An Unexpected 'Missions Handbook'
Have any of you come across Anne Fadiman's book, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down"? If not, may I commend it to you... partly because it's a fine book and partly because I would love to kick it around with some fellow readers.
It's not a Christian book, and it's not written as a missions handbook, but... The book tells the story of a Hmong family living in Merced, CA. Their youngests daughter, Lia Lee, develops grand mal epilepsy (the Hmong term for epilepsy is "the spirit catches you and you fall down") and begins to intersect with Western medicine, with tragic and heartbreaking outcomes for everyone involved. For example, the docs keep taking blood and spinal fluid samples from a girl whose parents do not understand that the body can replace these fluids; they are understandably alarmed... the docs at one point have the girl on six different meds, all of which need to be taken at different frequencies throughout the day--and expect the parents, who cannot read English and whose way of telling time is dramatically different, to comply with these instructions. The book is NOT saying 'Western medicine bad, folk medicine good'; it's a much more nuanced and ambiguous matter. Anyway, I found it a fascinating, if unintentional, mediatation on mission work in our cross-cultural, postmodern environment.
Any takers?
posted by Brian Emmet @ 2:17 PM
7 Comments:
Hey, Brian, I would tend to agree with Robert, although it does sound fascinating. In some ways, I believe that we need to approach an unchurched America with "missionary eyes." Yet, there are differences. The brief stories that you shared reflect an ingnorance concerning the "truth," which is born out of growing up in a different culture. The postmodern generation and beyond are likewise ignorant of The Truth, but they have grown up in a culture inwhich they have been surrounded by the truth. Unfortunately, the packaging of that truth has taken a variety of shapes and forms, some of which have turned-off and turned away the unchurched. I very rarely watch network TV, apart from sports. I am not a news junky; don't watch 24, etc, etc. Not that any of that is wrong! However, a week ago I caught a show where the the wives of two families swap places, nothing sexual mind you. Families volunteer and the network decides how they match them. Well, you would not believe the incredible differences in these two families. The husband and wife of one were full of tatoos, declared athiests, who wanted their three children to be "free thinkers." They were unashamed to announce that all their friends were homosexuals, lesbians, or strippers (interesting combination!). The wife, who switched places, was so covered with tatoos that it was even hard to look at her (honest!). The other family were Afro-Americans, Christians, and very strict with their kids! Wow! Talk about an accident waiting to happen. When they swapped there were major fireworks! However, the black lady finally got the husband of the home inwhich she was staying and his kids to go with her to church (a time other than Sunday morning). The church did a fantastic job of meeting these folks where they were. The kids had a ball. The husband's comment was that if this was what church was always like, he might attend more often!!!! We all know that its more than simply attending church (and so did the black lady), but so many who don't darken the doors have wrong, or warped misconceptions of what it is really about. I find it sometimes easier to talk with folks in Latin America or Indonesia than in the USA about Jesus. We face a different set of barriers. Enough rambling for tonight . . . ERR Out!
unfortunately, in my experience missionaries are for the most part clueless. A passionate calling seems to trump all else. So many well-meaning fired up folks move into new cultures to do their ministry on the needy having no understanding whatsoever of the people they are trying to influence. The result is a wierd and synthetic worldview that contradicts itself. Our mistaken certainties stem from the fact that we in the USA are coming from a culture that is well formed in us. We have bought into the American model of Christianity as it has become over the years. Seldom do we examine that model for scriptural accuracy. We assume we have the cultural advantage over less developed (what ever that means) nations. We are the teachers..they are the students. We can set them straight. Problem is that, often, they have a more scriptural take than we do. Furthermore, they will do stuff our way (sort of) as long as they perceive that we will reward them for agreeing with us. If there is no immediate and practical reinforcement, they will return to their own ways....because that's what worked for them in the past.
When I read the Book of Ruth, I can't have her having sex with Boaz because it offends my American Christain certainties. I demand some sort of religious ceremony before any kind of sex can happen. Africans have a much different take. There is no ceremony for a widow, only a virgin. This seems to be true in ancient Israel as well. For Africans the only issue was the marriage "right" Boaz had, not the sex. The fact that he resolved the conflict as soon as he was able proved he was a righteous man. If asked now what happened on the treshing floor, I'd say "I don't know for sure". From the scripture it's pretty ambiguous. The mistaken certainties formed by our culture shades the way we read it....whether we are African or American. I want to be able to "step away" from my certainties and weigh the facts of the words..what do they say, what do they mean, what must I do? I want the Word to impose itself on my culture, not the other way around.
No problem on not reading another book...i was more curious if anyone had run across the one I mentioned.
leRoy and Randy's comments play off each other. In the book, the US docs are very confident that they "have the truth" about the little girl's epilepsy and how to treat it; I think we'd all agree that their approach is better than sacrificng pigs and the other folk medicine remedies her parents would naturally turn to. The point was not a right-wrong argument of western medicine versus folk medicine--it was the ways in which the people involved absolutely missed one another because of their cultural perspectives... and if we apply Paul's 'the strong should help/serve the weak and not just please/live for themselves' it would seem that the bending-over-backwards-to-understand responsibility rested with the western docs...whose entire culture and infrastructure made this impossible.
When I was in Seminary I had to do an internship in a public health hospital as part of my practical application requirement. I was placed as chaplian's assistant in Kenkucky Eastern State Mental Hospital. The chaplain put me in charge of the "manic-depressive (now bi-polar)ward. It didn't take long to realize why!!!!We were either scaping these folks off the ceiling, or finding them in a catatonic state under their beds. Anyway, there was an 80+ year old lady from Hazard with a snake handling church background in my ward. Miss Bessie would wander around speaking in tongues loudly. The young East Indian doctor working the ward diagnosed her as being a "skitz" because of this. It was strange, because as a Hindu, he believed in evil spirits as much as I did, but he had not studied Penecostalism and had no clue that what she was doing would have been perfectly normal in her home town. He didn't have all the facts.
Sometimes I think God does more miracles in third world situations because that's their first and only hope. There are no illusions of advanced science to fall back on.
I was rereading the many thought provoking comments, and found myself amazed, again, at the words of Father Schmemann. I was reading his journal entry from February 16, 1975, just THIS morning. More than 30 years ago, he was wrestling with similar questions: "I thought how not serious religion had become since it ceased being the essential form of life. Religion seems to be constantly reinventing itself, in order not to disappear completely, not to be discarded."
"People had stopped believing not in God or gods, but in death, in eternal death, in its inevitability--hence, they stopped believing in salvation. . . . ."
I wonder if Schmemann got it quite right (I may misunderstand the quote Randy gave us): I think death is actually what people believe in--bot the inevitability of death and the eteranility of it, too. The modern was of a pretty sunny dispositon about all of this: the application of reason to the natural world would dispell all darkness and guarantee liberty and justice for all. As that modern mindset has been weighed in the balance and found wanting, but as modernity's materialism continues to exert and tighter and tighter grasp, death becomes the last certainty. "We don't/can't know for sure about any of this spiritual stuff; but one thing we do know is that death wins in the end." As Lady Wisdom says, "All who hate me love death." So I'm not sure that Schmemann is right that people stopped belieiving in death; I would posit that death is all they believe in. They stopped belieiving in the possibility of salvation because of they perceived the power of death as final and ultimate.
Wow, Brian, you are a deep thinker! I love your comments. Unfortunately, Father Schmemann left this earth in 1983. He was only 63 years old. In fact, reading his journal from 1975 is a bit erie, as he would have been 55, which is the same age that I am and some of the others reading this blog. I think you and a few others are only a year younger. Is that right? Blessings . . . ERR
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