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From The Times December 27, 2008 As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem – the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset Matthew Parris
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work. It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God. Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good. I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith. But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing. First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall. At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi. We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission. Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers – in some ways less so – but more open. This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service. It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught. There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours. I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition. Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders. How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds – at the very moment of passing into the new – that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said. To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it – would stand as a second reason for passivity. Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates. Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted. And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
The Koh Kong team has slimmed down it’s members in country. Our teammates, James and Lynette and family, and Pat and Jeannie and family, are temporarily in the US on home assignment. Pat and Jeannie return first this coming January. This leaves Sret and Daah, our Cambodian teammates, and us pushing forward, waiting for our teammates to return. We have set up our work here expecting this time with half of our team in US. It is a common occurrence with missionaries; always coming and going. I anticipated these few months would be a time in which I could just maintain what was going on, and not push forward with any new endeavors. Courtney is pregnant, and busy with Weston (15 months old). I figured there would be needs for me to help her out at home. However, our Boss, the Lord, had other plans for me.
We have see a lot of results from our Evangelism Explosion seminar. Not in the way of many new believers, yet, but a fire among the believers trained to share the Gospel. They are hungry to get the message out. Especially in the neighboring village of Bak Kong. Bak Klong was the village I had mentioned in my previous post: “Swiper no Swiping.” Only one believer from that village was trained in EE, but what he had learned he shared with other believers there, and a new group has formed. This group, including well as Sret and myself, meet together on Friday afternoons. We have been practicing the things they learned in EE, and are even making new illustrations to use in sharing. They are boldly going out now, meeting with people they know already, sharing the Gospel.
Our plan is to quickly include any new believers in with our group. Going in with the prayer and singing together before we break up into smaller evangelism teams. We will include those new believers with the older, more experienced believers, in these smaller teams to get them exposure and experience in sharing. They will be mostly observing in the beginning, of course, later as they feel led, also participating in sharing.
My current thoughts are this: as the groups grow, we will split off in an organic fashion, half the group staying in the original Friday meeting, and the other half starting a new evangelism group. Bak Kong is big enough for maybe two or three teams, but there is room in the Koh Kong town and out lying villages for groups to go.
The second big task God has given since my teammates left is a young fellow by the name of Kamrint. I am hesitant in mentioning Kamrint to you, because he is a young man, without a family. What has been the case, in my experience here, is young men are very unreliable, and those who do not have family ties to a community are a nuisance, looking for action, and moving on. Yeah, I have been burned, but I can’t dismiss them all.
Kamrint was, at one time, such a young man as I previously mentioned. So much so, his own mom and dad have disowned him (only after they herd he became a Christian). Fortunately for Kamrint, he was allowed into the Youth With a Mission (YWAM): Discipleship Training school here in Cambodian and he got more excited about his faith. Somehow, WYAM decided to send Kamrint to Koh Kong for ministry experience at a small church I know. Kamrint had finished with his course of study with YWAM and had no where to go. So he came to me.
Not a penny to his name, and only the clothes on his back, he asked for our help in getting a job. We gave him work at the gym in the evenings. In the mornings he teaches English to some local kids. In the beginning he had five or six students. Now he has paying students, too many for him to keep his night job at the gym.
In his off time, Kamrint has started a ministry endeavor, on his own. He teaches soccer to fifty boys and Sunday, after bringing them to the local church. He needed only five soccer balls to get going. I am impressed.
The gym is also coming out of it’s slump. The rainy season is over, and more people are coming. I don’t have enough time to teach all the new people who are coming. I just go around and find out peoples names and answer short questions. I am glad to see more people coming. It was really quiet in there the last month.
Then Weston was sick with Roseola, only we didn’t know what it was. He just had a high fever, 103 degrees, for three days. As a new parent, I was surprised about how much stress a sick kid brought to me. We were worried, thinking he had Malaria or something, He is just a little guy, so such a high fever for so long…we weren’t sure how much he could take. But he is better now. His rash is completely gone.
So, that’s my October thus far, who knows what next week will hold?
We collect rain water off the roof for drinking and washing. We filter it as well. Most Cambodians do this as other water sources are expensive. In this video I clean out the water tank.
My son loves the “Dora the Explorer” cartoon. He doesn’t understand it much at 13 months, but he likes it nonetheless. In the cartoon, Dora has a nemesis, named Swiper the fox. He “swipes” or tries to swipe from Dora time to time in the story.
We have a “Swiper” here in Cambodia as well. We saw the effects of him last week when we went to a familiar village to meet and share with people. Our team has gone there before as we brought the Evangelism Explosion team there to share. Previously, we had seen some people come to faith there and we were hopeful to bring them together to start a new fellowship group. We had even a leader trained and ready to teach.
But our Swiper made it there before us. Suddenly, as we met with these new believers, they didn’t want to study. They were no longer interested in the Gospel as we had thought before. Out of five people who were previously interested, none remained. The Swiper had cleaned us out. All of them had their excuses and each were different.
It still mystifies me. How people can respond to the Gospel, even with tears of repentance and proclamations of faith, and yet a few days later, nothing of it remains. Swiped clean.
This is where perseverance is need on our part. Those five people’s refusal doesn’t mean we should stop our sharing our message there. In fact, this afternoon, Sret and I intend to go back and share more. Who knows what the Lord will bring our way? Should we not expect resistance in the spiritual work? This is the “Swipers” den after all. He has had free reign here for a long time and is not willing to simply roll over.
We are not discouraged. It is all part of the process. Sowing seeds, breaking up hard ground and waiting on the Lord to bring the growth. We just need to be tenacious.
Well, we are not completely alone. Our American teammates are gone, though. Both the Cottle family and the Hartsfields are in the US on a home assignment. This leaves our family here, but with our Khmer friends and fellow workers, Sret and Daah. Sret and Daah are great. We meet together for prayer and study of the Word. We quite often share a meal together. But it’s not the same as having co-workers from your own country to fellowship with.
We have done this before. There have been other times where we were without other US missionary families. It won’t bring our ministry to a halt. But there is a comfort in having them around to bounce ideas from, or watch a movie together. Ah, well, it is only for a few months. The Hartsfields are expected back in January.
So we were beginning to wonder what was going on in your life when we realized you must be thinking the same thing about our lives! We moved to a new house at the end of July and our internet hasn’t been able to be installed yet! We are able to use our teammates internet in the mean time. We arrived back from Thailand yesterday after Courtney’s 4 month check up! Her and baby are doing well. She seems to be getting over the morning sickness or better called “all day sickness” for her! She has a few good days and then a bad day but things are looking better! Thanks for all your prayers! She now needs to work on eating and putting on some weight! While we were in Thailand our teammates, Jamie and Lynette Cottle, came with us. Jamie hasn’t been feeling well the past few days and the hospital admitted for observation and possible malaria! They hope to return today with medication if his blood count continues to improve. Please lift them up! Also Sret, our Khmer teammate, thinks he has malaria too! Courtney will take him to get his blood checked today. He is asking for prayer since he was playing a major role in this weeks activities! Once arriving in Cambodia late yesterday afternoon we had 11 Cambodian Pastors/teachers waiting for us at our house. This week we are hosting an Evangelism Explosion Conference. Last night during prayer and praise they asked us to make sure all our friends in America were praying for this week of teaching… which is when we realized that since we haven’t had internet we haven’t ask you to be in prayer! So, please join us. The conference is 5 days long with over 30 people in attendance from the local area. We are not involved in any of the teaching but organizing and feeding everyone and providing opportunity for them to practice what they are learning! We are really excited for this opportunity the Lord has provided for us and hope you will join us in prayer as 30 local Christians will be encouraged and learning how to share the hope they have within!
God has been working in the hearts of people here in Koh Kong and it is AWESOME to see!
First off, if you have not yet heard, Courtney is pregnant! You are probably in as much shock as we are. In twelve years of marriage she has never been pregnant. We had little Weston in our lives for 4 months before we found out she was pregnant. She is due at the end of January. We will be traveling once a month to Trat, Thailand (about an hour and half away) for prenatal visits and ultimately delivery. She has the typical all day “morning sickness” with some vomiting usually brought on by a stinky diaper from Weston. We will keep you all posted as to the days draw near.
So-chekt and his family continue to ask questions about Jesus. Apparently he has started talking more with Sret, our Cambodian teammate. We are really excited about this new development and yet sadden that we aren’t the one’s doing so much front line evangelism. BUT this is what we want and dream about, Khmer leading each other to Christ. Continue to pray for him and his family. We have offered to come and teach about the Creator God and the one God sent to save people from their sins but he hasn’t taken us up on it yet.
Alex is a 28 year old single man who studied and graduated as a veterinarian. He was a contact of our teammate Pat Hartsfield through the gym. Pat and his family are now in America for a 6 month home assignment. The other day Alex walked up to Jeff at the gym and asked him straight out if he could teach him the Bible. Jeff was dumbfound for a second before he could respond yes! Jeff called him today and asked if he wanted to come over and talk. Before long we were watching a wonderful video in Khmer about the Hope christians have. The video clear explains creation, adam and eve, the fall, sin, man’s attempt to deal with sin and God’s promise of a savior. About 10 minutes into he got a phone called and said he had to go but wanted to come back later in the day. As he left we both prayed that he really would come back. He called around 3 and praise be to God he came back and watch the rest of the video. It’s a long video too (over and hour)! He asked questions through out and at the end when it was over we asked him what he thought. It was very clear that he was choked up and it took him a few second before he could talk. He had the usual questions about khmer becoming christians and not being able to show respect to their dead relatives…. we tried are best to answer him and in the end he left in deep contemplation. Please join us in prayer for him.
This same evening our teammates the Cottle’s are having their neighbors over for dinner, 8 people. We have not yet heard how their evening went but we are praise God that tonight several people have clearly heard the gospel. Will you continue to join us in prayer for the people God is calling to himself. We are eager to keep you all posted and share how God is working here in Koh Kong, one of the last provinces in Cambodia unreached for Christ!
We had Socheat, his wife, seven year old boy and 11 month old baby over for dinner last night. We told them that we would have American food for them to try. Courtney made breaded chicken with mash potatoes and gravy. Everything was ready for their traditional “late” arrival so we took advantage of the time and prayed for evening and conversation together. This Cambodian custom of arriving late is something we have gotten use to, but we never had completely understood.
As it turns out they were only at our house for an hour. The evening progressed and they even liked the food! Socheat started a conversation by asking if it was OK to ask some questions. My heart skipped a beat and I thought here it is, the question about Jesus. His question, sadly, wasn’t gospel related. He wanted to know if it was true that Europeans kiss when they meet, and was this an American custom as well. The conversation continued on this topic; the differences between European (French) customs and Cambodian customs.
His last question was about nude bathing in Europe, now prevalent in Thailand. His wife and seven year old were both present at the table and such risque conversation in mixed company is not the norm. But they were all attentive, as if they all were wondering the same thing. No one blushed or stirred in their chairs. This behavior is not acceptable in Cambodia, and he wondered how embarrassing this tradition must be.
Court felt the Lord leading to talk about the subject of God. But, how? Just blast in with Jesus dying on the cross or what? Then she heard herself saying, “You know that reminds me of a story about Creation…..” She went on to explain that everything God made was good and perfect without sin. Then God created the first man and the first women and they also were good without sin and naked. But once they disobeyed God sin enter the world and their body and they realized for the first time that they were naked. They became ashamed and embarrassed. This was the fist time that man had ever sinned and first time they had ever felt this emotion. They listened to the story but then their baby started crying and our conversation came to an end.
When they finally left, both of us started to laugh about how I tried to get in a spiritual conversation while talking about nude European bathing. You definitely need a sense of humor in ministry.
We are praying for the seeds (no matter how kookie they come) we have planted and for more opportunities to share. Our team (two other couples and us) will be going to Socheat’s house tonight (Monday). He has invited us over for dinner. Please pray as all of us share a meal and hopefully more interesting spiritual conversations.
In Anthological circles, missionaries are often demonized. Missionaries are commonly posed as the ones who destroy cultures, crusading over the barbarians, making peace loving tribal people conform to some Victorian and prudish norms. Missionaries are the ones who took surfing and the Hula away from the Hawaiians after all.
Yes, missionaries have gone way overboard in some cultures. Sometimes non-moral practices, such as a sport or fashion, have been unnecessarily put down by missionaries who claim the moral high ground. It is a case of missionaries majoring on minor or non-issues, if you will. I believe missions in general has made great improvement in recent decades and has refocused on the essentials of their message.
Cultures, on the other hand, are not necessary always good for people. Preserving a “culture” as if it is something holy is off the scale in the other direction. Some cultural behavior degrade a people group, destroying relationships and diminish social cohesion. Long held common social practices sometimes lead to more social problems. Often a people group doesn’t see the causes of their own social problems because they are in the culture. The old “frog in the kettle” scenario. Slowly, imperceptibly, peoples behavior heats up, causing people emotional pain, and people don’t know why it is. Such practices should be called out by missionaries. It takes an outside perspective, like a missionary, to diagnose a problem and cause social change.
In Cambodia, child molestation is common. I will withhold the specifics in consideration of my reader. Both male and female adults practice what I will call, “inappropriate touching” of children as a means of teasing, playing, or pacifying a child. Such practices, if preformed in other countries, would undoubtably be grounds for criminal prosecution. But to Cambodians, this is an non-moral issue, a cultural pattern that has been practice for who knows how long.
And Cambodians wonder why there are so many family and marriage issues in their culture.
Yesterday, I witnessed such an event as a male neighbor inappropriately touched a young male child from another family. The child’s mother and female neighbor were present as well as my wife and I. No protests were made by the mother. Her reaction was if it was an non-moral issue and was not offended. However, the young boy clearly felt degraded, screamed out in cries, swinging his fists at the older male as he persisted in the assault. It was over in moments. As an observer, I felt anger, but I held my tongue as I watched and waited for the mothers lead in the situation. Nothing came.
Now, what would you do if you were the missionary? Would you: a)walk over and bust the man in the chops for his behavior? b) preach at the man, explaining to him (who doesn’t have the same moral background as you) that he is preforming an immoral act? c) wait for an opportunity share the Gospel and then hope later to address this issue? d) consider this issue as a minor issue and just get over it?
If you think of another option please send me your thoughts.
Jeff
