In his series about Heaven, Pastor Daniel Brown asks, in the world to come, will we be who we were?

There are two kinds of death—spiritual and natural. Death is not a state of oblivion or non-existence; it is, rather, a separation from the life that was meant to be. Spiritual death cuts people off from relationship with God in the spirit realm, and our physical death will cut us off from relationship with the people we love here on earth. Death is the state we are in after we have been cut off from the life we would have had, and from the people who love us.

Physical objects can exist in different states on earth. Most of us learned years ago in Science class that physical matter can exist in three states—solid, liquid and gas—without altering its fundamental organic composition. H₂O is a good example. It can be steam, water, or ice. Water freezes to become ice; it boils to become steam. Steam will not quench thirst, water will not reduce swelling and ice cannot help remove wallpaper. Each physical state has its own qualities, but each of them is H₂O. When we die physically, we merely change states. Our metamorphosis takes us from one form to another, from one dimension to another. Though we change states, we remain essentially who we are.

Our reborn spirit already exists in us in the same manner that it will exist after our bodies die. Even now our spirit inhabits the dimension to which we will be fully translated upon death. Though we are not that cognizant of our spirit in the present earthly life, and though our spirit will have a new body in Heaven, it is fundamentally as it will be after death. We will simply be more conscious of it in Heaven. As we learned earlier, our soul is comprised of our thoughts, emotions, will-power and consciousness. Our awareness of the world around us, as well as of our inner selves, comes from our soul. The good news is that our personalities will be “refined” like gold from base ore, but who we are before we die is who we will be after we die. So, our souls/spirits remain intact and essentially the same.

This is why birth is such an excellent analogy for death. As surely as a newborn baby dies from the womb-world into this world, so will our passing from life on earth be a rebirth into another. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” (John 3:3) Babies do not cease to exist when they pass down the birth canal, but they no longer live in the womb. Until we grasp this basic truth—that death is changed existence—we will stumble over what the Bible tells us about life after death. Our conscious existence will be extended, not exterminated. Our state will be transformed, and we will shift dimensions, but we will not lose our identity:

Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.1 Corinthians 15:51-53

In our life after death, we will not become new (different) people. We will be ourselves, with the same fundamental qualities of personhood that we have now—minus any wrongs, distortions, wounding or bondage. God calls Himself “I AM” (Exodus 3:14) If this quality of being and remaining the same is so central to God’s identity, then it makes sense that His children, made in His image, will also always be who they are. When the offspring of “I AM THAT I AM” transition from the earthly plane to the heavenly dimension, their identities are not going to be “I AM DIFFERENT THAN I WAS.”

Image: Tom Barrett

We are like expensive antique bureaus finely detailed and handcrafted by a famous wood worker many years ago. Since our creation, though, we have been gouged by many things; we have been spilled upon, burnt by hot wax, water-stained and repainted in garish colors. Our hinges are loose, the drawers do not slide like they used to, and one of our edges has been stripped of its molding. When such antique pieces get restored and refinished, they are not fundamentally altered; rather, they are renewed to what they have always been despite the wear and tear.

The human soul/spirit is not immortal in the sense that it is not subject to death. Neither does the human soul/spirit exist as an eternal entity on its own. Only God, who has neither beginning nor end, is truly immortal and eternal. (1 Timothy 6:15-16) He is never subject to death, change or dependence on anything outside of Himself. The human soul/spirit does not have an eternal nature of its own. He grants us eternal life, but we always depend on Him for our life in eternity, which is why Paul exclaims:

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1 Timothy 1:17

We will retain our original God-given personality and character when we rise from the dead. Everyone will live after death—either experiencing eternal death (separation from God and His life) in Hell, or eternal life in Heaven. We will all rise again, and though different eternities await us depending on how we respond to Jesus Christ, we will exist forever—either with God or without Him.

PR

Originally from www.coastlands.org. Used with permission of the author.

Further Reading:

Daniel Brown, “Will I Have A Body In Heaven?”

Daniel Brown, “How Old Will I Be In Heaven?”

Daniel Brown, “Heaven: Will I Recognize My Loved Ones?“

Missionary-scholar Jim Harries argues that the wide differences between the West and the Rest are being ignored by anti-racist strategies. These misunderstandings are perpetuating dependencies in the majority world and stunting sustainable development. However, there is a way forward, a path of humility that rejects colonialism and embraces real equality.

Abstract

Strategies designed by Western nations to counter racism can conceal difference between non-Western and Western peoples. Such concealment results in a misleading obscuring of social reality outside of the West. Because the globalised world is dominated by European languages and scholarship, non-Western academics can be forced to plan their strategies for socio-economic development in the light of contexts and peoples other than their own. By preventing development in the majority world this provides a back door to the ongoing stoking of racist thinking in the West. “Anti-racist” strategies in the West and the tidal spread of globalisation seem at the moment to be relentless. This article suggests that Christian champions practicing vulnerable mission make a contribution taking us towards a society more accepting of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity that can understand rather than condemn difference. Once understood, difference can be compensated for and appreciated rather than ignored.

Introduction

Image: Sergey Pesterev

This article links two issues which are frequently addressed separately—development for the poor in the majority world (with a focus on Africa) and anti-racist strategies in the West. The author, who is British born and raised but has lived in Africa since 1988, points to an antagonism between the above two: policies designed to counter racism are oriented to ignoring consequential cultural differences that fall along racial lines. Such ignoring frustrates efforts at majority world development.

The first section looks at the roots of racial thinking and its ongoing impact in global perspective. It finds that a self-deception on the part of the West, perhaps arising from its “shame”[1] over a history of racist thinking and policy, is undermining the efficacy of scholarship about “the other.” This in turn is skewing strategies pertaining to international and intercultural relationships, including development intervention in the majority world. There has been a “rise of claims to global knowledge in the contemporary world,” according to James.[2] I interpret James as telling us that the contemporary Western world these days considers itself to be well informed about human societies beyond its shores. It does so in part since the Western world conducts much well-funded anthropological and other research. Unfortunately, such research may follow over-simplified models of translation from indigenous languages of the majority world. These models often arose from work in Bible translation,[3] but have in extension of their use resulted in insensitivity to indigenous cultures.[4]

The West, through interpreting non-Western ways of life according to its own categories has perceived non-existent similarities. Visitors to the majority world, missionaries included, can be determined at all costs to find the “sameness” that they are told back home should exist. This renders them impervious to signals that point to massive and deep cultural differences. Because the way in which majority world cultures are different from Western ones is consequential to their economic and social development, development strategies that ignore these differences are constantly frustrated. Through contributing to the perpetuation of poverty in Africa, the undermining of development aggravates racist thinking in Africa, which impacts back in the West.

The second section seeks for solutions to the above scenario. The option of doing nothing could be disastrous. This author advocates for champions operating based on vulnerable mission. Champions are people who dedicate themselves to intercultural service on behalf of others. The term vulnerable mission refers to ministry using indigenous languages and resources.  Champions practicing vulnerable mission buck the system by expressing a deep love for and commitment to people in the majority world as they are, rather than as they ought to be according to the West.

The author’s personal experience in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa should be borne in mind as a backdrop to this discussion.

Black people referred to herein are predominantly those of sub-Saharan origin, including some now living in Europe or the United States. Whites described are those originating from Europe or the United States, some of whom are living in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cultural Linguistics

 I will in this article draw on very recent work on ‘cultural linguistics’. Sharifian, a self-proclaimed leader in this field,[5] draws heavily on research into Aboriginal people in Australia. Genetic evidence points to Aboriginal origins in Africa, their having left Africa separately and prior to European and Asian peoples.[6] Cultural similarities remain between them and African people, as observed by some visitors,[7] and as is clear from scholarly descriptions.[8]

“Cultural linguistics,” according to Sharifian “explores the relationship between language, culture, and conceptualisation.”[9] Such “exploration brings to the surface ‘differences’ and arising issues that were not previously visible.”[10] Whereas it has traditionally been thought that learning a language required knowing words and their meanings, Sharifian points out that “cultural conceptualisations … underlie the use of human language.”[11] These conceptualisations that arise from a people’s culture, mean that two people coming from different cultural communities can use the same language very differently. This applies even if they say the same words. Sharifian found Australians who, “because they sounded like speakers of Australian English, were not identified by their teachers as Aboriginal English speakers,” yet, “English words such as family, home, and shame evoked cultural conceptualisations in these students that were quite different from those of Australian English speakers.”[12] For Aboriginal people, for example, contrary to the understanding of Western people, land is a living being.[13] This is strikingly similar to the understanding of land held by Luo people in western Kenya, for whom land can speak (piny owacho), can die (piny otho), and can be us (wan e piny).

Hidden but ‘real’ differences between Africans and Westerners

African people can sometimes be surprised by portrayals they receive through the media of fellow blacks who have emigrated to and live in the West. That is, the way they are depicted may be contrary to expectations at home in Africa. To some extent this may be because blacks who have migrated to the West have adapted and become “Westernised.” Additionally, I suggest, it arises from determined efforts by Westerners not to represent people of African origin as “inferior.” Since Westerners implicitly understand “inferior” behaviour to be any that is “not-western,” these efforts are in effect to depict them as behaving essentially no differently than white Westerners.

Handling issues of racial identity is a big concern in Western nations. Robert Young explains that not so long ago different (especially black) races were looked upon by the West almost as if they were different inferior species (“types”).[14] According to Neville Alexander, race replaced religion as the main social status differentiator in British society in about 1806.[15] The West is still trying to recover from the reverberations arising from its legacy of scientific racism. In reaction to this past the West has developed an extreme sensitivity to any portrayal of Africans that one could interpret as implying their inferiority.

African people tend to be monistic in their thinking.[16] That is: Africans typically make a much less clear distinction between the spiritual and the material than do Westerners.[17] Such has certain out workings. It results in a holistic approach to problem solving: if problems (i.e. misfortune) are caused by “spiritual agents” then they need to be resolved by prayer, the shedding of animal blood, the following of customary law codes, etc.[18] When Africans who live in the West are depicted as using Western reasoning to solve problems, those who remain in Africa ask themselves whether that depiction is accurate.

Any attempt at providing evidential support for hidden difference will need to draw on contextual contributors largely invisible to Westerners, but very evident to many Africans. This is what Sharifian refers to as conceptualisations that are associated with a language, which are peculiar to a culture. The Luo people of Western Kenya have a term jochiende that refers to a cause of negative feelings in living people that are linked to less than positive experiences of people who are at the time already deceased. For example, a girl who dies childless could bring misfortune to a living woman. The term jochiende is commonly translated into English as ‘spirits’. English speaking people who come across the term ‘spirits’ and consider themselves already to have an understanding of what they are will be missing specifically African conceptualisations. Luo people, who may also take spirits as the English translation of jochiende, can remain largely unaware of Westerners’ assumptions that arise from their understanding that jochiende = spirits.[19]

The message given at a Pentecostal church I attended in Kenya regarding dealing with your past seemed to be strongly akin to ways in which counsellors in the West endeavour to help people to come to terms with prior experiences. Paying careful attention to what was going on in this church however revealed that the actual targets of the preacher’s message were the ancestral spirits that were troubling the congregation. The service turned out to be a massive exercise in exorcism involving 90% of the congregation. People’s relationships with their ancestors are complex and rooted in numerous traditions. Dealing with ancestors implicitly brought all that profound complexity onto the scene. To have depicted those African people to be dealing with their past, in the way that this English phrase seems to suggest when used in western circles in England, would have been failing to grasp local conceptualisations.[20]

Questioning African people’s capabilities as scientists could be considered a very racist position. Yet “In contrast to the classic European, the Negro African does not draw a line between himself and the object … Thus the Negro African … abandons his personality to become identified with the Other … he lives in symbiosis [with it]”.[21] A foundation for science, is that it is practiced by people who in some way endeavour to separate themselves out from the objects that they are studying. How can an African person do this if he “does not draw a line between himself and the object” (as cited above)? In so far as Senghor is right, an African person’s capabilities in science must be limited or at least different from that of a typical westerner. To claim that this is not the case is misleading untruth.

Shamala tells us that ceremony is “the bedrock to African Obuntu [i.e. communalism].”[22] “Ceremony denotes … the presence of the departed,” Shamala adds, linking to our point from the church service above.^[23] The love for ceremony does not suddenly end when Africans leave their homeland to live in the West. It will continue in the West. Western people who do not perform such regular ceremonies tend to ignore such goings on amongst Africans living in their midst. Could ignoring such be doing many Africans a great injustice?

A lady who had for many years lived in South Africa approached me a few years ago. She explained that the standard of English of many South Africans is far too poor for them to submit their writing as it is to their professors. They are obliged to use people like her (a native English speaker) to radically re-work what they have done before submission. The level of editing she was doing for South African students was high. That reminded me of comments I have often heard from British friends of African students studying in the UK telling me things like: “I told my friend what to write,” or even, “I wrote something for my friend, because it was obvious that he would not get his degree without my help.”

My final piece of evidential support for difference comes from a fascinating if frustrating experience that I had on accompanying a North American colleague visiting a Kenyan in the USA, who had already lived for a number of years in the USA. The difference between my engagement with that Kenyan, and that of my North American colleague, was to me very striking. My American colleague treated the Kenyan (I have lived in Kenya, engaging very closely with indigenous people, since 1993) as if he was American. He ignored endless ‘Kenyanisms’ that I was constantly perceiving. For example, my American friend told the Kenyan that I wash in the traditional way. The Kenyan articulated with his hands, a movement like that of throwing water over oneself with one’s hands. My American friend did not recognise this movement, or the implications that someone who washes in that way is somehow ‘primitive’ or of the lower classes. This Kenyan was not very impressed by the way in which I lived with his fellow countrymen in Kenya – something to which my American colleague remained oblivious. I was very aware that the tribe that I live with tends to be despised by this American Kenyan’s tribe. My American friend was oblivious as to how this inter-tribal relationship profoundly detracted from the development of good rapport between myself and this American Kenyan. My American friend was oblivious to endless conceptualisations attached to my Kenyan colleague’s English.[24]

I hope the above provide sufficient evidential support for ways in which the West is determined to ignore ways in which African people differ from them. It is drawn from personal experience, and in each case depicts insights hidden from regular Westerners. It is because the above bases for difference are hidden that they are easily ignored by the West.

Anti-racist policies in the West contribute to the ignorance of Westerners

Samuel Tshehla once observed that globalisation can be the global spread of provincialism.[25] While the West may believe that globalisation enables a flow of information to and from all corners of the globe, the reality is that information flow is rather heavily from the West to the rest.[26] The evidence for this in fact is rather overwhelming. The influence of the Western film industry is enormous globally. So is the influence of Western academia.[27] Western news media are translated into numerous languages and listened to almost everywhere around the world. Can poorer countries have a voice in the global world? Gayatra Spivak’s study of majority world women concludes that they, along with subalterns (the global poor and “underprivileged”) in general, “cannot speak.”[28]

A general concealing of cultural differences contributes significantly to this unidirectional flow of information.[29] Westerners are deceiving themselves into the belief that concealed differences between cultures, such as those between dualistic (Western) and monistic (African) ways of understanding, do not exist. To use Sharifian’s language, they “conceptualise the source domain in terms of the target domain,” that is, they assume monistic conceptualisations simply to be equal to Western ones. To restate that: Major efforts being made in the West by all kinds of organisations and institutions to conceal cultural difference by means such as positive discrimination and other strategies, can end up misleading the population of the West itself. Westerners can believe that conceptualisations that are concealed from view have disappeared.

If the general populous in the West is misinformed by the above mechanisms, then it is likely that policy makers and academics are making decisions on a misinformed basis. We must ask; can Western scholars writing about Africa, including those advocating for particular means towards social-economic development, be trusted?[35] Were the impact of their scholarly study to be clearly visible and receiving feedback from genuine intercultural experience, then the reality of the context could be preventing them from going too far astray. The outcome of research on Africa arising from Western scholarship could be more reliable if the Western scholars doing the research were on an ongoing basis deeply immersed in African contexts and languages. This cannot be happening if a Western scholar writes about the other (say indigenous African people) on the basis of a misguided assumption that what he or she appears to find in the West will also be found in Africa, while fearing that to suggest otherwise could bring an accusation of racism. In reality, many scholars draw for their research on the writings of other scholars and short-term relatively shallow interaction in Africa confined almost universally to engagement in European languages.[36] While they may draw on what the others (in our case Africans) have written about themselves, this writing typically being in English is limited for reasons outlined above.

As well as Western people being determined not to find differences in the course of their exploration of Africa, Africans may well attempt to conceal that about themselves which is different from Westerners. This could be for many reasons, and I can only touch briefly on a few here. 1. They are unlikely to want their visitors to receive confirmation of the once-held notion that Africa is a dark continent with all that this implies.[37] 2. African people prefer as far as possible to themselves control the interventionist strategies proposed by their visitors. If “the problem of Africa” is in the behaviour of the African people themselves, this implies that Westerners should be in charge of the many foreign-funded projects that are designed to “put Africa right.” It is understandable that African people get tired of having their affairs run by outsiders.[38] This makes it often in African people’s interests (at least in the short term) to deny extant difference in order to be given charge of whatever project is at hand, even if this means that the project concerned may not function as was intended and may instead “fail.”[39] The high rate of “failure” of projects in Africa is a known concern.[40]

Because Western countries do not sit high and dry from the rest of the world, issues that affect the majority world, including Africa, come back to them through new immigration, the media, travellers, migrants, the globalised communication system and other means.

Strategies for dealing with “anti-racism” in the West, in global perspective

We have seen above how “anti-racist” policies in the West are causing considerable confusion in Africa (and quite likely the majority world as a whole). I now want to look at possible resolutions to the stark picture painted above.

The barriers (many mentioned above) to the circumvention of our problem are so enormous as to appear at the moment to be insurmountable. There is a place for those who attempt to challenge the status quo both in the academic and in the political arena. The people who will do so will, as things appear at the moment, have an uphill struggle.

A lot of research has in recent decades been done into what is the appropriate choice of language for education.[48] Contrary to apparently widely assumed wisdom, it is believed by researchers to be in the interests of majority world people’s intellectual development for them to use their own language (typically their mother tongue) for as long as possible in the educational process.[49] Westerners working with a people using the people’s own language can help them appreciate and value it. They can help in the growth and expansion of that language. They can thus add directly and indirectly but powerfully to the prospects of a people’s intellectual development. Working with a non-Western people using a Western language undermines the non-western people’s competency in their own tongue. I refer those who consider Africa’s problems to be that it has too many languages to the writings of Prah.[50] One cause of the ongoing failure of African languages to thrive is the smothering effect of subsidised Western languages like a blanket for formal purposes over African communities.

An outsider’s refusal to subsidise his key activity with foreign resources will enhance local productivity and reduce the production of dependence. If outsiders can do something using local resources, then so should local people be able to imitate them without becoming dependent in an unhealthy way on outside donations.

Disquiet expressed in this article can be considered to be part of a wider category of post-colonial concerns. The post-colonial legacy in parts of Africa, when examined closely, can be extremely discouraging. This article is an attempt at encouraging Christians (and others) in the West to develop an awareness of such concerns. Considered from within the West, racially based bias is clearly the bad guy. From a global perspective, if as appears to be the case non-Western races are often foundationally culturally different from Westerners, trying to avoid racially based bias can result in the spreading of types of knowledge that do not have a fit to local understanding.

This article, especially through drawing on linguistic insights, proposes that committed individuals are key to finding solutions to some of the world’s problems. Sufficiently committed individuals in focus here are those inspired by their faith in Christ. It is very difficult for those not so inspired to achieve the standards here advocated.

This article does not claim to present the silver bullet required to resolve global issues. Interrelationships in today’s world are such that a change in one area has implications everywhere else. Yet, a renewed look at the race-question in global perspective is an important piece to be considered in the process of unravelling deep contemporary injustices in the interests of building a better society for tomorrow.

What “champions” are able to do, once they have acquired sufficient understanding, includes sharing beneficial information from the wider world with people who are disenfranchised. They may be able, through a careful process of translation in the light of the local context and language, to share benefits of Western academia, literacy, history,  the experiences of other cultures, religious traditions, and so forth—things that otherwise remain trapped in foreign languages and traditions.[52] By doing this, a “champion” will empower a community to resist the attack of globalisation by building their own capacity and literacy.

Should foreign (non-Western) communities be able to develop their own innate competencies, then clearly this will reduce the competence gap between them and the West. This in turn will undermine racism, reduce numbers of migrants, and perhaps do so much more effectively than current “anti-racist” regulations.

Producing champions

Given that dominant models of intervention into the Majority World have been found wanting (Africa certainly being a case in point), we have suggested a need for “champions.” This raises the question of how one is to find these “champions” who can follow the alternative “vulnerable” means of intervention here advocated?

I have above narrowed the defining characteristic of a champion as being the practice of vulnerable mission, which is itself defined as the use of local languages and local resources in ministry to the people being reached. This has in the past usually happened by default rather than through purposeful intention. However, recent colonial and neo-colonial conditions increasingly give potential Western champions a choice. Such a champion (i.e. missionary) should remember the Spirit-given example set in Acts 2:11, in which every person in Jerusalem at the time heard the Gospel in his or her own language. Acts 22:2 gives a clear example of how Paul’s knowledge of the mother-tongue of a very aggressive mob that wanted to lynch him enabled him to share the gospel with them. Acts 14:8–20 is a little more complex: Paul and Barnabas’ preaching to the Lystran people without first having learned their language resulted in a very serious misunderstanding, as a result of which instead of being able to communicate about God, they were taken as being gods. Could this passage represent a way of warning would-be missionaries not to engage in serious ministry until they have a grasp of indigenous tongues?

The overt motivation for a lot of the use of outside resources by Western missionaries in Africa in recent decades has been compassion. Western missionaries who have perceived problems of poverty, ill-health, hunger, morbidity, infant mortality, and so on chose to invest western resources into communities that they have been reaching. This has led to many problems, not least unhealthy dependency and a very widespread prosperity gospel in much of the continent of Africa and beyond. Careful consideration of Christ’s own approach to mission and ministry (reflected in the Christian Scriptures) reveals that Jesus did not hand out material resources as a means to boost his ministry. He rejected that option in a very overt way through his refusing the temptation by the devil to turn stones into bread (Lk 4:3–4). Later, after Jesus had fed thousands, he had to walk-away from both them and his disciples to avoid being given political office by force (Jn 6:15). While Jesus taught people to be compassionate (and he had compassion for those who suffered) we do not find him raising funds abroad so as to initiate projects in the way that has become common practice in mission in recent decades. I believe that his failing to initiate such “projects” was intentional. It allowed him to identify with communities as a champion. Such practice on the part of Christ himself is often known in Christian doctrine as his incarnation.

Impacts of champions can be widespread even if not always visible. I want to give just a few simple examples from personal experience, having lived and worked amongst Africans since 1988. In one instance, a local church had invited me to share in some door-to-door ministry in a part of Tanzania. When it was time to leave, a motorised rickshaw was sent to pick us up. I got in and said nothing. My hosts paid for my trip back. I was told that a few years earlier they would have expected a white person like myself to pay for my own trip. My failure to offer to pay transformed me from an agent from the outside into a servant under local leadership, who could potentially be entrusted with sensitive local information. Another example involves the fact that outside speakers coming into western Kenya are usually ignorant of a very pernicious problem troubling local people. The problem is known locally as chira. This Luo-language term represents the outcome of people’s failure to follow ancestral decree. Outsiders’ unfamiliarity with the details of what causes chira can prevent outsiders from intelligently articulating and dealing with it. My own position of having learned the Luo language and culture in-depth, and my ability to communicate using the same language enabled me to apply healing balm in the form of Christian teaching to this gaping wound.[55]

I can illustrate how one may as a result of being better informed apply ‘healing balm’ by way of an example: Chira, suffering caused by sin, for the Luo people in many ways resembles AIDS. Telling people that AIDS is not caused by sin is either to radically re-define sin, or to be 180 degrees in contradiction with an incredibly deeply held belief and fear. Correct Christian teaching has, to my understanding, to find a more profound and helpful ways of understanding and dealing with sin than simply to deny that it causes misfortune such as chira / AIDS.

I believe that it is Christian teaching, the full depth of which has only been touched upon in the above few paragraphs, that by the power of God’s Spirit produces true champions. The deep influence of Christian teaching in the West over many centuries continues to influence our era. As a result, even many Western people who no longer confess Christ have been so profoundly affected by this kind of ethic as to be able also to appreciate the role of champions. The closer people are to their Christian roots, the more likely they will be able to appreciate the role of champions. The church can, through the production of champions, begin to counter the problems identified in this article that are brought on by “anti-racist” strategies that run on the basis of ignorance of the impact of conceptualisations on language use, in the West today.

Conclusion

Scholarship in the West that looks at inter-cultural relationships, especially those involving Africa, is found in this article to have been seriously undermined by strategies that are intended to counter racist thinking. This undermining has resulted in a skewing away from contextual truth in the planning of projects and programmes of all sorts oriented to the facilitating of development and healthy international relationships. Because this hampers or even prevents socio-economic development from occurring amongst many people outside of the West, it in turn accentuates unhealthy racist thinking in the West through the perpetuation of endless scenarios of apparently racially-based inferiority. The skewing of scholarship caused by “anti-racist” strategies is also found to conceal the importance of specifically Christian mission activities, such as the need for Christian discipleship.

Either the rate of globalisation should be slowed, legislation countering racism in the West withdrawn, or some means found to help to facilitate strategies that counter poverty that are drawn up in the light of non-Western conceptualisations. Because the likelihood that globalisation will be slowed or “anti-racist strategies” will be annulled in the West looks small, I have suggested another means by which enlightened Westerners can cut through the current screen of deception regarding race in their relationships with Majority World people. They may become champions who work on the basis of the practice of vulnerable mission. Such champions will become a cutting edge for new strategies that do take serious account of extant conditions in the promotion of socio-economic development in the majority world. Once such new strategies gain traction, they will reduce the apparent level of incompetence of majority world nations. Raising the capacity of Majority World people so that they can function effectively in their own contexts will remove the back door of feedback from outside of the West (including new immigration) which currently continues to fuel racist thinking inside the West. The Christian church in the West is well equipped to play a role in raising champions that can empower people in the majority world.

PR

Notes

[1] Nancy Lynne Westfield, “Teaching for Globalised Consciousness: Black Professor, White Student and Shame,” Black Theology: An International Journal 2, no. 1 (January 2004): 73.

[2] Wendy, James, ‘Introduction. Whatever Happened to the Enlightenment?’ in The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations. Wendy James, (ed.) London: Routledge, 1995, 1-14, 2.)

[3] https://marielebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/translation/

[4] Bible translation operates on the basis of an assumption of ongoing divine inspiration which means that the divine can use translations of his ‘living words’ to speak truthfully to a wide variety of linguistic communities. So called ‘secular’ translation has I suggest falsely presupposed that divine action to be universal to almost all translated texts.

[5] Farzad Sharifian, Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/PA: John Benjamins, 2017, 9.

[6] https://phys.org/news/2016-09-unprecedented-aboriginal-australians-africa-migration.html

[7] In conversations about traditions, it turned out that there were surprising similarities in the lives of the Aborigines and the Maasai – for instance in circumcision ceremonies. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/911809.stm

[8] Sharifian’s descriptons of Australian Aborigenes’ ways of life have striking parallels with that, from personal experience and much reading, of many African peoples. (Farzad Sharifian, ‘On Cultural Conceptualisations’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(3), 2003, 187-209, 194-198.)

[9] Sharifian, Farzad, (ed) 2015, ‘Cultural Linguistics’, 473-492 in: Sharifian, Farzad, (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 473.

[10] Sharifian, Farzad, 2017, Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/PA: John Benjamins, 36.

[11] Sharifian Cultural, 21.

[12] Sharifian Cultural, 194.

[13] Sharifian Cultural, 55.

[14] Robert C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge, 1995, 13, 15, 117.

[15]  Neville Alexander, “An Introduction to Perceptions and Conceptions of ‘Race’ in South Africa,” in Racism in the Global African Experience, ed. Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Cape Town: CASAS, 2006), 129–141, 130.

[16] Jim Harries, Secularism and Africa: in the light of the Intercultural Christ, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock 2015.

[17] In this, as many other cultural features, Australian Aboriginals appear to be very similar to African people, hence finding any difference between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘real’ to be invalid (Sharifian Cultural, 42).

[18] Note that “Aboriginal people [as Africans] sometimes use words such as spirit and spiritual when talking about ‘beings’ in their worldview, as a communicative strategy to facilitate somehow non-Aboriginal people’s understanding of experiences that draw on the Aboriginal worldview” (Sharifian, Cultural, 42.)

[19] See also Sharifian Cultural, 201.

[20] Sharifian Cultural, 168.

[21] Léopold Sédar Senghor, On African Socialism, London: Frederick A. Praeger. 1964, 72.

[22] Lucas Shamala, The Practice of Obuntu among the Abaluyia of Western Kenya: A Paradigm for Community Building. Saabruecken, Germany: VDM Verlag 2008, 135, 54.

[23] Shamala, 10.

[24] I encourage my reader to go to Sharifian Cultural in order to grasp what I mean by conceptualisations.

[25] Samuel M. Tshehla, “’Can Anything Good Come out of Africa?’  Reflections of a South African Mosotho Reader of the Bible,’” Journal of African Christian Thought 5, no. 1 (2002): 15–24, 23.

[26] I would argue that a lot of what might be supposed to be the flow of information from the non-West to the West is more accurately a reflection back of what the West wants/expects or is able to hear from the non-West; hence not a non-West to West flow but West to West.

[27] Hans de Wit, “Africa Must Lead Innovation in Higher Education Internationalisation,” University World News: The Global Window on Higher Education, no. 239 (September 16, 2012).  http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120912160836275&

[28] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ”Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 271–313, 308.

[29] Jim Harries, “Racism in Reverse: the impact of the West on racism in Africa.’ In: Jim Harries, Vulnerable Mission: Insights into Christian Mission to Africa from a Position of Vulnerability, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2011, 163–184, 175–176.

[30]  Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, “Between Subalternity and Indigeneity: Critical Categories for Post-colonial Studies,” Interventions  13/1 (2011): 1–12, 7.

[31]  Jim Harries, Communication in Mission and Development: Relating to the Church in Africa, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013, 106–124.

[32] Andreas Musolff, ‘Metaphors: sources for intercultural misunderstanding?’ International Journal of Language and Culture, 11, (2014), 42-59, 48.

[33]  Aidan W. Southall, “History and the Discourse of Underdevelopment among the Alur of Uganda,” in The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations, ed. Wendy James, London: Routledge, 1995, 45–57, 51.

[34]  Benjamin Graves, précis of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”  http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/poldiscourse/spivak/spivak2.html

[35] “The fact that scholarship is tradition-bound, in such a way that the cultures and societies create their own scholarship, which speaks to the experience of their societies, remains lost on us till the present day” (Kwesi Kwaa Prah, The African Nation: the state of the nation, Cape Town: CASAS, 2006, 114.)

[36] Thiong’o comments on this in Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers Ltd., 1981, 6–8.

^[37] See the above account of the church service in which African people were told to exorcise those aspects of their past that might hold them back from being modern and prosperous. By faith, people who have gone through such an experience, believe their past and traditions to be ‘gone’.

[38] Aboriginal people in Australia have a different problem. Whereas many African people want it to be known that they no longer have a ‘a culture’ and so can run their own affairs, Aboriginal people point to their culture as the source of their authority in modern-day Australia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06UpQQQ7cBM

^[39] Although what constitutes a failed project for Westerners may not be so understood by Africans: David Maranz, African Friends and Money Matters: Observations from Africa, Dallas: SIL International, 2001, 151.

[40] Andrei Schleifer, “Paul Bauer and the Failure of Foreign Aid,” Cato Journal  29/3 (Fall 2009): 379–390.

[41] See David Maranz, African Friends and Money Matters: Observations from Africa., Dallas: SIL International, 2001, 9.

[42] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmann’s Publishing Company, 1983, 32.

[43] Wolterstorff 32.

[44] Neville Alexander, ‘English Unassailable but Unattainable: the dilemma of language policy in South African Education.’ Paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the International Federation for the Teaching of English, University of Warwick, England, UK, July 7-10, 1999, 6. http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=ED444151 (accessed 28.08.08).

[45] Jean Johnson of World Mission Associates (USA) is particularly concerned about this kind of unhealthy dependency: http://www.missionexus.org/counterproductive/

[46] Robert A. White, “Research on Communication for Development in Africa: Current Debates,” African Communication Research 2/2 (2009): 203–252, 218.

[47] For examples, see http://www.jim-mission.org.uk/articles/index.html

[48] Allan Pitman, Suzanne Majhanovich, and Birgit Brock-Utne, “English as a Language of Instruction in Africa: Policy, Power, and Practice,” in Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa—Highlights from a Project, ed. Birgit Brock-Utne and others, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2010, 1–10, 3.

[49] Kwesi Kwaa Prah, “The Burden of English in Africa: From Colonialism to Neo-colonialism,” (Keynote address presented to the department of English fifth international conference at the University of Botswana on the theme, Mapping Africa in the English-Speaking World, June 2–4, 2009, 9. See also Sharifian Cultural, 207-247.)

[50] Prah, “The Burden,” 5.

[51] Kwesi Kwaa  Prah, ”The Language of Development and the Development of Language in Contemporary Africa: The Challenge of African Development in the Context of Current Linguistic Realities and Dominant Knowledge in Applied Linguistics.” (Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Chicago, March 26–29, 2011), 11.

[52]  Martha A.S. Qorro, “Unlocking Language Forts: Language of Instruction in Post-primary Education in Africa—With Special Reference to Tanzania,” in Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA), ed. Brock-Utne and others, Dar-es-Salaam: E and D Limited, 2003, 187–196.

[53] Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, New York: Orbis Books, 1989, 174.

[54] A process that could take many years.

[55] A problem with both of my examples is that their full explanation would require a lot more contextual explanation than I can give in a limited space. This is of course exactly the difficulty that I am dealing with in this article. The examples illustrate what they cannot, given limitations of space, fully articulate.

[56] For more discussion on this see Jim Harries, From Theory to Practice in Vulnerable Mission: An Academic Appraisal, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2012, 94–111.

PneumaReview.com speaks with Dave Johnson about the publication of his book, Answering God’s Call: Reflections of a Veteran Missionary in Asia.

Pneuma Review: Please tell our readers how you came to understand that the Lord was calling you into missions.

Dave Johnson: I was in the Navy when God called me to the ministry. When I got out of the Navy, I went to Bible College to prepare for that calling, although I did not know at the beginning the kind of ministry to which God was calling me. In my senior year, God spoke to me about becoming a missionary, but he first directed me to further education.

Pneuma Review: What advice would you give to a person who thinks that they may be called to missions?

Dave Johnson, Answering God’s Call: Reflections of a Veteran Missionary in Asia (APTS Press, 2021).

Dave Johnson: They should be sure of their calling, grow in their spiritual disciplines and in their walk with God, gain some ministry experience at home first and then pursue their calling without fear.

Pneuma Review: Once it has been determined that an individual is called what should they do in order to prepare for the field?

Dave Johnson: This depends on the person and the ministry to which they feel called. They should certainly gain some ministry experience here and formal training is usually a good idea. They should also talk with their pastor and contact the leadership of the mission they wish to join to see what their requirements and advice would be.

Pneuma Review: What are some of the challenges that a missionary can expect to encounter on the mission field?

Dave Johnson: Probably the greatest challenge is to die to ourselves. We must die to our desires, our dreams, as well as the prejudices and the narcissism of our age that have so greatly impacted the Church. Missions is not about me or my own fulfillment. It’s about loving God and responding to his dreams for our lives. After 29 years in missions, this remains my greatest challenge.

Pneuma Review: Give us an example of how you dealt with one of these challenges.

Dave Johnson: I’ll tackle language and cultural adjustment here. My approach was to immerse myself in the language and culture from the very beginning. I was single at the time and took the opportunity to live with a Filipino family. They were very Filipino about their approach to life and this presented me with the opportunity to experience life through their eyes from the very beginning. While the adults normally preferred to speak to me in English, much to my dismay, the children were happy to converse in Tagalog. Since my fluency level was much lower than theirs, I had to become like a child again in learning the language and culture. It was a humbling but ultimately a very rewarding experience. On any given day, living in another culture could be very rewarding or very frustrating. It was often both on the same day!

Pneuma Review: Have you ever doubted your missionary call? If you have, how did you get past that doubt?

Dave Johnson: In the years following seminary I followed the Lord’s leading and engaged in evangelistic work, which included short term missionary trips. Since the door to full time missions wasn’t opening as I had hoped, I went through a period of doubt that I called “The valley of the death of the vision.” After a few years, however, the Lord resurrected my vision and sent me forward into missions.

Pneuma Review: How important is self-care for the missionary?

Dave Johnson: It is critical. Missionaries should always take the long view of their missions calling. Leading a balanced life and making time for intimacy with Christ and with time with our spouse and children, as well as time for ourselves, is important to remaining on the field long-term. We need margin in our lives because we are human. God never intended that we work all the time.

Pneuma Review: Missionary work is not “one size fits all.” You have served in a number of different ministries. Please tell our readers about them.

Dave Johnson: I arrived in the Philippines in 1994. After taking a year for language learning and cultural adjustment, I reengaged my calling as an evangelist and began traveling to many parts of the Philippines, along with an assistant, to conduct Good News Rallies for existing churches and new church plants. At first, I based in Manila. After Debbie and I married and she had completed language studies, we ultimately moved to the Legazpi City area, about 350 south of Manila, and continued evangelistic ministry, although we restricted ourselves to southern Luzon and engaged in working in a Bible school to honor Debbie’s calling and gifting in teaching. We remained in the area for 13 years.

In 2012, I was invited to become the managing editor of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, the official publication of the Asia Pacific Theological Seminary (APTS), the Assemblies of God school for higher theological education in the Asia Pacific, which is located in Baguio City, Philippines. At first, these positions were part-time, but in 2013, the Lord lead us to terminate our ministry in Legaspi and move to APTS and become part of the full time faculty.

In addition to all of these roles over the years, I tried to support Debbie in the various roles that she undertook.

Pneuma Review: You are currently involved in publishing with Asia Pacific Theological Seminary Press. Tell us a little about the purpose, or focus, of the books that you publish.

Dave Johnson: The purpose of both the Press and the Journal is to deal with theological, missiological and ecclesiastical issues that pastors, theologians and churches deal with in Asia. Due to the different cultures and the strong presence of other global and local religions, the issues faced in Asia are substantially different than those in the West. This means that books and journals from western authors often do not address the real and felt needs of Asians. We seek to fill that lacuna.

Pneuma Review: Where can people purchase your book Answering God’s Call and the books published by Asia Pacific Theological Seminary Press?

Dave Johnson: All of our books and Journal editions are available at www.aptspress.org. We also license most of books to Wipf & Stock and can be accessed at www.wipfandstock.org. They can also be read for free at Open Access Digital Theological Library, www.oadtl.org. The books can also be purchased directly through www.amazon.com and www.kobo.com.

PR

Notes

[1] Editor’s note: Led By the Spirit is being published serially in Pneuma Review. Read the first chapter. Read Malcom Brubaker’s review of Led By the Spirit.

Vinson Synan is well known as a Pentecostal historian and scholar. He authored many books about the work of the Holy Spirit, these include: The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901-2001, An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit, and In the Latter Days: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Twentieth Century. He was also the general editor of Spirit-Empowered Christianity in the 21^st Century: Insights, Analysis, and Future Trends from World-Renowned Scholars and was one of the editors of the four volume series Global Renewal Christianity.[i] Synan was an ordained minister with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. The current volume, Where He Leads Me, which was published a little more than a year before he died, is his autobiography.

Over the years I have read a few of Dr. Synan’s books, but this one was very different from the others. The others focused on Pentecostal and Charismatic history, this one focused on his personal life, which I knew nothing about. I learned he was the son of a minister (page 14) and that he was converted in 1951 (page 36). The night after his conversion he received a call to preach (pages 37-38) and months later received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit (pages 38-39). In the preface of the book he says that he always had an interest in history (page 11). Over the course of his life the kind of history he focused on changed, eventually leading him to write extensively on Pentecostal/Charismatic history (page 11). There was also much that I did not know about his ministerial life. As I read through the book one thing that struck me was how busy Dr. Synan was throughout his life!

His ministerial involvements were quite diverse. He served in pastoral ministry in a number of different churches (pages 52-53, 59-60). He also served in the academic community, two of the schools he served were Regent University and Oral Roberts University (page 7). One of his lasting academic legacies is the Society for Pentecostal Studies. He was one of the founders of this organization (pages 82-85). He also served in various denominational capacities in the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. He served as the General Secretary (page 101) and the Director of Home and Family Life (page 103).

One thing that really caught my attention was his relationship with the Charismatic Movement. I did not realize he was so involved with it. He supported it and networked with various leaders of the movement, including Catholics. In chapter 6 Synan shares a profound experience he had with God at a Catholic Charismatic meeting at Notre Dame University (pages 90-91). At that time the Lord told him that this movement was from Him and that Synan would have a part in it (page 91). And it was true, he did work with Catholic Charismatics and spoke regularly at some of their gatherings (page 209). He participated in the Catholic Pentecostal Dialogue in Rome (pages 95-99). He also spoke at the golden anniversary celebration of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal which was held in Rome (page 209).

Dr. Synan did much to encourage the Charismatic Movement. He was involved in planning the charismatic conference that was held in Kansas City in 1977, close to 50,000 people attended this gathering (page 108). The conference brought Catholic and Protestant Charismatics and Pentecostals together (pages 108-109). He participated in other conferences as well, which are mentioned in the book. Synan was truly ecumenical. However, not everyone appreciated his involvement with the Charismatic Movement, he admits that he had some critics (pages 143-145).

Vinson Synan’s life is an example of a life well lived. He served the purposes of the Lord by serving the church. He had a significant impact on the body of Christ. Dr. Synan was truly a historian of the Spirit. His books chronicle and preserve the rich history of the work God has done as He has poured out His Holy Spirit. Vinson Synan not only wrote about these events but during the course of his life he participated in some of them. May his life and work serve as an inspiration to those of us who are part of the Spirit-filled movement.

Reviewed by John Lathrop

Publisher page: https://lifespringsresources.com/where-he-leads-me-the-vinson-synan-story

Notes
[i] Editor’s note: The four volumes of Global Renewal Christianity: Spirit Empowered Movements: Past, Present, and Future are: Europe and North America (2017), Africa (2016), Latin America (2016), and Asia and Oceania (2015).

Matthew A. King is the cofounder and president of the Christian Animal Rights Association, an organization dedicated to ending animal cruelty and exploitation. King believes that Christianity’s historic support for eating meat and animal use stems from an incorrect understanding of the biblical testimony. The title of the book is taken from Hosea 2:18 which says,

“In that day I will also make a covenant for them
With the beasts of the field,
The birds of the sky
And the creeping things of the ground.
And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land,
And will make them lie down in safety.” (NASB)

King employs the standard Christian virtues of sacrificial giving, love of neighbor and alleged vegan diet of the Garden of Eden to ground his animal-friendly ethic. Like other Christian animal rights activists, King contends that God’s original plan was for humans and animals to live in non-exploitative harmony where human rulership was characterized as servant, perhaps sacrificial, non-consumptive leadership over animals and that God’s future plan is to restore a world with animal-human harmony (Isa 11:6-9; 65:25 and Hosea 2:18 (p.xiii). One of King’s contributions to the Christian animal rights movement is his moral rubric called the New Earth Abolition (NEA) that organizes the principles of human-animal relations. The NEA consists of three pillars namely, 1. Treat animals the way you would like to be treated (Matt 7:12; 22:39; Mk 12:31; Lk 6:31; 10:27), 2. Humans should serve animals not exploit them (Mk 9:35; Philp 2:3-4) and 3. Humans should foster harmony with animals and between animals (Gen 1:20-30; p.23).

King, however, does not believe the traditional arguments (e.g., respect for weaker/lesser creatures) for animal rights go far enough to press and justify the proper treatment of animals. He believes that animals must be recognized as “persons” and thus of equal moral status as humans. To support this radical contention (at least from a “Christian” perspective), King appeals to Scripture’s use of nephesh hayah (living soul) and scientific evidence regarding animal sentience.

The behavioral implications of King’s philosophy for Christian ethics is as far reaching as it is shocking. As expected, he opposes consumption of animal products (e.g., meat, eggs, milk, etc.). But surprisingly, even honey is banned from the list of allowed foods (p. 24). In like manner, King believes that insects must be left alone because they have individual personalities and a fluid that is analogous to blood (pp. 95-6). He breaks with some animal rights activists by accepting the legitimacy of dogs and cats as domestic animals. However, owners must feed their dogs a vegan diet so as not to run afoul of principle 3 of the NEA (p.34). In a concession to reality, he acknowledges that cats must still be fed meat because they are “obligate carnivores”. He hopes someday laboratory meat will be available to resolve even this ethical concession.

I agree with King’s belief that animal treatment is an important topic that should be based in a proper understanding of scientific inquiry and biblical interpretation. Regrettably, King’s reach for a resolution far outdistanced his grasp. His work suffers from several key weaknesses, each of which is terminal in its effect.

First, King fails to read broadly enough to fully understand and appreciate the monumental difficulty of justifying an animal rights position biblically and scientifically. For example, if he had read my book, Dominion over Wildlife? An Environmental-Theology of Human-Wildlife Relations (Wipf and Stock, 2012), he would have known that Adam and Eve could have killed animals while still being vegans (cf. kabash, “subdue” Gen 1:28). In similar fashion, King seems unaware of how human-wildlife conflicts constitute a significant threat to human health, safety and food security both in ancient times and today.

Second, King’s interpretation of Scripture at times is so forced that one wonders whether his reading would be recognized by the original author. For example, on pages 72-73, King argues that John 10:11 (I am the good shepherd) is not just a metaphor of Christ’s care for humans but a literal statement of Christ’s service to animals. Another example of strained exegesis can be seen on p. 77 where he discusses the Gerasene demoniac and the drowning of pigs. It never seems to occur to King that Christ can still be charged with animal cruelty for allowing demons to possess innocent and sentient animals (cf. p. 49). King’s inability to accept the text at face value as shown in his treatment of Isaiah 25:6 (pp. 81-82) causes one to wonder what wording the Bible would have had to use to convince King that eating animals was acceptable to God.

One can only hope that King and his supporters will eventually take the time to read more deeply and broadly. King should not have written a book until he truly understood the arguments and claims of the traditional Christian view on animals. To understand before one criticizes exemplifies the Golden Rule, which unfortunately he does more for animals than those who believe in the traditional view. Christians interested in reading an animal rights perspective should look elsewhere as this book lacks the research and argument worthy of one’s time.

Reviewed by Stephen M. Vantassel

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/9781666700275/i-will-abolish-the-bow/