1. Checking my worldview

There’s nothing like distance and a different culture to give a perspective on one’s closely held assumptions. I have been accumulating ideas about this and will be covering them for the next few posts.

The fundamental idea is that not everyone in the world thinks like us, assuming the home turf for this blog is the US. We know that, of course, but the implications of that differing vantage can be staggering.

Books. These posts will refer to books. Let me mention them.

Paul Hiebert’s Anthropological Insights for Missionaries. He gives a long and incisive chapter on the western world-view and how that looks to other cultures outside the west.

Things Fall Apart, by the Nigerian Nobel prizewinner, Achebe. That book drew two very different responses from me – an amazing insight into African Traditional Religion, and an appalling take on white missionaries.

The Gospel in an African Context has provided many helpful concepts, ones which provide a framework for understanding Achebe’s missionaries.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost. An engrossing rendering of the first three chapters of Genesis through the twelve books of this epic poem. Milton offers a clear grasp of the powers and echelons of evil.

Let me give you the thread. It’s about gods, spirits, ancestors, evil powers, and other realities that are part of the African worldview. For years I have heard how these have been pushed out of the western worldview. Being in Africa for five weeks, reading these books, discussing and listening to these ideas – all this has given me a sharper focus on the question, and maybe a slightly clearer understanding of the problems.