mbjones

Invisible Children have a new video out (Kony2012) and it’s made a splash in a big way. The vast majority of the publicity you’ve likely seen is positive but there have been a few less than excited voices out there. I have a natural aversion to anything that goes viral in such a big way so it took me some time to check it out, and upon doing so found myself with mixed emotions.

• I’m honestly glad that they are trying to raise awareness about an important issue: a vast history of injustice in the central/eastern African region perpetuated by the LRA and Joseph Kony.
• There has been a lot of discussion about IC’s financials. It’s not all that bothersome to me that so much of their cash goes into video advocacy. I expected that. I think IC did a good job of speaking to this issue specifically here
• I’m honestly quite uncomfortable with several aspects of it.
• I’m not keen on how much the issue has been oversimplified. IF the video thrusts folks into learning more and digging deeper, GREAT. But I’m not sure it’s doing that. And you still have to deal with the fact that it glosses over information that’s quite important (and at times gives some questionable info as well)
• I’m not keen on heavy US involvement or placing an un-critical eye on Ugandan army involvement either. Particularly in regards to the latter, they have their own war crimes to answer for in this region. In regards to the former, it wasn’t exactly an altruistic involvement: we got the Ugandans to fight in Somalia for us.
• I’m not keen on the advocating of direct violence as a solution. Especially when nonviolent approaches are currently working (and have been for some time). I won’t go so far as to say that its beyond a state’s power to exercise violence if she deems it necessary, but it should never be done lightly. Direct concerns here: will cutting off the head kill the LRA? Probably not, and we are left with a new, potentially more troublesome problem. Also, do we not think that Kony will surround himself with a large number of children? Ignoring that they are brainwashed and holding guns, and assuming the innocence of childhood, the collateral damage potential is massive.
• Flowing from the above, Obama’s “kill or capture” order makes me uncomfortable. I’d much rather see, and celebrate, justice rather than death.

Anyways, I don’t want to spend much more time writing on it. It has worth in raising awareness but I would encourage you not to stop with it, or what IC is trying to do. Dig deeper into the issue. Listen to Ugandan voices. There is significant work going on in the region, actively seeking justice and peace. Get involved there. Listen to the voices of successful nonviolent resistance and heed their cries.

It is easy to look around at Africa and see it solely through white western eyes. Those are the only eyes I’ve ever had after all. As Africans look around at their land though, they more often than not see things in a completely different manner. Whether or not we are willing to admit it, the culture we grow up in greatly influences how we see the world around us. It shapes how we approach problems. It defines our ethics. It determines our values. All of our interactions and ideas about the world around us are influenced by this lens which is commonly called a worldview.

As I’ve already mentioned, the African worldview is different (vastly different, in fact) from my white American one. Those differences, when not addressed, cause much unneeded conflict. Further — as we try to approach and see transformation to some of the vast problems afflicting this great continent — we must keep the African worldview in mind. Transplanting a western worldview doesn’t (and won’t ever) produce the desired change. In truth, it exacerbates the problem more often than not.

So what broadly is the African worldview?

For one thing it is cyclical in nature. The physical world isn’t the starting point or final destination but merely a temporary existence. The real home is the afterlife, which souls periodically step out of to come to earth. It can be compared to the grass that grows and is burned off. After a good rain and some sunlight, it comes back seemingly exactly the same as it was. Or take the sun. It disappears every night but then shows up again in the morning. Life is visible yet all too often invisible. It’s physical yet deeply spiritual. And ultimately our primary residence isn’t here but in that spiritual place.

Because of this endless cycle the points of transition are extremely important. They mark movement from one residence to another and then back again. Pregnancy, birth and death are sacred moments often ritualized and ceremonialized. The lack of the these movements — sterility and impotency for example — are seen as some of the greatest curses.

And as a cyclical view of life implies, reincarnation is seen as the normal mode of life. In every birth, a soul leaves its home and takes up temporary residence here on earth, yet again. Names are often common as they represent not only the present life but all of the lives lived. Dreams and visions and the consultation of witchdoctors are necessary ventures in determining the name of the soul coming back to life.

As already implied, the African worldview necessitates a high degree of interaction between the spiritual and physical world. Spiritual “beings” (most often souls at home) are seen not only as real but as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. They are the source of all that is — both good and bad — and physical life is held subject to them.

And communication between the different worlds is common. The physical calls upon the spiritual through invocations, sacrifices, prayers and the aid witchdoctors just as the spiritual calls upon the physical through signs, dreams, visions and witchdoctors. Some of the spirits are good and some are bad, just as some people are good and some are bad.

In everything — harmony must be maintained. Harmony must be maintained with the spirits. It must be maintained within family units. It must be maintained with in tribes. Everyone must be responsible in this; nothing is more important than honor. There is nothing worse in fact than seeing family or spirits dishonored. In this solidarity with one another is incredibly important. It’s not a matter of what I have — the issue is what you need. All property, all monies, all food, all shelter, all everything is available to those that have need as they have need. It’s a way to maintain honor. It’s a way to maintain ancestral heritage. it’s the way to maintain life.

As previously mentioned this worldview stands beyond and even against the one in which I was raised. There is a lot within it that makes me raise an eyebrow. There is a lot within it that I wouldn’t want to live out (and some I might). But to understand Africa — to understand truly its problems and begin to develop solutions — you have to understand its worldview.

I’m not going to be prescriptive at the moment but I do plan to write more in the coming days regarding a few of the implications of such a worldview. For now it’s something to chew on and consider — not to judge but to understand.

I’ve been able to read more lately, which is quite nice. It seems that my old job tended to wear me out mentally and when I would get home, didn’t have the energy to do much requiring invested thought. I still read, mind you, just not as much as I am now.

The last book I read is entitled A Letter to Africa About Africa by Kasongo Munza. Munza was an ordained UMC pastor from the Congo and was director of a training center in Zambia when he passed away in 2005.

His book looks in depth at the prevailing African worldview, particularly that of subsaharan Africa, and analyzes how it (a) has led to the vast problems facing Africa and (b) how it matches up against Jesus’ view of the kingdom of God.

I didn’t quite know what to expect upon picking it up. Part of me worried that this was going to be another book focused on replacing the African worldview with an American Evangelical one. I’ll readily recognize that there is much in the African worldview that needs a critical eye, but a replacement of one broken worldview with another broken one isn’t an answer I wanted to read about (I’ve already seen enough proposals like this).

Thankfully this book was not that and because of this I found it quite helpful. It was a detailed analysis of the African worldview — something necessary to understand if you are going to even begin to attempt spiritual and community development type work. It also provided a framework for building a new worldview steeped in God’s kingdom — not based in throwing everything African out and not importing everything western in.

I think it worth writing in some detail about the African worldview so that people have an understanding of the good and the bad inherent in it. And that task I’m going to save for another day. But for now, if you would like to read a fascinating and small book on why Africa is the way it is, pick up A Letter to Africa About Africa. And if you ever plan on doing ministry here, make that a priority.

Today is World’s AIDs Day — a day set aside specifically to raise awareness and support for the 33 million people living, and dying, with it. It’s a disease that is literally tearing through the developing world at an alarming rate and it’s one that we don’t yet have an affordable, easily reproduced and highly available cure for yet. In 2007, it was reported that 5.7 million people in South Africa had HIV/AIDs; 22.4 million have it in all of sub-saharan Africa. To add, several million more are being infected yearly and more than 14 million kids are orphaned because of it.

Hopefully those stats are humbling enough to make you want to do something. Truthfully, there’s so much that needs doing; Education, medical research and care, funding and raising awareness here are just a few of the things we can play a part in. It’s not a situation that bares no hope regardless of how dire it may seem. Research is advancing — there are groups that seem to be ever closer to a vaccine and just this past May it was reported that a German group actually successfully cured AIDs in a stem cell transplant procedure; the patient has now been HIV free for 2 years. An end is in site.

And until that end — a highly available cure and/or vaccine — is fully seen, I can take some hope knowing I serve a GOD bigger than any disease, no matter how scary it may seem. One of the most moving stories of Juli and I’s time in Cape Town this past May was meeting Angela, an 18 year old woman lying on her death bed in Masi. She had AIDs and was dying of TB; hospice had sent her home, not giving her much time at all. When we first met her, she couldn’t move or doing anything for herself. We told her about a man, GOD’s son, who loved her so much and was here for her now and always. We told her about HIS kingdom and how it differs from ours (which is broken by sin and decay and death). And we cried out to GOD there with her.

It’s still amazing to me how GOD heals and comforts and restores those that come to Him. I see this throughout the Gospels especially, as Jesus walked through life. It’s not always how I expect it and it’s not always how I might want it but above all of this and my limited expectations God is now and always faithful. That hasn’t, and won’t ever, change.

Anyways, back to Angela. Many in our rather large group got to see and meet her throughout our trip. She had such a hunger for Jesus. And an amazing thing was happening — by the end of the trip she was easily talking and she could feed and bathe and clothe herself and even briefly make it out of bed. She was supposed to be getting weaker and weaker until she died and here she was getting stronger.

We left after two weeks but left her in the hands of the long term missionaries to continue discipling her. About a month after we had left, some of the long termers visited her and after hearing complaints of pain, took her to the hospital. She was tested and after some time the doctor came back and said, “I know why you are having this pain. The medication is so harsh and is treating something you don’t have and is causing it. In your x-rays and blood work you show know signs of TB! I don’t understand it but there it is.”

She and the long termers and us when the told us celebrated our GOD’s strength and compassion — He’d taken away this young woman’s disease and healed her at least of that. Several months later the doctors called her back in for another test as they just couldn’t believe the results. They showed the same thing — no TB. She was baptized rejoicing the day, knowing hope that sees Jesus’ kingdom breaking through here and now and knowing how it changed her (not just the healing) and how it can change others.

It will be a wonderful day when we all have vaccines and cures and successful treatments for blights such as AIDs. But more than that though I have hope knowing that there is kingdom where none of these blights even exist and it breaks through occasionally into our broken kingdom and it is bringing with it hope and change through the redemptive power of Jesus.

This describes one of the more life changing events in my life. It happened 3 summers ago in Mozambique. I thought it pertinent for this site as my wife and I prepare to embark full time to Africa.

Every week without fail, Luis makes two trips: one to the Maputo jail and one to an AIDs hospital. While staying at the orphanage, we had the opportunity to join him in these missions. Today I’ll turn your attentions to our time at the AIDs hospital. Looking back, it was one of the more impacting times for myself (and I think that I’m not the only one of the eleven of us who would say that).

About the Hospital

The hospital was actually in the town we were staying in, Matola. It is divided into gendered floors, the bottom couple being for the newer patients and the upper couple for the highly contagious terminal patients. We rode a chappa to the hospital and upon exiting were met with an interesting site. The building itself looks kind of like any other bland government building – honestly there is not much to set it apart. It is surrounded by a fence with a gate but security wasn’t an issue. I expected to have to go through something in order to get in, but we just walked right on through the gate (I don’t think the security booth was even being manned by anyone at the time). Upon entering the hospital we were met with drab, dark halls on the bottom floor. It was rather depressing – in comparison our hospitals look like amazingly bright and cheery places. I remember the colors as gray scale and just blah. The second and third floors weren’t much better although numerous windows made for a much brighter atmosphere. On these patient floors, the stairs emptied into a kind of common room that had tables and chairs setup (it was here we talked to and prayed with the patients). On either side of the common rooms were the halls with patient rooms.

About the Patients

All of the patients here had AIDs. Most had other, secondary diseases as well, the most common being tuberculosis. Generally speaking, its not AIDs that kills people – its the opportunistic secondary diseases that their bodies can’t take care because of immunodeficiency. The onset of these diseases is generally what takes people to these hospitals to spend their final days. The patients on the two floors we couldn’t go onto where in their final stage of life. The highly contagious form of tuberculosis is mostly what we heard they had. The plan in future years is to bring HEPA masks and robes so that we can go onto these floors but lack of appropriate safety equipment kept us from talking with these patients this time.

The patients on the two floors we could go onto where dieing as well, some from diseases other than tuberculosis, I would guess. Many of them looked too weak to even be up and moving around, but come out they did. I remember praying for one woman, my hand on her shoulder as we generally did, and quickly moving my hand off in fear that I would break her. It felt like i was touching bone (and that’s all most of these individuals were – skin and bones).

Sharing and Praying

All eleven of us did not descend on the hospital at once; rather, five went the first week and six the next. I went in the first group. We had originally thought that we would just be going around to rooms, chatting briefly and then praying with the occupants. The common room was a surprise to us (as was Luis telling us that someone needed to stand up and share). I decided that I would take the opportunity to do that on the guys floor and felt led to share briefly and broadly about what I was reading in Isaiah and how their lives were important to us and more importantly, were important to Jesus. We then paired up and prayed for everyone of them. We next went up to the girls floor and did the same. As the “have something to share” thing to our group slightly by surprise, none of the ladies with us had anything in particularly to share so I once again took the lead. Rather than talk about the same thing I did on the guys floor, I decided that it’d be much more worthwhile to talk about Hosea. Don’t ask me why – it was a last minute change as when I stood up the Isaiah bit was still on my mind – but Hosea it was and it seemed to go alright. And after the sharing we followed the same routine, praying for everyone individually.

The Aftermath of the Visit

There were several important aspects of this visit. If I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it right now – this was one of the most important things we did in my mind. At least, it was one of the most impacting things we did to me. For one thing it was one of the more emotional things we did. I’m generally not an emotional dude but it was impossible not to tear up, standing in front of these hopeless, dieing people and not tear up. Their environment just felt wrong and depressing. They really had no hope to ever leave that hospital. They knew there days were numbered and that there was pretty much nothing that they could do about it. And what where we to do? How where we to pray knowing that it would take one crazy miracle of God to ever get them free of that hospital? It’s important to be able to look deep inside of the dark and hopeless places and know that the light of God can penetrate even there and that’s what we were there to do, and what Luis is there to do week after week. It’d be easy to find places like this here in the states but we shelter ourselves off from it for no good reason. That’s definitely one thought I took away.

Other things I took away were much more trivial (or at least they feel trivial compared to the above). One – God will give you the words if you trust. Two – I want to be given the words more, I need to put myself in that kind of situation more, however you want to word that. Three – One of the oddest sites I have ever seen occurred on the ride to the hospital (because it happened on the way there, and with everything else going on, it’s automatically lumped with the hospital experience in my brain even though it doesn’t necessarily deal directly with it). As we were driving past a poor village, one much like the one I’ve posted pictures of with dirty roads and small poorly built houses that lack what we consider basic needs (running water, etc), I never expected to see a brand new, blazingly clean and white, four door Mercedes sedan pull out from its dirty streets. The contrast of rich and poor was never clearer (or more inappropriate, or so it felt). That will be a fuller conversation for another post yet it is tied intimately to the whole hospital experience, which is why I mention it here.

I would post pictures but I don’t have any of the hospital. It is illegal in Mozambique to take pictures of government building, monuments and officials and not knowing if the hospital falled into one of those categories I decided against whipping my camera out. Better a post without pictures than time in a Mozambiquan jail I think. The lack of color in this post is more fitting anyways to the environment of the hospital I think.

This is a heartbreaking article on the problems facing people of the country of Eritrea. I'd honestly never heard of this country until reading this article. It borders the Red Sea, Ethiopia and Sudan and has struggles greatly. Disappearance and torture are common problems for its inhabitants and they have trouble finding any escape whatsoever. Again, this is why Africa needs discipleship.

Africa needs discipleship, and not just church planters, and definitely not just mission workers unwilling to truly invest in people. Churches are abundant, even in the poor areas, but so often they are syncretic messes (and often they are sponsored by denominations and congregations from outside of the continent so there is limited local oversite). Syncretism is the blending of traditions in such a way that pieces of each are retained and active. This can be very problematic for followers of Jesus as part of what He calls us to is a repentance (an active turning away from) from the track of the world (particularly idols and other ‘gods’ existing in our lives).

We saw this play out in our time in Cape Town this past may in that many of the folks that we met that said they knew Jesus went to churches where ancestor worship played a large part of the religion. It was Jesus and…this. It’s in the this where things get problematic because people make for themselves, often unwittingly because discipleship is non-existent, idols that open them to dark spiritual forces.

Many of you may not be aware of ancestor worship and its problems. Ancestor worship says that when we die, we still have a spiritual presence in the material word and can act upon it through our living descendants. People believe that their ancestors come to them as spirits and that they have to do anything that their ancestors say. It’s always the destructive path that the ancestors lead people on: drinking, drugs, promiscuous sex and the like are common things that people say their ancestors affect. People commonly seek both protection and aid in dealing with these spirits through witchdoctors, who are actually allowed to play a fairly prominent role in syncretic churches.

Syncretic churches aren’t the only reason Africa needs discipleship though. I mentioned previously that many African churches have some connection to outside churches and denominations but oversite is limited and we’ve tended to export our bad along with our good. One “bad” that we’ve exported is our western consumerist attitude that says not only that church is just another decision we make but the church we choose is dependent on what’s best out there (it’s fairly common within the western church to be based on ideas of “attraction” or what we can best do to attract people into our church).

One particularly bad case of this gone awry is seen in Nigeria (and many other places in Africa) where churches are quick to label children as witches in order to attract people in with their supposed power. According to the linked article, over the past decade in two of the Nigerian states 15,000 children were accused of witchcraft (1000 of them were brutally murdered and countless other brutally tortured). If it wasn’t bad enough that these supposed pastors use such false accusations to garner attention, they also often charge an arm and a leg to perform supposed exorcisms (often $60/session to people who make no more than $2/day). And what’s worse it’s often the orphan that’s targeted.

As I started by saying, Africa needs discipleship. This is why we are moving our family half way across the world. More than planting churches we seek to truly disciple leaders, training them to do the same, not in the ways of western churchianity or old African traditions but in Jesus who transcends all of these. He has a plan for this continent and these people; when they truly grab ahold of Him and Him alone, old ways will pass away, lives will be transformed and a whole continent will be closer to the kingdom of God.