Loving Africa... but only with Africans

I’m laying in a long row of Zambian men. I’m sharing a blanket with my best Zambian friend, Chomba. On the other side of me is Mark and a stranger who didn’t bring bedding and begged Mark to share his twin-sized mattress. We all squished our foam mattresses together on the concrete floor of a converted shop under construction along the highway. This is what they call “the dorm”. When I arrived here in Kabwe, there was a crowd of white and African faces mixing at the giant Operation Mobilization conference center here in Zambia. Here at OM, 700 missionary types from Africa and the rest of the world converge for a 4-day hoopla they’re calling “Love Africa.” Our team was invited here to teach a series of 6 workshops on discipleship.

So I went to the reception and the woman there asked me if I wanted a guesthouse or the dorm. Since I had our Zambian team with me and the dorms were literally 1/5 the cost of the guesthouse, the choice seemed obvious. “So what will the cost be for an American?” I asked.

The woman looked at her price list and looked confused. “I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly we don’t have a price for that. Americans usually want to stay in the guest houses.” So after thinking it over for a moment she gave me the Zambian price: $30 for 3 days of room, board, and conference fees. No complaints there! So tonight as I left the main session, I walked past a nice coach bus filled with pensive white faces going to the guesthouses. I also walked past an open cargo truck filling up with dozens of Africans (not a white face among them) heading for my place. Classic.

So here I am, camping African style with only Africans. I was happy enough with the arrangement. White people in Africa make me anxious, after all. I never know how to respond to them or how they’ll respond to me. Call me a racist. I just don’t like being around them.

I have no criticism toward OM for what I’ve just experienced. I think they were being pragmatic when they realized that only the Africans would be willing to sleep in a bare concrete building under construction without bedding or working outlets. They did it this way to make it affordable. 

But I think it’s an interesting commentary on the state of the relationship between whites and blacks in Africa. Most westerners have good intentions coming to Africa, but very little stomach for the standard of living. Most westerners try to be modest, but have a baseline of creature comforts that naturally segregates us from our African friends. Don’t get me wrong. I like a good hotel with a hot shower! But when we come to Africa and just look at it from the outside, we miss out on so many crucial elements of community life here: laughter around a boiling pot of nshima, impromptu dance parties, and the ability to ask a stranger to share his mattress.

PS y'all: If you've been in the developing world and stayed in nice accommodations and feel a little judged by this, please don't! 95% of the time, that's exactly what I do. My point isn't to say we have no business in Africa if we're not living "African". My African friends would find that idea silly. My point is just that if we hope to develop deep friendships here, we need to at least understand what it feels like to need each other, to NOT have a back-up plan, or cash reserve, or extra blanket. In Africa, they don't have social security. They have each other. And I think that's a beautiful and necessary thing for us to understand and learn from, especially if we hope to have a mutual friendship with our African friends.

Love... From Russia of Course!

I arrived on Tuesday in St. Petersburg Russia for a 3 day stint before going on to Zambia. I'm here because God told me to come. Long story. The bottom line is, I don't know why I'm here, but here I am.

I was immediately struck by how helpless I felt. I could barely sound out the Cyrillic letters on the signs, much less make sense of the incredibly complex tongue-twisting words they form. My feeble attempts at communicating my 3 well-rehearsed Russian phrases met with mostly blank stares. I was saved by free WiFi in the airport, which I used to get directions to my hostel... after a quick stop at Starbucks (yes, it’s EXACTLY the same as in America).

In the crowded bus we wooshed past huge stone buildings and stark apartment high-rises with that forbidding look of cold Russian pragmatism. I saw giant statues of military heroes and forgotten soviet factories with trees growing from the roofs. The place would have been downright eerie if not for the bustle of blue-eyed sharp-featured people.

I arrived at the Red House Hostel near the city centered. Hostels are always a unique cultural microcosm wherever I go. A haven for students and backpackers, they are like overgrown dorms with coed bunkrooms and brightly painted common spaces full of people lounging, cooking, drinking, and speaking a variety of languages. This one happens to be blissfully quiet with comfortable beds and hot showers. The people are friendly and I’ve met a number of folks on long global treks from France, Brazil, Australia, and Siberia.

Part of this adventure was a specific church I felt led to pray at. The Kazan Cathedral is a replica of St. Peter’s Bascillica in Rome. Ironically, it was built as a monument to Russian military dominance over the west! I walked the 2km to the church and milled around for a couple hours just watching and listening and wondering why I was here. I stood in on an interesting prayer service complete with chanting, incense, and pilgrims kissing the walls. Though I watched and listened and waited, nothing happened. But I wasn’t feeling very Holy Spirit-y. So after a while, I went home, crawled into bed at 10:30pm (the sun hadn’t even gone down yet!) and slept a solid 12 hours.

Kazan Cathedral

Inside Kazan, pilgrims line up to kiss the icon, "Our Lady of Kazan"

This morning I stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee. I offered some to the Brazilian brothers sitting next to me and suddenly we were friends! Julio and Marcelo invited me to rent bikes with them and tour the city. Well why not. We cruised along the river, through a fort, and stopped to tour an old Soviet prison. I’d like to say it was amazing. It was just okay. Historic architecture isn’t really my thing.

Out biking with new Brazilian friends.

After the bike ride, I went back to the Kazan Cathedral to pray some more. I was stopped only once by a guy trying to convince me (in Russian) to visit his strip club (the flyers he was handing out left little doubt that it wasn’t a coffee shop he was running). But after a firm “nyet” or two I was back on track. The church was closed, so I sat on a park bench outside and didn’t actually pray much because I was so exhausted. I dozed off a couple times, tried to journal but couldn’t keep my eyes open. Two people sat down on the bench next to me and stayed for 30 minutes each, both just looking at the fountain in the middle of the square. Should I have talked to them? Did God send them and I missed out because I was too scared to strike up a conversation? I didn’t think so at the time, but then again, the voice of the Holy Spirit felt impossible to hear today. Finally, a gregarious Khazak girl sat down with her girlfriend and tried really hard to be my friend but her English consisted of about a dozen words. It was 11pm, the sun had finally set, so my new friend gave me a death-grip handshake and I headed for home.

The fountain outside Kazan Cathedral

On the way home, I stopped by the famous “Cathedral of the Spilled Blood” (It’s much prettier than it sounds) and listened to a phenomenal string quartet play Beethoven and Puccini. Then I gave my last 50 rubles to a big Russian man who thanked profusely me with a bone-crushing handshake (is that a thing here?).

On the canal leading up to The Cathedral of the Spilled Blood

But I know I didn’t come here for handshakes and Puccini. I certainly didn’t come here to tour another European city. Then why am I here? I still don’t know.

It’s 6AM now. I’ve been tossing and turning since 3. It’s hot and though I’ve thrown off all my covers, I’m still glistening with sweat. There are mosquitoes buzzing nearby and my 9 roommates are rustling. Every thought in my mind is anxious. What DID I come here for? What if God doesn’t show up? What if I’m still feeling this way when I go to the airport on Friday? Will this experience be redemptive or just prove to me once and for all that I’m a hack at listening to the Holy Spirit? Oh yeah, I just remembered I’ve been asked to preach at a church on Sunday. When will I prepare my sermon? And what could I possibly preach about in a state like this?

I’m out of bed now, in the kitchen with a fan blowing on me. This is normal, I tell myself. This is jetlag. My thoughts are always darkest in the middle of the night. I shouldn’t take any of it too seriously. But in that vulnerable space we find ourselves in the middle of the night, I’m finally willing to face it: I’m way out on a limb here, I’m lonely, I’m 5,002 miles from home, and I just don’t get it. I know the story is far from over. And I have to trust that God knows how to communicate in ways I’ll understand, even when my receptors feel fried.

Maybe the discomfort is the point... ya know, to shake things up or something. Or maybe I was just supposed to be obedient. Or maybe I’m just no good at this stuff. Or maybe I’ll get thrown into that old Russian prison or lightning bolts will fall from heaven. I don’t have prefabricated answers. Because if I had prefabbed answers, that would make this a prefabbed story and I don’t think I could live with that.

I’m not willing to live a prefabricated faith. I’m just not. And maybe that’s really why I came to Russia in the first place. Being brutally honest here, this is my game of chicken with God. Is all this Holy Spirit stuff real? Or is it plastic like so many Christian movies? 4 years ago in an African village, I dared it to be real. And God seemed to say, “alright. Game on.” And at the end of the day, I don’t mind if the answers are mysterious, even bizarre at times. But they need to be real.

It’s 6:31AM and the sun is shining. Silly Russia. I need to sleep now.

When the Truth is a Lie

I had a great conversation yesterday with a pastor friend who is trying to more deeply embody a Jesus-style discipleship in his church. I asked, “when you do discipleship, how do you practice accountability in a group without creating a controlling or toxic atmosphere?” I thought his response was pretty Jesus-like: hold people accountable by being honest about what you see in their lives while always communicating that you love them and that they have a choice in how to respond. And their choices don’t impact your care for them or their intrinsic worth.

Jesus wielded authority without a “position” and without apology. People just “sensed” that there was authority to his words. He could speak very strongly to his disciples, but continued to serve and relate to them in a way that communicated their value and loved-ness. He gave them multiple opportunities to “opt out”. But he never tried to convince, control, or manipulate them. He always pushed them, always spoke the truth to them, but never withdrew his love, or confused their actions/attitudes/beliefs with their identity or their human dignity.

There’s a growing sickness in America and most of us feel it. It’s not just in the church. It’s everywhere. We don’t really know people anymore. We have thousands of acquaintances but very few friends. In the age of social media, loneliness is pandemic and we have forgotten how to see the humanity of others. We are all emotionally malnourished and underdeveloped. Our disconnection from others makes it easy for us form caricatured opinions about who they are as people from the wounded silos of our private minds. So when we speak of our politics, our faith, our opinions, or our lifestyles, we feel it deeply—we can taste it in the air—that our right to be human is on the line. So we hide away or scream our heads off, building thick walls to demonize anyone who would oppose us.

Here’s where it plays out in the American church and in discipleship: It’s very difficult for most Americans to “speak the truth” to each other without also speaking a lie: that if you are defensive or disagree with me, I can and will simply “unfriend” you. Or I will bully you into submission. The lie is “you’re not worth my energy, my care, my respect.” Disengagement is dehumanizing. Shame-based control is dehumanizing. But hard truth spoken in genuine love can be the most honoring gift we can give. It says, “I trust you to hear me. I think you’re worth the effort. I believe in you enough to risk you rejecting me for what I’m saying.”

Sadly, most of us forgot how to love. We THINK we love someone when in fact the thing we love most is our relationship with that person, and how that relationship benefits US. (Trust me, I speak from experience.) Object relations theorists posit that the infant mind can only identify something by its function. So for many of us, our underdeveloped social selves draw cartoonish caricatures of people, mistaking them for “things” identifiable only by their function.

So when someone “speaks the truth” to me or holds me accountable for something, I’m not listening for “is this person right?” But rather I’m listening for “does this person care?” And if they don’t care, then their choice to “speak the truth” will always come with a lie: that if I don’t shape up, I can never have value, can never belong, can never be loved. In that way many of the zealous “advocates for truth” coming from churches, political causes, and activist groups are in fact propagating a more insidious lie than any truth they hope to offer: it’s the lie of shame.

So here’s a few tips for that “difficult conversation” you simply must have with a friend or family member or that incendiary comment you’re dying to make on your friend’s Facebook post:

1. Ask yourself: do I REALLY care about this person? Do I care enough that I’m willing to feel the pain of losing them? Or do I just love the function they have in my life? Will I stick with them if they push back?

2. It’s okay to be wrong, to realize you’ve misread someone. We’ve all done it. Know when to apologize.

3. Don’t say things just to ease your mind. Believe it or not, your job isn’t to “clarify your position” or make sure people know what you think about a given topic. If your motivation is to feel better rather than to show love, then your “truth-telling” is intrinsically self-centered.

4. Conversation, not prosecution. Try giving them the benefit of the doubt, believing them to be reasonable people who want to hear you out (even if they’re not). Don’t prepare lengthy arguments, lists of offenses, or ultimatums against them. That stuff comes MUCH later.

5. Love is not an esoteric concept or philosophy. It’s a real feeling and involves real choices. If you can’t FEEL yourself in someone else’s shoes and deeply long for their wellbeing, don’t say you love them just before you slap them. That’s two-faced.

I tend to never ask for feedback (good or bad) because I’m afraid of the feedback I might get! But when someone lovingly speaks truth to me, I breathe a huge sigh of relief. It’s healing to hear painful truth from people who love me no matter what. It makes me feel seen. It makes me feel invested-in. It makes me feel human.

Verbs, Nouns, and Spiritual Pedagogy

A new study shows that infants use action verbs to understand new nouns. In other words, “hearing what an object does is how they learn what an object is.” It makes me think about the way we think and teach about God. We want to use adjectives and nouns to understand God: “he’s the loving, omnipotent, supreme being, etc...”

But the writers of the bible thought about God differently. To the Hebrews, God wasn’t a bundle of propositions, but a personal being best understood by his actions: He’s the God that made promises to Abraham, freed the Israelites from slavery, parted the Red Sea. He’s the God that clothed himself in skin and walked among us, who died, and was resurrected.

This narrative approach to understanding God (with all its rich action verbs) is a humbler, but more effective way to teach and facilitate spiritual “bonding” or “attachment” to God. It seems that as infants, we forge attachments to our parents because long before we understand what they are, we understand what they do. Why should spiritual attachment to a heavenly Father look any different?

So if we can loosen up on our rigid nounish doctrinal statements, we might find a greater voice and resonance in our culture by talking less about the stuff that God is and more about the stuff that God does.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/infants-use-verbs-they-know-to-learn-new-nouns/