We Have Power Over Those Too
Welcome to “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined.” You get a glimpse here of the kind of work that I do both at Church Mission Society and Missio Africanus where I help students of all levels (from unaccredited courses to PhD) explore the theological (and missiological) implications of the rise of World Christianity. In the newsletter, I focus on the subject of global witness in the context of the twenty-first century. Every Thursday, I share a thought that has spoken to me in the week, one or two resources that I trust will be helpful to you, and three exciting quotes about mission to give you something to think about as you go through your day. I pray one of these will energise you.
1. Thought I Can’t Shake Off
Today, I am responding to a friend who asked me last week what I think about Paul’s mention of principalities and powers in Eph 6:10.
I grew up in Africa, in a community that, just like many other African communities, teaches its children that spirit beings are real and that spirits interact with the human/material world constantly. There are, at least, as I learned as a child, myriads and myriads of spirits in the cosmos. All of them are created beings, but some of them are of people who have died and have joined the community of many other spirits. (I do not have enough information to have a conviction about this or what to do with it, but I have no doubt that spirits exist and that they exert a great deal of influence in our world). Spirits, as far as we understand them, are infinitely more powerful than humans. That is why people invoke them and call on their ancestors—they are more powerful as spirits than they were as humans. This worldview causes people to spend a lot of time attending to spirits, either listening to them (or discerning what they want done) or sacrificing to them (to increase their power). The quality of one’s life in such communities is often attributed to the power of the spirits on their side or, to put it more correctly, the spirits to whom they belong. Of course, this is their quality, not Western quality.
Nothing could prepare me for the theological culture shock I experienced when I landed in Europe. My theology students went straight to thinking about witches when I spoke about spirits. The younger students thought of Harry Potter while the older ones often went to Macbeth’s three witches. When I began to study theology, I was amazed to hear my colleagues (and professors) explain Paul’s “principalities and powers” as evil ideologies, systems, institutions and organisations without imagining that there are spirits behind them. Of course, many of them believe spirits do not exist or are too far away to care about and interact with the human world. Turning back to explore African thought on this, I learned that these evil systems are the outworking of the evil spirits and that any efforts to change them without engaging the spirits do not result in real change. The call to witness for Christ and serve in God’s work to heal this sin-sick world must, therefore, involve a spiritual wrestling with principalities and powers and a pulling down of strongholds. To pray “your kingdom come” is to dethrone the evil powers that corrupt our world. We cannot have both. Where the Spirit of God reigns, the principalities also always seek to rule. This is our life, until Christ comes and makes all things new.
2. Resources I am Enjoying
In this Institute of World Mission Podcast, scholar Boubakar Sanou talks about the crucial role of worldviews in cross-cultural mission. Sanou argues that when mission agents downplay or ignore worldview transformation in their cross-cultural missionary endeavour, they only end up with recipients who demonstrate or masquerade a change of behaviour with the tendency to revert to the previous “mode of operation they know [which can] easily lead to syncretism.” In other words, we cannot expect the gospel message to indeed impact people’s lives and truly transform their behaviours and outcomes without first considering and allowing it to affect their thought patterns and how they see the world they live in. If we do not do this, we end up with no converts or behavioural disguises based on the hope of “being rewarded.”
3. Quotes I am Pondering
If the person of Jesus is superlatively central to the gospel—and he is—every culture into which the gospel makes in-roads will need to answer the question Jesus himself posed to his hand-picked disciples: “who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). — Joseph Ola
When we are able to catch the spirit of Jesus then we are in mission. When the church catches the spirit of Jesus it will have no alternative but to engage in actions which challenge the evil of society. — Mary Mikhael
When the church becomes intercultural, it does not preach reconciliation to the world, it lives it. — Safwat Marzouk
I pray that you will be faithful in whatever God calls you to do this week.
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