Confessions of a Xenophobic Pastor

South Africa’s past is synonymous with Apartheid. However, a new tag may soon overtake the apartheid tag – Xenophobia, crudely defined as discrimination against foreigners.

My wife traveled to one of the African countries earlier this year (no, it was not Zimbabwe – not that I don’t like Zimbabwe. I love it, and was there for a week recently myself). Her host, who was driving her to the airport was stopped by a traffic policeman. The policeman spoke to the driver in a local language she could not understand. The policeman asked the driver where he was going. He mentioned that he was taking his South African passenger to the airport for a flight home. On hearing that she was South African, he remarked: “Oh, she is South African? Let her come out so that I can show her what Xenophobia is.” (Of course he was joking. He immediately released them so that she did not miss her flight.)

“Are you xenophobic?” I often ask my friends and acquaintances. Of course, their responses are not different to when you ask somebody: “Are you racist?” The answer is often: “Me? No. No way! I like Zimbabweans/Mozambicans/Blacks/etc.”

People have come up with all kinds of reasons why xenophobic attacks took place in South Africa recently. The most common reason given is that it is because of poor service delivery. Of course the government did not buy this explanation. They commissioned their own fact-finding team into the trouble spots to establish the causes of these attacks. Their conclusion was that this was a work of criminals and a “third force”, whoever that is.

As a South African, I had to engage with the issue as well. “Am I xenophobic?” I decided to unpack the whole concept, and not simply tell myself that I am not xenophobic. As usual, my starting point when it comes to the condition of our society and human behaviour in general, is to begin in the Christian Holy Bible. Although I am a Psychology graduate, I have since found that psychology; sociology; anthropology and other related social sciences have a big weakness in their theoretical make up.

My first quest was to understand why humans fight each other in the first place. I found out that James, a Jewish believer from the first century, gave an answer about the causes of fights and wars almost 2000 years ago:

“²What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? ² You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.” (James 4:1-2 NLT)

Of course this was not James’ wisdom. It was inspiration from the Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Christian Holy Scriptures are inspired by God: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.” (2 Tim. 3:16 NLT)

The root cause of human conflict is resources/opportunities. Those who live in war-torn DRC, or in Angola during the 1980s, or in Sudan, Palestine, Iraq or any other conflict-ridden country, will tell you that their oil, diamonds or gold has turned out to be their curse instead of a blessing. As you can see, those who said xenophobia was due to poor service delivery were partly correct. People were fighting over limited houses and jobs. The government was not completely wrong either. As it turned out, in most of these xenophobic attacks people looted the shacks of foreigners for their possessions, and even their small shops.

One social networker on Twitter lamented the problem on Twitter: “…the brutality of an African on another baffles me. Colonialists and slave traders I can understand. But our own kind?”

Once again, I find that the Christian Holy Scriptures are the best place to start. In the Genesis creation account, we read that God created creatures according to their own kind. However, there was another creature he created according to its own kind. This creature was called human. Human is translated from the Hebrew word adam, the name of the first human. Of all the creatures, God created humans one of a kind. He only created a male, and created the female out of the male. Therefore, there is no difference between male and female humans, except their genitalia. God even said the male and female humans will marry and become one, because they were originally one of a kind (but this is a topic for another day).

When we don’t see ourselves as humans, of one kind, we start inventing our own identities. When we see foreigners as of another kind, and not our own kind, we start discriminating against them, because they are not one of us. For example, I used to see myself as a Muvenda, but I don’t see myself that way anymore (if you are Muvenda, please read to the end before you stone me).

Humans are social creatures. They don’t like getting lost in the sea of other billions of humans. Therefore, they create new identities. Several hundred years ago, some humans developed a slang ( slang is jargon/words used by a group of humans to understand each other). This slang is now called Tshivenda language. Those that spoke and understood this slang called Tshivenda started calling themselves Vhavenda. All other language groups came about this way since the time of Babel (Genesis 11).

You see, Tshivenda and Vhavenda did not exist a thousand years ago. Neither did the English, the Afrikaners, the Zulus, the Basothos, and many other nationalities. It is the same with cultures. They are social inventions by humans, driven by location, time and circumstance.

When humans identify themselves by their language, culture or their GPS location on the earth, they misrepresent their own identity. Three years ago, I met one of Africa’s greatest minds in Oxford, England. His name is Eddie Obeng. By original location of his parents, he is originally from Ghana. As we were having tea, somebody asked him a question: “So, Eddie, where are you from?”

Eddie responded in a way that stayed with me since then. He said: “Do you mean where am I from this morning, last week, last year, ten years ago, thirty years ago, hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, or six thousand years ago?” Of course Eddie knew what the person who asked the question meant. He was just making a point. If he said he was from London, he did not know what we thought of Londoners. If he said he was from Africa, or Ghana, or Kumasi, or that he is Ashanti, he did not know what our attitudes are to those identities. We would put him in a box, and he did not like that.

If I call myself a Muvenda, I define my origins as being less than a thousand years old. If I define myself as a South African, my origins are less than five hundred years old. If I define myself as a Guatenger (somebody from the Gauteng province of South Africa), I define my origins as less than ten years old. As you can see, my identity is what I see my origins to be.

As a converted xenophobic pastor, I had to redefine my origins. Now I see myself as a human, a descendant of Adam, the first human. I am not a Muvenda, but you may call me that if calling me human leaves you feeling short-changed.

When God started the Christian church two thousand years ago (church is simply a group of Christian believers), he started by breaking down the main human symbol of identity in human society, namely, language, because he wanted the church to be comprised of humans, and not Jews, not Greeks, not Romans, not males, not females, nor rich, nor the poor from the other side of the tracks. This is what happened on the Day of Pentecost, the day the church started in its current form.

^“4 And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability… ⁶ When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers. ⁷ They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, ⁸ and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! ⁹ Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!”(Acts 2: 4-11 NLT)

Paul having gotten the point of what the church was, changed his view of believers and people in general. He made this point repeatedly in his writings:

^“26 For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus... ²⁸ There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:26,28 NLT, see also Rom. 3:9; 3:30; 10:12; 1 Cor. 10:32; 12:13; Col. 3:11).

Jesus became a human, and died for humans, so that humans can become humans again, as God created them to be. He removed the wall that divided humans, namely, language, culture, location, gender and social status. “¹⁴ For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.” (Eph. 2:14 NLT)

So, are you xenophobic? It is a matter of how you see or define yourself, or what your assumed identity is. If you are anything other than human, you will be surprised at what humans may become when an opportunity arises. Ask the Rwandans. Ask the South Africans. Ask the Germans. Ask the Americans and British slave owners. Ask the Zimbabweans.

You see, when there is only one peanut left, and somebody must have it, it most often will be Takalani Musekwa, and not Bizza Musekwa. Why? Because for some strange reason, Takalani has a right to the peanut, and not his brother.

Thank God he has saved me from the foolishness of my old identity. Our South African Constitution Fathers, had the foresight to state in the preamble of the South African Constitution: “We, the people of South Africa, Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.” You have heard my confession. Are you xenophobic?

The Ascension and You

Many South Africans will remember Ascension Day was a holiday in South Africa before 1994. It was always on a Thursday, and it was one of the annual long weekends. After 1994 the government started reviewing holidays, and Christian holidays came under review. Ascension Day was one of them. At that time, when Ascension Day was being abolished, I don’t remember many Christians raising any objection. If it was Christmas or Good Friday, there will probably have been a lot of noise. Looking back, I think it is sad that Christians did not deem Ascension Day important enough to defend. I conducted a simple survey on Facebook to check how many people know when Ascension Day was this year. Sadly, I found that almost half professing Christians did not know.

Ascension was such a central belief of Christians that it was included in most of the Christian Creeds of the early church. I don’t know if you know what the Creeds are. A Creed is a statement of beliefs. In the early days of the church, before the New Testament was canonized, the Creeds helped as a unifying and doctrinal grounding of Christians. Believers would recite the Creed before baptism, and later during church services as some still do today.

For example, we have what is called the Apostles’ Creed. It was not developed by the apostles, but is believed to have summarized what the apostles believed in. Here is what the Apostles Creed says:

“I believe in God the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit; born of the virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven; and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.”

In the early church they would recite this when they met. In the Reformed church which I used to attend, we used to recite the creed. At that time I had no clue why we recited that, but today I realize why this is crucial for believers. They have helped the church to preserve doctrinal soundness throughout the history of the church. Some of these creeds were developed after long discussions and debates at Church conferences like the one at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, and revised in AD 381. Others include Chalcedonian Creed (AD 451), and the Athanasian Creed . Almost all of these creeds have one commonality: they affirm the belief in the birth, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus Christ. For the believers in that age, the belief in the ascension was as important as the belief in the birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

For most Christians today it is easier to understand why the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus are important. But why does the ascension matter to us today as something we believe in. The ascension event is recorded in Acts 1:9-11 ^“After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”

During the 40 days after his resurrection, Jesus used to appear and disappear to his followers. But on this particular day, he did not just disappear. He was lifted up into the clouds before their very eyes.

But why was it important that Jesus ascended in this way, and not simply disappeared like he did the previous 40 days. If he did not leave this way, there would be stories today about where he is. Some would be saying we saw him here or there. Jesus himself emphasized this point of knowing where he will be and how he will come back. “So if someone tells you, ‘Look, the Messiah is out in the desert,’ don’t bother to go and look. Or, ‘Look, he is hiding here,’ don’t believe it! ²⁷ For as the lightning flashes in the east and shines to the west, so it will be when the Son of Man comes.”(Matt. 24:26-27).

So, Jesus ascended visibly because he would return visibly. In other words, when Jesus returns, no human on earth will not be aware. All humans will be aware. Even those that are asleep will wake up. In fact, believers who are dead will also wake up and join him in the descent.

The passage in Acts also says he was surrounded by clouds as he ascended. Why was that? In Hebrews the believers who had died in faith are referred to as a “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1). The cloud represented all the believers, because he was ascending with them. Jesus was our representative human. When he was born, we were born in and with him, when he lived, we lived, died, were buried, resurrected and ascended, in and with him. Paul puts it this way, “Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? ⁴ For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives” (Rom. 6:3-4)

Concerning the ascension, Paul tells us, “For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:6). “For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:3). So if it is true that we have ascended with Jesus, and are now seated with him at the right hand of God, we will descend with him when he returns. Those who have died in the faith, and those that are in the faith and alive, will together be caught up in the clouds to meet Jesus, and the world will see Jesus descend with all the believers with him. By then they will be transformed into the same body he ascended with, and will share in his glory.

But what are the practical implications of the ascension for Christian believers today? I believe it is found in the passage in Acts 1, “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven?” You see, believers need to have a posture towards heaven where they are seated with Christ at the right hand of God. John says that if we have this belief that we are seated with Christ at the right hand of God in heaven, and have the expectation that he is coming back in glory, we will purify ourselves. “Christ is pure, and all who have this hope in Christ keep themselves pure like Christ.”(1 Jn. 3:3) On the same thought, Paul puts it this way, “aim at what is in heaven, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Think only about the things in heaven, not the things on earth.” (Col. 3:1-2) The ascension reminds us of the return because “he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go” (Acts 1:11). The hope of the resurrection and the return of Christ makes believers to live like kingdom citizens.

It is this belief which spurred the Apostles to forsake everything and pursue the kingdom of God at great cost. It is this belief as captured in the Apostles’ Creed that says I believe in Jesus who “ascended into heaven; and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty”. The same belief made Paul write the following to the Philippians with TEARS in his eyes:

“ Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control. (Phil. 3:17-21)

Christians are like the woman who was engaged to be married when war broke out. Her fiancé was sent to war. Before he left he promised her that he will come back, and when he comes back she must be ready to get married to him. After he had left she got the wedding dress done to her size. Since then she started watching her weight to make sure that when her man returns she will be able to fit into her dress. She stopped flirting with other men. Everybody knew she was waiting for her man. Her whole life reflected that. Each month she will go into her bedroom and fit the dress to make sure she has not gained weight. One day as she was busy fitting her dress, there was a knock on the door. She went to check who it was still wearing the dress. As she opened the door, there he was! Her man was back! He could not believe his eyes. Her bride was ready. With tears in his eyes, he said to her, “When I said you must be ready to marry me when I return, I had no idea you will be this ready…”

Like this woman, Christians also await their bridegroom, and as they wait, they live like those who wait, those with hope. The bridegroom says to us: “Look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds.” (Rev. 22:12). I don’t know whether when the people in the world look at you they can say, “Yes, this man, this woman, is waiting for her LORD”. We live like people with hope for something.

May the Ascension be a perpetual reminder for you that that this Jesus who ascended into heaven “will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go”. And may that knowledge transform you and how you live your life! AMEN.