Two weeks ago, I drove up to the village of Chipembe to
meet with the leaders from three churches in that area. After greeting everyone upon my arrival one
of the men, João, pulled me aside and said that there was a woman who wanted to
be baptized before our study that day. "Elena
has a problem, though. She is possessed by an evil spirit." João said.
"But I told her that if she decided to follow Jesus, the church
would have to go with her to her house.
The church will help her tear down the spirit house and everything
associated with that evil spirit."
A little while later, standing beside the river, Caunia
and I talked about the significance of baptism.
We talked about Romans 8 and the way that followers of Christ are
promised that the Holy Spirit will dwell within them. While many people are
filled with destructive, deceptive, and defective spirits, we shared the joy of
the promise that God's Spirit - the spirit of life whose power raised Jesus
from the dead - lives in Jesus' disciples.
After the baptism, our group moved to Elena's house where
João, Caunia, Ignacio led the exorcism.
We prayed and sang for a few minutes and then church members grabbed
large rocks and a hoe and broke up the clay pots associated with spirit
worship. They burned an amulet. Then one of the men asked Elena if there was
anything else - any other item that needed to be destroyed - she showed them
where to dig, and we dug up a bottle with magical medicine inside. The church members crushed and burned all the
items associated with spirit worship and covered them with dirt. They encouraged Elena to leave that evil
spirit completely behind and devote her life to Jesus. Many of her neighbors and family members
stood at the edges of our circle watching to see what would happen. And as we left their house, Elena's husband,
who is not a Christian, made a point to thank each of us.
During our meeting afterwards, we talked about ways to
encourage Elena in her new life with Christ.
We looked at Jesus' story of a man freed from an evil spirit who
neglected to fill his house up with a good spirit (Matthew 12). In that example, the expulsed evil spirit
finds seven of its 'bigger and badder' friends and returns to find the 'house'
swept clean. Since no one is occupying
it, those evil spirits move right in. Jesus'
warning was that if a person doesn't fill themselves with the Spirit of God,
then their final condition would end up being worse than when they
started. The church committed to
visiting and encouraging Elena to fill her 'house' with the Holy Spirit.
In our part of Mozambique, spirit possession is everywhere. The demonic touches all areas of life. People spend what little money they have on
divination, magical amulets, and sacrifices to the spirits. Many people build little houses in their yards
to honor the evil spirits. Spirit
possession often starts as a response to illness, and there are serious costs to
keeping the spirits placated (both financial and relational). And while some people claim benefits from
being possessed by a spirit, most live in fear and frustration.
Since the spirit realm is full of secrecy for the Makua-Metto
people, I try to speak openly about this topic in order to shed some light on
this dark and mysterious part of life.
I often share this conviction: human beings are made for possession.
Now that idea, that we were 'made for possession', may be
a little shocking. It's an phrase that
I'm borrowing from a fellow kingdom worker here in Mozambique named Phil Henderson. Phil lives
in another part of Mozambique, but has visited our team a few times. During one of those visits, he talked about
this idea of being 'made for possession' and that concept has been extremely
helpful in engaging this topic in instructive and constructive ways here in
Cabo Delgado.
We were made for possession.
There is a drastic difference, though, between being
possessed by God's Holy Spirit and being possessed by a lesser spirit.
We humans are like cups.
We were made to have our souls filled by something - and we will be
filled by something. If nature abhors a
vacuum, then it is even more true in the spiritual realm. And whatever we are filled with can't remain
hidden for long.
Imagine a busy street with pedestrians walking this way
and that - everyone carrying a cup filled to the brim. When people are bumped or jostled, the cup
will overflow, spilling to reveal the nature of its contents. Every one of us is possessed by a spirit. Many
are filled by aspirations of fame or fortune, or by desires to look strong, sexy
or smart. But whether we are filled by something corrosive like anger or something
nourishing like peace, the contents of our cup (the spirit that possesses each
of us) will find its way to spillover into our lives.
Before moving to Africa, I knew that this issue of spirit
possession was something I needed to prepare for. In many ways, the Greco-Roman worldview around
the time of the New Testament was closer to a typical African worldview than
that of the Western perspective today.
At that time,
spiritual realm was seen as ever-present and effecting human lives -
“‘spirits’ or however they may be termed, could be found everywhere.” (Ramsay
MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, 82)
While it is always dangerous to make broad generalizations,
it seems safe to assume that "the Greco-Roman world was very conscious of demons.” (Everett Ferguson, Demonology of the Early
Christian World, 59). Even
though it was common to believe that demons existed, the Greco-Roman world did
not have a unified understanding of their nature and function. In my research, reading through ancient
sources from around the time of Jesus, I realized that explanations of spirit
possession normally fell into one of three categories. Some people believed that those who claimed
to be possessed by evil spirits were faking it - trying to get attention. Others believed in a more natural or physical
explanation and said that possession boiled down to something like mental
illness or epilepsy. And a third group
believed that spirits really did possess human beings. It surprised me to realize that those same three
categories summarize the way people understand the demonic even today. While the percentages of the population that
would fall into each category would likely differ - our explanations for
manifestations of the demonic have not actually changed that much in two
thousand years.
It
seems clear that as Christianity came onto the world’s religious scene, it used
the thought forms and cosmology of the day.
Disciples of Jesus did not ignore the problem of the demonic, but instead
they showed how these mysterious spiritual entities were subject to the
authority of Christ. The early church
continued this tradition of freeing those possessed from their spiritual bondage. It is important to recognize, though, that
while exorcisms brought a strong reaction out of crowds, “the art itself had no
great fame or audience.” (MacMullen, 50). The early church certainly did not
perceive its central mission as going into the world to cast out demons. That was, as it should have been, only part
of their holistic approach to evangelism. It was clear from my research that the church
today could learn a lot from how the early church lived out their faith. Personally, as I hoped to help the church engage
the world today, I wanted to aide them in understanding their culture and
encourage them to appropriately address the needs of the world around them.
That was is easier said than done.
Living in Mozambique, I felt like my brain was divided in
half on this issue. I had my American/Western
perspective that was skeptical of the spiritual realm and looked for naturalistic
interpretations. But, the beliefs of my
African friends and my experiences here didn't fit in those categories.
Walter Wink's books about the 'Powers' helped me bridge
the gap. Wink’s descriptions of the powers and the demonic challenged me
to think about the universe using these biblical categories of spirits and
possession in helpful and alternate ways.
Wink regards the demonic “as the impersonal spiritual realities at the
center of institutional life” (Engaging the Powers, 9). Even though, Wink demythologizes the powers,
he at least recognizes that they are both real and potent. His work has been helpful to me in taking a different
path for understanding the demonic in the world. While I do not follow all of his twists and
turns, it has given me some more wiggle room to interpret the world around us
in Mozambique in a way that holds onto the biblical texts and the best parts of
my Western perspective and African experience.
Back in
2004, our team was asked by the government to leave Montepuez. We were forced to spend over a year in
another part of Mozambique waiting for an open door to return. That time of 'exile' in Nampula was an
extremely challenging time for all of us, and Wink’s books helped me to
understand it as the result of bumping up against the spiritual forces and
powers that dominate the hearts and minds of many in the region. Since returning to Montepuez in 2005, his
books have given me a framework for understanding ministry in this context.
Wink's books helped me to see how possession occurs on
levels both personal and communal. Wink
led me to recognize how possession happens to individuals - like the story of
Elena and her spirit possession. And he
revealed the function of evil spirits in groups as well - like the reasons
behind our 'exile' in Nampula. In the
US, this language of communal possession, where humans submit their wills to
the spirit of a group, still lingers with us.
We comment on the importance of 'team spirit', or lament the destructive
tendencies of a 'mob mentality'. We reference
communities that seem possessed by a 'spirit of gossip' or corporations that
are 'possessed by greed'. Language of
communal possession is all around us.
So, humans were
made for possession in both individual and communal spheres.
Our response is to dedicate ourselves to the important task
of filling our cups with something life giving and worthwhile. We will be possessed by something. Our communities will be possessed by
something. The question is: what will be
the substance of that possession? Will
it be God's Holy Spirit - a life-giving spirit that moves us to serve the interests
of the Kingdom of God? Or will it be a
demonic spirit - one that enslaves us to destructive patterns that damage us
and those around us?
On Saturday afternoon, twelve members of the church in
Chipembe walked for over two hours to the village of Ncororo to spend the night
on the ground in order to worship with their brothers in Christ the next
morning. A new follower of Jesus, Elena,
was with them. From where I was seated
on the floor during the worship service this Sunday, I peeked often over at
her, watching her attempting to sing along and listening intently to the
message. When it came time for prayer
for the sick in the community, she came forward along with others asking for
God's spirit to bless and heal her.
Elena wants to be filled with a healing and life giving spirit.
May God fill Elena (and the rest of us!) with his Holy
Spirit and empower us to live well. And
may he fill his churches with a Spirit of Peace!
Grace and Peace,
Alan
One way that we are trying to address this problem is to use
audio players so that church members can listen to God's word with their families
and neighbors. With contributions from a
few of our friends (thank you so much - you rock!), our team was able to
purchase 100 DAVAR players. They are
solar powered and easy to use. We were
able to put recordings of 125 songs in Makua-Metto (thank you Chad), recordings
of the books of Mark and James (thank you SIL), the 'Look, Listen and Live'
series of Bible stories (again thanks SIL), and a bunch of sermons and lessons
for adults and children in Makua-Metto (thank you Aguas Vivas Ministry, Balama).
A little while later, standing beside the river, Caunia
and I talked about the significance of baptism.
We talked about Romans 8 and the way that followers of Christ are
promised that the Holy Spirit will dwell within them. While many people are
filled with destructive, deceptive, and defective spirits, we shared the joy of
the promise that God's Spirit - the spirit of life whose power raised Jesus
from the dead - lives in Jesus' disciples.
