Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve

This morning I heard a friend of mine talk about a recent mission trip he took to West Africa. He had had a great experience, and I'm thrilled for that, but there was something he said that I hear over and over that just irritates me. He talked about how these people live in huts made of straw and mud and sometimes cinderblocks, but despite their poverty their worship is filled with joy.

The observation doesn't bother me in the image itself, because it's a powerful one tinged with truth and beauty. What bothers me about it is that it is always such a surprise for middle-class, white Americans to find that poor people are often happier than they are.

It seems to me that we shouldn't be surprised that the hymns sung in Cameroon sound more genuine than those lifted in some American churches. I'm definitely not going to try and romanticize poverty, but it seems to have escaped our attention that we live in a society that is often toxic. We live in a culture driven by fear, in an economy built on perceived lack, in a country where happiness often requires drugs—and I'm not even talking about the illegal kind.

I am frequently troubled by the prevalence of eating disorders, depression and other forms of mental illness in those around me. I am bothered not only because the darkness in people's lives is often so complete I don't know how to penetrate it, but also because I believe that those kinds of things are encouraged by our culture. In the face of world poverty, anorexia and bulimia disturb me; a starving girl in Tanzania can't worry about her body image because she doesn't even have a choice as to whether or not she'll eat today, while an economically comfortable, intelligent Duke undergraduate has the luxury of choosing to starve themselves. Antidepressants are not for people living in war-torn regions where death and illness and trauma and hunger are plainly recognizable in the face of daily life; Zoloft is for those with the leisure time to realize how empty their lives have become.

I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of illnesses like anorexia, depression, ADD and so on—I've seen these things take hold of the lives of those very close to me; I know their power. Nor am I trying to suggest that someone should feel guilty for dieting when there are people literally dying for the food that others can choose to consume or to throw out. The guilty party is not any individual, but a consumer culture that dictates a gospel of success, inane happiness and hedonism, which should be completely foreign to the Gospel of Christ—but which, unfortunately, is not always read as such.

The thing is, I'm not in the least bit surprised that the Christians in Cameroon seem more joyful in God than the Christians in America. We are tempted daily to put our trust in wealth, good looks, success and human approval; none of these temptations are held before those who live in mud shacks. Without the distractions of an idolatrous culture, West Africans have no trouble discerning to whom they should turn in times of trouble and in times of rejoicing: it's always God. The challenges of their lives seem obvious to those of us who never want for food or shelter, but the struggles in our lives are subtle and insidious, products of a culture that tells us we can't be happy unless we have an iPhone, that we won't be able to meet people unless we drink Budweiser, that our lives are not meaningful without a Lexus to match that executive position. We need to learn to recognize cultural icons as potential idols, as alternative gods, and "choose this day whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15).