-to-do friend to take in their child so that child might have better opportunities in life. Some of this is related to the "it takes a village to raise a child" mindset and part of it is just based on pure economics, especially in situations of polygamous marriages where dozens of children are involved.

One of the organizational workers that joined us for dinner explained how a friend of hers was brought up in an orphanage. Family and extended family were either nowhere to be found or inadequate attempts were made to find them. The child was alone and subsequently raised by the institution. She beat the odds and ended up doing quite well for herself. She became a nurse. She married a doctor.

It was at that point that family came out of the woodwork and introduced themselves to her. Her new-found professional and economic success was, no doubt, a significant draw.

It was evident that she was being watched from afar. Family that didn’t want the responsibility of raising her were tracking her life’s developments, perhaps out of curiosity and love, perhaps for opportunities of future personal gain.

Yes, this child was indeed unwanted and abandoned for whatever reason. But could there have been better intake procedures to identify her true origins and the existence of family? Could there have been ministry opportunities into that shallow or overburdened family that could have changed the whole dynamic and situational analysis?

A major ministry once established and ran multiple orphanages in East Asia. The president of this ministry recently shared with us how they eventually had to make the decision to shut down the orphanages and follow a new ministry model that was not based on institutionalization. On the day the facilities were being closed, relatives literally lined up to pick up the children, pick up the ‘orphans.’

In India, we have visited many orphan homes where there were a large number of ‘needy’ children being housed with the orphans. Well, as you can imagine, many, if not most of the children of India could be classified as disadvantaged or needy. Where does one draw the line?

The line should be drawn at orphaned or endangerment status. Period.

Any type of group residential care program, regardless of whether it is an institutional orphanage or family-style home, should never, never, never (did I emphasize that enough?) enable families to give up their children for others to care for. That is simply unacceptable. The child needs to be with their family, even if that family is struggling greatly.

As with most things there are exceptions, of course. If the family is truly abandoning the child, selling the child, abusing the child, or planning to kill the child...those situations take special consideration. The child needs to be removed while that family is being ministered to. The goal would ultimately be reconciliation and reunification, brought about through the Gospel and much counseling.

But if the family just wants to have others take the burden of raising the child, or feels that others could do it better, that is simply not acceptable under any circumstance. That family should also be ministered to and supported. But their child should always remain with them.

Institutional orphanages are indeed part of the problem and actually help to perpetuate the problem. The very existence of an institution in a community can create orphans, create abandoned children. It’s too big of a temptation. It becomes an easy ‘drop-off’ point for families that are struggling to raise their children or want better opportunities for them. In addition, as those children grow up without healthy family role models, they end up abandoning their own children. Orphanages can create, perpetuate and increase the numbers of abandoned children over generations. They can destroy communities and nations.

Residential care should never enable abandonment!

Related to this, where there is a need for residential care, there’s usually gross problems regarding intake procedures.

Churches know the families and kids in their communities. They are much better positioned and equipped than the government, NGO’s, or established institutional orphanages to assess the needs of children and to know the specific situations concerning their status, abuse or abandonment. They know who the true orphans are. They minister to the dying families and know the children before they hit the streets. They know if extended family options exist or not. Their very work and involvement in the surrounding community is the intake assessment procedure!

Since the funding of institutional orphanages is often based on the number of children they care for, there is an inherent conflict of interest involved. Even above-the-board orphanage directors are less than motivated to make sure a child is a true orphan, and they are certainly not inclined to try to keep children in families or return the children to them. They need to keep the child numbers up in order to keep income up.

Yes, churches can abuse the system also, most notably when they receive funding for children from the West. Narrowly-focused, poorly-run child sponsorship programs create these potential problems where funding is directly related to the number of children involved. Such sponsorship programs should be left to the experts (i.e. Compassion International and other dedicated sponsorship ministries) who have significant, multi-tiered, in-field accountability structures.

Provided that poor sponsorship programs aren’t in the mix, the church is clearly the better assessment and intake mechanism because they are involved in activities spanning the full continuum of care, most notably orphaning prevention and delay programs. In addition, their heart is for the community they serve, not for filling up buildings with children. They take a more integrated approach that involves multiple options.

They don’t enable abandonment.

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

A Sense of Urgency

Our fourth stop to view church-based school programs being conducted amongst the ethnic Vietnamese living on the waterways in Cambodia, took us across the Mekong from the capital city of Phnom Penh. Here, set in the current against a small chiseled cliff on the opposite bank, sits a small community of boats and barges within eyeshot of the metropolis that preys upon its children.

As I was sharing and praying with the young students, two of our group spoke with the teachers. When asked how often children in the community are sold to traffickers, the response was an affirmation of steady frequency. The teachers then pointed out the two oldest girls in the classroom, aged 12 or 13, and stated that, "If they don’t get jobs and provide income for their families soon, they will probably be sold."

These same girls smiling for my camera lens in a school setting could very soon be forced to pose for pornographic photos as men repeatedly take advantage of them, up to twenty times per day.

Our minds went into action. The need for sound research and approach collided with an immediate sense of urgency. This is typically the case with such scenarios. One has to figure out the right culturally-relevant strategy and implementation steps through the local indigenous churches, but also acknowledge that, as each day passes, more and more children are placed in imminent danger. (Please view my related, ‘Green Lights’ post regarding this delicate balance.)

And so this is my promise:

We’re quickly going to assess trade-skill development programs that also provide immediate income opportunities for these older children as an alternative to being sold into prostitution. These programs will include capital equipment needs and micro-finance initiatives to then place fully-trained girls into positions of self-sustainability. As we evaluate the market opportunities for the goods these girls can produce, we will also open up western markets to them through inventive Internet-based tools.

After all, World Orphans not only seeks to respond to orphaning and abandonment, but prevent them.

........................................................................................

If you are interested in contributing to this pilot program that will be executed using trusted, experienced partners, please send donations to World Orphans and write "Child Sex-Trade Prevention" in the memo line of your check.

World Orphans
1840 Woodmoor Dr., Suite 100
Monument, CO 80132
1-888-ORPHANS
719-487-1700

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant.

A Game of Thirds

After we rumbled down the dirt road and past the wooden houses on stilts at the shoreline, we came to an opening, a dock of sorts. There, we walked over deeply-cracked mud and boarded a longboat that would take us to the other side of the slow-moving Mekong.

Barges with homes built upon them were anchored close to the shore; just a few feet away from Cambodian soil, but a whole culture apart. Different language and customs. Common problems.

The motor’s rhythm was labored and irregular, but it was enough to propel us by this first cluster of refugees and illegal immigrants and across the dirty expanse to the opposite bank. There, we docked at a floating church that was running a school for children, many of them orphaned or abandoned.

Current estimates of the Vietnamese community in Cambodia range from 100,000 to over 2 million. Citizens of neither Cambodia nor Vietnam, many live on the lakes and rivers in flotillas, waterborne villages huddled together for protection and community.

We boarded the church where thirty or so children were diligently studying at rows of desks as part of a program funded by our hosts. The gentle rocking of the mobile vessel spoke of the villagers’ precarious position, caught in a land of prejudice, discrimination and persecution, but unwelcome back in the socialist land of their heritage lest they spark a counter-revolution.

To be Vietnamese in Cambodia, especially as one engaged in subsistence life on the lake or river, is to be a ‘yuon,’ a person regarded by most Cambodians as ‘lower than scum.’ Widely resented, these poor fishermen are frequent targets of political power plays and hate crimes. Various purges and sporadic attacks have brought death to them and their families, including the massacre of children in a floating video game parlor. Viewed as intruders, stealers of fish, and polluters of waterways, they are unwelcome guests in a culture where many seek to eradicate or expel them.

Lack of citizenship privileges, restricted access to basic education, social exclusion, illiteracy, limited trade skill opportunities, strong obligations to paying family debt, and extreme poverty all work together to attract the wolves. It’s no wonder that the children of these displaced Vietnamese communities are constantly preyed upon by traffickers.

The net result is a horrible game of thirds...

Over one-third of the 60,000 to 100,000 full and part-time prostitutes in Cambodia are under 18 and most are Vietnamese girls, many stolen or hoaxed into sexual slavery. The impoverished Vietnamese boat people are so desperate for income that one third of the families have willingly sold a child to sex traffickers in order to survive. Another one third has seriously considered doing so.

I scanned the children in rows before me and looked at every third child.

How many of them might be sold?

If not for this church-based education program, how many of them would already be in brothels by now?

Migration

To be in Ho Chi Minh City is to be in the middle of an ant nest swarming with mopeds and motorcycles. People dart on two wheels from every direction, seemingly without order. Larger vehicles push their way through the mayhem, much like lions on the chase splitting herds of stampeding wildebeest. I was amazed by their lack of concern for the ‘small guy’ as they plummeted into busy thoroughfares without hesitancy or caution.

Victims are common. The Saigon Times reported matter-of-factly that, last week alone, there were 185 traffic fatalities in the country. If that statistic bears out as an average, it equates to almost ten thousand deaths per year on Vietnamese roads.

As Vietnam enjoys an economic boom its citizens trade in their pedal-powered bicycles for motorized versions. Wealth is still limited, though, and families will often share one set of wheels. It is not uncommon to see three, or even four or five, members of a family stacked like dominoes onto one moped. Little ones are held in mommy’s arms or crunched up against the handlebars in front of daddy.

Given this scenario, bad accidents can take out whole families or, as parents presumably protect their children during collision or ground impact, they sacrifice themselves in their stead.

Billboards extol the dangers of multi-thousand-pound vehicles colliding with their lesser counterparts. But who heeds such signs when you’re simply going about your way in a system of semi-organized chaos?

We saw the aftermath of two motorcycle accidents as we went to and from a location up country to visit orphans. I wondered, as the lions pluck off the inattentive, dazed or confused, how many accident orphans are left as a result?

Our vehicle and others simply skirted around the accident scenes, un-phased by their occurrence or consequences. Just another casualty in the daily migration, collateral damage in a society trying to further itself on the world’s stage.

Our host told us that the greatest fear of these motorcycle riders is to crash and survive, only to be run over by another vehicle. I could see the risk. The crowded surge leaves little room for a delay in response reflexes.

...And so we are left with yet another analogy for our dog-eat-dog world where the crowd moves forward at the cost of the individual, where the errant or slow wildebeest is felled by the predators.

Stand and Fall

"If Cu Chi stands, Saigon falls."

These are the words of an American general during the Vietnam War, as told to us by our guide into the land adorned by a jungle canopy above and a jungle of tunnels below. Above ground, amongst the dense foliage and thick humidity, bamboo vipers and cobras dropped and slithered while huge scorpions scampered alongside them. Below ground, over two hundred miles of snakelike warrens were swarming with thousands of Vietcong guerrillas perched to strike. Venomous bunkers and booby traps occupied both realms.

Camouflaged pits hid lurking metal spears poised to impale an unsuspecting soldier. One permutation included spikes on parallel rollers that would pierce bodies on the way down and prevent extrication without further injury. Similarly, a leg trap held a twelve-inch upright spike to penetrate through boot and bone, while four other barbs set at 45-degree downward angles ensured that the retraction of the foot meant ensnaring the calf. These despicable contraptions were designed to immobilize and terrify.

The goal of the enemy was to injure and maim, not necessarily kill. "The Americans would take two people to care for one," we were told. An injured soldier meant that three were effectively kept off of the battlefield. The dread of these devices meant those remaining in the fight would be trapped by fear, scared into inaction.

Isn’t this how our chief enemy operates also? He burrows under what we hold dear and cherish. He tunnels through the foundations of God’s best for us. He tries to keep us, and others tending to us, out of combat. While we are so busy patching each other up, he acts at will in the world, bankrupting the morality of societies and stealing the childhoods of innocents.

We should recognize it for what it is. Yes, we are to care and nurture our own, but with an extreme sense of urgency to get them, and us, back into the greater battle. The goal isn’t just ‘whole’ people; it’s whole soldiers.

After all...

If distractions stand, opportunities fall.

If traps stand, possibilities fall.