White God

When I came on this trip I expected to find out what God looks like in Africa. What I have found, however, is that God looks very European. Before coming here I assumed that God would take on African characteristics in Africa but I was puzzled when I discovered that in Uganda, God is dressed in European clothes, much resembling the God I know at home. Something about that fact seemed very uncomfortable.

While I was at the church service on Sunday I couldn’t help but cringe at how Westernized everything was. It seemed that nothing going on in that service (with the exception of the actual sermon) had any tangible connection to Ugandan life. I thought that John V. Taylor's words (from his book The Primal Vision) were a perfect description of what I was observing :

This is the inner significance of the complaint that Christianity is the white mans religion. It is bad enough that religious pictures, films and film-strips should have almost universally shown a white Christ, child of a white mother, master of white disciples; that he should be worshiped almost exclusively with European music, set to translations of European hymns, sung by clergy and people wearing European dress in building of an archaic European style; that the form of worship should bear almost no relation to African ritual nor the content of the prayers to contemporary African life. (Taylor, pg 5)

Sitting in the service I felt like bringing Christianity to Africa has almost done more harm than good. There seems to be an unspoken theology here that says African culture and race is not good enough for God. Instead of helping people uncover their true identity in Christ, it seems that Christianity has stripped the people of the dignity of being African. It seems like in accepting Christ as savior and committing their life to Christ they are also committing to becoming Westernized.

Such an idea is disturbing to me and i want no part of such 'mission work'. I've been struggling to identify how foreigners (especially Westerners) can take to Gospel to a culture without destroying it. currently this experience has left me disillusioned with foreign missions but thats part of why i came here...to be challenged. To allow all my questions to surface and to battle through them.

What does all of this mean for me? It means that while I am here I will be battling with what role Western missionaries should have in taking the Gospel to the nations. I have a passion for seeing God’s name glorified but recently I have been struggling with what role I should play as a white American. This expectation to find the African image of God being presently unmet means that while I am here I’m gong to be working hard to dig beneath the European crust to search for what God looks like here in Uganda. I’m going to make a conscious effort to ask questions and do a lot of listening to what people here think about religion, faith, God, Christianity, salvation etc.