Dread Me

On my last day in Africa, I did something that I had been wanting to do for a long time...I got dreads! Now, they're still a work in progress (it can take several months for dreads to actually lock in), but I'm digging them so far. The best part was after I put them in, when for the rest of the day anytime a black guy saw my dreads, he would give me a thumbs up or yell, "Hey, my Rasta brotha!" Even the lady at the check-in counter at the airport told me she loved them! Apparently getting dreads = immediate solidarity with black Africans!

The "before" shot.

The "during" pic.

All done!

From the back.

So what do you think? Do I pull it off, or is a buzzed head in order? Leave me a comment!

Fifty-(Two) Nifty United States?

I've recently uncovered a bizarre glitch in South Africa's education on world geography. My South African friends are often boasting (or whining) that Americans know very little about African history and geography. And, for the most part, I tend to agree with them. I honestly never remember learning a single thing about Africa in geography classes growing up, and the only part of African history that I remember learning was focused more on the history of American slaves. In high school, I remember watching the movie Roots and reading Things Fall Apart, a brilliant novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. That was the extent of my African studies. So, I'm forced to agree with my South African friends about the ignorance of Americans when it comes to Africa.

At the same time, I like to flip the table on these same friends and grill them on American history and geography. While most Americans would probably recognize that they don't know much about Africa, several of my South African friends think they know everything about America, simply because of all the American movies they've watched and the fact that, even in Africa, America dominates the world news. What I've found is that most Africans are equally as ignorant in their knowledge of America.

Take one friend of mine (who, for his sake, will remain anonymous), who thought that Obama was the president of both North America and South America. I tried to explain to him that those were two entirely separate and VERY different continents, with many nations and many different presidents, but I quickly gave up as I realized how much his geography teachers had failed him.

And then, my personal favorite. This is a real conversation that I had with one of my South African friends...

How many states do you think there are in the United States of America?, I asked.

Fifty-two, Wayne boldly and confidently answered. I started cracking up laughing.

Nope. There's only fifty, I replied.

He started getting defensive.

No, man, there's fifty states on the mainland. You're probably forgetting about Alaska and Hawaii.

Again, his confidence was shocking, as he tried lecturing me in American geography. Our other South African friends chimed in, backing Wayne's answer. (Apparently they all had been taught in school that there were fifty-two states as well!).

Trust me, bro, I'm not forgetting about Alaska and Hawaii. There are forty-eight states on the mainland; Alaska and Hawaii make forty-nine and fifty.

I proceeded to explain that there was a reason we have FIFTY stars on our flag, and then I proudly burst into the chorus of the song FIFTY Nifty United States (anybody else remember learning that song in elementary school?).

But not to be outdone, Wayne responded with dry sarcasm:

Oh, now I remember. You have fifty states...plus Iraq and Afghanistan! That makes fifty-two!

Touché, my friend. Touché...

Faith, Hope, and Obama: Part 2

HOPE

If you haven't yet read part 1 of this discussion, I suggest you head there first. Then, after you've slapped yourself in the face (this will make more sense after reading part 1), you can come back here to the second installment in this discussion. As a disclaimer, I know this is a long read, but I hope that you will find it well worth your while as it represents a great deal of what I have been wrestling with this year in Africa.

Today's discussion turns a little less political, as we take a look at the concept of hope. I fear that I may have come out of the blocks too strongly in my opening statements of this discussion (part 1), as if I myself had the answer that was going to enlighten everyone to some deep truth that we all have been missing. I wish that were the case, but after nearly a month of wrestling with this topic since I last wrote on it, I'm simply left with more questions than answers. Maybe you can help me find the answers I'm looking for....

What is hope?

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work; you don't give up." -Anne Lamott

We use the word as a noun: The doctor's report gave us hope. We use the word as a verb: I hope I passed my biology test. We define hope as some sort of feeling or belief that things will turn out for the best (at least that's my simple definition). I mean, at quick glance it all seems to make sense. Hope is an easy enough concept to understand, right? But a closer look reveals that there's something deeper going on here--something a bit more complex that goes beyond the cliché, penetrating to profound depths at the core of the human condition.

Hope, though a seemingly unquantifiable feeling, is often spoken of in quantifiable terms. We speak of hanging on by "a thread of hope," implying just a small amount of hope. Other times, we speak of being "filled with hope," implying a larger quantity of hope. It seems somewhat contradictory that we can truly have varying degrees of hope because, really, how can you sort of believe in something? By definition, hope seems to imply something real, almost objective--something that you either have or you don't have. But in reality, we all know what it's like to truly believe in something--to truly have hope; and we know what it's like to want to believe in something--to desire hope, even if at the time it escapes our grasp. So maybe when we use phrases like "I'm hanging on by a thread of hope," what we really mean is that we want to hope that things will work out, but in reality we are ready to cross over that fine line between hope and despair.

Why do we hope?

"Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words: 'Wait and hope.'" -Alexandre Dumas

The other thing that really intrigues me about hope is that it seems to be ingrained into the human condition. It's almost like there are three guarantees in life: we are born, we will die, and in between we will have hope. The ancient Roman philosopher, Cicero, summed it up well when he said, "When there's life, there's hope." Seriously, as I look at the world around me, and even throughout history, I see that humans are incredibly resilient beings--that it takes an awful lot to break the spirit of a human being and bring them to despair, and no person's life story is complete without at least mention of hope.

This appears to be the point where we can no longer ignore the Christian worldview. It seems that within each one of God's children--whether they believe in Him or not--He has placed an eternal hope. (No, I will not be quoting from Jeremiah 29:11 now, even though it directly uses the word "hope" and would probably serve my purposes well here. A small soapbox of mine, I think that verse gets overused and, often times, utterly abused, so I will look instead to another prophet, Zechariah). Speaking through the prophet Zechariah, the LORD says, "Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you" (Zech. 9:12, NIV, italics mine). God calls His children "prisoners of hope." I find that to be a poignant description of the human condition; we are bound to hope.

Is false hope better than no hope?

"The miserable have no other medicine but only hope." -William Shakespeare

"A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread." -Georges Bernanos

"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Up to this point in the discussion, you have probably been reading from a 1st World, Western worldview. I can't fault you for that because it's natural to view the world from within your own context. I, too, often catch myself looking at the world from that perspective, even though I am currently surrounded by the 3rd World. But, in order to get to the root of this discussion, I ask you to take a mental journey with me to my current context: Africa. In doing so, we are really going to get to the crux of this discussion, as it must be seen in light of the impoverished 3rd World.

The question here is again simple, yet very complex: Do you believe that false hope is better than no hope?

Think about it...

Here's the exact same question, just worded differently: Is having hope better than not having hope, even if your "hope" is rooted in a lie?

This is the eternal conundrum that plagues Africa. Lest I attempt to sound like an expert here, keep in mind that my African experiences are limited, since I'm only here for a year. But I've traveled Africa. I've been in 7 African countries in the last 4 months. I've spent significant time studying the history of Africa this year, and I've seen it unfold with my own eyes. I've seen a young girl waste away to death from AIDS, seemingly paying for the sins of her own parents' infidelity. I've lived in a community that had no access to clean drinking water, let alone access to proper medicine to cure the diseases that were sure to follow. I've been witness to (and sometimes the victim of) government corruption, which has sifted all the way down to the local police forces. I've been to the schools, which are grossly lacking in resources and, more often than not, good teachers. I've been called "boss" enough times to know that still ingrained in many black Africans is a feeling of inferiority to white people. And I've seen poverty...extreme poverty. Don't be fooled--Africa is a harsh, harsh reality for its people.

Although I did not grow up living this harsh African reality, after having seen it with my own eyes, I often find myself bordering on despair when I think about Africa. "Will things ever get better?" I often ask myself. "Will it ever change? And what can I really do?" There are no easy answers to these questions. But yet, overwhelmingly, I find Africans to be optimistic, even hope-filled people; they truly define resilience. At first glance, this is an impressive feat, in light of their surrounding circumstances. But, again, at closer look I have found that many Africans place their undying hope in lies.

One of Satan's greatest strongholds of deceit in Africa is found in animism, witchcraft, and idolatry. Even many African "Christians" find themselves tip-toeing the line between true hope in the salvation of Jesus and "hope" in the traditions of the sangomas (witch doctors), or in appeasing their ancestors through sacrifices and rituals. It can be argued that Satan's strongholds are often very geographical, and it seems that these believed lies are especially prevalent in this continent that is looking for anything in which to place hope.

Another area of false hope in Africa (and the rest of the world) is rooted in wealth. If I had a dime for every African this year that has told me about his elaborate plans to go study in America, get a great job, get rich, and never come back to Africa, I'd be a very rich man right now (maybe I should have really asked each of them to give me a dime...that could have been my elaborate plan to get rich!). Seriously, though, as much as I've tried to explain to these guys that America isn't the answer to their problems, the "American dream" is so ingrained in their heads that there is no convincing them otherwise. Their "hope" is all wrapped up in another false reality.

Finally (yes, it's time to get slightly political again), a lot of Africans have placed their faith in the government. Essentially all of the independent African nations have achieved independence within the past 50 years. In nearly each instance, it was a classic case of expelling the "oppressive white man," the colonial powers, and replacing them with black African "leaders." These "leaders," then, represented the sole source of hope for the people of these newly-independent African nations. Unfortunately, in the overwhelming majority of these power shifts, the "oppressive white man" was merely replaced with a power-hungry "oppressive black man." Even today, Africa is still run mostly by dictatorial leaders who exploit their own people for personal power and wealth. And yet, Africans today still place their undying hope in the hands of these leaders and their corrupt governments.

South Africa is actually an unusual case. Independence came late, with the fall of Apartheid in 1994, and the transition to a democratic black majority rule came relatively smoothly and peacefully. But, just as in the rest of Africa, many South Africans believed (hoped) that salvation for their people had come with this governmental shift in power. The reality, however, is that no government has the power to save. And while South Africa has made great strides in the last 15 years, overwhelmingly the whites still live in the fancy suburbs and the blacks still live in the tin shacks. The "hope" which so many Africans have placed in their governments has gone unrealized.

So, let me ask the question again: Is false hope really better than no hope at all?

Even as I sit here writing what seems to be an argument that false hope is destructive, I still don't know the answer to this question. Surely false hope is better than despair, isn't it? Maybe Billy Shakespeare and Georges Bernanos were right, that we need the illusion, the medicine that is hope. Maybe we should just swallow the blue pill and continue living in the illusion. Or maybe the famous atheistic (even nihilistic?) German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, was right for once. Maybe hope (at least false hope) just prolongs our torment. Truly a conundrum...my brain hurts.

It's at this point that we finally come back to Obama...and Jesus.

To be continued...

The African Sunset

I am convinced that there is nothing more beautiful than the African sunset. It's nearly impossible to capture in a picture, but I've tried anyway. Here are some shots of the sun setting over the rural village of Chihota, Zimbabwe.

A Vision for Africa

One of my favorite things about working with J-Life is that this organization has a very clear-cut vision: They want to see the whole of Africa transformed with the gospel of Jesus Christ. After spending more than 7 months with this ministry, that goal is unmistakably clear. Their means for accomplishing such a goal is equally clear-cut: J-Life sees young people as the mode through which their simple (yet complex) mission--"Mobilizing Disciplemaking Movements"--will be accomplished. This ministry is definitely heading in the right direction, and God's hand is extremely evident in what they are doing. A relatively young ministry, founded in 2001, J-Life has multiplied exponentially over the past 8 years. The map above shows the 20 sub-Saharan African countries in which J-Life is currently working. The countries with yellow dots represent those in which an indigenous leader from that country is working full-time with J-Life to spark a movement of young disciples in that country. Those countries with pink dots represent countries in which J-Life has formally trained youth leaders in disciplemaking ministry, but no country leader has yet emerged. You can read a lot more about J-Life on their website here. But more than anything, please pray that God's hand would continue to bless the ministry of J-Life as they seek to expand His kingdom in Africa!