A few ideas

My brain has been coming up with a lot of good ideas lately... maybe it's on a roll or something, so I should probably write down some of the ideas I've come to, to see if they're really as good as I thought they were.

#1. What is the problem with evangelization? Why doesn't it work, and why do its efforts annoy the people it's trying to convert? The question was asked, during my Soteriology class Thursday, "Why are we trying to convert these people in the first place?" The answer was, of course, "to save them." But the retort was, "Save them from what?" Salvation is a tricky thing to nail down. It means different things to different people. Some people need to be saved from potentially life-threatening situations -- a rescue effort. Other people need to be saved from political or economic situations that restrict their freedom and growth. And many people need to be saved from themselves -- from depression, from addictions, from habits that eat away at them and drag them down. When Jesus ministered to the people in Israel, he always ministered to them at their immediate level. If they needed healing, he healed them. If they needed teaching, he taught them. If they needed friends, he ate with them. With one exception that I can think of (the quadraplegic), Jesus gave in order to satisfy their immediate needs. It is my observation that, if people are still suffering from lower needs (physical-emotional-mental), they won't be really responsive to their spiritual needs (see Maslow's hierarchy of needs). So, it would make sense that, when ministering to people in Africa, Central America, or other poverty-ridden areas, physical aid will be much more welcome than spiritual aid.

Even so, it is certain that missionaries often have a hard time spreading Christianity, due to many people's lukewarm reception of it. I ask, Why might people accept or not accept a proposed (imposed?) religion such as Christianity? Presumably, because it either addresses or does not address the particular needs they have. I asked a classmate on exchange from Burkina Faso (north of Nigeria) what Africans thought of Western technology, medicine, religion, etc. His very enthusiastic and extended response was that the African people like Western technology because it works -- it has the potential to make their lives better. Same with medicine, and he implied that it was the same with religion. But the problem -- present with technology and medicine no less than with religion -- is that Westerners often try to push their culture on them, instead of offering the technology or medicine or religion and letting the Africans decide what to do with it. Worse, this culture often gets imposed on the natives unwillingly, through coercion or deception. He told me stories of companies that would take horrible advantage of African people and nations, in order to get their resources or to get their customer base. But Africans aren't stupid; once they learned what the Western companies were up to, they began to play the same game, demanding what they wanted from the companies in return for their resources.

What bothers my friend is that Western countries try to force their ways onto African people and countries. Why don't we treat them as equals? I think, maybe because of our cowboy ways; or maybe it's an attitude of colonialism in one form or another; or because of a latent racism. But when we minister to their needs as they stand -- especially when we educate them about how to fill such needs themselves -- they respond with enthusiasm. He told me of a Benedictine monastery in northern Nigeria, in which one of the new monks had come from a local family of herbalists. This young man had discovered that with his herbs, he could heal people, and that this made him happy. He went to America to get a degree in pharmaceuticals, and came back with all sorts of additional knowledge of medicine. He joined the Benedictines, where he combined his training in pharmaceuticals with his knowledge of Nigeria's native plants, and came up with many new and wonderful medicinals. And as a Benedictine monk, he was able to heal people both in body and in spirit.

This is what we should be doing. Minister to people's basic needs; educate them with new ways to meet these needs; and then let them do as they please. People are intelligent, resourceful, creative, and will find new ways of doing things that preserve what is most valuable to them, be it part of culture, religion, technology, or theory. And we must let them do this. As well as our methods may work for us, other minds may find a method that works better for them.

#2. I was listening to a radio program today that was talking about what to do about illegal immigration. On the one hand, we do need to keep track of who comes into our country, where they live and work, and make sure they pay their taxes and get health care and all that good stuff that goes along with citizenship. On the other hand, though, when people circumvent the system and live/work here illegally, we cannot just deport them all immediately, first because of practicality (there's too many of them), and second because our sense of decency can't stand to send people back to the hells they ran away from, nor to break up families already in existence up here. What seems to me to be the best solution is not citizenship and not deportation, but the via media, i.e. green cards and resident alien certification. Not everyone deserves to be a citizen -- that does and should require English tests, proof of economic responsibility, etc. But there is a compromise already available to them -- the ability to work here and send the money back home, or work here while the immigration paperwork is still in process. Because immigration does not have to mean citizenship. All it means is: We know you're here, so give us your taxes. That sounds simple, doesn't it?