The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

Author:Richard Stearns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

HIV AND AIDS

As I have said, my own journey with World Vision began at ground zero in Uganda’s AIDS pandemic, with three orphaned boys. That I could have been so unaware of something that causes human suffering on such an unimaginable scale makes me feel ashamed even now. That experience was the one event that finally shook me out of the numbing apathy that had prevented me for so long from seeing the world as God might see it. And it may even now be the reason I am writing this book—that others might see what God allowed me to see: the things that break His heart.

We have all seen movie thrillers about a so-called doomsday virus that has been unleashed on an unsuspecting world, wreaking havoc on the human race and changing the course of history. Usually, a small group of stalwart heroes is racing against the clock to save the world from certain annihilation. In this drama, the powers that be seem clueless about the impending doom unfolding right in front of their eyes, and the unsuspecting public goes about their daily lives, blissfully unaware of the coming catastrophe. Unless our heroes are successful at sounding the alarm and defeating their malignant enemy, all will be lost. We know the plotline well.

HIV is just that kind of threat to the human race, in that it has profound implications for our world. If one of those movie producers tries to invent another diabolical “doomsday virus,” he will be hard-pressed to come up with something more frightening than HIV.

Consider these facts. A person who becomes infected with HIV today may have no symptoms of the disease whatsoever for three to five years or even longer as the virus establishes itself in his body and begins to attack his immune system. Every sexual encounter that person has during those next three to five years potentially infects each sex partner. Then each newly infected person is also asymptomatic for three to five years and potentially passes the virus on to all of his or her sexual partners, and so on and so on. I once asked a man if he knew how he had been infected. He said, “It is an age-old story: I slept with a woman who had slept with a man who had slept with a woman who had slept with a man . . .” Because HIV is spread primarily through sexual activity, it carries a strong stigma; there are taboos in most cultures that prevent even discussing it. Those who carry the disease often choose to remain anonymous lest they become branded, refusing even to be tested and thereby rejecting the very medical help that might ease the pain. The result is that the disease spreads with stealth from man to woman, husband to wife, and even mother to children through childbirth and breast-feeding. And worst of all, this doomsday virus is fatal—and there is no cure!31

HIV now infects 33 million people,32 70 percent of them living in Africa,33and it has taken more than 25 million lives since 1981.

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