The last two weeks of classes have been tougher than trying to masticate and choke down the hunks of gristly, fatty beef served every Tuesday and Friday for lunch in the pilau. We’ve experienced the kind of tough that makes us question our core beliefs and grieve our now wavering confidence in absolute truth.
I’m still processing the difficult ideas we’ve discussed in class, and am not sure how I’m going to put my many thoughts into words, so please bear with me as I attempt to share.
The week before last we discussed the idea of “Worldview”. We learned that people from the West tend to view the world from a primarily physical perspective. Thus, we Westerners place much emphasis on science and the material world. For example, when we get sick, we tend to look to medical science for answers, and often engage in prayer over our health as a “last resort” or only for really serious conditions.
In contrast, people from the East tend to view the world from a primarily spiritual perspective. So when our African friends get sick, even with a minor cold, it is typically viewed as a “spiritual attack” on the body and prayer may be the only sought after solution.
This can be very frustrating for both Mzungus and Africans. A Mzungu might find it exasperating that her African brothers and sisters want to offer lengthy and loud prayers over her, when all she really wants to do is crawl home to a quiet place, and down some Nyquil. Likewise, when the well-meaning Mzungu offers cold medicine to the ill African, it can be discouraging because what the African really wants is a powerfully spoken and highly emotional prayer.
Learning about these extremes (viewing the world from a physical perspective versus a spiritual perspective) has shed some light on the nature of our experiences thus far in Africa. A primary example is that since we’ve been here, we’ve heard much talk about witch doctors, magic, and demons. These are things you just don’t hear about in the United States. As Westerners, our first thought is to chalk it all up to over-active imaginations that have been nurtured in myths and superstitions. But anyone familiar with the Bible has to acknowledge that the Bible also talks about sorcerers, magicians, and demons. This leads to the question: Do they really exist? I personally do not think I’ve ever witnessed any of these in my lifetime, other than the guy doing card tricks at a birthday party, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that he has supernatural powers. But I also say I believe the Bible; and if those things happened way back then, why couldn’t they happen now? The Bible does say, after all, that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So if we go on to assume that those types of supernatural occurrences do still exist today, I am led to wonder why I haven’t witnessed any of this. Am I hard-hearted to the spiritual world? Am I not “spiritual enough”? Or is it all just a fantastic story that has managed to survive and thrive for over 2000 years?? Again, please bear with me, I’m just sharing the various lines of reasoning my brain has wrestled with over the last 2 weeks.
Through the course of many intense discussions, reading, and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that a Biblical Worldview involves a melding of the physical and spiritual. Extremes on either end of the continuum result in missing the fullness of life that God intended for us. When we look to Jesus as a role model, we see that He was concerned about both the physical and spiritual aspects of people’s lives. Not only did Jesus forgive people’s sins (hence, healing their spiritual bodies), He also healed their physical bodies of many kinds of illness and handicaps. In fact, when He sends out His disciples in Luke 10:8-9, he instructs them to first heal the people, then teach about the Kingdom of God.
And as if wrestling with some of those ideas wasn’t difficult enough, last week we went on to learn about the Holy Spirit. I was very excited going into the week, because I love learning about how the Holy Spirit can develop in us the “fruit of the Spirit”. In other words, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to have love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control in any circumstance--especially those circumstances where those characteristics are not warranted, or even possible with human strength. For example, I find it a great testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit that Paul could show love to the soldiers in the palace guard when he was imprisoned in Rome, and have joy over his opportunity to share God’s love with them (Phil. 1:12-14).
But my excitement over learning more about the Holy Spirit became quickly clouded when our Kenyan speaker began talking about the miraculous physical healings that can occur through the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Bible speaks of many people being physically healed through the Holy Spirit, but again, I’ve never witnessed this personally. In fact, I spent a good portion of the week crying because I just still can’t understand why God didn’t miraculously heal our friend, Jenna, who died at age 5 of cancer in January of 2009. So the same questions of the previous week returned but with a slightly different angle: Do miraculous healings still occur today? If so, why didn’t our prayers heal Jenna? Am I not “spiritual enough”? Or is it all just a fantastic story?
Honestly, I went through a period of wondering what I am doing here, and really wanting to catch the next plane out to my comfortable home and my comfortable world view in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. But no matter how far out of my comfort zone I am stretched, I just can’t get past the fact that God has revealed Himself to me, time and time again, especially during this journey of coming to Africa. Even though I still don’t have answers to many of my questions, I am choosing to rest on what I do know:
I know God exists. I know He created me. I know He loves me. I know He is trustworthy. And because of those facts, I persevere. And for the rest, I take comfort in the following scriptures:
I Cor. 13:12 - “Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 - “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.”
Isaiah 55:8 - “My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.”
Romans 11:33-36 - “Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are His riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand His decisions and His methods! For who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who knows enough to be His counselor? And who could ever give Him so much that He would have to pay it back? For everything comes from Him; everything exists by His power and is intended for His glory. To Him be the glory evermore. Amen.”
Romans 8:26-28 - “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows that the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.”
Comments and additional scriptures would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading and sharing.
