GYC SE 2009: More

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GYC Southeast

World's Problems and God's People

Elizabeth Williams

Session 1: Ethnicity & Nationalism

Dear Heavenly Father God, you created ethnicity, Heavenly Father, and I just praise your name for the beauty of diversity that's in the world today.

Lord God, it's your Sabbath day, and I just want to treat this topic appropriately on the Sabbath, So please just give me clarity in your spirit.

Give us all your spirit, Heavenly Father.

And I just ask that this topic cuts all of our hearts open for your glory, Heavenly Father.

If you're not gonna be here, then let's just walk out right now.

It was an absolutely gorgeous fall day in Collegedale.

I woke up, and I was a student at this time, and I didn't have any classes that morning.

And I looked outside, and I saw the blue sky and the crisp fall air.

So I got in my red, huge red Chevy Blazer at this time that I was driving.

And I started making my way from my apartment to the Greenway.

While I was driving there, I flipped on the radio to listen to the morning news.

And I heard, or I thought I heard, that a small plane had hit the World Trade Towers in New York City.

I thought to myself, that's really strange.

Why would a small plane hit the World Trade Towers in New York City?

I decided to go on my brisk walk on the Greenway and actually started going about 5 minutes.

I ran back to my car, got in my Blazer, drove as fast as I could back to my apartment and flipped on the TV.

And this is what I saw when I flipped on the TV.

I saw these World Trade Centers, somewhere where I'd just been a month before, smoking, smoking.

And then, right before my eyes, and we heard Sebastian talk about this this morning if you guys were there at his presentation I saw these 2 massive towers just crumble to the ground.

This was September 11, 2001 and I bet you guys were of course younger There's a lot of youth in here at this time period.

But I still bet you remember where you were that day as well.

In the weeks and months that followed as the details of the World Trade Center attacks became public knowledge, there was an upsurge of patriotism in the United States.

And I define patriotism as a love of country.

Everywhere I looked, cars, houses, billboards, we saw the American flag proudly displayed.

And this is certainly not a bad thing in and of itself.

But at the same time, there was an upsurge in nationalism.

And I define nationalism as a devotion to the interests or culture of a particular nation, including promoting the interests of 1 nation over another.

Nationalism is an us versus them mentality.

On September 11, 2001, we had 19 hijackers that were associated with the extreme Islamic group al-qaeda and Do not get me wrong what they did was a horrible thing It was a horrible thing.

I actually lived in New York City the year after.

I was doing an internship at the United Nations.

I met several individuals that lost loved ones in the attacks.

I met 1 lady at the church that I was going to, Seventh-day Adventist Church in New York, right near Central Park.

Her husband's first day of work was September 11, 2001.

He was the board chairman of a Seventh-day Adventist church in New York.

I would go, I would go to the ruins of the World Trade Center some days after work and just go down there and look at it.

Because of their connection to the Arab world, because they were Muslim, a general fear of Arabs spread across the United States.

If people were riding in airplanes and they saw an Arab looking individual on that airplane they would look around.

There were hate crimes against Arabs in the United States.

There was discrimination against Arabs and even people that look like they are Arab as well.

Because of the actions of just 19 individuals, the entire Arab American population was at risk.

This is an example of fusing the potency of ethnicity and nationalism.

But is this an isolated event in the history of the United States?

From the outset of our nation's history, our nationalistic identity did not, and I suggest to you, has not included the Native Americans.

Let's specifically look at the example of the Cherokees who inhabited right here, the southeast of the United States.

First we whittled Cherokee lands away from them.

Then we forcefully kick them off their land.

Then right here from Chattanooga where the walking bridge is downtown, we sent them on the Trail of Tears.

So we sent them on a walk in winter no less from Chattanooga all the way to Oklahoma.

This is an example of the fusing of ethnicity and nationalism.

Again from our nation's history, slavery was an entrenched practice, especially in the southern United States.

Similar to the Native Americans, black slaves, Africans, did not fit our nationalistic identity.

And we deem them not even to be a whole person but three-fifths of a person for reprisational purposes in Congress.

Even after the Civil War when slavery was abolished there was basically an insurgency in the Southern United States by white Southerners against African Southerners to exclude them from the political process in white social circles.

Did you know on the walking bridge downtown that someone was actually lynched there in 1920?

So when you go there maybe think about that next time.

They were lynched, they were abused, and they were kept separate and unequal.

Well into the latter half of the 20th century, ethnicity and nationalism.

Let's look at another example, Japanese internment during World War II.

During World War II, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were rounded up in droves and put in detention centers in California.

Session 2: Poverty

Dear Heavenly Father God, I praise your name for your graciousness, your mercy and your love Heavenly Father.

And I just ask that you condescend to be here with us now, please Heavenly Father.

You see us here, but you also see all the other peoples out there, and you know what every single person in this world is dealing with, God.

God, I just ask that you give us a passion in our hearts to serve others.

That is why we're even here, God, is to serve.

Awaken a passion in someone's heart today for this topic if it's your will, Heavenly Father.

Just guide our talk today and I just beg you for the Holy Spirit, God, because you know that In and of myself, my heart is desperately wicked.

So I just ask that you just speak through me in spite of myself, give people here an interest, keep them awake, and may they see the importance of this topic for your glory.

Most importantly, may we just work to hasten your coming, Father.

We need to go to heaven so all this ridiculousness can end on earth.

So I'm walking down a path in Malawi, Africa.

The gum trees, their white trunks are gleaming.

The electric green of the tea leaves are glistening in the sun.

But to my right and to my left, I see shacks.

They are insufficient protection against the hard rains of the rainy season.

I see people washing their eating utensils in the muddy water, not of their sinks, but in the ditch beside the road.

I trudge along a wooded path, this 1 actually, for about 20 minutes, until I reach a little village, which is my destination.

Chichewa Bible in tow, I am headed to visit Mrs.

Gopani, a little 70-ish, this is her, year old lady, who is suffering from the after effects of leprosy.

She's actually a huge rarity in Malawi because she has reached this age.

Her feet are nubs, you can see her hand are nubs.

I arrive at her house, her thatched roof is falling in.

She has no bed to sleep on, she sleeps on the floor.

She hauls her water at her age from kilometers away in her enfeebled condition.

I walk into a downtown hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

There are 30 people gathered in the conference room at the hotel.

I make my way around the room visiting with the people and I hear numerous stories.

Many are desperately looking to find jobs.

He does not have a job right now and he's actually been sleeping out in the rain.

And this just happened a couple weeks ago.

Poverty and its related negative effects, such as poor health, crime, illiteracy, premature death, is a massive problem in the world today.

There are 3 billion people living in poverty in the world today.

That's about half the world's population.

According to UNICEF, About 25, 000 children just like this die each day due to poverty.

1000000000 children are living in poverty.

1 in 3 children do not have adequate shelter.

1 in 5 children do not have access to safe water.

1 in 7 children have no access to health services when they get sick.

And this little boy had cerebral malaria.

Every 30 seconds, another child dies from malaria.

That's another child dying from malaria, something that can be prevented.

But poverty is not just a global phenomenon, it affects the United States as well.

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2008, 39.8 million Americans, or nearly 13% of the population, are living in poverty.

And poverty is certainly a world reality.

And you might say, as a world problem, isn't the world already doing enough about it?

Aren't we providing food stamps for people in the United States?

Aren't these poor people already taken care of?

This certainly doesn't have anything to do with you and I, does it?

This certainly doesn't have anything to do with the Seventh-day Adventist Church today, does it?

Let's turn to our guidebook, the Bible, and we're going to delve into the spirit of prophecy as well.

And we are going to look at poverty and God's people, the divine prescription.

Let me set the context of this a little bit.

However, when they were fasting, they still had hatred in their hearts and strife for 1 another.

This is not the type of fast that you should have.

To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo what?

The heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free and that you break every yoke.

To share your bread with the hungry and that you bring to your house who?

Session 3: Human Rights

Dear Heavenly Father God, I just thank you for this opportunity to talk again about you and about the world.

And Lord, I need your strength and your power and your clarity right now to be able to express what you would have me to express.

And I just ask that you enable these people to be awake and alert and may the Holy Spirit just totally make this message applicable to every heart here, including my own.

Please take out of our chests our hearts of stone and put in its place a heart of flesh God.

Guide and bless this talk God in Jesus name, Amen.

So world problems in God's people, human rights.

I'm in Malawi, Africa at Malamulo Hospital.

I have just trudged up the hill about a half mile to my house.

I walk into the female ward of the hospital.

I rush into a room and I see a young woman about my age being cradled in her mother's arms.

The mother is attempting to get her daughter to breathe with every ounce of her being.

Not being a medical professional, I have absolutely no idea what to do.

I think that the young woman might be having an asthma attack or something.

But what I do know is that we need to pray.

That's what they say in Malawi, which means right now.

I asked them in Chichewa, and this is the only few words of Chichewa I know, if they want to pray.

The young woman, she's gasping for air and she nods, yes, yes, let's pray.

And I distinctly remember praying in this prayer that this young woman accepts Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.

I say, amen, and I run out of the room trying to find a doctor or a nurse.

20 seconds later, I am back by the woman's bedside.

Her mother arches her head back and begins to wail.

Family members around the bed begin wailing as well.

I step back into the corner in disbelief.

I hear a few days later that this woman should not have died.

The lab was incredibly slow getting back her lab results.

With an appropriate diagnosis from the lab results this death could have been prevented.

But praise the Lord that I listened to his impression and actually went down there and prayed with her seconds before she died What a tragedy But this is not an isolated incidence lack of proper health care is a major issue in the world today.

But is access to health care, and I'm not talking about health insurance, is it a basic human right?

And does the church have any role to play in these issues?

So human rights defined here is just a simple definition.

The conditions and expectations to which every person by virtue of his or her existence as a human being is entitled.

So basically human rights are simply that, human rights.

In the world today we hear about human rights.

We hear the word human rights, human rights violations, human rights abuses frequently on the television news, in magazines, in newspapers, and in the international political arena.

When the phrase is uttered, human rights, we might think of the genocide that's occurring right now in Darfur, Sudan.

We might think of child soldiers in Uganda, human trafficking in Thailand with young children being sold as sex slaves.

This is happening in our world right now.

But where did human rights phraseology come from?

Actually, the issues surrounding human rights steadily gained in importance following the genocide that occurred in World War II.

Shortly after World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt spearheaded a drive to create something called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

With the hopeful intention of creating a Magna Carta if you will for human rights that the world would abide by.

Thus she hoped and the other diplomats to avert another world war and the Holocaust.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was slated to be a part of the United Nations, an organization that was slated to promote world peace around the world.

For months, Eleanor Roosevelt and her team of dedicated diplomats from around the world came up with a listing of what they deemed to be universal rights.

Let's say that we take 30 people here today, maybe there's about 30, and we have to sit down and hammer out what are human rights?

Do you think that that would be difficult?

They actually came up with 30 different articles and let me just show you 6 just 6.

Don't worry Number 1 no 1 should be subjected to torture or to cruel and unusual punishment.

Amen Amen, No 1 shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

But being able to be a citizen of a country is a right.

Everyone and this is important for Seventh-day Adventist has a right to freedom of thought, conscious and religion.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.

And the sixth, everyone has the right to what, everybody?

So these are just a smattering of the noble rights that are delineated in this Universal Declaration.

So from the creation of the Universal Declaration, which was in 1948, to today, advocacy of human rights has picked up steam.

For example, in the last 2 decades alone, numerous non-governmental organizations, NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, just to name a few, have formed solely for the purpose of advocating human rights.

I, God totally worked it out, and it's an interesting story how this happened, but he worked it out so that I could do an internship at the United Nations several years ago in New York City for the Adventist Church.

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Series

World's Problems and God's People

Session 3: Human Rights

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

Session 1: Ethnicity & Nationalism

36m

Session 2: Poverty

47m

Session 3: Human Rights

33m

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