I became more of a person on my flight to Africa:
On the long trans-Atlantic flight over to Addis Ababa I started reading Carl Roger’s On Becoming a Person. As I was reading I totally resonated with this line: “The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to “fix things.” It’s funny and kind of ironic how, as counselors especially, we want to know and explore all the complexities of both ourselves and others and, yet, this further makes things complicated. Life is so full of complex processes and understanding this should make one less inclined to hurry up and try to “fix things” and to try to “manipulate” people to go in the way we want them to go. I think similar things can be said about missions. As humanist Carl Rogers says, we need to accept and warmly regard every human being with a high degree of unconditional self-worth “of value no matter what his condition, his behavior, or his feelings.” Before we fling the gospel at anyone, we need to first understand what it means to have “respect and liking for them as separate people, a willingness for them to possess their own feelings in their way.”
Deciphering and understanding cultural differences is a very tricky and risky business yet a very crucial one and perhaps a little dangerous –dangerous in the sense that further understanding often naturally weakens the initial drive to achieve that understanding. The older I get the more I realize how much I don’t know….and maybe don’t want to know? People are complicated, cultures are complicated and the more we know about either one, the more complicated they actually become. However, we are called to dive deeper and deeper into these bottomless mysteries and what a tremendous spirit of humility is required in order for us to do so.
Learning to literally see Jesus everywhere in everyone:
One weekend we left the capital of Kigali for the smaller town of Gisenyi. We spent the night at a church/theology school compound. During the night, almost half our team experienced what we thought was the rapture taking place. I typically sleep soundly through most thunderstorms but in the middle of the night I was startled awake as my whole bed with mosquito net covering shook. Above my bed my window lit up a very bright shade of orange for what seemed like a half of a minute and I simultaneously heard the loudest booming sound I think I have ever heard before. My first thought upon waking up was that the world was ending. I felt a sense of panic as I wondered how I was going to escape the apparent fire that was quickly closing in all around the compound as the bright shade of orange still lingered across my entire window. I quickly ran down the hall to where a few of my other teammates were but they were of little comfort for they were soundly asleep.
The next morning I was planning on keeping my little rapture experience to myself in fear of being laughed at until another team member said they thought they saw Jesus last night. They too woke up to the explosion in the sky and within seconds their bedroom door flew opened and there was Jesus standing in the doorway. This “Jesus” figure was actually another team member coming in the room, but only the outline of this figure was seen and so this girl thought: “Jesus is coming to get me to take me home!” Who knows for sure if it was just the thunderstorm that woke us up...or even a bomb for we were only a few miles from the Congo (although much of the political unrest more often occurs in the country’s interior).
Some powerful quotes placarded on the wall in the genocide memorial center in Kigali:
“When they said “never again” after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?”
“There will be no humanity without forgiveness, there will be no forgiveness without justice. But justice will be impossible without humanity.”
“If you knew me and you really knew your self, you would not have killed me.”
“But the genocidaires did not kill a million people. They killed one, then another….day after day, hour after hour, minute by minute. Every minute of the day, someone, somewhere, was being murdered, screaming for mercy. And receiving none.”
“God must love America more”
While spending a few days teaching at a girls’ school in Rwanda, some of my team members and I were asked some pretty tough questions. Initially, we were always asked: “Do you have a mother and a father?” (many lost their parents in the genocide or due to AIDS) and “How old are you?” and “Why aren’t you married yet?” but later as conversation continued I was posed a question that I was not expecting, a question I did not know the answer to, a question that made every part of me twinge in guilt, disgust, anger, confusion, and embarrassment. One of the girls asked me: “How come America is so much more blessed than Africa?” As I stumbled for words, I said something to the effect that just because people are rich in America doesn’t mean everyone has a relationship with God and often riches get in the way of people loving God. As I dialogued with an American Peace Corps volunteer later that day, she explained how she constantly needs to remind her students how we are all the same people with the same desires –how we are never satisfied with what we have, we always want more. However, I felt if I simply told them that God loves them as much as He loves Americans it would probably just make me feel better.
"All that has perplexed us in the providences of God will in the world to come be made plain. The things hard to understand will then find explanation. The mysteries of grace will unfold before us. Where our finite minds discovered only confusion and broken promises, we shall see the most perfect and beautiful harmony. We shall know that infinite love ordered the experiences that seemed most trying. As we realize the tender care of Him who makes all things work together for our good, we shall rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
