The Way Things Ought to Be

Have you ever tasted the fresh cool air driven just in front of a storm? It’s so refreshing, so out of the ordinary. I don’t know what it tastes like, but it seems it must stimulate my taste buds – the feeling of coolness doesn’t’ do the sensation justice. I’m driving now into an African countryside with beautifully dark grey clouds on the horizon that would be menacing if they didn’t carry God’s sweet gift of rain. I think one of the reasons I’ve become so passionate about rainwater tanks is that I’ve been inspired to think about the topic of abundance. I think that we Americans don’t notice it much, because we’ve so polluted and abused the earth, but God made this place for us! He made it for us to live on, to thrive on. He has provided us with a bounty of resources; a beautiful, perfect home. (Happy belated Earth Day everyone, by the way) I am reminded of God shepherding the Israelites through the desert, and how thankful they were (or rather, remembering my biblical history, how thankful they should have been) at God’s wonderful gift of all the food they needed, miraculously appearing fresh each morning. Here in Uganda the parallel seems obvious to me: God gives us all the water we need, as a gift from heaven. It falls in abundance, a true spiritual lesson. I think that God desires abundance for us all, to shower us with blessings, to drench us with His goodness until we are inundated with all He has to offer. Just as with the rain from above, in order to have all we need we need only accept it (and perhaps make some preparations: what is a spiritual rainwater tank? I’ll keep working on that one). This is no prosperity gospel, and indeed in a land filled with poverty and thirst it strikes even me as perhaps a bit idealistic. But it is not nonsense. We who proudly call ourselves Christians have the duty, and indeed the privilege to consistently call our world to the vision of the kingdom presented in the prophets and most of all by Christ, and I’ve been learning it looks a lot like the rains down in Africa.

Of course life is more complicated than that, so I’m going contrast the reality of the kingdom coming with a little about the world as it is at present. I think most of you will readily grant that the history of humanity is frequently a dark and disturbing story full of evil, one of the manifestations of which has been the profoundly sinful way that men and society in general have treated women. I won’t elaborate here – this is a blog of my travels after all – but if you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about I highly recommend a serious romantic relationship with an intelligent, enlightened, insightful, profound, Christian feminist (my thanks to Elsy for a much-needed education on this front).

I don’t think it amiss to say that lots of countries and societies have made great strides on this front. After all, women were allowed to vote in the US only a half-century after we stopped having slaves (insert [sarcasm] at “only”: this was obviously a good step, but note the “less than impressed” tone as far as the rate at which “progress” progresses). Also, you’re not allowed to beat your wife anymore. Yet, some pockets of some form of the “old school” remain, especially within religious communities. With different shades of meaning, we use the words “submission”, “complementarianism”, and “roles” to indicate that men should teach, lead, and be in authority and women should learn, listen, and follow. I have found in general that this is widely held in theory, but in practice expresses itself much as egalitarianism would. I think that the harmful edge of women’s oppression (and much of it remains very harmful, even in the U.S.) has in many ways been worn down in the kind of life most of us are familiar with. Not necessarily the case in Uganda.

To illustrate, take an exercise we recently carried out during training. A group of Ugandan men and women and 20 Peace Corps volunteers were given a card with a trait or task, and with one second of thought asked to categorize it as being done by men, women, or both in Uganda. They included such things as “driving cars”, “enjoying sex”, “slaughtering animals”, “cooking”, and “working outside the home”. As expected, all present had a fairly good understanding life as it is in Uganda, which has fairly universally agreed upon roles: men drive cars, enjoy sex (more than a few Ugandan women were unaware that sex can/should be enjoyable), work outside the home, and drink beer, while women stay at home, cook, raise children and so on. We then repeated the exercise, this time with the prompt to put the cards not in the category of who does them now, but who is able to do them. The vast majority of cards wound up in the “both” category – both Ugandans and Americans for the most part agreed that both men and women were capable of most of these tasks. There were 3 outliers: one of the cards was “get pregnant”, which obviously wound up in the “women” category; another card was “drive cars”, which one of the Peace Corps guys put in the “men” category as a joke.

The third outlier was that “slaughter animals” wound up in the men-only category. One of the Ugandan men put it there, and upon being asked about it he defended the proposition: only men are able to slaughter animals – woman are incapable of doing so. He was gently challenged, and informed by a number of people that they had personally witnessed women killing chickens to prepare them for dinner. Rather than reconsider his original proposition, he decided to vigorously defend this proposition instead: chickens are not animals. Seriously! So set in his perspective of women and what they are capable of, he chose to defend this ludicrous departure from reality rather than reconsider what he believed.

Now that’s the kind-of-funny part. The un-funny part is how deeply this man’s prejudice and ignorance went. We proceeded to have an hour-long discussion about gender roles in the US and in Uganda, examining how they affect life, with a vigorous and productive give and take from both Ugandan and American men and women. This man sat in his chair, laughing uproariously every time anybody mentioned the capacity for women to earn an income, make decisions, or enjoy sex (or life, for that matter). He laughed at this prospect – so ridiculous were these ideas that he wouldn’t consider them, merely dismissed them. The real consequence of his deeply ingrained prejudice is that far from considering women equal to men, he barely considers them to be human.
There are 2 worlds in Uganda: the development world (consisting of volunteers, NGO’s, and most government agencies and employees) and the real world. The devlopment world can be quite advanced as far as women are concerned: each district has a seat in parliament reserved for a woman, woman are prominently placed cabinet ministers and are a group frequently reached out to in development efforts. But in the real world, out in the villages of Uganda, women are second-class citizens at best.

This pattern is offensive, and it is pervasive. I stand proudly in the tradition and wisdom of such dedicated Christian leaders and heroes as Jimmy Carter and Cecil Sherman when I say: the clear message and intent of God and scripture is that women are equal in status in every way; that constructions of hierarchy and role based solely on sex are un-Christlike; that as Christians we should follow the precedent of Christ in welcoming women as equal partners and heirs in every aspect of life and ministry; and that no person should be denied any position, privilege, or power in professional, social, or family life simply because she is a woman. The continuing trend that believes otherwise is a refusal of the great gift of women to society, is unworthy of our humanity, and is unworthy of the gospel. Moreover, it is a contributing factor to holding potentially great societies like Uganda, in the grip of poverty.

That’s all for now, but I’ve been accumulating stories and anecdotes and will try to continue to share them at regular intervals. Love to you all.