Viewing My Worldview

Trying to explain the summer has been an interesting experience. It's just hard to shrink two months full of intense highs and lows and food and language and ministry and stories and people into two minutes. Mostly I ended up feeling like my explanations are either inadequate or that I have somehow made others feel worthless by having an awesome summer and traveling really far and doing ministry. No, this doesn't make me a better person than you, and your summer is not less worthy just because you stayed home and worked.

I've been trying (with mixed success) to express the deeper things God has been teaching me through the summer and through now. One of the recurring themes has been how easy it was to criticize Filipinos worldview, and how God turned me back, over and over again, to look at and challenge my own worldview.

It's easy to see how a culture that believes deeply in spirits, demons, ghosts, and spiritual causes for many things leads to people being oppressed and fearful. Or how a culture of having 7 or 8 children perpetuates poverty. Even more than that though, is the idea of where do we look for security, the future, and our salvation? I'll try to explain with an illustration, mostly borrowed from Bryant Myers Walking with the Poor.

If you come into a community, say "out in the provinces" of the developing world, out far enough to have a strongly traditionalist worldview, and dig a well, what have you done? In the eyes of the village, you've somehow appeased the water spirit into giving them clean water. Or you are a better water shaman then their shaman. While you've done something good (helped provide clean water) you haven't taught them anything about it, and their worldview remains unchanged. If the well stops working, or gets contaminated, they will (naturally) fit this into their worldview and think that the water spirit is now angry, and must be appeased.

Let's say you then teach the villagers about the well. You draw charts of the geologic table, describe the water cycle, explain how the pumping mechanism works and how to maintain it. You explain how science has taught us that there is water in the earth and technology has given us means to obtain it. Now what have you done? Sadly, you've just traded their traditionalist (and limited) worldview for our western, or modern, (and also limited) worldview.

That last part is a lot harder for me to grasp. Let me put it this way, how often do I believe that we can make the world a better place by trying harder? Sure, there is oppression, slavery, and wars around the world. But if we just spread democracy and freedom and do our best to battle oppression, eventually we can win. We may have mucked up the environment, but if we just learn enough, are innovative enough, and develop solar panels and wind power and biofuels, we can overcome global warming and pollution. There might be a lot of poverty and inequality in America and around the world, but if we keep spreading capitalism, and open up more free markets, and improve education systems, eventually things will get better.

These beliefs permeate life in America, especially in a place like Penn State. For me, they are quite attractive ideas. Sadly, I think they are just seductive, but subtle, lies. The question comes down to: where do we put our hope?

Do we believe that human ingenuity, effort, reason, and goodwill will one day fix (or save) the world? If we just learn enough and work hard enough, we can overcome pollution, poverty, disease: all of it. I think the Bible teaches something else. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Through Him comes our salvation. No matter how intelligent, dedicated, and skillful we become, without the transforming life of Christ, our efforts will ultimately be defeated by greed, pride, or desire for comfort [read: sin].

Why is this so hard for me to grasp? I think because the lies of modernity are really seductive half truths. I think God wants us to develop technology like solar panels that will help us be good stewards of the earth He has given us. And that He wants people to have a voice and political power in their communities and that freedom is a good thing. Alas, the problem comes when I think that those things will save. When I act as if those things are true, I show that I have not yet come to really trust Jesus.