“The subtleties of darkness never cease to amaze;
As the physical world creates a spiritual haze” - DC Talk (from the song "Day by Day")
A couple weeks ago the power went off in the whole town. Our house is a little ways up the side of the mountain and it’s easy to see the many lights in town at night, so when I looked out the window to see nothing but darkness over the town, for some reason it reminded me of a Frank Perretti novel (Christian fiction writer) from back in the early 1990’s in which he tells a story about demons and angels that are all around us in the spiritual world. Even though we don’t see or feel them, it does not mean they are not real. I guess looking out over town in total darkness changed my lens to be more attuned to the things that one cannot see with the eyes.
Living on this continent has made me realize just how much the West uses our belief in sciences to explain everything, whereas here in Africa the belief in the spiritual realm explains why many things happen.
For example, a few months ago driving out on a village dirt road with a full pick up truck, we came to a wooden bridge that looked a little worse for wear. The physics and math calculations start going through my head as we approach the bridge - how much does this truck weigh? And with the load we’re carrying? Can the bridge support the weight? How long is the bridge relative to the length of the truck - can I get the front axle across before the back axle gets on? Whether we make it across successfully or not to me, is simply a question of science. For my Malawian passengers (who travel on various types of unsafe roads on a daily basis) the questions going through their mind might be somewhat different. It can be as simple as - “God will allow me to get safely over this bridge, or He won’t.”
Another example was at a primary school we were working at for the Water and Sanitation project. My staff arrived one Monday morning to see a witch doctor being watched by a crowd of people performing some kind of ceremony. As it turned out, there was some sort of public gathering on the weekend and a middle-aged woman dropped dead in the middle of this gathering two days before. She had no known health issues that might cause a sudden death, so people naturally assumed it was a curse or spell put on her (there is a wide spread belief in, and fear of, witch craft - even among Christians - which seems to keep people in a sort of bondage). The witch doctor was called in to “cleanse” the spot where she died to make sure no spirits from the curse on that woman would be able to stick around. When I heard about the woman dying on the spot, I again first thought about the scientific (medical) explanations and figured it was a heart attack or aneurism or something of the sort.
As I might be critical of this African culture for believing such (seemingly) far fetched ideas about the spiritual realm to explain everything, I can probably be just as critical of myself and my own Western culture of ignoring the spiritual realm. Science has taught us a lot and is very useful in helping us understand the world God put us in. However, we can become so hung up on relying on our own finite knowledge that we forget about the unseen and unexplainable world, forget the God who is Infinite.
I’m not saying there is a spirit hiding behind every tree and bush about to jump out (read C.S. Lewis’ book “The Screwtape Letters” to get a more seasoned perspective on that issue), nor that there is necessarily some spirit back in the shadows behind every good or bad thing that happens, but just that we in Western culture especially - in a culture of see and hear, touch and feel - can too easily forget about the unseen spiritual realm. We as Christians can even become lazy about it.
A friend of mine has a teenage niece that a number of months ago, out of the blue, went into cardiac arrest. The doctors and nurses that tried to revive her had come out of the ICU room to tell her family and friends waiting that there wasn’t much hope. After a few minutes (and a lot of prayer) the now shocked doctors came out again and said she started breathing on her own. That was the first sign in a string of medically unexplainable (but spiritually explainable) events which ended up in her niece having fully recovered.
Much like being submersed in this spiritually-aware (whether good or bad) Malawian culture, the story of my friend’s niece is another good reminder that there is a whole lot more to this world than what our physical senses lead our minds and hearts to think. (Eph. 6:12).
