You know, there are two postures I've encountered for this sort of thing.
One is that lived out by Shawn-- aware of deficiencies, focused on trying to do some visceral teaching in the difficult situation of prosperity and trained indifferent negligence.
The other is that of an entrepreneur claiming and offering to confer Poverty Experience [Deep Discounted Now!]. Yuck.
For decades I was very down on church mission trips, particularly long-distance expensive church mission trips. They struck me as vacations for people who wanted to feel self-satisfied. Then, churched again, I heard youth telling the congregation about their experience, in worship. They just spoke in cliche, but I saw their faces. And though all of them had received the customary US training in blaming low-income, low-wealth people for their lacks when thinking of them at all, and some had received intensive indoctrination in it, that expensive trip had caused them to perceive human beings in a very different situation as human beings.
no subject
One is that lived out by Shawn-- aware of deficiencies, focused on trying to do some visceral teaching in the difficult situation of prosperity and trained indifferent negligence.
The other is that of an entrepreneur claiming and offering to confer Poverty Experience [Deep Discounted Now!]. Yuck.
For decades I was very down on church mission trips, particularly long-distance expensive church mission trips. They struck me as vacations for people who wanted to feel self-satisfied. Then, churched again, I heard youth telling the congregation about their experience, in worship. They just spoke in cliche, but I saw their faces. And though all of them had received the customary US training in blaming low-income, low-wealth people for their lacks when thinking of them at all, and some had received intensive indoctrination in it, that expensive trip had caused them to perceive human beings in a very different situation as human beings.
So there's something to it.
Something, anyway.