A broken tulip

….I am Canadian. Since the age of three, I have lived in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In each place I saw broken lives and harmful customs. I also saw the grace of God and beauty in humanity. My earnest wish and prayer is that the global Church would truly be the Body of Christ. I hunger for the day that Canada will listen to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to learn from them of the sacredness of life, the hope that decades of suffering cannot kill and the power of Christ against the works of Satan.

In the Christian belief, each man and woman is made in the image of God. Thus, each human culture bears two faces: the beautiful image of God, and the sinful image of man. Our joyful duty as the Church is to call humans of every culture into the full image of God by appealing to the living Word of the transcendent Creator.

We are not superior in any way to any African culture, nor are they superior to us. We each exist because of the authority of God; we all are shamed by human sins. The love of life found in many African cultures images God. In some ways, the West has embraced a culture of death. We must be honest. We must listen to those we want to help. We must accept complexity. We must be helped in our own turn….

Published in the Christian Courier. Read the full article here.