Yo Estoy Muy Irritado

I had an irritating drive home the other night. It wasn't because of other drivers on the road; it was because of what I heard on the radio.

I was singing along to the song being played, making a fool of myself, as usual, as people in cars next to me watched. The DJ came on in between songs to offer a tid-bit of information. This is usually the part where I begin getting irritated: sometimes it's interesting, but more often than not, it's either cheesy or irrelevant. Just play the music! If I wanted to listen to talk radio, I'd listen to talk radio! Sorry, I digress.

So, the tid-bit was about a tradition in the country of Nicaragua: during Holy Week, it is custom to have a stew made out of a certain kind of green iguana. However, because of a recent decrease in the population of the iguana and fears of it becoming an endangered species, the government put a ban on using the green iguana as a stew, and a fine would be charged to anyone caught doing so. The fine is $5.50.

The radio personality ended the story with this: "What kind of deterrent is that?!"

Okay...I don't know a ton about the country of Nicaragua, but I did know two things at the time: 1)It is in Central America
2) It is a Third-World Country
Ergo, $5.50 is QUITE the deterrent!!

Maybe in America, in our lavish lives, this isn't a deterrent. But to those in Nicaragua, and many other countries around the world, $5.50 might be all a family sees in a MONTH!

No wonder people in other countries aren't fond of us.

What also really got me is the fact that I was listening to a Christian radio station. You'd think there would be a little more sensitivity to such things on a CHRISTIAN station, but there wasn't. Oh, so irritated was I.

It was especially irritating because, as previously mentioned, I had just come from small group. During this time, one of the guys was talking about his mission trip to Mexico that he'd just taken and how little they had. That brought to mind my mission trip to Cuba in '02. The people there had so little, and in some many ways it was one of the saddest places I had ever seen, but they gave so much to us, who were just visitors, and had so much joy in their lives because they had the Lord. I have so much, yet I don't think I focus on the joy I have in my salvation in Christ nearly as much as they do.

The point of this rant is that the importance of being a World View Christian became so much more evident to me that night driving home. The world does not revolve around America. Other countries are not like us. We need to get out of our American-Christian bubbles and become more aware of what is going on outside our borders, whether that means we read more, go to conferences like URBANA, pay more attention to the news, or GO! Not only will we be more aware, we will also be able to pray more knowledgeably.