Cargo Cult Still Lives

Last Thursday as we met together at the end of the day, we talked about a question that was asked that morning.  If you don’t give whatever someone asks you for, can you possibly be standing in the ‘good’ canoe? (used to represent truth and being part of God’s family)  The question was general but it was aimed at us whites.  The people know that we have more than they do.  They are hunters and gatherers so the concept of not eating everything you find today is foreign to them.  We don’t have gardens – we don’t hunt for our food (otherwise we’d never get any teaching or translation done) so the fact that I have extra rice or meat in my freezer is beyond their understanding.  They’ve heard that good behavior is sharing everything you have with those that have less than you do.  By and large, that philosophy is one of the things that keeps this country as the third world country it is.  No one can get ahead – you are obligated to share whatever you have with family – sometimes so far removed that you’re not even really sure how they could possibly be related.  We see it as our folks get royalty money from the timber company.  There are three other villages along the Sepik river trying to figure out how they can get a piece of it – claiming their distant kinship relationship.  It’s amazing to see the things they’re coming up with to lay claim to some of those funds.

 

Anyway – as we talked about the question last week, Matt had heard that some of the single guys were planning on doing a skit on Sunday morning to ask their question.  The night before several folks had come back from the bush – folks that are intentionally choosing not to listen to the teaching.  The one guy has been disgruntled for a long time – because we’re not giving him everything he asks for.  I believe that we are generous and yet we want them to understand the value of things as opposed to just freely giving things away all the time.  That does not create gratitude with them – rather just more greed and discontentment.  It’s never enough – no matter how much we give them.  So as we talked, we realized that the skit was going to be about sharing. There is a cargo cult thinking here that if they do the right things, then they’ll get all the white man’s cargo.  They need to follow the white man’s god and the cargo will literally appear before them.  I heard a guy preaching this in the trade language a couple years ago and thought I misunderstood since he was so blatant about it.  But they really do think that.  Some believe that that’s really what this teaching is about – how to get the white man’s stuff.  They’re demanding and in their minds, when it comes to us, if we are in God’s canoe, then we should never say no to them.  We are obligated to give them whatever they ask for – no matter how ridiculous it might be!  So we were thankful that the Lord had revealed this so we could talk about it and pray about it – and be prepared for it when it came on Sunday morning.  The Lord impressed some neat things on our minds and we were encouraged that He’d brought this out into the open.

 

So Sunday morning rolls around and we finished the lesson about God creating Adam out of dust.  The idea that God decided how He would create Adam – that He’s Adam’s creator and that He loved Adam was all part of this lesson.  We moved through some other questions and then the guys did their skit.  The funny part – or sad – or typical of how much they don’t understand about Scripture was that they took a little piece of the parable about the rich young ruler that came to Christ and the parable about Lasarus and the rich man and laid out their case.  They missed the point of both talks and only took out the parts that they wanted to apply to their belief that we must give them everything they ask for if we’re going to be God’s people.  That’s the ultimate behavior that will get us into God’s good canoe, right? 

 

Elias in turn asked them about God’s Word – was it all about whether they should eat the betel nut plant or not?  Was it about batteries and salt? Giving those things and everything else you have would ensure you a place in God’s kingdom?  He explained that getting all of the white man’s stuff is not what this teaching is about.  The base of this talk is about how they can sit together with God forever.  God will tell us what He expects from us – what behavior is good and what isn’t in His eyes.  Matt shared with them that we know that they’ve heard all kinds of teaching about what God expects from us – from other men’s perspectives but now it’s time for them to hear it from God – from His Word.  I shared something in terms of a word picture.  We have a tree drawn on the blackboard with roots, branches and leaves.  From the start we’ve been telling them that we’re starting at the root and working our way up the tree.  We will get to the leaves but we need to start from the bottom and work our way up – that sense of building a strong foundation and working from that.  So since they had used a piece of this passage and a piece of that (translation helpers have already heard these stories as we prepared them for the lessons), I first shared that we want to answer them quickly on this particular question as well as others that they have.  But we don’t want to just grab a leaf without having the foundation for it.  If they just grab a leaf and don’t get it while standing on the tree, they’ll just fall down.  They need to climb up the tree and take it off of the branch they’re standing on – then they won’t fall but they’ll understand the whole meaning.  God’s Word does talk about giving – and the believers in Acts shared what they had so no one had any needs.  But the recipient didn’t make the demands of how much or what they should get.  Their approach here to giving is really about receiving or taking.  Other talk sprouted up through this and it was a neat opportunity to challenge them to keep coming – that they would know the base of this talk – and it will/could change their lives.  They were satisfied with our answer and it ended up being a neat time together although I’m sure they’re still wondering when we’re going to get to the ‘real talk’ and how to get the stuff. 

 

In the past, as people died, their relatives would come to us asking us to pass on a letter to their dead relative with the list of things they needed.  The dead person needed to send them clothes, a pot, batteries, salt, etc.  And we white people know how to see them and pass on this letter.  For people that only ever get food by gathering it themselves, the idea that a guy in Wewak buys my groceries with my money and sends it in from the store is a very foreign concept.  So they try to come up with a reason for this – and it’s like watching a 4 year old decide how things came into being.  They look around at the things they know in their grid and decide it must come from this or that.  May the truth of His Word liberate them!  May they walk in light and not darkness soon!!