Think Outside the Box

(written last Wednesday)

The description of this blog says that it will contain more than just a narrative. I know that I have left so much out( a 4.5 hour church service, gymnast in Kibera, eating Ethiopian goat) but the following entry is a reflection and a bit of insight. I don’t think if I was sitting at home right now I would agree it, but things are different over here.


I’ve been having some problems with some of the theology being taught around this place(imagine that). The greatest example of corse is the prosperity gospel: that if you have faith and confess to Jesus then your car is on the way(since only 15 percent of people own a car). They even want nice cars after that. Not that this isn’t a problem in America as well though. In fact the Christian radio is played quite frequently here and some of the messages aren’t necessarily the most Love sounding things(just not a huge fan of claiming a holy war on someone because of a misunderstanding). So I’m sure some of misguided concepts come from the west.

Everyday we drive to work though I see countless posters and signs for Christian miracle and healing conferences and cents.
The miracles thing is an interesting concept. Yes I believe in miracles, but it seems as if they are advertised as if they are so rampant. The healing thing is also something that I find questionable. Granted, the miracles preached that repeat so often is the trash that comes on at 1 in the morning on cable asking for your money so some guy with a fat toupee and a botoxed face can get another grandmother Cadillac. He says if you send him one dollar he’ll multiplied it by 10 and so on. So with that disgusting image I find it a little harder to believe everything that people say is miraculous.
And at first, with my wrestling, confused, emerging, freed, frustrated, postmodern thinking mind I find it even more difficult to believe in such phenomenon as sight being restored just like that. Sure it can happen today but I call that miracle lasik eye surgery.

Rob Bell says many people usually think theology is heretical if they’ve never heard it before…So I think I was part of that many.

O the wisdom though that comes from Pastor Edward-it is so refreshing, so loving, and so open.

After hearing stories of how he has been healed before and how he has seen people that he feels are possessed by evil forces, I really started to wrestle with these concepts and actually started questioning his doctrine as well. What a dangerous thing that is that we constantly do. If somebody has one questionable thought or does one thing that we personally don’t approve of, we discredit everything they say and count them as “just another one of them.” O how destructive that is.

We had this conversation as we drove through the rain in Nairobi as we sat in traffic for 1.5 hours and as I enhaled a million parts per million of carbon monoxide from the mutatuas(public vans and buses) which have absolutely no filter or regulator, so I want to blame my sin of being judgmental on the conditions. It of course though was just me stuck and not thinking progressively.

Edward’s wisdom quickly gave deliverance though. He could tell that I was struggling to grasp and to believe his stories of miracles and of healing. He went on to say that he could understand why it would be hard to believe such things and to even see such things in America. With all that we are blessed with, he said, its almost as if there isn’t any room for miracles and healing. Maybe we’re embodying Christ and truly performing a miracle when a boy that has been diagnosed with leukemia receives proper care and can live on to become a doctor and perform the same kind of miracles. Maybe it is a miracle from God when someone who makes millions denies themselves and their family to live simply amongst the poor and give away all that they earn.

He continued on with saying that many here in Africa don’t have access to medical care and insurance or even a daily meal. Edward revealed that he had gone 40 days without eating before not just from fasting(which he used to do annually) but also because he didn’t have food growing up.(Talk about a success story-he goes from having nothing to attending Oxford). He said there wasn’t anyone around that had the resources that could bring such blessings… With no food, and no medical professionals, God did and does the healing.

Again, the wisdom and love that this man has is phenomenal.

I sat to the left with Edward and started processing and wrestling with his understanding.

So it was my progressive, questioning, usually skeptical thinking mind that possibly brought me into this, but it also helped me accept this(of course with the great help of Edward’s wisdom)

Here is what I came up with. We have put God in a box. He is whatever we interpret him as and sometimes only that. We have defined him by our own culture, our own traditions, and sometimes our own agenda.

There is no box for God. He probably doesn’t even live by our same dimensions.

Speaking dimensionally, it was my friend John Thornton who passed on this teaching to me. He said a teacher was teaching theology and had a dry erase marker in their hand. The teacher said that it is almost like we are trying to define a three-dimensional, in a two dimensional world. (There is a book that deals with this concept, I believe it is called
Flatland, but I’ll find that out.)
So when we look at the marker from one angle, it is a square, but if we look at it from another angle, it is a circle.
Relating this to theology, when we ask if God has given us free will or as predestined everything to already happen, so is it predestination or free-will? yep.

Perhaps when we speak of the way God is and the way He works amongst different cultures, countries, and time periods, He is a lot of times different. He transcends these boxes, these narrow theological beliefs, and these agendas that are developed by our two dimensional minds.

And it also depends how you are defining miracles. Edward said it is any extra-ordinary thing that happens in any extra-ordinary situation.

So do such extravagant miracles actually happen? I believe they do now. And I hope to continually tear away the cardboard that is storing my God.

And when I see the 14 signs for Christian healing tomorrow, I will have much less frustration and anger, and maybe perhaps a instead comforth

Finally, here is an insight that my brother Christopher Mack shared with me about this dilemma that I have been having. It has truly been such a beautiful encouragement

Our beloved Grandfather in the faith, asleep on this earth, but alive in the Kingdom to come will help you in this. Grandfather Chesterton from the church in England reminds us that it is folly to talk or predictability. That our so-called sciences are slaves to predictability. We would call anything a miracle where God ‘intervenes’ from the natural order, but this is not so. If that were the case, then most assuredly, everything is NOT spiritual. But you have learned a better way than this, for most assuredly, everything IS spiritual.

Hear from Brother Chesterton:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.”

“But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and ever evening , ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grow old, and our Father is younger than we.”

“The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of brining forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose.”

“It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop.”

If this is the way of things, then most assuredly miracles are merely when our Heavenly Father decides to tell something to do something other than what we have expected. So look for miracles, both in the sun rising on the righteous and the unrighteous, in the transformation of your heart, but most assuredly in the physical and spiritual healing of those with you.


-Benjarobi in Nairobi
(Many of my insights here were inspired by a book called Generous Orthodoxy, indulge if you feel so inclined