Mexico is Not Burning by Dan Quezada

Mission work isn't supposed to be safe.

You're not supposed to be able to guarantee your safety.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the words are genuine. They were spoken by Beth Underwood. Beth and her group from Central United Methodist Church of Waco, Texas are in Puerto Penasco, Mexico.

They are here to build a secure home for a Mexican family whom otherwise would not have one.

Beth and her group traveled two days to get here. Eighteen hours of driving.

Eleven hours just to reach El Paso. One night in a hotel and an early rise for seven more hours on the road to meet Jonathan in Lukeville, Arizona, for an escort over the border and across the last fifty miles of desert.

In a camp that has room for over a thousand people, they are alone.

I shared Beth's words with my wife last night, over the phone. I heard the anger, the hurt in Katie's voice, when she blurted out "See?! She gets it!".

The thing you should realize is that my wife was the bearer of bad news. Only moments before she had informed me that I wouldn't be spending spring in Baja with my friends, as I have done for each of the last seven years.

My friends and I would come to Baja and build houses with Amor Ministries; that experience is what ultimately brought me to full-time emloyment with Amor. God and good fortune has swollen the ranks of their group to over two hundred people.

But that doesn't really matter if you aren't coming.

I'll admit to be struggling with this one. Shamefully, it could be my pride.

In a certain sense, it's not really their fault that they've fallen victim to fear. They simply don't know. When wildfires were raging in the mountains around San Diego, worried calls of concern came from my family in Northern California. Was I alright? Was I in any danger? I patiently explained that I was in the middle of the city, that the wildfires would have to cross 25 miles of asphalt and concrete to get to me.

But that wasn't what the news explained. My family simply didn't know. San Diego was burning, and that was that.

Violence in Mexico. Scary stuff, to be sure. Bad things happen in Mexico. I am not being flippant. I am not in denial.

There are bad people fighting other bad people all trying to do bad things. It's true.

But it's not as bad as they would have you believe, and when it is, We won't let you go there.

But Mexico is burning, and that is that.

But why choose to be afraid? The modern Christian church is notorious for deriding, debasing, and disregarding the modern media. We decry them as a tool of a corrupt world, one that seeks to normalize all the sin and mediocrity in which our shameful and lost fellow citizens choose to live their lives. Abortions for all. God out of government. Gay is okay. No prayer in schools and no In-God-We-Trusting on the dollar.

"No, no!!" we cry! We will not compromise. We will not be fooled. We will not slowly, imperceptibly, allow some twisted world-view to creep in - to dilute our Christiamericity! The world is lost without Christ, and we will never bend in our dedication to that principle!

Unless we think it could hurt.

You see, what good is our salvation if we stuff it in our pocket? What good does the life changing news of Jesus Christ do if we leave it at home, in the mall? Or spend the week on the couch with it, watching "Friends" reruns over spring break?

The problem is consumerism, and it is a disease riddling the Christian church. The irony. For all our raging against society and its ills, we can't escape the fact that we're neck-deep in the pool with it.

Whenever the media serves up our fears, we are gluttonous - happy to stand in the buffet line for seconds. We have all been content to sit in the pew and listen to the visiting missionary weave tales of suspense and danger. Government persecution. Home churches. No mention of God or Jesus in emails. "I can't really say exactly where I work, because that would put my family's lives in danger".

We admire their commitment, pass the plate to support them, and we lay hands on their shoulders to pray for their protection. But why aren't we compelled to join them? Why aren't we willing to step into the fiery furnace with them? To spend a week in the lion's den at their side? Why are we more concerned with finding a church whose preaching or style of worship suits our fancy?

I would submit it is because our motivations, for all our posturing, are not salvation-based. If they were, we would go.

Sadly, it comes down to one very simple fact.

We hold our fears and the risks we may be subject to in one hand, and the needs of a desperately poor, often unsaved family in the other - and we decide our own concerns outweigh theirs.

You cannot convince me otherwise - all of the varied reasons of all the varied churches that are canceling their mission trips to Mexico - they can ALL be distilled down to simply that.

One hand outweighs the other.

The burden of our own safety weighs heavy because we have taken our consumer tendencies and applied them to mission work; the problem is that the two are fundamentally incompatible. If we are salvation based, our own comfort can never be the deciding factor; if it's not for the missionary in Indonesia, why should it be for us?

Mission work without that salvation basis is devoid of it's meaning.

At its worst, it is tourism. At its best, it is simply humanitarian work.

It's Humanitourism.

And no one wants to risk getting hurt for Humanitourism.

So is it worth it? My co-worker Jonathan knows the answer.

"I don't want to get hurt, but if one unsaved family is reached for Christ, then it's worth all the risks I may take. I'll never not go somewhere because I might get hurt".

Jonathan gets it.

Jonathan drove half of the Central United Methodist group back to camp yesterday afternoon, through the sandy back streets of Penasco, through the "bad" part of town.

Fully half of their group has never been to Mexico before. Some of them were told they were taking foolish risks going to Mexico, some of them were told they could die. Yet still, they came.

Some of them, moved to tears by what they had seen, thanked Jonathan for taking them down those roads.

We thanked them. For their sacrifice. For their long drive. For having any number of reasons not to come - but for coming anyway.

We thanked them for their bold stand against fear.