I want you to read this post below. It's a hard topic to cover and one a lot of folks don't understand and one several folks, quite frankly, do not want to address. Just know that I don't wear a cape and I am nobody's hero. It's not about me. Never has been and never will be. It's a difficult battle to fight but if anyone around here should be held up as awesome, it's Flash. He's the warrior of this family. :) But Jesus, now that guy is our real superhero!!
Thanks http://jasonjohnsonblog.com/ for the post!
Killing the Orphan Care Hero Complex
WARNING: This post will be a bit more angsty than usual. You'll understand why in a minute. I apologize in advance… :)
But this post is a bit different - it's more
of a word of caution than one of encouragement. It's born out of a great
concern that perhaps, if we're not careful, our care of orphans can
become shrouded in an evangelical hero complex that makes it more about
us than it is about them. In the end, our great works can be promoted on
the backs of the vulnerable to the detriment of making Jesus known as
the true Hero in all of this.
In light of the Gospel, our call to care for the marginalized, abused and orphaned is the joyous privilege we have to lose ourselves for their sakes because He first lost Himself for ours. We carry the burden of their plight because He first carried the unjust and undeserved weight of ours to His death. He is the Hero in all of this - we are but shadows. He is the Hero - we are but signposts.
On the Cross, Jesus dealt a decisive death blow to our hero complex leaving room for only one hero in the Gospel - and it's not us. This is our great hope, that we as the rescued ones might introduce the marginalized, oppressed and orphaned to the Rescuer. In the end, all of our efforts for them are ultimately meant to point to Him - not us.
THE IDOL OF ORPHAN CARE
Our
call to care for orphans is more about the help they need than it is
about our need to help. We cannot use orphan care as the means by which
we gain some personal sense of fulfillment, purpose or meaning. Only
Jesus can provide that for us. The last thing orphans need is us using
them to mask our own personal insecurities by burdening them with the
expectation to satisfy our self-righteous need to help someone less
fortunate. Orphan care then becomes an idol, and a service project – a
work upon which our identity is based and our self-justifying needs are
met.
Many of these kids experience horrendous atrocities and
injustices in a very short amount of time. They are not trophies for us
to put on display so people know how obedient, radical and missional we
are. The end goal of our obedience in caring for orphans is not the
display of our own obedience - it's what a child may greatly gain
through what we are called to lose - namely, ourselves. It’s about what
is best for the them, not what is glamorous or daring or risky or
evangelically sexy for us.THE RUDE REALITIES
Fostering
and adopting abused, neglected, marginalized and orphaned children is a
big deal, but it expresses itself primarily through very small, very
menial, very hidden tasks that go largely unnoticed. The rude realities
of orphan care find themselves up for 3am feedings, changing a diaper of
a baby that's not even yours for what seems to be the 100th time that
day, on the phone with case-workers, lawyers, doctors and government
departmental offices, filling out stacks of paperwork, sitting through
court hearings, driving across the city for parent visits and trying to
raise thousands of dollars to bring a child home from another country.
This is a far cry from putting our super hero capes on while parading
our multi-racial family down the hall at church or through the aisles of
the grocery store hoping people will notice how awesome we are.
Yes, orphan
care is a big deal, but its grandness is not measured by the public
fame it produces but by the private faithfulness it requires…when no one
is around to see, no one cares and there's no chance that you'll ever
earn a prize for it or be given a cape to wear because of it.JESUS, THE TRUE HERO
The hard but glorious call of the Christian life, in all arenas, is to lose yourself in order to truly find yourself in Jesus (Matthew 16:25). It's to humbly take up the cross of your own death daily so that in Jesus you may find life (Luke 9:23). The beauty of the Gospel is that Jesus never calls us to do anything that He hasn't first willingly, joyfully and perfectly done for us. His call for us to lose our lives is but a mere signpost to the great loss He endured on our behalf. His call for us to carry the cross is but a shadow of the death He joyfully embraced in our place.In light of the Gospel, our call to care for the marginalized, abused and orphaned is the joyous privilege we have to lose ourselves for their sakes because He first lost Himself for ours. We carry the burden of their plight because He first carried the unjust and undeserved weight of ours to His death. He is the Hero in all of this - we are but shadows. He is the Hero - we are but signposts.
On the Cross, Jesus dealt a decisive death blow to our hero complex leaving room for only one hero in the Gospel - and it's not us. This is our great hope, that we as the rescued ones might introduce the marginalized, oppressed and orphaned to the Rescuer. In the end, all of our efforts for them are ultimately meant to point to Him - not us.
Put the cape down and pick the Cross up. Everyone wins if Jesus is made out to be the Hero. Everyone loses if not.
