It amazes me
I was helping my 80 year old neighbor with her rummage sale last weekend. She was telling me about some woman who went on a mission to New Zealand. Anyway my neighbor was under the impression that New Zealand was some backward, primitive place in need of our cast-offs. It always amazes me how arrogant Americans are about their status in the world and how little they know of the rest of the world. Whenever anyone says "this is the best country in the world" I always say, "I don't know, I haven't lived in any others" and they look at me like I should be hung as a traitor.
As far as missionaries go, I'm sure they are as welcome wherever they go as the Jehovah Witness and Mormon missionaries are to me.
As far as missionaries go, I'm sure they are as welcome wherever they go as the Jehovah Witness and Mormon missionaries are to me.
posted by Flimsy Sanity @ 3:36 AM
3 Comments:
At 11:13 AM,
R J Adams said…
Reading your post reminded me of a book by by Pali Jae Lee and Willis Koko, "Tales from the Night Rainbow" in which they descibe how the Hawaiians walked a path of love and harmony for centuries, until their islands were invaded and the Christian missionaries arrived. The old Hawaiians, who lived according to the Huna wisdom, had no word for 'sin', believing mistakes were just part of a learning process, lifetime after lifetime. The narrative goes: "There was a great difference between the Hawaiian beliefs and the beliefs of the foreign people who came to teach the Bible. They believed there was no river, no flow to life. It was a once or never trip. They meant well. They tried hard. They spoke love, they taught love, but they didn't know love. They taught 'Thou shalt not' - and they were angry with us all the time for having fun and for the laughter and joy in our lives. They were not allowed joy. Salvation came to them through misery.....I am sure their God loved them for all the misery they endured."
I believe the Maoris of New Zealand suffered a similar problem. Now, it is the turn of Americans!
At 12:39 PM,
Shephard said…
... I've studied Huna and some of the Hawaiian history, and had heard about that also. A real shame.
I've always thought of missionaries more like those annoying mail solicitations for refinancing mortgages... expand the pockets of the flock.
At 11:47 PM,
Anonymous said…
Most Americans, I fear, still believe if they step off our shore, they drop from the edge of the earth into the waiting jaws of a sea monster. The fact that it is WE who are "new civilization" compared to many others always seems to come as a surprise to them...
My European friends smilingly refer to us as "callow youth" and hope we'll outgrow our awkwardness and arrogance. Personally, I am less and less sanguine about that possibility.
And, of course, I consider proselytizing the height of arrogance, whether it takes the form of believers to non-believers, Christians to non-Christians, or one flavor of Christianity to another. Who in the world, once he has made his independent arrangements with his God or non-God and system of beliefs, is so confident of them that he will preach them to others?
We're sometimes a silly lot. Still, it sounds as though your neighbor was acting from good intentions...I suppose that has to count for something besides another length in that pavement to hell, to which I've contributed a good bit myself.
Lots of thinking one can do about that very brief vignette of yours, flimsy.
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