How Do the baSotho Fit In?

So, David Modupi and I got into a discussion here in rainy Johannesburg last night about eating pork. He mentioned that he had once served some pork lungs to friends who belonged to a pentecostal church that didn't believe in eating pork, telling them that they were sheep's lungs. After eating, they went to a meeting at that church, and all of them became very dizzy and ill and had to leave the service. I said it sounded to me like there was something going on in that church connected with pork and witchcraft, but he assured me that it's all about "what you believe".

Well, there's some truth to the idea that belief is powerful, but also i had to object to the idea that the bible is talking about "the power of belief" in that sense. David pointed out that Jesus said if you have faith you can move mountains, but i countered that no, Jesus said if you have faith you can move this mountain— but that the mountain in question is mount zion (see the context at Mt 21.21, Mk 11.23; but see also Mt 17.20, which requires further discussion). "This mountain", which Jesus has just left and which they're looking at from the Mount of Olives, which is the place of eschatological judgment, means the whole corrupt religious system of the chief priests, the scribes, the herodians, and the pharisees, that is being brought to an end.

David then said, doesn't the Bible say we must not eat pork? (I was surprised that he was able to go directly to the passage in Deuteronomy where it talks about this.) He asserted that "all people" have the same rules as in Deuteronomy— he read the list of unclean animals, and said nobody eats those. I pointed out of course that most peoples do in fact eat pork and that he himself has eaten rabbit. So then he said, still, there are traditional religious strictures in most african tribes about eating pork (that's actually not true as far as i'm aware, but it might be more or less true here in SA), so this law has to mean everybody. Well, i could see he was drowning, so i waved back. And then he told me that especially among practitioners of the Sangoma religion, they don't eat pork— it has something to do with their charms and spells. That's interesing; Sangoma is big around here, and some african pentecostal churches are rather syncretist, so this suggests that I may be right in my assessment of what happened to him and his friends at that church. He said that anyway, witchcraft works for those who practice it because they believe in it.

Well, we need to look at what "faith" is, in the Bible. It's not a power to work miracles, but an assent to what God is doing in the world. So I had to break the news to him, that OT law was not written for us but only for the Jews. This blew his mind, especially as he had never heard of the Torah and had no idea about its purpose or the purpose of those laws. (David, by the way, has been through our previous catachetical seminary program here, which i think we may safely surmise was not all that demanding.) Anyway, I suppose like many christians, especially here in Africa, the bible is to be taken literally and every word of it applies directly— except the parts you don't like, of course— but it's a kind of rule book, and not in any way a specific story with its own specific shape and intent, its own characters (who are not necessarily you), and so forth. No, the rules are meant for YOU, not for the people in the story; and whatever stories there are, are for your "edification".

So I pointed out to him that Genesis 1-11 basically describes the problem of "the wound that is man", as one of our hymns strikingly expresses it, and that Genesis 12 through Revelation 22 then gives God's answer to the problem. And God's answer to the problem of man is not a special set of rules we have to keep, like not eating pork, but a master plan, and that the Bible is the story of what God is doing in the world to implement his plan: God chose Abraham because he wanted to restore the blessing he originally gave to Adam, which Adam lost. That's what "faith", in the bible, is all about— not the power to work miracles, but to trust God and walk with him as he works through the execution of his plan. Abraham was the beach head, and Moses and the Jews and Sinai and the Law came later in the story— that God gave the Law to the Jews "alone among all the nations" so that he could lead and train them as his "special people", in order that eventually he might bring forth from them the Anointed One who was finally going to fulfill the promise he had given to Abraham, to restore the blessing of Adam to "all the nations": "In your seed shall all nations will be blessed".

I then showed him that the entire NT was about how the blessing of Abraham had in fact finally been poured out on the gentiles (nations) through Christ. I pointed to the big struggle in Acts that began with the conversion of Cornelius and culminated in the apostolic council in Jerusalem, with its decision not to bind the gentiles to the Torah; I showed how, especially in Galatians and Romans, but also in Mark etc, that salvation in Jesus the Messiah did not entail having to get circumcised, keep Torah, or become Jews; and so forth.

(It would be useful to have Norbert Lohfink's book Israel and the Nations handy, especially when i start telling this story to my seminary students, to show that this was already the point of view of the prophets and the psalms— that the nations would come to Zion, but not as Jews; they would bring tribute to the God of Israel, but in their own right.)

In other words, we can eat pork, no problem— but more importantly, we need to step up to a new and better understanding of what the bible is all about.

Well, that's a little hard to swallow. David, of course, is extremely bright and was certainly getting what I was saying, but it was definitely blowing his mind. Because if what i am saying is right— well, there are many churches here, including my own (which is his as well), but nobody is actually telling the actual story in the actual bible. He has never, ever, heard this before. (Neither, of course, had the parish where i preached yesterday morning about Mark 1.1). So he will need to process the implications over time, and I will certainly have to work hard on filling in the story. But he is already asking how, if what i say is true, the baSotho (his tribe) fit in, if the Old Testament is not meant for everyone.

And that's the right question.

I just hope I can pull this off.

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