June 3, 2002
ANOTHER VIEW:
Bono, AIDS and the Good Samaritan
___Two thousand years after Jesus gave the church the parable of the Good Samaritan, we still are asking the question, "Who is my neighbor?"
___And we're still getting the answer wrong.
Richard Stearns
___The U.S. church is, for the most part, getting it wrong on AIDS. We often judge the victims of this devastating plague, but we fail to recognize our own sin of indifference to human suffering.
___In an updated retelling of Jesus' parable, the rock star Bono would be cast in the title role of the Good Samaritan. The lead singer of the Irish band U2 recently traveled to Africa on a 10-day trip with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, visiting schools, AIDS clinics and World Bank development projects.
___On a continent where poverty fuels the spread of HIV, Bono's goal was to prod O'Neill and the Bush administration into supporting economic development and fighting AIDS.
___Bono has the answer right.
___Our neighbors are the 40 million people worldwide with AIDS, including 28 million in Africa.
___Our neighbors are more than 13 million children who have lost parents to AIDS, 12 million of them in Africa.
___Our neighbors are the widows of Zambia, South Africa, Malawi and other nations whose husbands died of AIDS, but not before infecting them and, by extension, their children.
___Yet like the priest and the Levite, most American Christians look away. When evangelical Christians were surveyed last year on whether they would be willing to donate money to help children orphaned by AIDS, only 7 percent said they definitely would; 56 percent said they probably or definitely would not.
___According to the Barna Research Group poll, even fewer would donate to faith-based AIDS education and prevention efforts overseas.
___The same survey found that non-Christians were significantly more likely to say they would help people affected by AIDS overseas.
___Why is the church ignoring AIDS? Aside from our historic foot-dragging on social issues like the denial of civil rights to African-Americans, I believe we are especially loath to care because of the way HIV is spread.
___Scripture makes it clear who has the right and the responsibility to judge: It is God, not us.
___Yet we judge people with AIDS. Death is the ultimate penalty for sin; we shed few tears for those whose death comes more quickly than most as a consequence of sexual sin. Never mind that we all would be dead if we faced such a certain death for any of our sins--including indifference to the suffering of our fellowman.
___That sin, of course, is the only one Jesus condemns in the story of the Good Samaritan.
___Jesus never said the man at the side of the road was an innocent victim, unjustly attacked. Perhaps he was a robber who had been beaten by his fellow thieves. Or perhaps he was engaged in some illicit activity and was beaten as a result. Maybe he was just careless.
___The point is that we do not know. Jesus did not feel it was relevant whether the man was beaten as a result of his own actions.
___Yet with AIDS, we distinguish between the "innocent" victims, such as children infected or orphaned by their parents, and the "guilty," prostitutes and the promiscuous. Somewhere in between, we place the widows, culturally bound to submit to unfaithful husbands, and the husbands themselves, compelled to leave their families in the developing world for months or even years at a time to find work.
___In truth, we are bound by Scripture to respond to all those beaten and left by the side of the road by this devastating virus.
___We also are bound by science, which teaches us that the key to stopping this epidemic lies with high-risk groups--prostitutes, unfaithful husbands and reckless youth.
___The African church is reaching out to these groups with a message of abstinence before marriage and faithfulness after. Changing cultural mores will be hard. Harder still will be providing economic opportunities--for women in dignified employment and for men closer to their homes.
___O'Neill should have returned from Africa with a greater understanding of the problem and potential solutions.
___He also should gain resolve that the world's largest economy can and must play a major role in solving this generation's greatest problem.
___America's churches and faith-based organizations must respond as well. Two thousand years after Christ first spoke it, the story of the Good Samaritan remains relevant and legitimate.
___The church will be neither if we continue to get the answer wrong on AIDS.
___Richard Stearns is president of World Vision, the international Christian humanitarian organization serving the world's poorest children and families in nearly 100 countries. His column is distributed by Religion News Service
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