Lubanga kene

I’m in a gang. A bike gang to be exact. We’re not so much a gang though, really. Its more just a bunch of guys who are getting into dirt bikes and planning an epic adventure around East Africa.

So here’s the deal. In lieu of spending a bunch of money and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, something everyone here wants to do, a few friends decided to buy dirt bikes and take a trip over Christmas. One of them, Eric, sent an email, trying to talk me into it.  It read, “We will break down a lot. We won’t know what to do. We will get lost. We will screw things up. We will figure things out somehow… it will be awesome.” I was quickly convinced to join.

I was convinced, but it actually took me some time to agree. You see, I had already promised the parents that I’d be home for Christmas. I desire to be a man of my word so I hated the thought of telling them I wasn’t coming home. But this is a once in a lifetime experience. Well, now that I think about it, hopefully it won’t be a once in a lifetime thing. I’m hoping when all is said and done this is in my top 20 life experiences, but for now it definitely has the potential to be in the top 2 or 3 for my life so far. But secondly, I’m a pretty injury prone guy. A few friends who know me well, upon hearing our plans, basically told me this was the craziest idea for the most injury prone guy they knew. Haha. But to ease things over with my parents I came home for a quick trip right now and got a bunch of safety gear in case of an accident. Boom, problems solved.

But I’m doing it. And right after deciding to officially do it, a beautiful bike came into my life. My buddy Jared, after buying his bike, was riding through town and saw his bike’s twin parked on the side of the road.  He stopped, found the owner and asked if he’d be willing to sell.  He said yes. Two days later I owned it.  I like to call her Veronica. A mechanic I know called her, “The best bike I’ve seen in Gulu” which might not mean a lot, but it does to me. :) So I bought it and am trying to learn to ride it.. and how to repair it.

What excites me most about this trip is that we’re doing it together. Its the group of guys I’m “doing life” with, walking, learning, struggling and sharing experiences with in Uganda. It won’t be easy, we will get hurt, lost, in trouble etc. But we’ll be doing it together, striving towards the same goal of a) surviving and b) creating a memory and a story worth telling.

So here’s the route: Leave Kampala around December 13th, head to eastern Uganda and go over Mount Elgon into Kenya. Beautiful. Then head to Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, and stay in a beach house with Eric’s family who will be there the week before Christmas. Classy. Then down the coast of Kenya into Tanzania and put the bikes on boats and hang out in Zanzibar for a few days. Awesome. Then back to the mainland, and down across Tanzania to Lake Malawi. Legendary. Spend a few days on the lake, then start the journey north, stopping at Lake Tanganyikain Burundi, seeing friends in Rwanda, then back to Uganda, about a month after leaving.

Epic.

PS I tried and failed at posting pictures of all of us, the bikes etc.  So here’s a link to all my pictures from this year

Another great point Bruxy Cavey makes centers around the fact that Jesus is the Word become flesh.  John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

This is a defining characteristic of Christianity.  Only in Christianity does God’s revelation come in a person. In Judaism and Islam, Moses and Muhammad received revelations from God, but they themselves weren’t the revelation, it was the words they wrote down in the Torah and Qur’an.  Even Buddha as a person is not the revelation, it is his teachings that disclose the path to enlightenment and compassion.  But for Christ-followers, the revelation is a person. 

Jesus said I am the truth.  Follow me. Trust me. Come to me.  Cavey says, “The implication is important.  Reading, studying, and understanding the Bible is not the goal of a Christ-follower.  Bible knowledge is just a first step toward the goal of following Jesus.  According to Thomas Adams, ‘The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.’”

I think this distinction is important.  So many times we have “Bible studies” with the focus of learning and gaining a deeper understanding of the original meanings of what was written.  But we are to be reading and studying the Bible for the specific purpose of growing closer to Christ, the living Word, the Holy Spirit.  I once mentioned to a mentor of mine my desire to start a Bible study and his response shocked me.  He said, Yuck, Bible study?  Why would you want to study it?  If you see a girl across the room and you analyze or study her, you see that she has brown hair, she’s five foot whatever… Why would you want to analyze her?  Go over and talk to her and engage, but don’t study her from afar.  The same way with the Bible, don’t study it, engage it and live it, the Word is Jesus and he’s active and waiting to do life with you.  Now obviously he was just trying to make a point, he is a big advocate for reading the Scriptures.  But at the heart of the issue, why are we reading?  To learn and have more knowledge about God and Jesus?  Or to participate in an active life with Jesus?

William Barclays writes:

There was one mistake into which the early Church was never in any danger of falling.  In those early days men never thought of Jesus Christ as a figure in a book.  They never thought of Him as someone who had lived and died, and whose story was told and passed down in history, as the story of someone who had lived and whose life had ended.  They did not think of Him as someone who had been but as someone who is.  They did not think of Jesus Christ as someone whose teaching must be discussed and debated and argued about; they thought of Him as someone whose presence could be enjoyed and whose constant fellowship could be experienced.  Their faith was not founded on a book; their faith was founded on a person.

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t read the Bible, because the Bible points the way to Jesus.  I am saying we should follow Jesus and not the Bible.  We still read the Bible, but Jesus is our goal.  And if that is true, it will radically change the way we read, interpret and apply the Bible.  Jesus always taught that the Hebrew Scriptures, the Bible of his day, always pointed to Him.  Twice in Luke 24 it says Jesus explained to them what was said about him in the Scriptures and he opened their minds to understand.

Cavey says, “So God’s written Word is not a substitute for the Word made flesh, Immanuel, “God with us”.  God’s precepts are not a substitute for God’s Spirit who continues to be God with us and within us.”  

The Bible is like a treasure map with the treasure being Jesus.  But we often treat the treasure map as though it’s the treasure itself and when we do this we miss the treasure completely.  To the religious people who did this Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life.  But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life” (John 5:39-40)

I’m currently reading The End of Religion by Bruxy Cavey. This book is amazing. The premise of the book is that Jesus never intended to found a new religion; he hoped to break down the very idea of religion as a way to God. He says, “The primary mission of Jesus was to tear down religion as the foundation for people’s connection with God and to replace it with himself - the Divine coming to us in our own context and our own form. This is what Jesus called “the kingdom of God.” It is God and his people, living together the way he originally intended.”

Jesus completely broke down and turned upside down the religion that God set up, Judaism. He came as a “fulfillment” of the law. The Jewish religion told people that you had to do A, B, C and then D in order to be forgiven of sins, to pray, to be “clean” etc. But Jesus came and proclaimed something entirely different. He said anyone can pray, anywhere. He forgave sins in the middle of someone’s house or on the roadside. You didn’t have to go to the Temple and offer a sacrifice to be forgiven. He completely shattered the religion. He subverted virtually all of the traditions and widely held beliefs of his day, and completely dissed the religious scholars and leaders. These were people considered closest to God. In Mark 7:6-9 he says,

“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

‘These people honor me with their lips,

But their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain;

Their teachings are but rules taught by men.’

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”

I think Jesus’ rebukes of religion apply just as much to present-day Christianity as it did to ancient Judaism. We honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from him. We obey our tradition and rules over Jesus. We worship Christianity, not Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus you don’t have to go to a church building every Sunday morning, say the “sinner’s prayer”, be baptized by a pastor, speak in tongues, never speak in tongues, vote a certain way or obey any of the other rules we’ve set up.  The early Church never built buildings for themselves or had a “sinner’s prayer” to pray in order to be a follower of Christ. They just simply did what Jesus said; they subverted the religion of their day and were outsiders to religion.

In the book he says:

“By saying something as audacious as “I am the way” (John 14:6) to his disciples, Jesus fundamentally challenged all of the how-to-systems of the spiritual world. The way is not the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Pillars of Action, the Six Articles of Belief, the Seven Sacraments, or any other of the systems of salvation stewarded by the religions of our planet. God himself is the way. He has come to earth to share this message, to show us his love, and to shut down religion once and for all. We can embrace this and the freedom it brings, or we can cling to our religious systems for the comfort and security they bring. But we cannot do both.”

There are good things about tradition and the rules we create, and he talks about it in the book. But the point is Christians generally worship Christianity and the comforts it brings. If we box ourselves in and obey certain rules and interpret the words of Jesus in a way that fits inside of that box, we’re safe, we’re Christian and we’re going to heaven. I don’t think Jesus intended us to do that, and I don’t think we’re safe.  If anything we should interpret them with a historical context, looking at what he said and did in terms of the norms of his day. Then he becomes even more scandalous and subversive than we’d ever like to believe.  I don’t think many people like it when Jesus said many people would call him Lord, Lord but he would reject them, saying he never knew them.  I think he was serious when he said “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”  

Sorry if this has a critical tone to it, I usually try not to be critical.  But this is a critique from the inside.  I was raised a Christian.  As I have examined my faith, I’ve seen how my whole life, while proclaiming to believe and put my trust in Jesus, I’ve really put my faith in the religion that bares his name.  Jesus was not safe, he was not a conformist.  He was subversive and created scandals.

Now I’m only giving a cursory glance at something he dedicates 200+ pages to, so I highly recommend you read the book.

The other day I experienced two raw and opposite emotions back to back. 

As I was going around downtown trying to set up meetings for Bob’s upcoming trip, I realized I was near a salon where one of my “daughters” (I can’t really call her a daughter though considering she’s 3 years younger than me) has been doing vocational training.  I always try to stop and say hi to friends or people I know whenever I can, because it really means a lot to them.  One of the aunties told me once that when you don’t have visitors, you don’t feel loved, but when people come to see you, you know you are loved!  So I always try my best to make time to see people when I’m in their area. 

Anyways, I walked into the small salon and Sarah (not her real name) saw me and ran over to greet me and we sat and talked for a while.  The home she stays at is a home myself and others have befriended and supported in any way we can.  The ladies in the home decided it was time to resettle some of the girls, the ones best capable of making it either on their own or with their families.  The resettlement day when they are leaving is today.  As we talked I knew Sarah was depressed and not excited about leaving.  At one point she leaned in and just started crying into my shoulder.  I did my best to hug and comfort her, but I didn’t know what to say.  Here was a girl who came from the streets, was brought into the home and had her life completely turned around.  Now she has to go back out on her own.  Her life will be difficult, she’ll no longer have the support of her sisters or “mommy” in the home, and she’s realizing it.  She has to support herself now.  Obviously the organization is going to help her get started, but her life will never be the same as it has been for the last 3 years. 

I say all this in full support of the resettlement, without it people like Sarah will be dependent on an organization for the rest of their lives.  Sarah is at a point where she is mature enough to not be in the home anymore… its just sad for her to leave and sad to see her go.  After doing my best to cheer her up, I talked about what she had to look forward to and how happy she should be to have been blessed with living in the home.  I left sad to know I wouldn’t be seeing her much anymore, sad for her, knowing life would be much more difficult in the weeks to come, but trusting that God was watching over her and knowing things would work out.

After leaving there I went to the remand home to meet with the wardens.  They had been telling me they had more kids who needed help so I wanted to find out more information.  The main problem was the only girl they had waiting for the High Court.  She had been in the home for 5 months and never brought before the court because her district was really far away and they lacked money to buy fuel to take her.  I asked them to draw up a budget and said I’d get back to them.  Before I left the girl came into the room and I was able to meet her.  She knelt next to us (as is custom) and looked at the ground solemnly.  The warden introduced me and told her we were going to see if we could help get her before a judge and she immediately looked up, bright-eyed and smiling.  She covered her face with her hands to hide her smile as the warden laughed at her reaction and assured her we would do what we could. 

I wiped the corner of my eyes as she left the room with a bit of hop in her step.  I silently prayed that the injustice that had kept her in remand would soon end, and vowed to do my best to help.  I too left with a hop in my step, knowing that that girl was going to sleep tonight a bit more hopeful than the night before.

That night as I thought about my day, I saw how connected the pain and joy I experienced was.  I realized that the deeper the level of sadness or pain, the greater the joy will be.  If I had been sad over a papercut or stubbed toe, then happy over its healing, my joy would not have been as great, I don’t know if I would have praised God about it.  But seeing and feeling their deep sadness and pain makes the optimistic outcome all the more joyful and reason to rejoice.  For Sarah its come full circle, her past circumstances were painful and sad for any human being.  Then she entered the home and has been full of joy, having been transformed… and now sad and painful to leave the new life she has known.  For the young girl in the home, she’s spent the last 5 months with no hope, no real reason to believe she’d ever get out and before a judge… but now she has reason to believe that day is approaching and she has a new hope and joy for her life.  I don’t know why I write all this, I guess it really struck me the other day how connected the valleys and mountains in our life are.

This was forwarded to me, makes me laugh at how true it is…

…driving, you find yourself using your turn signals as means of
communication….’the road is too thin’, ‘don’t overtake (pass me)
there is a BUS coming’, ‘No I’m NOT going to turn here’, ‘traffic police are ahead!’

…you no longer get annoyed when people lie to you and make promises
they can’t possibly keep

…seeing someone speeding towards you in the wrong lane seems completely normal

…Your phone rings and it is a wrong number and you can keep the Hello?
Hello? Hello? Hello’s going back and forth like a tennis match until
eventually the caller realises you are the wrong number and abruptly
hangs up, after spending at least 2 minutes worth of airtime!

…You find yourself pointing with your lips and saying “yes” by raising
both eyebrows.

…You can masterfully employ a variety of “Eh!” and “Eh eh!” noises to
convey a range of meanings

…You know “Come back tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.” means whatever you’re
trying to get done is NEVER going to happen

…You start using the words “even” and “ever” in places you never would
have (”Even me, I’m feeling hungry,” or “I have ever done that”)

…You start referring to people as “this one” or “that one”

…You know you’ve what? been in Uganda a long time….when you what?
Start each sentence as a question and proceed to what? Answer it
yourself!

…someone asks you “How is there?” You reply “It is there…

…You willingly drive into oncoming traffic just to avoid the potholes

…A car isn’t full unless it has at least 7 people in it

…you can speak Uganglish so well that - you talk with a Ugandan
accent; use words like ’shocked,’ ‘fearing,’ ‘extend,’ ‘balance,’
‘’somehow,’ ‘even me,’ and ‘can you imagine’ and ‘are you sure?’ far
too often…

…someone “flashes” your phone you just flash them back and wait for
them to flash you back and then you flash them back and then they
flash you back and….

…you keep a jerry can full of water around, just in case…

…you feel exposed without bars on your windows

…When you come back from being out of the country and conversations go as:
Them: “you have been lost!!” and your response: “I have been found!”
Them: “how is there?” and you: “there is fine!”
Them: “you have gone fat!!!” and you are lost for words cause you are
not used to be told so with such frankness!!

…You emphasize how you like something and they say: “Are you sure?”

…you are asked how you are and your response is: “Me I am fine, how are you?”

…you end the conversation with “ok please!”

…your knees ache from squatting over a long drop 4 times a day as a
result of a parasite living in your intestines

…it’s 80 degrees outside and there are people wearing jackets and beanies

…You ask for someone, and you know the answer “He’s within” means
everything from “He’s within the building” to “He’s within the city”
or even “He’s within the country”.

….you refer to others as ‘you people’ and don’t intend to be rude

…you start sentences with ‘As for me, I ….’

…you stop using those little ‘off’ or ‘up’ bits of verbs. You pick
people. And you drop them.

…you get ‘Fine’ as a reply to your ‘hello’.

…’nownow’ means sometime soon, possibly in the next day or two,
whereas ‘now’ means anytime in the next month.

….’moving’ becomes ’shifting’ (but you move with people rather than
hang out with them)

…you stand in a line and feel something is very wrong because it is
orderly and the person behind you respects your personal space…

…”ok” punctuates,modifies, tags and answers almost every sentence.

…”Bambi”, said with that humble look, becomes your standard expression
of sympathy.

…you use the term “just there” to mean on the other side of the city

…”first let me come” or “first wait” makes perfect sense to you

…at the end of a meeting, people say, “Ok Please” as opposed to good
bye or have a nice one.

…your stories always have an “eh?” to make sure the people are listening

…you say SORRY! when someone hurts themselves through no fault of yours

…you call white people “muzungu” and forget that you yourself are white….

…you go to a restaurant and order something off the menu and the
waiter/waitress looks you right in the eye and says “We don’t have
that one”

…walking by a uniformed officer carrying an assault rifle is completely normal

…Clothes becomes a two-syllable word. Clo - thes.

…You know the man asking for Lose actually refers to Rose.  And when
someone says “let’s play” you should stay seated.

…you don’t get confused even though the person you’re talking to keeps
mixing up ‘he’ and ’she’ in the same sentence talking about the same
person.

…you are reluctant to let go of a new, CLEAN 1000 shilling note.

…your home does not have an address.

…your handshakes last an entire conversation

…next to a public phone at the bottom of the call cost there is a
charge for beeping

…marriage proposals become a normal and almost expected thing from strangers.

…you have time to grab lunch while the bank teller cashes your check.

…you stop noticing how ugly marabou storks actually are

…you think the taxi you’re about to enter is too full but the
conductor will squeeze you in and let you sit where he was sitting but
then he will be standing over you with his bad body odor.

…You have 9 x 10,000UGX bills and you wrap the 10th one around it and
put it in your wallet.

…being given a “push” has nothing to do with “push and shove”, but
being escorted to your car after a visit….

…You lie on the phone that you are about to arrive for a meeting…yet
you’ve not yet left you’re home, forgetting that someone can do the
mathematics and be able to tell that you lied!

…You have constant power supply at your house for a week. It leaves u
thinking Umeme is not doing its work rite. Supplying darkness instead
of light.

…people walk into your house and you say “You are all most welcome!”

…you are making a verbal list and trail off saying “what, what..”

…you start calling inanimate objects “stubborn” when they don’t work well

…you always use your big notes despite the fact that you have the exact change.

…you think “eh” in a high pitch tone is the correct way to respond
when a boda drivers price suggestion is too high.

…umbrellas are not for rain but for the shunshine

Last week I was in DC for the national prayer breakfast. Any words of mine cannot do justice to what this week was like, but I’ll try.

I have been blessed to have a guy like Bob invest in me and encourage me to go to DC for this. I was able to spend most of the beginning of the week with him and a few others, running around meeting people. For Bob it was meeting friends that he already knew, but new friends for me. I met ambassadors, businessmen, politicians and average Joes like me from all over the world, from Sri Lanka to Lebanon to Benin to Kazakhstan and many, many more. What was so great about everyone here attending the prayer breakfast is this: you are instant friends with whoever you meet. The whole spirit surrounding everyone there is indescribable. Virtually every conversation is centered on Jesus. For politicians, politics usually gets thrown out the door. I saw between Bob and these friends a deep friendship, most of which started with Bob just calling them and saying “Hey I’m some dude from San Diego and I want to meet you.” Sounds weird right? But he did it, and now is incredible friends with people from all over. And its not like he’s friends because he wants something out of them, more of the opposite. With every single one of them, he is discussing ways he can help them, not vice versa. And every single one of them he is being an instrument to point them to Jesus. Many of the people I met were Christians, but several were Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or non-believers. But all of them had had some encounter with Jesus or were experiencing Jesus through the likes of Bob and other friends.

One of the cool things too was that once I met someone, if I saw them later in the day or week, it was like we were old friends. Through the friends I met I learned a great deal about other cultures and religions. For example, through some friends from Sri Lanka I got to see, through two different generations’ viewpoints, their thoughts on topics like Muslim extremists and arranged marriages. It was quite funny hearing a girl my age ask her parents, jokingly, how many goats or cows she was worth to them for her dowry. But with religion, both were simply outraged at what is going on and disgusted with the fundamentalists. Both the kids and their parents talked about how hard it has been for them though in the West. They are prejudiced against from both sides, from many Christians for being Muslim and the general clumping of all Muslims into the extreme suicide bombing category… and from extremists (supposedly about 10% of all Muslims) who are attacking everyone. The two my age talked about old high school friends they saw who are now extremists and how weird it was for them.

Anyways, the week was incredible. Obama and Tony Blair spoke at the actual breakfast; both gave really good speeches.

Note that this was not a “Christian” gathering. There were people from all sorts of religions, but the focus of the whole week was to put aside out religious differences and look at Jesus and his life. Every religion can accept Jesus and what he taught. They may not accept that he is truly the way truth and life, but just looking at his life is the beginning of the conversation. You can’t become friends with someone by telling them from the start that they are wrong… I met several people, from different religions, who bumped into Jesus through friends and heard how it had changed their lives. Its just so cool seeing how focusing on something that unites us can transcend our differences and bring peace and reconciliation to people from all over the world.

Go watch it.  This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while. It is very entertaining, but tells the story that is true for over millions and millions of people in our world.

I was recently emailed this very interesting article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece 

An athiest wrote it on his observations of aid and missions in Africa.. and comes to a conclusion that Africa needs Jesus more than they need money.  Pretty cool coming from an athiest.

But… having lived there and seeing the brand of “Christianity” that is in Africa, I don’t fully agree.  I obviously agree that everyone needs Jesus, but I don’t agree with the Jesus that is being preached.  Most of the Christianity that is preached and brought over from the West is the prosperity gospel, telling the people that God will bless them if they give… and if they aren’t blessed with wealth than they are doing something wrong.  The most commonly watched TV programs (apart from soccer of course) are televangelists asking for money.  Ask any local Ugandan who has access to a TV and he’ll name off several megapastors from the US, mostly guys I’ve never even heard of.  But I have seen these guys on TV there and it makes me sick… seeing a # on the bottom of the screen to call to donate money so one can be blessed by God.

I’ve heard it said that in Africa if you want to be rich you pursue one of two professions… You become a politician or a pastor.  And the pastors in Uganda at least, are just as corrupt as the next person.  The pastors of the two largest churches are currently in legal trouble.  One of them is being investigated by the FBI for molesting a young girl while in the US this summer.  The other was just arrested (for at least the third time) for stealing cars in Uganda and selling them in the Congo.  This pastor heads a 40,000 member church and in the newspaper said something along the lines of, “Stealing is a sin.  I’ve sinned but God forgives me.  If you are sinning come to Miracle church on Sundays to get saved.”  But this guy has been arrested over three times for stealing cars… I assume because of his wealth he constantly is let go.

While I ultimately agree with the author of this article, I believe the Christianity that is being brought over and being preached is wrong.  The people need something to believe in, and I agree that the Christians are different/happier than the next person in Uganda… but my Jesus didn’t steal or ask the poor for money.