Grief and the Gospel

A few weeks ago, just before Molly and I left the office to go to the prison, we got a visit from John, a former inmate at Kamfinsa who had been in my preaching class. He was released on December 23rd and is staying temporarily with a minister here in Kitwe until he can raise the money for transportation to get back to his family in Western Province. He was all smiles as he told us that he has got almost no money, hasn't seen his wife and kids in nine years, and is desperately trying to scrape together enough to get to them by doing "piece work"--small jobs for individuals like yard work, shoe shining, etc.--and selling cologne (I bought a bottle for 30,000 kwacha, a little over $6). "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," John said cheerfully. "With man it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." He must have quoted about five or seven Bible verses during the few minutes we spoke, and for a while I think I just stood there with a dumb grin on my face as King James English whizzed past me at a mile a minute. "Amen," was about all I could think to say in response.

Something Molly and I have been noticing a lot lately, not only among the prisoners but in our interactions with many of the Christians we meet here in Zambia, is that people often tend to express their faith using a very rigid and repetitive form of "Christianese," a melange of popular, inspirational, and overwhelmingly "positive" theological catch-phrases and biblical quotations that is beginning to sound the same to us no matter who we're talking to. It may just be a cultural thing, but I'm starting to find it disturbing--it's very hard for me to feel that I'm actually having a conversation with another human being when my interlocutor is using very few of her own words. Especially when talking about the things that matter most to us, I want to have a sense that what the other person is saying actually means something to her, and when all I'm getting from a conversation partner are catch phrases and quotes, I'm not sure whether the things I'm hearing are borne of a deep personal faith, are symptoms of a false positivity that won't let anyone actually feel their grief, or are simply expressions of the desire to tell the Reverend what he wants to hear (maybe it's a little of all three).

The positivity thing seemed to come to a head yesterday during class, as the inmates and I were chewing over a discussion question in the preaching course workbook.  We had been talking about the exile of Israel, when as a result of their failure to keep their end of the covenant they had made with God, the Bible says God cast his covenant community out of the Promised Land.  "Did the people of Israel have a right to complain after they broke their side of the contract?" the book asks.  The consensus of the class was that no, they didn't have the right to complain.  Their negative behavior brought about negative consequences, and they shouldn't have been surprised.  They had no right to complain.  At that point, Aran, who serves as my translator for the handful in the class who don't understand English very well, spoke up.

Aran is a pretty highly educated guy, and in addition to tutoring quite a few of the TEEZ courses in the prison, serves as an English teacher in the prison school.  He is looked upon by his fellow inmates with great respect.  He is a teacher, and as a teacher he commands a good deal of authority--and he takes pride in that authority.  Aran has much more experience as a teacher in the prison than I do (he's serving a very long sentence, and I think he's been teaching through most of it), and the other inmates have much more experience with him in the role of teacher than they do with me.  As a result, sometimes it feels like I am competing with him for the role of teacher in the class.  For example, last week we were discussing the many places in the Bible where human beings are compared to sheep, such as in Psalm 100:3: "We are the sheep of His pasture."  I was trying to problematize the comparison a bit--while in some respects it is apt (human beings can be quite foolish, we often get ourselves into trouble and don't know how to get out, we become forgetful again and again of the presence and love of God and need constant reminding, etc.) in other ways, the comparison can be problematic, as in when people feel that God commands them to be submissive, obedient sheep following their pastor (which literally means shepherd) regardless of what the pastor says or does.  Vincent, one of the brightest students in the class, was finally arguing back, saying, "No, I don't think humans are like sheep.  Sheep are stupid and humans are quite intelligent."  As Vincent started to build on his argument, Aran turned to him abruptly and shouted, "Just pay attention and learn why the Bible says humans are like sheep!"  It's hard for me to know what to do in such situations--I don't want to embarrass Aran in front of the class.  In that case I tried to affirm Vincent's argument by saying that while there are some good reasons why the Bible says I am like a sheep, there are other important ways in which, as Vincent was saying, I am not--thank God--like a sheep.  At least that got a laugh.

Anyway, back to the story of yesterday.  The class decided that the people of Israel had no right to complain about their exile, as they had brought it on themselves.  Then Aran spoke up: "Okay, I have a question for you now.  Do we prisoners have any right to complain about being locked up in prison?"

No, the class obediently responded to teacher Aran, we broke the law, so we have no right to complain about being in prison.  Before I could say anything, Kelvin answered, "But what if someone didn't commit the crime?  Do they have a right to complain to God then?"

Aran quickly responded by asking the class to read James 1:2: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds."

I just couldn't go there. I jumped in. "Wait a minute.  We have to understand the context of this passage.  When he wrote this passage, James was talking to people who were being persecuted for their faith, who were being killed and tortured and imprisoned for their faith.  He wasn't saying that we should be happy about everything bad that happens to us.  He was saying that even when we are persecuted for our faith, we should consider it a privilege to stand up for our convictions and our God."

"But Reverend," said Mike, "what is the meaning of Hebrews 12:5-7?"  We turned to that passage.  It reads: "'My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.  Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.  For what son is not disciplined by his father?"

"Well, Mike," I responded, "again we have to remember that this passage was written to encourage Christians who were undergoing persecution and hardship because of their faith in Jesus.  My understanding of that passage is not that we need to be happy whenever terrible things happen to us.  It's that we should be encouraged by recognizing that God is able to use even terrible things to make us better people.  That's what discipline is--it's something difficult that we take on in order to make us better people."

The class was silently skeptical.
"Okay, let's look at a different part of the Bible," I said.  Let's look at Jesus, who we believe is our primary example of what it looks like to live a faithful life.  Let's look at how he felt the night he was arrested, the night before he was to be killed by the government authorities.

"Wait," Vincent interrupted.  "Before we do that, could we please read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18?"

"Sure, Vincent," I replied.

Vincent read, "Be joyful always, pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you."

"I hear you Vincent," I said, "but Bible verses need to be put in context.  They need to be read in light of what the whole rest of the Bible says.  So, just to begin to consider an alternative view, will someone please read for me Matthew 26:37-38?"

Mike read, "He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  Then he said to them, 'My soul  is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.  Stay here and keep watch with me.'"

"Now," I said, "here we have an example of Jesus, the one who we believe led sinless life, who is our best example of what a life of faith looks like, telling his friends that he is overwhelmed with sorrow.  Does it make sense, then, to say that we Christians need to be happy no matter what awful thing happens to us?"

The class was silent.  Vincent stood up, looked at Aran, and pointed toward the door.

"Are you being called out?" Aran asked.

Vincent just pointed at the door again.

"Alright," said Aran, "go then."

I asked again what the class thought about expressing our sorrow and grief in light of what we had just read.  More silence.

"Okay," said Aran.  "Let's move on then."

The rest of the class felt awkward.  The guys were less talkative than normal.  At the end of class, when I asked if anyone wanted to share prayer concerns, no one said anything.  When I asked who wanted to pray us out, they said, "No, you pray."  As I waited to sign out after class outside the chaplain's office, Haggai, the chaplain's assistant who sits in on my class, simply said, "Get in."  Did this feel abrupt and cold because of the language barrier, or was he trying to send me a message?

As I left the prison, I felt shell shocked.  What had I just done?  What was I trying to do?  Was I trying to open up trauma that I hadn't made the space to contain?  Was I goading the guys into feeling pain that they just weren't ready to deal with?  Was it even appropriate to ask them to talk with me about their pain?  If not, what the hell was I even doing there?  Were the things I was teaching even relevant?  I didn't know how even to begin to answer these questions.

I talked about it this morning with Kangwa, my supervisor and the director of TEEZ.  He was very supportive, telling me that I shouldn't feel like I had done something wrong, that this was my job as a pastor and teacher, and that sometimes being a pastor and teacher means making people uncomfortable.  A TEEZ class was exactly the right place to talk about this, he said, first of all because it shows students that theology should relate to our daily lives and our deepest feelings, and secondly because the class, whether I knew it or not, did provide a much stronger container for trauma than a prison cell or a work yard, where feelings of anger and grief are bound to come up.  He said he was glad that I talked with him about it, because then we could talk about the theology of grief next week during the Tutor's Course, so that the inmates would know that what I was saying wasn't just weird muzungu stuff.  He also told me that it would be appropriate for me to talk to the class about it next session, to ask them about their feelings in response to last session's conversation.  I really appreciated Kangwa's perspective and support, though I still think I will feel a good deal of trepidation going back to class on Thursday.

Just this morning, as I was walking to work, I ran into Rev. Kondolo, the minister in charge at United Church of Zambia Mindolo Congregation, which is right next door to our house and where Molly and I attend church most Sundays.  He asked if I would be willing to preach and serve communion this Sunday, as he is on leave, and I told him that I would.  I asked Kangwa if he thought it would be appropriate for me to preach on God and grief, and he said he thought that would be great.  While I feel strongly led to speak on this topic, I'm also quite nervous about doing so with cultural sensitivity.  There are times when I feel so palpably my cultural distance from the people around me, and I wonder about the appropriateness of challenging aspects of Zambian culture that I don't like.  On the one hand, this is part of what cross-cultural partnership is about--the opportunity to see one's own culture through the eyes of an outsider.  And as my pastor used to say, "Christ stands in judgment of all cultures."  On the other hand, the line between respectful challenging and unwelcome, imperialistic-seeming criticism sometimes feels hard to discern.  God help me to know the difference where and when it matters.