What would Jesus do?
I’ll admit: when all my friends started wearing WWJD bracelets in 5th grade, I really resented it. I don’t care for proselytizing, but the bigger problem was that 11-year-olds aren’t always the walking example of Christian goodness. I know because I was one.
Now, though, I almost crave the sentiment. What would Jesus do?
The question has the same meaning if you replace the central character with Mohammed or Buddha. Sure, the originators of our world’s main religions lived way before our globalized modern era. But the spread of ideas and goods across continents has been going on a long time. When Jesus said to “love your neighbor,” my guess is that he was thinking in broad terms.
I want to tell you a little about some of our global neighbors - the people I met in Zambia when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer from 2008 to 2011. Ahem, yes, that was a long time ago. Considering recent political events and their possibly stemming from a dominant American culture that tends to diminish the lives of others around the world, I have some lost time to make up for.
So, Zambia. It’s a country of 72 recognized languages and dialects (with 8 official languages, including English). It’s a place with fantastic names: Spider, Expeditor, Boniface, Perpetua, Musaiwale (meaning literally, ‘you shouldn’t forget,’ given when a baby is born shortly after a respected person has died).
In the village, Zambian adults go by the name of one of their children. You could be Amake Fatness - Mother of Fatness. Or even better, Atake Mabvuto - Father of Problems.
In a Zambian village, it’s customary to greet your neighbors with a proper greeting the first time you see them in the morning and in the afternoon, even if you’ve already seen them that day.
Most Zambian villagers are subsistence farmers - they literally grow most of their own food as well as crops to sell for the money they need to buy household goods. Much of this work is done by hand, and much of the hand work is done by women. I spent a year trying to build up the muscle to carry a 5-gallon jerry can on my head, like most 12 year-old village girls can do without batting an eye. A not-uncommon and completely humbling sight to witness is a woman balancing 5 gallons on her head and toting a 2.5 gallon can in each hand. When I’m tempted to complain about something, it helps to remember that my friends in the village probably could have done whatever it is while simultaneously breastfeeding a baby and cracking a joke.
A statistic that will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life is the average life expectancy for a Zambian woman in the year 2000: 45 years. Zambia has come a long way in many measures of health, including in the battle against HIV/AIDS, with a current life expectancy of 61 years for women.
That is amazing progress, much of it thanks to PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). George Bush was inspired by his faith to create PEPFAR in 2003. Since then, the program has saved over 25 million lives around the world through HIV prevention activities and treatment with antiretroviral drugs.
Funding for PEPFAR comes from multiple government agencies, but USAID was responsible for its oversight and much of its implementation. The 90-day freeze on USAID threw PEPFAR activities into chaos around the world.
One could argue that countries like Zambia have become too reliant on donors to fund health and development projects. Indeed, in 2001 African states promised in the Abuja Declaration to fund their departments of health with at least 15% of their own government budgets. As of now, only Rwanda and Botswana have met this goal.
One could also argue that the United States has become too reliant on fossil fuels, cheap goods made in factories in poorer countries, rare minerals mined by people living in slave-like conditions, the list goes on.
What would Jesus do?
I hope there is a future in which global neighbors truly learn from and look out for each other.
And as for Peace Corps? A good friend from my husband’s Peace Corps cohort texted him a photo of DOGE employees outside the Peace Corps Headquarters. His response was “tidzaonana” - goodbye, in local language. In true Zambian optimistic fashion, the literal meaning is “we will see each other again.”
I hope that will be the case.
Sydney Null is an organic vegetable grower.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of TSPR or its license holder, Western Illinois University.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.