Renee Bach, who had no medical training, opened a clinic in Africa. Just like missionaries are supposed to.

Map of Uganda. Image source.

So I need to talk about Renee Bach, the white American woman who went to Uganda as a missionary and set up a health clinic even though she had no medical training, and now 105 Ugandan children have died under her care.

NPR has an article about it: American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died. I recommend reading this; it gives a good overview.

(And I also posted another link about it on my June 27 blogaround, with my comment: "Oh wow this is terrible. And the only thing I can think is 'God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.'")

What strikes me about this story- the reason I feel, ahem, "called by God" to blog about it- is that what Bach did is EXACTLY what the romanticized missionary stories I heard my entire life in the evangelical church say to do.

To be clear, most missionaries don't do things as reckless and bad as what Bach did. Most missionaries are more grounded in reality and common sense. I find her story so striking because it sounds exactly like the idealized version of missions that is presented in American evangelical churches.

This is what happens when somebody actually "steps out in faith" and literally goes and does the things that, according to American Christians, perfect godly missionaries do. This is what happens when that naive romanticized ideal collides with reality. In this case, she claimed to be able to provide medical care for severely malnourished kids, and she actually just made things worse, and many died.

A bit of background about myself: So, I'm a white American Christian who's been living in China since 2013. I do not identify as a missionary. The first time I came to China was in 2010 on a short-term mission trip, when I was a college student. Back then, I was "on fire for God" and totally bought into radical Christian missions ideology. However, there were a lot of things I did NOT buy into- I did not believe God was "calling" me to go to China, and my motivation was NOT "we need to go help those pathetic Chinese people"- instead it was more along the lines of "the image of God lives in every person in every culture, and if I only know my own American culture, I'm missing out on so much of knowing God." That mission trip left me with an overwhelming, obsessive desire to move to China long-term, and I devoted myself to learning Mandarin Chinese- which I am now able to speak, read, and write. I researched a lot of different options for how to move to China- and many of them would have involved being a missionary. Personally, I didn't care that much about whether I came through a missions organization or just a normal secular job. I just wanted, needed, to be in China- and I believed "All Christians are missionaries wherever we are." Looking back on it now, I'm glad none of the missionary opportunities ended up working out. Back then, I was in the early stages of leaving evangelicalism, and I'm glad I didn't end up in an organization where I would have to constantly explain to my colleagues how I can be a Christian if I don't believe in "God called me" and all those other things I no longer believe in. Anyway I moved to China in 2013 and now it's 2019 and I'm still here.

So yeah, I have Some Things To Say about missions.

I want to touch on a bunch of aspects of Bach's story, and how they relate to the way white American evangelicals talk about missions:

Africa

So ... in my experience, white American Christians seem to think that countries where most people are not white are poor and unsafe and those people are so sad and need our help.

Before I came to China for the first time, I had never traveled to any non-Western countries. I didn't really have any idea about any specific country's characteristics; it was all just a vague mass of "exotic." I didn't choose China for any particular reason. It was just the mission trip opportunity I happened upon when I was like "I want to go on a mission trip this summer."

In particular, Africa is seen as a pathetic, needy land where everyone is poor, everyone lives in a dusty hut with no food, no water, no medical care. Where everyone just spends all their time being sad about how poor they are, I guess.

IN REALITY, Africa is a whole continent, with over 50 countries, all of which are unique. It's extremely diverse. Statistically, it is true that the poverty rate is way too high, and lots of people don't have access to clean water- but that doesn't tell the whole story. That doesn't mean everyone lives in the middle of nowhere with no resources. There are cities. There are universities. People are full people with full lives- not stereotypes.

(And I'll stop there because actually, I too know basically nothing about Africa...)

But white American Christians have this idea that these places are so poor, they have nothing, they don't know how to take care of themselves, and therefore if we just waltz in and improvise something, well even though we don't really know what we're doing, at least it's better than nothing.

This bit from the NPR article describes it very well:

"Just think of the arrogance," says Lawrence Gostin, who heads the Center on National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. "Who are you to assume that you can do better than they can? It's not your judgment call to make."

Gostin adds that while the circumstances of Bach's case may seem exceptional, he sees her actions as stemming from an attitude many Americans bring to developing countries.

"The American cultural narrative is that these countries are basket cases."

And so, says Gostin, Americans assume that whatever their qualifications, they're sure to be of help.

The result, Gostin says, is that everyone from college kids to credentialed doctors routinely parachute into poor countries for medical missions that completely disregard local laws and conditions.

"People think that they're doing good. And they have no idea how much harm they can cause."

And people back home in the U.S. are often complicit, says Gostin. Because when these volunteers write blogs or post videos to share their exploits, "They're celebrated."

Yes, reading Bach's story, I get the impression that she felt like, "I'm not qualified to help- but there is no other option, so I have to." Umm. Yeah, not true. There are real hospitals. There are real doctors. There are real laws about how you can't just go around trying to provide medical care if you're not qualified.

God's calling

Yep, Bach believes she was "called" by God to do this.

On her first trip, in 2007, she worked at a missionary-run orphanage — staying on for nine months.

Once back home in Virginia, Bach — now 19 years old — came to a life-changing conclusion: She should move to Jinja full time and set up her own charity.

In an interview with NPR, Bach says it felt like a calling from God.

"It was a very, very profound feeling and experience. It's kind of hard to even describe in words," she says. "Like there was something that I was supposed to do."

This kind of thing- the idea that an average American Christian suddenly gets "called by God" to go do some absurd unrealistic thing in a foreign country- is how missions is portrayed in the American evangelical church. Yes, back when I was a teenager, I totally 100% believed that I could be just minding my own business and then suddenly God might "call" me and then I would have to go live in a hut on the other side of the world and be a missionary. I assumed that's how people became missionaries. It was totally a real, believable possibility that could totally happen to any Christian.

Notice, also, that God apparently called Bach to "move to Jinja full time and set up her own charity." Yes, not just move to Uganda, but SET UP HER OWN CHARITY. See, the more daunting and unrealistic the task from God is, the better the story. Of course it sounds impossible! That's why we need God's help! And God will make it a success.

In my case, back in 2010 when I was considering going on the mission trip to China, I did not feel that God was "calling" me. I just really wanted to go- and it confused me so much. Am I allowed to go on a mission trip just because I really want to, or do I need a special invitation from God? I always imagined that God's calling would be commanding me to do something I didn't want to do.

And after that, when I came back from that mission trip with an obsessive desire to move to China long-term, that didn't feel like "God's calling." It wasn't some out-of-context command to do some weird thing I didn't want to do. It came from my own realization about how little I knew about the world, and how I hated that about myself. After being in China, I just COULD NOT STAND living in a culture where I'm the majority and I have privilege and I understand how society works. I felt like it tempted me to believe that I understand the whole world, when in reality I only know a tiny tiny fraction.

I spent so long praying about my decision to move to China. Because God didn't "call" me. And so I worried that I wasn't "allowed" to do it. At times, I attempted to redefine "calling" so that "I have a huge internal desire to do this thing, perhaps the desire was given to me by God" would count. I'm no longer interested in redefining the term "calling" so at this point I just say no, God didn't call me to move to China. I just did because I wanted to.

But yes, the way Bach talks about being "called" by God to go start a charity in Uganda is 100% a normal thing people in American churches would say.

Being unqualified

The article says this:

Except Bach was not a doctor. She was a 20-year-old high school graduate with no medical training. And not only was her center not a hospital — at the time it didn't employ a single doctor.

She was completely unqualified. She had no business opening up a medical center.

But in the missionary stories I always heard in church, being unqualified- by "worldly" standards- was seen as a good thing. Christians like to say, "God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called."

It wasn't about your own abilities. It was about God doing this amazing, seemingly impossible thing, and giving you the opportunity to be part of it, if only you'll trust God and jump in way over your head.

The less qualified you are, the better the story. And so, even though in reality, most missionaries spend years training and studying the culture of their destination country, they emphasize their lack of qualifications when they tell their story to the supporters back home. This is not good.

Bach was so young- only 20- and she moved to Uganda and started a charity for starving children. Wow. Look at how impressive that sentence is! How young- only 20! How scary and foreign Uganda is! How huge the task- starting her own charity! And how poor and needy the targets were- starving children! Wow! Hard to imagine a missionary story better than this- according to the way missions are talked about in American churches.

In reality, though, when a thing looks like it's impossible and it's going to fail spectacularly, typically it ends up failing spectacularly. "God" doesn't "work a miracle" and make it a success against all odds. In reality, when you have no medical training and you let people think you're a doctor, and you attempt to treat their extremely vulnerable children ... in reality it's not good.

And here's the part that scares me even more: Was she "stepping out in faith" when she took risks with these children's health care? I didn't see anything about this specifically in the article, but I know how American evangelicals talk about things like that. What if, when Bach didn't know how to help a patient, she prayed about it, and got a "feeling" from God telling her what to do, and she went ahead and did that even though she had no actual medical knowledge indicating it was actually the right thing to do?

Because that's how the stories go, when they tell them in church. God sends you into some situation where you are horribly unqualified, you're in way over your head, you have no idea what you're doing. And then of course, you encounter problems and you need to make a decision about what action to take- but there's no way you have the ability to make a good decision. Not on your own, at least. But you pray, and you get a *feeling* about what God wants you to do. And then, even though you still have no idea what you're doing, even though you're terrified, you "step out in faith" and do the thing. That's how the very best role-model missionaries live.

Wow, that's horrifying, to imagine someone might use that method IN THE ACTUAL REAL WORLD when caring for a starving child in a medical setting.

And I want to be clear, nothing in the article said Bach actually did that. But it said she made medical decisions without any actual doctors present at the center. I personally believe it is extremely likely those decisions were based more on prayer than on actual medical knowledge.

The missionary blog

Oh, the missionary blog.

NPR's article mentions Bach's missionary blog several times. When I went on my China mission trip in 2010, missionary blogs weren't really a big thing yet- THANK GOODNESS. Instead, I sent email updates only to my family and people who had given me money for the trip. I remember a few years later, seeing kids from my church posting links on Facebook to their own mission-trip blogs, and the concept felt very cringe-y to me.

Why? Because if you're going to some country where you've never been before, you're gonna have a ton of culture shock, you're gonna be so clueless about everything that is happening- do you really want your initial reactions to that to be there on the internet for everyone to see, forever? *cringe*

Like yeah, my first day in China I had a lot of opinions about things, a lot of wide-eyed "wow can you believe this is how they do things here????" and I now realize all of that was incredibly naive and I didn't have A CLUE what I was talking about. So good thing I didn't broadcast that to tons of people all over the internet.

If you go on a short-term mission trip, don't make a blog about it. Because that's the culture shock talking, and the more you learn about the place where you're traveling, the more you'll realize you knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING at the beginning and you don't want the whole world reading that. Yeah, sure, it makes sense to send emails to your family and people who gave you money, but don't post stuff more publicly than that.

(As for me personally, when I first started this blog I used to do more posts about "wow look at this interesting aspect of Chinese culture", but the longer I've lived here, the more I've realized I don't know and it's not really my place to be acting like an expert on China.)

Bach's blog wasn't a short-term-mission-trip-my-first-day-in-this-country blog; she had been to Uganda before. But still, in my opinion, the posts mentioned in NPR's article have that wide-eyed-cluelessness "I'm on a grand adventure from God where I am the main character" feel.

Yes, let's talk about that part. So, when you go on a mission trip, one of the main goals is getting the people you meet in the destination country to become Christians. And maybe offering them some kind of service (in Bach's case, food and medical care) because they are in need. And both of these aspects are things you don't actually want them to know. You don't tell your targets "my goal is to get you to become a Christian." You don't tell them "I came here to help you because you're so poor and deserve my pity, look at me being such a good person, a white savior who stoops down to help you." But when you talk to your supporters back home, you do say those things.

And so when people write a mission trip blog, the audience they have in mind is those supporters back home, and other people from their own American Christian culture, who hold the same beliefs about missions.

But. It's the internet. Everyone can read it.

And people in your destination country have smart phones.

So you get missionaries posting photos of those "poor, needy" people they met, sharing romanticized versions of these people's stories- all without their consent. Treating them as stereotypes, as objects in a grand adventure that God is directing. What happens if those people- who, in reality, are intelligent human beings with a whole life, just like you- find your blog?

It's not very likely ... because of language and cultural barriers, it's not likely that people in your destination country are browsing around the same areas of the internet that you are. Except ... except for Facebook. What if you post links to your mission-trip blog on Facebook, and then you find "wow, our new friends we met in X country have Facebook, this is great, we can keep in touch!"

What if they read what you really think about them? *cringe*

The things people write on mission-trip blogs- those are the things that we're not supposed to say out loud where our evangelism targets (and other non-Christians) can hear us. The internet connects people in ways that they maybe didn't realize they didn't want to be connected.

Here's an excerpt from the NPR article:

Ten years ago, Renee Bach left her home in Virginia to set up a charity to help children in Uganda. One of her first moves was to start a blog chronicling her experiences.

Among the most momentous: On a Sunday morning in October 2011, a couple from a village some distance away showed up at Bach's center carrying a small bundle.

"When I pulled the covering back my eyes widened," Bach wrote in the blog. "For under the blanket lay a small, but very, very swollen, pale baby girl. Her breaths were frighteningly slow. ... The baby's name is Patricia. She is 9 months old."

See what I mean? It reads like "wow, here I am on this amazing adventure that God has sent me on. I met this mind-blowingly sick baby- isn't it exciting?" Do you think the parents want this dramatized account of their child's life-threatening condition broadcast for American Christians to read?

But that's how Christians talk about the people they meet on their mission trips. That's how they've always talked, when they go back to their home churches and share their "mission moment" during the Sunday service. That's bad enough. But now, in the 21st century, when blogs allow them to share their ignorant stereotypes with a much wider audience than before, ooooh I cringe.

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Bach's story is exactly what would happen if someone literally did all the things that American Christians say missionaries do. Go to Africa, a land so backwards that they don't know how to do anything, a land where they're desperate for help from random unqualified Americans. Follow God's "call" and put yourself into an absurd, impossible situation so you can watch how amazing it is when God turns it into a success story. Go even though you have no qualifications and don't have a clue what you're doing- that gives God an even bigger opportunity to show off. And document it all on your missionary blog- all the one-dimensional people you meet, all the shocking situations you end up in because you had faith and obeyed God's call, all the excitement and fear of living this wild adventure that God allows you to be part of.

The most impressive missionary stories in the white American evangelical church have people doing exactly the things that Bach did. In reality, though, she did a very bad thing. She was reckless with children's lives, and many of them died.

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Related:

This whole thing reminds me of the news last year about John Allen Chau, another missionary who did all the things that a perfect role-model missionary should do. Here are my posts about him:
This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To
Evangelicals Agree With What Chau Did (And It Makes Me Angry): Here Are The Receipts

And another related post:
Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church