Lessons from the equator

Week beginning 5 September 2005

Well, number one son is back. For those of you who failed to spot it in my recent columns, he was out in Uganda for three weeks, helping with the building of African Bible College's newest campus development.

The whole trip was a big adventure, as much for us as for him. He can publicise his thoughts and experiences if he wishes, but this is my column, so I'm going to tell you about my feelings after meeting him, chatting with him and seeing his photos.

Any travel experience is an education; and it really is quite amazing to have a live report and film footage from other parts of the world. My travel has been limited to the so-called civilised West -- preaching trips to America and holiday trips to Europe. But I think we should all see Africa at some point in our lives.

Perhaps then, when we've sat with a class of children in the open air, with not a book or computer in sight, with only one blackboard and a teacher who never gets paid, we will re-assess what education is all about, and be a bit less critical of school provision in our islands.

Perhaps then, when we've spent a day or two with people who live in a shack, with no change of clothes, and little in the way of worldly possessions, we might view our wealth differently, and realise that it was true after all: a man's life does not consist in the abundance of what he possesses.

Perhaps then, when we've driven along sun-baked streets in clapped-out vehicles, having to stop because a goat has been tethered in the middle of the road, or because children are trying to use your vehicle wheels to kill a snake, we might look again at the whole business of transportation, and realise that part of our problem is that we don't have time to stop.

I kid you not -- number one son experienced all of that. I've only experienced it by proxy, but I hope I've learned enough to make me value what I have. Still, I realise that my westernised view of Africa is probably like the recent edition of National Geographic, which I purchased because it was dedicated to studies of the great continent, interspersed of course, with page upon page of adverts for the best cars, watches and cameras available.

We just don't get it, do we? We know that the average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is 46; but we still plan that we are going to live for ever. We know that some of Africa's countries are among the poorest in the world, yet we still wonder what we are going to buy for ourselves.

But beyond the glossy ads of the National Geographic there is real Africa, making up 20 per cent of the world's total landmass, housing 14 per cent of the world's population, 71 per cent of whom are under 25, and 66 per cent of whom are totally dependent on agriculture for a living. It's not that far from us, and it's probable that our earliest ancestors walked on its soil; but how easily we forget the world next door.

Our connection with Uganda has been a remarkable adventure and lesson in Providence. One of the world's foremost evangelical Old Testament scholars in the Reformed tradition, O. Palmer Robertson, visited us and preached in our church some three years ago. His sermon enthused our then church officer, Kenny John Mackenzie, who has become the building project manager in the new College of which Prof Robertson is Principal.

Along the road in Kampala is Dwelling Places, an initiative to help orphaned children with shelter, accommodation and stability. One of the workers there is Marsali Campbell, a Free Church member, whose father and I ministered next door to one another in a former life.

So I studied the photos of my son with the various people he met on the equator, on site and off, and marvelled at the Providence that made it all happen. Others might look at Hurricane Katrina and challenge the existence of God; I look at our involvement with African Bible College and I am overwhelmed by the existence and the plan of God.

Indeed, Hurricane Katrina is part of that plan too. I have been in touch with friends in the Presbyterian Church in America, some of whom have experienced the devastation which we have witnessed in the past days. Many of these PCA men in Mississippi are closely involved both with African Bible College and with Dwelling Places.

It's all in the plan; but sometimes the plan has strands that are darker than others, more difficult to trace and to unravel. Nothing in the world leads me to question whether there is a God. Everything I see around me makes me realise just how intricate and involved that plan of God's actually is.

So what of the future? Just as number one son prepared to return home, the first students were settling into what has been built of the campus, ready for the first stage of their theological training. There are still many building to go up, with a capacity for many more students than have been admitted on the first intake.

But it strikes me as nothing less than remarkable that all over the world, in different missionary locations, there is a hunger to learn about God that is striking in its absence from the West. Why is that? Have we been so swamped by our materialism and greed that we have no room for God any more? Have the glossy magazines become our Bible? Are we driven by the unchallenged consumerism of our modern lifestyle to the extent that we have still to learn what is really important?

One day maybe I'll go where my son has gone before me. Until then, I hope I'll learn from his experience, and hold to my possessions just a little bit more loosely. Is it better, I wonder, never to have had them, or, having had them, to see them washed away by a natural disaster? Either way, I don't want my life to be swamped, or my aspirations moulded, by a relentless pursuit of things.

iaind@backfreechurch.co.uk