You know how to push-start a car is, right? In cars with manual transmissions, you can still start them if the battery is dead. Put the car in first gear, hold the clutch out, get a few strong guys to push it until it starts to roll, then pop the clutch. The impulse from the transmission turns the engine over, and gives enough spark through the ignition system to fire it up. Why am I telling you this? Because on our long, long trip back to our village today, I saw a dozen guys push-start a diesel bus that way in the terminal. I laughed out loud; that’s so Guatemala. My laugh caught in my throat when I realized it was MY bus they started.

Spending hours on a bus gives me time to ponder our work here, and the parallels it has with things in the U.S. I read a story in the news this morning about an 11-year-old American girl that died in her home because her parents denied her medical care. She was diabetic, and slipped into an insulin-induced coma. The parents are extremist Christians, and refused to take her to the hospital because they couldn’t “put doctors before God,” they said. Instead, they gathered the family around and prayed for days, as their child slowly and surely died. Now they’re up for manslaughter.

As shocking and unfortunate as this is, it chills me even more because we deal with this problem all the time here in Guatemala. During our second month in Guatemala, a neighbor’s son-in-law was decapitated in a horrific traffic accident. Everyone shook their heads, muttering that it was the voluntad de dios (the will of God). It never occurred to anyone that it might have POSSIBLY been because he was totally drunk and driving on the busiest highway in Guatemala. It was voluntad de dios last month, when the lady on the other side of the village died in childbirth, despite the fact that they didn’t take her to the hospital, even though she showed several of the high-risk danger signs. And the voluntad de dios nearly killed Galindo as he lay dying next door, until the “voluntad de Nas Palas” saved his life.

I like to delude myself into thinking that we as Americans are above a lot of the third-world, hillbilly, backwater things that inflict Guatemala. But the truth is, these things happen in the U.S. too. The only difference is a matter of scale. Organized religion has a lot to offer mankind; but blind, unreasoning devotion to ANYTHING fosters ignorance and paves the way to disaster. We tell people that the good Lord helps those who help themselves, but many of them don’t listen. It reminds me of a joke:

There was once a devout man who was the only survivor of a shipwreck. After floating a day at sea, he came to rest upon a small deserted island. He immediately got down on his knees to give thanks that he was spared, then prayed to God to deliver him from his captivity. “God will help me escape this island,” the man thought to himself.

A few days later, a boat came by, and offered to take him to their next port. “No thank you,” the man said. “I asked God to save me, and he will come.”

A few more days passed, and water was running low. The man heard a noise in the distance, and soon a helicopter swooped low over the island. “We’ve come to save you,” the pilot yelled through a bullhorn. The man waved the helicopter off, yelling, “I asked God to save me, and he will come.”

On the seventh day, the man was lying thirsty on the beach and near death. He shook the fog from his head, and saw a man step out of hot air balloon and walk towards him.

“Ye gads man, you look awful. Let’s get you into this balloon, and be off,” the balloonist said.

The man weakly raised his hand, shooing the balloonist away. “I asked God to save me, and he will come.”

The following day, the devout man died. He ascended to heaven, as devout men do, and encountered Saint Peter at the gate.

“Excuse me,” the devout man said, hesitantly. “I couldn’t help but wonder. I’ve put my faith in God all my life, and He has always been there for me through good and bad. But when I prayed for Him to deliver me from the desert island, he forsook me. Why? I still had much to do in my life, and my children will now never know what happened to me.”

Saint Peter looked up from his book, perplexed, and pulled down his reading glasses. “What are you talking about? We sent a boat, a helicopter, and even a balloon!”

Think about it.

UPDATE

I just got this from my friend Karen; it’s a link to a fantastic (and short) article in the New York Times on EXACTLY this theme. Perhaps Karen is prescient. I read it, and was dismayed at how Pakistan is so much like Guatemala.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/opinion/30kristof.html?_r=1