Inevitably you run into it - and it’s a hard thing to know how to deal with it: the “P” word.
As a Christian agency working to serve people around the world through holistic mission, it must inevitably be faced in the Canadian context.
Twice over the past year, I have been asked the question with something akin to disgust or shocked revulsion in the voice of the asker. In both cases they were European-background Canadians. “But, you don’t proselytize, do you?"
It’s a hard question to answer. Part of the difficulty comes from the reality that you know the person has something in their mind that is far from the actual situation. In their minds, formed and informed by cultural and moral relativism, the idea that a spiritual dimension is part of human and societal advancement is not considered.
For them, impacting human need in disadvantaged sectors is exclusively material, practical and end-results driven. They unfortunately have had little real experience or information apart from the sessions in university that informed them of the horrors of past colonial political and religious domination of the world’s peoples by the European and Western nations.
For them, economic and other types of advances are believed to be viable apart from human development.
I think we need to admit to the reality of a very unfortunate past that inevitably tainted foreign mission efforts by their association with colonial expansion. In many respects, missions and mission agencies used the power represented by the colonial powers to show up, unasked for and sometimes in spite of local wishes, to establish mission bases. (Interesting to compare this with Saint Patrick, who chose to go back into slavery in Ireland to bring a Christian message there).
And in many instances, unfortunate practices were implemented that required the now “Christianized’ individuals or communities to become increasingly embracing of European culture including clothes and day to day “civilized” decorum.
This reality can be tempered somewhat by the many times when missionaries stood in opposition to the colonial government’s brutality, sometimes resulting in great personal loss, in order to protect those who were being dominated and subjugated.
But, back to the topic. Given the above unfortuate history, how do we deal with and communicate a relevant answer to the “P” question? The fact that Jesus was given all authority by His Father and so commanded his followers to go into the whole world and preach the gospel does little to help an average Canadian consider this issue in a somewhat different light.
The first step may be to discuss the reality that a Canadian with a secular worldview is a minority on the world landscape. Most people believe in a de facto spiritual dimension to their lives. And for many, it is the spiritual world that is the primary driver of personal survival and/or success. Many community development projects that seem to make sense from a Western perspective fail when they do not take into account the issues that are held in the worldview of the potential benficiaries.
Seeing a change in the minds of those within the orb of development projects is key to lasting success of the projects. In some cases, the project’s effectiveness is dependant on this occuring.
For example, a long standing tradition among the Saura people of Andra Pradesh, India is that women have to have a flat stomach to return to work. As a result, women, post-birth, do not eat for a week or more and their abdomens are bound. This belief and trend is reinforced through local female shaman, who channel spirits to give direction to the activies of the community. Typically shaman are the guardians of tradition and are the most resistent sector to new ideas that would change the life patterns of the local population.
The result of this practice is a 50% infant mortality rate due largely to non-lactating mothers, putting the survival of the whole ethnic group in a precarious position especially when including other at risk behaviors emergin with their connection to those in the encroaching towns HIV infection from prostitution as an example.
Another instance of how worldview impacts behavior is found among the Ibo Edda people of southeastern Nigeria. This large sub-group of the Ibo people numbers approximately 2 million and are scattered in large communities of 10 to 20 thousand people in Eboni State. They are mainly animists and follow a traditional form of ethnic-specific belief, transmitted in oral form through the generations.
Their religious beliefs (and animism is a religious belief, as it defines the meaning of life, the intersection of the material and spiritual planes and resulting social behaviors) are shown through the annual ceremony where children around the age of ten are tied in the forest and provided for minimally. Enduring the heat, rain, cold nights without clothing and with a reduced caloric intake, many die.
The belief is that the spirits would not accept those who died as worthy of becoming part of the ethnic group. These trials by ordeal are common in primitive peoples and are thought by anthropologists to be useful in eliminating the weak from the gene pool and inculcating endurance and character in the lives of the survivors. It is also usually the time when the traditions and beliefs of the group are taught more formally to those entering adulthood.
While there is doubtless some harsh pragmatic truth to this, there are two inevitable things to consider. The first is that there is a belief here, beyond the pragmatic need of having physically robust individuals to carry forth their genes into the next generation. There is a belief that it is the spirits who are responsible for the deaths, not the parents or community.
This allows for a reduction in the moral implication of who is responsible for the death. The community obviously believes that there is a spiritual plane inhabited by beings who desire, at least at certain times, the death of humans.
This idea is not left with the initiation rites in the forest, but inhabits the minds and psyches of the people all of the time. Living in fear of and seeking the appeasement of these beings is a major preoccupation and impacts their attitudes towards change.
If change, that from a western mind would be good for the community, ensuring greater survival potential and enhancing the quality of life of individuals, flies in the face of what the spirits accept, the community will not change or embrace new opportunities as long as these beliefs remain entrenched.
The second implication is that the suffering of children is acceptable and that the protection of the children is not the moral obligation of the community. When the Edda were largely cut off from the broader world, the initiation rites remained largely an anthropological point of interest.
But with increased connection with the rest of the country as roads and infrastructure are developed, a very dark side of their views on children have emerged. Children are a labour force that parents feel little moral responsibility to protect. This is seen in the fact that the children are exposed to very harmful behaviors in the annual “new yam festival” where wives are freely shared and drunkeness is rampant.
Even worse, the local population is now aware that their children are marketable. They bring a decent price when sold into baby-mills in the slums of Lagos. Some children are sold into the human parts market (the killing and utilization of human parts for magical power), others are simply sold as slaves for household or other labour.
What is the answer here? Certainly the laws of Nigeria do not permit this behavior. But, in the chaotic and stressed context found there, it is highly unlikely that something will happen in the near future. And this is not really our topic. The topic is how ideas produce behaviour and choices, including the rejection of viable community development options.
Back to the “P” word. In discussing these things with Canadians, most will not engage in a discussion long enough and with enough focus to track with these challenging examples. For most, a comment along the lines of “we believe that God loves people and Christians are suppose to love people, which means helping them. Usually the people who are being helped know we are Christians” is all you are likely to get across.
For some however, the question might be, “Can you see how people’s worldview changing opens the gateway for the good of the community?" These people believe in a spiritual world. The alternative solution proposed by the outsider has to have a spiritual dimension. They have to begin thinking in a way that frees them to choose a better path.
