Bulley's blog: An Atheist’s Praise of Evangelism in Africa

It's very postmodern to recirculate material. Here's an old Post from Michael Bull's blog, where he quotes Brian McLaren, who in turn quotes Matthew Parris. Fun to make the world go round. But the Gospel is the power of God to make things new. And we do well to remember that.

Some good observations by Brian McLaren

"Matthew Parris is a self-confessed atheist, but he writes with extraordinary candor and insight about the role of faith in social transformation in a recent Times article. He explains,

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.

He used to say, “… if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.” But now he believes otherwise. Reflecting on his experiences with Africans over 45-plus years, he confesses,

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.

There was

… 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…. What they were was … influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

He explains,

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.

Then he concludes,

Christianity … 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 know-how 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.

In my book Everything Must Change, I use the term “framing story” for what Parris calls a “belief system” — giving us our sense of our place in the universe, liberating us from various forms of crushing tribal or geo-political groupthink. Parris is right: if you want to help people be liberated from a destructive belief system or framing story (and I believe certain versions of Christianity present some scary and unhelpful twists — all aren’t equally liberating because all aren’t equally true), you can’t simply eliminate it. You have to replace it with something better.

And, of course, what’s true for rural Africa is equally true for the urban West. Take away Jesus’ radically transforming good news of the kingdom of God and we may find ourselves at the mercy of a malign fusion of the military-industrial complex, the slick politician and televangelist, the carbon-based economy, and the nuclear bomb."

It’s just a pity that Parris (and to some extent McLaren) see the Bible as just a helpful story. And why is the Bible’s ‘think’ any better than the tribal ‘think’? On this one, the African Christians are a very long step ahead of the west. They hear it and they believe it.

Good observations all around. Thanks Mike.

An Unwarranted Certainty

We all want to be certain of our final destiny, we all want to be able to answer the question: "Where will you spend eternity?" with a resounding "With Jesus!" And it's entirely justified to want that. It's also possible to have that, but not perhaps as some seem to have it.

In our rush to have this certainty, many present the gospel as some sort of fix for our ailment of sin, which requires only a 'sinner's prayer' to then be certainly healed. The problem is that this isn't the gospel at all.

The gospel is that Jesus is Lord, demonstrated to be so by his resurrection from the dead. Who by his life, death and resurrection has dealt with our sin and thereby made peace between God and man such that God and man may once again know each other, and that for eternity. What this means is that those who accept Jesus as Lord and bow their knees to him, receive from him that peace with God. The problem is that there must be an acceptance of Jesus as Lord, and simply praying the sinner's prayer says very little about whether Jesus is Lord of your life.

Time and again the bible gives us ways to know whether we have genuinely accepted Jesus as Lord. 2Corinthians 13.5 calls us to test whether we are of Christ, the whole of 1 John is a 3 fold test as to what our lives will look like if Jesus is Lord of them.

Certainty about where we will spend eternity is something which the bible says comes from seeing our transformed life, not from some formulaic confession or prayer.

Let me caveat at this point that we will only be able to submit to Jesus as Lord if the Holy Spirit works in our hearts to grant us that repentance. So this is not something we can freely do, rather something God does in us, yet it is still something that happens in us which has visible quantifiable results, hence the tests in 1 John, Hebrews etc.

Let me leave you with a favourite passage from 'the life of God in the soul of Man by Henry Scougal:


"These are the highest perfections that either men or angels are capable of--the very foundation of heaven laid in the soul; and he who hath attained them, needs not desire to pry into the hidden rolls of God's decrees, or search the volumes of heaven to know what is determined about his everlasting condition; but he may find a copy of God's thoughts concerning him, written in his own breast. His love to God may give him assurance of God's favour to him; and those beginnings of happiness, which he feels in the conformity of the powers of his soul to the nature of God, and compliance with his will, are a sure pledge that his felicity shall be perfected, and continued to all eternity; and it is not without reason that one said, "I had rather see the real impressions of a God-like nature upon my own soul, than have a vision from heaven, or an angel sent to tell me that my name was enrolled in the book of life."

May God grant us such a changed life.

An Imperative, but Always Grace Dependent

A friend recently passed on a blog comment to me about the inter-relationship between what we know God has done for us and what we do in response. See the original comment here. The writer, Michael Bird, reflected that in our desire to hold Jesus and what he has done for us up as central, we have lost the fact that we actually have lives to live in response to his action. He certainly has a point, but how much of a point?

As 1Corinthians 6 puts it so well: "You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." Something has been done for us by God, and that means that we have responsibilities in this world in terms of our priorities and how we live. Yes, absolutely, let's not lose that imperative to holy lives of service. But is it the case that once God has saved us we are then on our own to live these lives of service? Is it the case that there is a clear division between looking to Jesus for our salvation, but then looking to ourselves for our sanctification and our transformed lives?

I suppose the question I am interested in here is one of 'how.' How do we give our lives in service? How do we change the way we think so as to bear the priorities of God?

If God is love, such that his every decision arises from the prism of his love, coloured and focussed by that love, then what or how will so fill our hearts with that love that we will think and act like him? And the answer to that question I think is to come back once again, to gaze on Jesus.

I am constantly struck by the statement of Paul in 2Timothy2 that the Lord's servant must labour in various ways: teach, gently instruct; to the end that people would repent and come to know God. It is fascinating that there is no direct causative link between the servant's labours and the repentance of the hearers. There is an intermediate agent which affects the change, and that agent is God. If it is the case in our labours to change others, do we really think it won't be the case in our labours to change ourselves?

God has saved us through the sacrificial work of his Son, we have been brought at a price, now serve God: Exhort yourself, challenge yourself, encourage yourself, but what will actually change your heart so that any good deeds you may do will arise out of a heart of love and not merely duty or guilt? What will make that change? It is God: God may perhaps grant you repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

So uphold the imperative to action by all means, know that you have been bought at a price and now you must labour in response to his work, but know that your labours will only spring from a right source, will only flow from a heart of love, as you more and more grasp the love of God in Jesus Christ and receive grace to change, grace that you cannot command or control, but receive only by faith.