As many times as I’ve tried to express what I’m about to try expressing once again, I’m still looking for just the right way to say it. I think what makes it challenging is that after most of a lifetime of living pretty much in the same culture, I had what turned out to be a very narrow definition of “normal”. Or put another way, the American upwardly mobile, get-more-stuff lifestyle is not a universal reality. Thus, my title for this blog, by the way.

In the brief time I was in Guatemala back in late January, 2008, I saw a new reality. And somehow it felt more real than what I’d up to that time known as reality. The other day I was trying to describe this to a friend, and suddenly it hit. What I saw in Guatemala wasn’t a “new” reality, it was, well, real reality. The way I’ve lived in this country, in this culture, isn’t reality. It’s more like a facade, a shadow, a game.

Seeing the pictures of starving children in Africa on TV fundraiser events, with their sad eyes, protruding abdomens, hopeless expressions, somehow doesn’t touch most of us very deeply. Perhaps it’s because we see so much unreality on television that we’ve become jaded. Maybe it’s because we didn’t see anyone living on the street in our neighborhood today – the HOA wouldn’t allow it anyway.

No, until a person actually chooses to go outside their bubble of reality to other places in the world, to feel the hunger, to touch the dirt, to smell the stench, there is just no way our hearts will truly be touched at any kind of deep place.

Maybe that’s why Jesus came to Earth – to experience firsthand the filth of a world cursed by the effects of sin. And of course also to show us that He cared enough to actually leave His comfortable home to come to live right among us – filth, smells, hunger, sin and all the rest.

What I’m about to say may not apply to you. Only an honest look in the mirror will answer that. But as the wealthiest country of all time, America surely also ranks as the most selfish. With a culture fueled by greed and gluttony, I think we may well have missed the reason why God has so blessed us with prosperity – to be generous.

So when I see those TV fundraisers, asking me to step out and pledge a whole $18 a month to save a child from starvation, I feel mostly sad – sad because we, as citizens of this immensely wealthy society, had to be asked in the first place. Sad, too, because I don’t know of a single family within my sphere of friends that couldn’t easily afford to save a starving child every month. It would be pocket change. It would be skipping going to the movies one time. It would be not buying that new video game. I would be, heaven forbid, fasting for a day!

I can’t help but think, even with sin and all, how much better this world could be, if we as a culture didn’t stop just with giving from our excess, but rather actually developed a lifestyle of giving sacrificially. Giving in a way that necessitated us living in smaller houses, passing up the country club, having two cars instead of three, donating half of our annual stock profits.

Now that would be a new reality.

I will tell you this much, having looked in the mirror and confessed my lifetime of selfishness, when I went to Guatemala and gave up hot showers and comfy beds and drive through food, I didn’t feel like I’d given up anything. Rather I felt like I had been freed from much. The Guatemalans were grateful for the food and the medicine and the caring, but in reality, I was the one getting the gift.