Western Christianity in the African Context

In our class, Faith and Action, we have been reading a book called Primal Vision. Bishop John Taylor who was the president of the seminary here for 6 years back in the late 40s to mid-50s writes is to “ find the true meeting place where Christ is conversing with the soul of Africa.”

One of the main themes that we have been discussing as we look at Western Christianity in the context of African traditional religion is the idea of the rational versus the supernatural. In the modernized Western world, we are products of the Enlightenment. As a result, we primarily look at the world through a rational worldview. For everything that happens, we like to have an explanation or know the cause. We often ask “how.” How did that break? How did he get healed? We like to be able to explain everything through our scientific method, because then life is more controllable and predictable. We live in a cause and effect world.

Traditionally, however, Africans don’t see the world in the same way we do. Instead of asking “how”, they tend to ask “why?” Yes, they understand that there is a rational explanation, but they don’t care as much about that. They want to know the reason behind the thing breaking. Was it an ancestor putting a curse on them? Was it God punishing them for sin they had committed and not dealt with? Was it an evil spirit? They aren’t satisfied with natural answer, because they think in terms of the supernatural.

I don’t know about you, but thinking in these terms makes me uncomfortable.

Now, I am not saying that African Christians believe in ancestors or believe in witchdoctors putting curses on them, because most of them don’t. But this is the background with which they approach Christianity. It affects how they view God’s work in the world. They would probably be more likely to attribute things that happen to the work of the Lord or the work of the devil. They would probably be more likely to see God in nature, in everyday life, and in the things that we often explain away by reason.

Is one view right and the other wrong? Is one better than the other? Can both be okay? What can we learn from African views?

If we looked more to the supernatural, we wouldn’t be able to control or explain everything. Our comfortable lives might be a little disrupted. We might have to rely a little more on God. In my poetic and wisdom literature class this fall, we talked so much about how the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I wrestled with this because I didn’t think I truly had a healthy fear of the Lord. Could this be because I want to rationally explain everything? Could it be because it is more difficult for me to come to grips with the ways God is supernaturally at work in my life? If I can explain everything and have control, I don’t need to live in fear of a God who is all-powerful and working mightily in our midst. A God whose wrath and judgment is just as real as his grace and mercy. I have been reading through Genesis, Exodus, and Psalms, and if our God is unchanging, then there are a lot of his characteristics that I read about that I have never experienced.

It has caused me to think a lot…in a good way. One of my main reasons for coming to Uganda was to see how God interacts with a different culture. Even early on, I am seeing it. And although at times I want to push back and say, “that’s not right,” I am trying to be open to this God that works in various ways across all cultures.

This is a rambling of what I am trying to process. I don’t know where I stand, but I am challenged. I am trying to live in the tension and be okay with it. To live in the tension and let God settle it in his time.