Two a.m. and I’m awake, awake and haunted by a thought. A thought that keeps me from closing my eyes and drifting back to sleep; that means at 2:30 a.m. I am up and drinking coffee and living with troubled reflections. 

My haunting is rooted in my deep desire for God’s shalom to be the way of things — for nations, peoples, individuals, and the creation.

Over the years, I’ve believed that shalom (peace in the New Testament) is central to understanding where God is bringing the world. The pictures of shalom in Isaiah and Revelation, the song of shalom in Mary’s Magnificat, the words of shalom from Jesus in Matthew 5-7, and 25 (the sheep), along with his inaugural declaration in Luke 4 — all stir my soul to see of where God is taking this world. 

As I’ve gone deeper and deeper into God’s picture of shalom, I’ve summarized shalom with these ideas (with help from Eric Jacobsen’s The Space Between & Lisa Sharon Harper’s The Very Good Gospel)

Shalom is often translated as ‘peace’, but it means more than the absence of conflict or simply having individual inner calm. Shalom speaks of 

• a restored relationship with our Creator, human flourishing, a flourishing creation, and justice
• relational wholeness in families, between genders, and between ethnic groups
• healing the rift between nations and beating our swords into plowshares 
• leaders and nations that end oppression and the lift up the poor

And shalom is unmistakably beautiful.

This brings me back to my 2 a.m. haunting. Over the years, we’ve seen nations that act in anti-shalom ways. In recent times, we have seen it in the extrajudicial killings by Kenya’s law enforcement and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Looking a bit at the past, we see the Rwandan genocide and further back in the USSR’s starving of its people, resulting in the death of millions. Sadly, for those of us who are U.S. citizens, we have our history of anti-shalom behavior, from slavery to Native American Trails of Tears to Jim Crow. 

Now, the decision has been made to stop the work of USAID for 90 days. That’s what’s haunting me, keeping sleep from my eyes. In my understanding of shalom this decision is an attack on God’s vision of shalom.

I understand that more than a few will disagree with my take. But kindly walk with me for a few moments and see why I am haunted.

First, the argument is that USAID is inefficient, and the only way to get it under control is to stop everything, review it all, and then move forward (although the administration seems bent on ending USAID, so whatever emerges will not be USAID).

I know that at this point, I’m supposed to grab the line that “Well, of course, there are problems, and of course, we want USAID to be efficient, but we want to keep certain life-saving parts of it operational.” I am not willing to go there. I am unwilling to do so because I don’t believe shalom is always efficient. Not only so, but I believe that sometimes, for shalom to be fully realized, it is inefficient because shalom is not first of all about efficiency but about flourishing people and a flourishing creation. As Timothy Snyder notes in On Freedom

There is nothing new about dehumanizing efficiency jargon. Efficiency was an argument for American slavery in the nineteenth century and for Nazi and Soviet concentration camps in the twentieth. Julius Margolin, in his memoir of five years in the Gulag, defined it as a place where no one could ask why? “Here there is no why,” said an Auschwitz camp guard to Primo Levi.

If efficiency is the only measure, then values evaporate and solidarity is impossible.       

USAID should be run well. An organization that is run well lives with at least four Cs.

• Clarity: The organization knows and does what it is called to do.
• Competence: The organization is competent as it carries out its work; it is not perfect; it doesn’t get it right every time, but overall, it is qualified.
• Character: The organization and its people have integrity as it carries out its calling.
• Compassion: The organization fully knows the people in its orbit and treats them with mercy, seeking their good.

Second, the scriptures call nations to account for how they treat other nations and their people.The book of Jonah is God calling the nation of Assyria to account for their outrageous evils. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for their lack of care for the poor and needy. Then, the troubling passage in Matthew 25 speaks of the nations being judged for their lack of care for the hungry, prisoners, etc. In multiple places in scripture, nations are called to account for their actions (again, read the words of Isaiah as he takes on the nations). These passages of judgment should call Christians to take a careful look at their own nations, knowing what God calls nations to and asking, “Are we living up to God’s desire for the nations?” Looking just at Sodom and Gomorrah, it seems like cutting off food to the hungry, medical care for people, abandoning people part of the way through medical treatment who have devices that need to be monitored, allowing children to be born with AIDS, and not treating them with retro virals put the U.S. in some dangerous biblical waters. 

Third, and this is the part that really haunted me at 2 a.m., is the U.S. passively killing hundreds of thousands of people over the next 90 days? By not supplying food, medical care, and more that we promised will, hundreds of thousands die. 

• Malnourished children who depended on USAID food supplements
• Refugee camps where people depended on shipments of food
• People who have AIDs who are not getting their medication

In 100 days in 1994, the Rwandan genocide actively killed 500,000 people. What if we passively kill 300,000 or more by failing to meet their needs as we promised to do? 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued waivers to assure that critical feeding programs will receive food and has released food in storage. However, due to massive layoffs of U.S. AID staff, there is no way to access accounts and do what needs to get done to relieve the suffering and stop people from dying. 

My 2 a.m. haunting continues because no matter what the administration says, people are dying and will likely continue to die. Am I now part of a nation that is going back to what used to be a place of concentration camps for Asians, of the deaths of 100,000 of thousands of Native Americans, of little compassion for those outside our own narrow camps? 

My haunting may be my own, but I can’t shake it.

Research

• Devex Newswire: The fight between USAID staff and Trump heats up
• Devex Newswire: USAID’s workforce to be slashed to just 294 staff
• ‘What Elon Musk Said Is a Bold-Faced Lie’ 
• The US Halt In Foreign Aid ‘Could Mean Life Or Death For Millions’ 
• ‘It will kill people’: Chaos, confusion after Trump halts US foreign aid 
• From fighting disease to protecting the Amazon rainforest, USAID has big impact across the globe
• As humanitarian officials warn people could die as a result of Trump’s foreign aid halt, Rubio issues new waiver 
• The US State Department says humanitarian assistance can continue. Foreign aid workers say that’s not happening