they’re rebels, and they’re everywhere!

I love the time I live in! And I love the people I get the opportunity to connect with! Not just the high-profile type, but mainly the little rebels. Not necessarily those who shout their rebel voices out on blogs and T-shirts, but those who slowly but surely create a world that is different from the one they inherited. And it’s happening. They’re all around us. People who are changing the world. Many of them on the non-written side of history, not the heroes or the big leaders. But those who are shaping a new way of living.

Some of them are academics, some of them not.

Some of them are extroverted, some of them introverted.

Some of them are loving and kind, some of them are harsh and critical, some of them are all of the above at once.

Some of them you’ll find in institutions, some of them prefer to do it the cowboy way.

Some of them are religious, some of them are not.

Some use words to label themselves, some will never give a name to what they are.

Some know that they are rebels, and recreating the world they live in, and some don’t even realise it, but change are happening when they are around.

Most won’t call themselves rebels, but I see the status quo of the world, I know they are rebels.

Will they change the world? To me, eschatology mean that I believe that the world can change, no matter what the odds! And I’m willing to believe that at least some of the people I know are changing the world right now.

How one Afrikaner became an African theologian

The reflections of the past few days on my own being an Afrikaner draw to an end… for now. It’s been a week since that transforming moment, when a black Kenyan transformed this Afrikaner into an African theologian.

While some liberal Afrikaner’s would easily identify themselves as being African, I’ve always been a bit cautious. Maybe I’ve seen too much of Africa, to know that in many ways I don’t fit. Maybe it was my involvement with the many philosophical conversations within the Emerging Church conversation, and the realization that these words have little to do with Africa. This was my experience at Amahoro as well. While it is popular for young Afrikaners to reject their past by saying that they had nothing to do with Apartheid, if I want to be in Africa I cannot say this. In Africa I cannot reject my past, I cannot be totally individualistic, what my people did is part of me. This said before I even start looking at all the practical ways in which Apartheid is still part of my daily life, in where I live, how I live etc.

The question that I struggled with was: How can an Afrikaner whose people were responsible for Apartheid become an African theologian? The people with whom I struggles through this was some fellow Afrikaners, but especially some Kenyan friends I made. I felt like I needed to ask permission to take part in constructing an African theology. After telling our story, the story of our people, proud at times, standing guilty at times, one of my new Kenyan friends said these words: “You need to come to Kenya and come tell your story! Our people need to hear that someone can admit that they were wrong.” Those must have been some of the most liberating words I’ve ever heard!

Suddenly our place in this conversation seemed so clear. We do not take part in this African conversation by forgetting Apartheid, by forgetting our past. We do not take part in this conversation in spite of Apartheid. We take part in this African conversation by remembering our past. By telling our story, so that this may never happen again. All over Africa one group oppresses the other. It’s not about white against black, but about the have’s against the have-not’s (as we said at Amahoro). I become an African theologian not by leaving my Afrikaner identity behind, but by taking sides with the have-not’s, with the oppressed, and doing this as child of the iconic oppressor of the past.

I am an Afrikaner, I owe my being to this continent

I am an Afrikaner. My people started Apartheid. Yes, many others have segregated communities. Many others were racists. But my people started Apartheid. That which I now confess to be a herecy. Racism, the root of Apartheid, which I now confess to be a sin. I cannot escape the fact that I have taken advantage from this system. I was educated by schools that was set up by this system. My forefathers voted in elections, and they kept on voting the National Party, and with it Apartheid, into our laws. I also recognize that many of my people didn’t know what was going on. Many of my people fought against Apartheid with everything in them. I, I am an Afrikaner.

But, as an Afrikaner, I can also say the following words with Thabo Mbeki:

I am an Afrikaner.

I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people, perished in the result.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.

My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.

I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.

Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that – I am an Afrikaner.

My people are the people who gave away the power they had, and gave power to those who they oppressed. Maybe the only oppressor ever to give away the power they had without a full-scale war. My people cannot be Europeans, never again, although some are trying at the moment. We are Africans. Under the sun of Africa we find joy. Here we search for peace, Amahoro.

 

I will try to blog on my Afrikaner identity in the coming days. Please take part in my journey with questions, critique, thoughts, or whatever you’d like to share.

can’t speak about Amahoro

Do you remember those youth camps from high school where you’d drive back in the bus, and suddenly realize that for you the whole world has changed in a weeks time, but for everybody else, this was just another week? While sharing comunion last night, I realized that this has  been one of those weeks. For some of us who attended Amahoro, the whole world has changed this week.

I guess that’s why I struggle to speak about it at this stage. My one colleague asked a few hours ago whether I’m back all inspired and with lots of ideas and made a lot of new friends? The answer is “no” to the first two. I made many dear friends, but I’m not back inspired, siked up, with many ideas of how I’m going to change the world. The change that happened this week was on a much deeper level.

I’m back, and I’m a different Afrikaner than I was a week ago. I’m back, and I’ll be going in a slightly different direction theologically than I did a week ago. The change was in identity, in the direction that I take in my personal story. It’s the kind of change where I know that most probably nothing will change today, or tomorrow, or in the next week even. But in weeks to come, I will have to process the experiences, the challenging conversations, the meaning of the new relationships, the emotions, the thoughts on my people, my history, my culture, and in a years time, maybe something of what happened this week would become part of who I am on the deepest level.

So, 2010 in Nairobi. I hope to connect with the Amahoro family and my new friends from Kenya, Nairobi.

McKnight on conversion theory and deconversion

Scot McKnight is visiting South Africa again. It’s been just over a year since last time he visited. Running a search on “McKnight” on my blog revealed some interesting things on how the emerging church scene changed since then, and Scot’s role in this from my perspective. I gave him an article David Bosch wrote about 25 years ago partly in response to the Lausanne Covenent today, and on it thanked him for the role he plays in keeping different voices together. I really respect the way in which he talks about some of the voices he differs with in private conversations.

Last night he talked with our church council on the Blue Parakeet, and I’m kicking myself for not video-taping it. Afterwards we had dinner together. Today he talked on conversion, and from tomorrow we’ll be discussing acts with him.

I’m not going to try and repeat all that was said, but this is the image that we used in the discussion:

Conversion is this process of moving from the context where you are to the “church”, the group where are are moving towards. This may be a megachurch or small group meeting somewhere that won’t ever call themselves church. Conversion is changing my story to be told through the lens of this new self understanding I now have, which is formed by this group.

Part of converting is a crisis that is addressed. For years now I’ve been getting more and more uncomfortable with the fact that we have been creating a crisis in our attempts of evangelism. This crisis have usually been by painting a vivid picture of how someone might just burn in hell, or in lighter forms convincing someone of the severity of his/her sins, and this warthful God that really cannot help but punish us, that is of course just. Scot mentioned Brian Mclaren’s moral question: How can a just God punish a lifetime of sins with eternal torment?

But what Scot was actually talking about in the end was how people deconvert from Christianity, how people become non-Christians. What is the crisis moments that lead to this?

In his book Finding Faith Loosing Faith he talks about a number of crisis that leads to deconversion. I’ll order the book sometime, and will mention them more when I get the book, but form today’s talk Scot confirmed one thing: Fundamentalism creates extremely good soil for atheism to flourish in. I’ve been saying this for a long time now. The crisis that fundamentalism creates is that an expectation on infallability of the Bible is created that cannot be met, and the text never intended to meet, when that realisation dawn on someone, it has the potential of leading to atheism.

Of course there are other reasons for deconverstion as well. But I’ll skip them for now. This is a model that I believe I’ll use again, and would love to know more about.

living in community

I haven’t blogged much on my experience of living in community this year. After getting married me and my wife moved in with 5 other people. I remember reading a blogpost, which I can’t find now, by the end of last year where someonw just wrote that “living in community is hard”… I knew I was going to write it at some point, and because of much conversations and much reading before making this move, was expecting this experience. But still, when it comes… well, it’s hard.

Tonight I know, living in community is hard. People get hurt in community. Those with whom you live see you at your weakest times, they see you when you are really really tired. Living in community mean that sometimes hard words get said. That is community. Living in community mean that putting my best foot out all the time is impossible. Living in community takes commitment. A commitment to work on relationships, especially those that are hard to work at.

But, community is also sometimes the place where healing happen. When people love even when they know who you are when you’re at your weakest, the healing happen. When people care, knowing that they won’t quickly “fix you”, then true relationship happen. 

Is it worth it? Absolutely. This is my home, these people are sometimes really hard to live with, but mostly, they make my life full. Living in community is hard, but that’s what we are called to do.

I’m submerging

Well, while the rest of you are emerging, some with “greatness” at this stage, I’ll be submerging for a while. No, although I’ve been getting more and more respect for the Anabaptist tradition over the last few months, I’m not becoming an anabaptist, I’m just submerging from online view. I’ll probably not be blogging over the next few weeks, not reading blogs either (so if anything of interest appears, you better let me know, else I’ll miss it).

I might have more of a twitter presence though, since I’ll be getting my phone back tomorrow, and going o holiday with some friends I might keep those interested posted on what we’re doing. However, I greet you for now, will be back sometime after Christmas, or maybe after New Years. Getting married on the fourth, so maybe only after the 15th or so..