DVL and is an 18-Year-Old Fit to Take Philosophy?

Once upon a time, I took Intro to Philosophy with my trusty friend Anna Luther (she was Luther then, back off!). I was reminded of several things about this class when, in a staff meeting here the other day, a man had a fly land on his upper-lip and begin moving around the landscape of his scruffy face while he remained unfazed by the insect who was becoming intimately acquainted with him. When this happened I couldn’t think of anything else except for the fly on his face and I even had to hold back laughter in a serious situation, which lets be honest, is always a bad lot.

Our Philosophy Professor, David Vander Laan, also possessed this same ability to regularly have flies land on his face and continue unflinchingly to teach us about the limits of reason or the ontological argument for…blah blah, or rather, meep meep, nar nar, as Anna prefers.

After my co-worker endured the fly on his face, my thoughts went elsewhere to early on in my freshman year as an 18-year-old trying to make it through DVL’s class. Let me give you some context for why this class holds so many memories for me. It was the only class at Westmont I would have considered myself to truly fail academically in. I got a C, but I’m not referring to the grade, I’m referring to the level of energy I put forth in the class, my confidence level in the material and my overall proficiency in the ideas I was learning about. I would like to take this moment to place blame for my failure in this class not on the extensive note-passing of Anna and myself, nor on my incompetence to test well in an oral exam. I would like to blame DVL for always letting flies roam freely on his face during lectures. Added to this strange quality of the man was the stare down. If you had DVL, you certainly remember that he would stare at people when he taught and hold his gaze for an unnatural and unbearable amount of time. Couple the gaze with the flies and you must admit there was nothing else for a couple of 18-year-old girls to do but initiate and uphold the best series of notes written between two friends in the history of note passing.

Let us recollect. There was Noel Peepgrass, who Anna kind of liked and he sat near us on most MondayWednesdayFridays. Now Noel went and started dating someone else, so naturally we needed to make up Garbage Pail Kid names for this girl and also any other person who crossed us in one way or another. Then, there was also the letting each other know what to expect for the chapel speaker of the day. This would be something like, “Anna, your mom is speaking in chapel today on her life of recovering from working the streets to sustain you as a small child. It should be touching, but possibly a difficult stroll down memory lane as you might recall some bad memories of your mommy taking you to work”.

To me, this story of my failure as a student of Philosophy is a strong argument for the value of development as a whole person. I did not retain or probably ever gain the intellectual concepts someone was paying a great amount for me to get. But, I did develop socially and emotionally as I grew in my ability to pass notes that made my old, worn out binders well worth saving. And if there is a going away party for Shane and Anna’s oldest child when he or she takes off for college someday I will bring that binder from Intro to Philosophy in hopes of imparting some unconventional wisdom to the college-bound.

Haille Sellassie as god?

I had a conversation the other day with some of the kids from the academy about reggae and religion. Most of the boys seem to be taken by Rastafarianism. They tried to point out that the Rastas are the only people in the community not stealing and killing. They live fairly peacefully and other than smoking dagga (weed) they don't do anything bad. After our conversation I figured out that the Rastas use weed as their sacrament and their god (Jah) is actually a man they believe to be the incarnation of the last four manifestations of God. I further found out that the Babylon they preach against is basically western culture. I said that even though they may not steal or kill they don't believe in the same God and it is only through a belief in God that true transformation and forgiveness can take place. I tried to explain that the Rastas are not trying to make their communities better but are actually making them worse through the use and selling of their dagga (weed).

One of the boys then brought up the fact that under the guise of "Christianity" Africans were taken from their homes and brought to America or other Western Nations as slaves. This was a major point for him and rightly so. I apologized for that dark time in our history and agreed that this period was evil and wrong. I tried to explain that through the Bible and the message of Christ's forgiveness we can see that this "Christianity" was not a true belief and following of God's law. The boy then said that I proved his point of Christianity having evil views by acknowledging this past and he was through with the conversation.
I took a look back into African history and it is "white Christianity" that brought the slave trade and Apartheid. Apartheid was created in the theological department of the white university in Stellenbosch, South Africa. It made me realize that to many non-whites Christianity is a white, oppressive religion.
Our conversation ended there for the time being and has made me wonder and struggle with the idea of being a white Christian here in this country. How can I be effective in bringing development, community empowerment, Christ, and education to this community if I'm a white Christian? There is little differentiation between people that call themselves Christians and those that actually live a life dedicated to Christ's teachings (much like Christianity in American politics). In this same way there is little differentiation between Reggae and Rastafarianism for the boys here and I wonder how to bring the true Gospel to these kids given our pasts? I was encouraged though by the message I listened to today about Hope and how since God is who He says He is, our Hope in Him will not disappoint. God rests his promise of Hope on His character and therefore through my hope in the eternal glory of God I know that He will guide me and open doors for me. It is only through Hope in God that we can make sense of our suffering.

hy·per·in·fla·tion

hy·per·in·fla·tion (hī'pər-ĭn-flā'shən)
rapid rise in prices as currency loses it's value

Don't abandon me. I'm not going to write about economic principles. Imagine if you will, going into Trader Joe's to buy a loaf of Milton's bread for $3.59. Now imagine just one year later that bread, in that same store, made with those same ingredients costing $179.50. Your salary has not increased and so buying this bread is impossible for you and considering that 4 people in 5 are without work where you live chances are, you are part of that unemployment statistic. Twenty hours out of most of your days are spent without electricity. And one candle, on most days, costs twice the daily official government wage for a farm worker. It's a dark time for Zimbabwe.

It's hard to believe that the African country with the highest literacy rate (85%) could be in such a bad situation. President Mugabe decided that 20 years after Zimbabwe gained independence and most of the farm land was still in the hands of white farm owners he would unveil a plan for seizure of land without compensation. This looked like a government official forcing a white farmer and his family off their land and giving it to a black family. As you can imagine, a person without training in methods of farming would be doomed to failure. Picture Lesley trying to start my dad's tractor and plow through the orchards. Or Anna directing field laborers when and how to prune the the trees... You get the picture. The farming economy that was doing very well went down hill and so now the country faces the annual 5,000% inflation rate. Or rather, hyperinflation.

There is a teacher at the Bridges Academy who has moved to South Africa with one million other Zimbabweans looking for a way to get their lives back. His name is Owen and he still has four siblings that are in Zimbabwe. He told Chase yesterday that he doesn't believe he will ever see them again. It's scary how fast a bad political situation can take over and negatively affect civilians who were previously doing so fine. It's like this weird thing where a good thing, like justice, gets hijacked and the wrong people try and make something happen that they believe is fair for them but ends up going so bad. We can cross our fingers that Robert Mugabe doesn't get re-elected in March despite all his efforts to take control of the election process. If he is re-elected he could be in office until he is 90, unless he dies first. It's ironic to have a dictator in a country that is supposed to have a democratically elected leader.

Night of the Living Mosquitoe

There was a retreat, a rental house near the beach, a hard bed with only a comforter to cover ourselves with, and 2 windows offering relief from the heat but, in true South African form, having bars to keep out the crime, but missing screens to keep out the bugs. We woke up in a sweat a few after hours after falling asleep because of not opening the jailhouse windows and creating an oh so stuffy atmosphere. We decided to take the “bug” risk and opened the windows. What ensued was what might be referred to as one of the worst nights of our lives….dun, dun, duh!

Cue noises of lights switching on and off and clapping hands and banging against walls. When the light turns on, see white washed walls with blood spatters from a, not nearly high enough, death toll of South African mosquitoes. This sleepless war goes on for 3 hours, we are loosing the battle, we’re low on the supplies we need to win, we’ve lost our vision and…no, George W is not our Commander in Chief. We are fighting on God’s side, the side that never loses (supposedly).

CarsfromGod

We went to church in Franschhoek for the first time. It is a church called Shofar and all the students from Bridges Academy ride a bus there, so there were quite a few familiar faces. This church is considered “charismatic” which includes members of the church being invited to share any “words” from the Lord they had. Open mic experiences have historically been very bad for me. Think no time limits, uncomfortable seats, emotional external processing in front of large groups that are captive audiences…you get the idea. I am not a fan. So if you have this “open mic” mentality and add to it the “God told me this” line it could be a very questionable mixture.
The first woman to go told a very touching story about forgiveness and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even shed a few. Then a young woman went who (for the sake of annonimity) we will call Shera. Shera ditched class the day her public speaking professor taught on audience analysis. Shera also lacked the use of an alternative word for “blessed”. Shera also, in my humble opinion, told the audience something about God that would make many people question what God must think of them.
To make an uninteresting story shorter and more to the point, Shera went car shopping with her dad and picked out the car she wanted and got it. You might be thinking that I have left out some important detail that would make this more interesting or more touching, but I assure you I have not. She took 4 to 6 minutes to tell this story and talked about things like financing and timelines, she smiled a lot and also said that God just blesses her and blesses her. There was a lot of spewing and now that I am trying to recall, I’m not exactly sure what her point was at the end. The interesting part of Shera’s story was that she was telling it to an audience that was made up of one quarter people around her own age but that had probably very little in common.
The students of Bridges Academy are either a. orphans or b. nearly orphans. They are all considered to be “at risk” and have grown up in the township of Philippi in, by nearly all standards, poverty. I think it’s nice that Shera has a new car that only has x amount of kilometers on it (she did include that detail). I had a car when I was young also. What made me really question what she was saying is that if God really wanted her to have a new car, just the one she wanted, and it is because he loves her so much and wants to bless her so much, well then what the hell about all the kids he doesn’t give brand new cars to, let alone parents or clean water or access to education? Does he not like them as much as Shera or I? Did he forget about them? Are they being punished?
What is the currency of blessing that God deals in? Is he operating in our realm by dealing out material wealth, and by directing all of our physical circumstances? Or is the world coming and going with light and dark, evil and good and our hearts are what God is looking at? Is it a mixture of both? I’m not sure, but I personally feel very skeptical when I hear someone say that God gave them a good parking spot. I know he does give good gifts, but are they gifts in the same way we think of gifts? I would pay good money to know how those Philippi kids felt when Shera went on and on about God giving her a car?