Post 183--The Power of Prayer

You may know that my wife and I spent 30 years in Nigeria as missionaries. If you want to know the entire story of that journey, I invite you to read our memoirs at

                < www.SocialTheology.com/boeriana >

After various introductory sections, the memoirs are the first entry: Every Square Inch: A Missionary Memoir.

You may be surprised at what became a problem to me for the first half year there. I was so amazed at Nigerian Christian prayers during church services.  Not only were there long queues of people waiting to offer a prayer, but the way they prayed just seemed unreal to me at the beginning. They were so real about, so serious, so persistent and covering many different fronts of life.  I had never heard such strong and emotional prayers.  I could not help but kind of doubt their genuineness.

Looking back on that early period—I’m talking late ‘60s, some 50 years ago!—I have come to understand that this was culture shock on my part, a spiritual culture shock. I had never heard such prayers. Of course, this was the pre-Charismatic breakthrough when really no one prayed that way in any culture I had ever experienced. 

I was a product of Western Christianity, of its Reformed branch, that was so heavily influenced by the Western worldview that is so much more influenced by Rationalism with its rational spirituality and logic, and by secularism, the major “common sense” in the West. All of that discouraged that kind of prayer outbursts.  Our  prayers were genuine all right, but so rational, reasonable and calm. And we certainly did not form queues of eager prayer warriors!

I look back on that experience with a sense of shame and embarrassment. Here I was, a Christian missionary, and I could not understand the prayer culture of our hosts, let alone appreciate it. I am happy to report that over time I not only came to understand it, but also accept it as genuine. I even began to copy that style of prayer, without pretense, but with sincerity, conviction and meaning. Nigerian Christian spirituality enriched me and I am grateful for that experience. One of the many blessings I received during my years of service there. My prayers have never been the same since, especially not my public prayers.

Today is Sept 3, 2017—21 years since I left Nigeria, physically at least. An item from Nigeria’s Premium Times appears on my screen. It is a story about Nigeria’s Super Eagles, the beloved national football team, having beaten their Cameroonian competition.  However, the report was not about the way the Eagles played, but how they prayed! Here’s the report, picture and all.

PREMIUM TIMES      Sept 3   2017

 Super Eagles defeated Cameroon by ‘prayers’ — Gov. Emmanuel

Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State has said that the Super Eagles’ victory on Friday against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon was a “testament” to the power of prayers.

The Eagles whipped their arch rival, the Lions 4-0, in their 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifier at the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium, Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital.

“The victory of Super Eagles today against The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon is a testament to the fact that whenever we go on our knees and seek the face of God like we did today during our fasting and prayer session, God will answer our prayer,” Mr. Emmanuel wrote on Facebook, few hours after the match.  END OF STORY.

This was not some pastor hidden in a church somewhere.  This was a politician, a State Governor, a man with much power and wealth. Most of his colleagues are very corrupt, though I hope this not to be the case here. But there this man wrote it on one of the most public and wide-spread podiums in the world without hesitation. Amazing. And then the story was spread by the news media. This was big stuff. Prayer saved the day or, at least, the big match. Never mind how they played. They won by prayer. Their strategies did not get any praise. It was prayer that did it, prayer and fasting.  You can’t get more serious!

As a semi-Nigerian who loves Nigeria and its people more than “semi”-- I am happy our team won, but those earlier questions of Nigerian Christian prayers came back to me. In a way it was a typically traditional response. When things go wrong in Nigerian life, people seldom take responsibility but blame external forces, including enemies, evil spirits, etc. But this time things went right, at least as far as Nigeria is concerned.  So it is refreshing to see the Governor giving credit for this result to God instead of boasting of the players’ prowess. I wonder about the Cameroonian reaction!  Whom did they hold responsible for their loss?

At the same time, the above picture does not make one think immediately of pious players. The front player seems almost angry, certain aggressive and determined. He’s not about to give anyone a chance!  The second player is having fun, an emotion that does not necessarily exclude spirituality. So, an ambiguous picture.

But my main hesitation is the prayer itself. It is a prayer for a battle, but not a battle for freedom or liberation. Rather a prayer for myself and my people against the interest of another group whose interest is equally valid before God. It is a prayer for my victory and their defeat.  Unless it is a case of an unjust war, Christians do not generally pray against each other but for each other. So, I find this prayer difficult to swallow.  But they did win. So, perhaps God did hear it.  But what if the Cameroonians prayed likewise?

Fortunately, this was for God to figure out, not for me. Sometimes it pays to leave things up to Him!

PS--Sorry that the picture has not appeared. I'm not a techy and don't know how to fix that.  But here's the URL. Try to access it yourself-- http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/242214-super-eagles-defeated-cameroon-prayers-gov-emmanuel.html

Post 127—Human Plumbing and Culture

I hope you’re ready for another session on human plumbing and how we manage its product.  That management, as we will see today, is usually related to the dominant local culture.  In the last post, we saw how at least some Indians still manage it in a pretty primitive way. Now I don’t know enough about Indian culture to demonstrate my thesis firmly on the influence of culture on the matter, but I can at least make a guess. The Indian practice described in Post 126 must have been influenced by at least two factors.

One of them would be a general traditional ignorance of the impact of hygiene on health. First of all, the people would not be aware that defecating all over the place creates hygienic problems. Secondly, they would not be aware of the danger to health such unhygienic practice creates. Flies crawling all over the excrement and then carrying it with them wherever they go, including humans and food. Well, we know what happens from there on, but those people do not. They are blissfully ignorant of it and so continue to practice their unhealthy tradition. So, one cultural factor is general ignorance of hygiene.

The second cultural factor would be low level of technology combined with a poor economy. It takes a certain level technology and economy to devise better management of sewage. And that technology is pushed by growing awareness of the dangers of traditional practice. When people become aware of the danger, they will be motivated to take the bull by the horns and devise more healthy management practices. I have read various publications that claim the rapid increase in the health level of Westerners during the 19^th century was due more to the improvement in sewage systems than to improved medical science. And that came along with the general rise of technology—the Industrial Revolution, remember? 

Bring these two cultural developments together and you will soon have a management system that almost makes the sewage invisible so that the general population almost forgets about it. In any modern city like Vancouver, where I live, I am blissfully ignorant as to where mine goes, how it gets there and what happens to it. Never really think of it—until, of course, the system develops plumbing problems and then we call in a plumber with all her sophisticated equipment. “Her” did I say? Well, probably not. I have yet to meet a lady plumber!

But then there is an even deeper factor that can play a role—anthropology. That’s a fancy term referring to a culture’s view about human beings, who or what we are. I have lived for many years in a culture where the local chief was regarded a demi-god with all the men of the community in some way sharing that status. They could not imagine that gods would have such human problems as defecation and so they pretended the chief and all the man did not defecate. I don’t know how the chief handled that pretense, but for ordinary males this meant they would do their thing in the bush or forest. There were no toilets in such communities, for that would entail an unwanted admission. So everyone else, women and children, though no demi-gods, also had no choice but the bush, for no provisions for them were made either. Not only were there no provisions, but no one would speak about the subject. It was a taboo.

A breakthrough came. After decades of missionary work in the area, the myth began to break down. The young church was one of the first to build a toilet in the town. It was a simple structure of a grass matting surrounding a deep hole. But it was built only a few feet away from the well from which they drew the water needed for the church’s cooking events!  The people did not see the dangerous connection! 

Another breakthrough came, a negative one: a cholera plague that killed many people in just a few days. The local government medical officer quickly called a meeting of all the religious leaders of the two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam. He begged these leaders to preach on the need for hygiene, including toilets, to contain the plague. It so happens it was my turn to preach that Sunday.  

I decided to preach on an Old Testament text that instructed the people to bury their excrement in a hole outside the camp.

 Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves. Along with your weapons have a stick with you. After you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the stick and cover your excrement.God, your God, strolls through your camp; He’s present…. Keep your camp holy; don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes (The Message, Deuteronomy 23:12-13).

 I knew it was culturally inappropriate to speak about such matters. So I consulted a church elder and friend who was to translate my Hausa-language sermon into another language. He advised me I should go ahead and preach that sermon and promised to translate faithfully, even if it was culturally inappropriate. So I did. I preached a sentence or two and he would translate. So we would alternate. Suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, a very influential man stood up and yelled something in the local language which I did not understand. My translator brushed it off and told me to continue, but my heart was out of it. After the service, I was told that man yelled that the translator should not beat around the bush! Say it as I said it! However, my sermon was not lost on most, for they understood the Hausa language.

Thus, another humorous story, but also an indication how culture can influence such matters. Though comparatively free from that tradition, it was not enough for him to translate the message straight. However, people did begin to construct toilets in their compounds. A combination of disease, new awareness and the gospel brought about a radical change in the way the people saw themselves and that, in turn, led to a breakdown of that particular tradition—and did so for the good of the entire community. I never learned how this was solved for the chief himself or what effect this may have had on his alleged semi-divinity. I do know that the church did not openly challenge it ever but played along with it good naturedly, even though over time the chiefs were all Christian. 

Post 77-- Canadian Muslims and Refugees

These days we all talk about refugees, all of us, no matter our status, profession or religion.  The media are full of it, not the least the Vancouver Sun (VS). So are churches, including the two with which I associate, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and First Baptist Church (FBC), both of Vancouver. The former happens to be located right next to the world’s first refugee welcoming centre of its kind on Victoria Drive and is planning to be deeply involved in the centre’s programme, including prodding its fellow CRC congregations to sponsor refugees. FBC is in the early stage of sponsoring, not the first time for her.

But Christians are not the only ones participating in this crisis.  Muslims are as well, Canadian Muslims, that is. More specifically for our purpose here,  BC Muslims.  Douglas Todd of the VS covered the subject nicely in his “BC Muslims fear ‘backlash’” (Nov. 23, 2015, p. A3). According to his article, David Ali, spokesman for the BC Muslim Association, emphasizes the importance of the safety and security of Canadians as a prior concern, of all Canadians, not just Muslims. “It’s our No. 1 priority,” says Ali.  “If Canadian officials feel any possible refugee is suspect … they must do due diligence.”  In France, two suspects involved in the recent Paris bombing arrived in the guise of refugees. Any such happening in Canada would create a backlash for all Muslims. Ali says his people don’t want such people to cause problems for Canadian Muslims.  Apart from entertaining such fears, more positively, the 74,000 Muslims in Metro are collecting funds to sponsor refugees.

Those fears are not merely alarmist and Ali being Muslim, they can hardly be dubbed Islamophobic!  Many Canadians express them. Barry Cartwright, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, thinks Ali’s concern is “well placed, since… it’s impossible to properly screen 25,000 refugees…in a couple of months.”  There’s no way, Cartwright argues, to “do criminal and police checks in a region where there are basically no recognized police departments.”  Where the do exist, they will be so corrupt that any "report" from them is at best suspect. The Federal Government seems to have acknowledged that difficulty by having extended the deadline to an indefinite one well into 2016.

So, Canada’s Muslims appear as concerned about the security issues involved in the refugee movement as are the rest of us, especially as it was first presented as a hasty procedure in which few people had any confidence. After all, militants have killed more Muslims all told than Christians, simply because there are more Muslims where militants operate, whether in the Middle East or in Nigeria’s far north. They have an equal stake in it with the rest of us. It can be even argued that they have more of a stake in it, for if things go wrong and militants pop out of the refugee woodworks, surely there will be a backlash against Canadian Muslims. Of course, they will have no stomach for that. 

But there is another stake they have in all of this: the missionary one.  Various Muslim world leaders have threatened the West that they will overcome the West through higher birthrate and the movement of Muslim peoples into the West. Various estimates have already forecast that Western Europe will in the foreseeable future be overrun by Muslims, not by the sword but by birth and immigration. It is not politically correct to agree with such predictions, but it is obvious, especially in view of the low birthrates among European Caucasians. And though the average Muslim may not be that concerned with these issues, there are leaders in the background who are consciously pushing the Muslim community towards that goal. Anyone who shrugs her shoulders at such suggestions is not doing herself or her compatriots a favour. 

Being a Christian missionary myself, I understand that “instinct.” There is nothing sinister about it and I do not deny them that missionary right. From their point of view, it is the best that can happen to the West.  Muslims are just more serious about their mission than Westerners are and will use all the powers at their disposal to advance it, including political and economic. And don’t kid yourself into thinking Canadian Muslims do not share that instinct.  Every Muslim allowed into Canada represents one tiny step towards that missionary goal. Every time the Federal Government accepts a Muslim refugee, it blindly contributes towards the achievement of that Muslim goal.  It is in plain denial. 

The above paragraph is not an argument for rejecting Muslim refugees, but it is an argument for extra carefulness. It is not an argument against compassion for Muslim refugees. Those that arrive should be embraced with compassion. But it is an argument for Canadian Christians to wake up and fight the ongoing legal and cultural struggles that are taking place against Christians by the secular powers in our own society, often behind the scenes in the courts, including fake “human rights” tribunals, where most people don’t notice. It is organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) and the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) who stand in the breach on our behalf. Follow them on the internet and support them.  And, I strongly  plead for Christian Canadians to sponsor fellow Christians, the ones who have suffered much more than their Muslim compatriots at the hands of these same Muslims throughout much of the Middle East for decades before anyone  even heard of refugees.  If this is interpreted as Islamophobia, so be it; Islamophobia at its best and most constructive for the future.

Post 68--A Change of Scenery--From Vancouver to Lagos

I believe most of you know this blog originates in Vancouver, Canada. Well, I am currently in Lagos, the former political capital of Nigeria and now the commercial capital.  The political capital has been shifted to Abuja,  a city built from scratch in the  middle of the country, said to be the biggest construction project in all human history!  Well, that’s Nigeria. Like the USA, the bigger the better. I’m here together with my wife, visiting our youngest son and his family—for a whole month! 

I’m not sure when I can actually post this post, what with less than a stellar quality computer and a fickle electrical supply. Every time the main electrical net decides to take a break, and that happens several times a day, we get switched to a huge generator within twenty seconds. However, every switch one way or the other, turns off the computer.  It being a decrepit machine, it sometimes takes close to an hour for it to recover from the shock-- pun intended. In addition, so far, we have not been able to access the internet, which is a sine qua non for getting this post to your screen. So, while I hope to keep writing while here, I’m not sure when you’ll get to read it. Perhaps not till we return to Vancouver in mid-October.  Hopefully, before then.  At least, when you do finally read it, you’ll realize we did not forget about you, our readers.

I regret I did not warn you of this trip. I simply did not foresee these problems. I had been assured we would have access to a working computer. Well, we do, but the two factors described in the last paragraph have thrown a rod into our plans to keep in touch with you. Hopefully, it won’t be as bad or as long as I now fear could become the case.  I just have to trust that you’ll have the patience to sit it out and stick with me.

I had a different topic in mind for this installment, but having started with Nigeria, I have just decided to stick with it. After all, Nigeria is a fascinating country, in spite of its reputation for corruption. Perhaps you have at one time or another been the beneficiary of Nigeria’s famous scam letters. Well, yes, more than one of its Presidents has declared corruption one of the country’s two major problems, the other being religious conflict. Those are the two topics for which the country is the most “famous.” However, my son works at the highest echelon of the Lagos business world and insists that today’s Nigeria has started a new trajectory, a new story of vigorous business that, he is sure, will invigorate the country’s business culture to heights it has never before experienced. In fact, he is playing a major role in making this happen. I write this with great pride in him, especially because he has frequently told me that his ministry is really a natural extension of my 30-year ministry in the country.

Yes, I use the word “ministry” in describing his work of invigorating business.  For one thing, his is a not-for-profit enterprise in the context of a large Nigerian foundation. But even if it were a for-profit outfit, that in itself would not disqualify it from being a ministry. Secondly, his personal motivation comes from his Christian faith.  During my missionary career, I was getting paid by the church; he, by this big foundation.  However, our motivations are similar.  As both a professional missionary and an academic missiologist, I warmly consider him a colleague of mine in the service of the Kingdom of God. 

Of course, if you remember some of my past posts, you may recollect that I insist that religion is part of and underlies all of life, including business. That’s the reason I often and easily switch from religious topics to “other” topics.  In fact, every post of mine has this religious base, mentioned or not. I may b e writing about water topics, but underneath it you will always find Christian concepts of conservation, responsibility, stewardship, justice, etc.  Same with topics like business or, for that matter, even  politics.  So, yes, my son is engaged in a ministry.

Oh, yes, Nigeria. Well, not much space left for this particular post. So, just a few interesting facts, some of them for your trivial pursuit games. Nigeria is the only country where you have around 80 million Christians and 80 million Muslims—two large equal sized blocks. In no other country is there such a constellation of these two religions. In most cases it is a matter of a large majority and a small minority of either. China may have more Christians and perhaps even more Muslims—I have not seen Chinese Muslim statistics—but they would both be overshadowed by the influence of Confucianism and the power of Chinese Communism.  Nigeria is the country where it will be decided whether these two religions can co-exist as equals.  That, by the way, is the major issue in my eight volumes Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations. See the Islamica page on my website  <www.SocialTheology.com>.

If the above is not exactly a trivial pursuit issue, the next one is. What is the largest country that has English as its official  language? From the context you will guess it is Nigeria. Correct.  But can you explain this trivial fact?  Another: What country sees the most Anglicans in church on any given Sunday?  Yes, ….!

This does it for the day. See you when I can get this into cyberland. Hope you're still with me. I will try to make up for this extended delay by churning out new posts more frequently, at least for a while. Hey, am I back in the promise mode? Not intended, really.