On crushing the serpent

As we move into the Easter weekend, we move into the spiritual battle that peaked on Good Friday but still continues.  As a mission we sense a call to pray specifically against some of the cultural forces that oppress people here in Bundibugyo.  I will give one example of corruption, since it occurred this week:

One of my former students went to obtain a driving permit so that he could legally use a mission motorcycle to help us with nutrition outreaches, and after many offices, fees, lines, bank transfers, and a day of effort he landed in an office in which he was issued yet more forms and told that the cost for the approval of these forms would be 50,000/= (about $30, a week’s wages for a mid-level professional).  He asked if he would receive a receipt for this, upon which the person behind the desk laughed at this absurdity and began to explain the way the world works to this young man whom he no doubt perceived as hopelessly naive.  My student then clarified that this money would essentially be a bribe, and gave the form back, refusing to participate.  In the end he was only able to get a provisional learning permit without paying the bribe, but I have to say his indignation over the entire affair gives me a glimmer of hope that the rising generation of CSB students will not accept business-as-usual when it comes to blatant corruption.  If only more people would take such a stand!

Culturally acceptable patterns of oppression can be vague and nebulous, hard to recognize, easy to justify away.  But God knows we are concrete and visual creatures, when He wants to present truth He often works through a story or a physical demonstration (compare the amount of the Bible devoted to history and parable rather than theological treatise, or notice the way prophets like Jeremiah used props like plumb lines, or consider the visceral nature of the passover meal and communion).  Good Friday commemorates the ultimate victory of Good over Evil in the paradox of the death of Jesus.  In Genesis this is foretold as the crushing of the serpent’s head while the promised One’s heel is bruised.  

This visual image of the evil one as a snake is very vivid to me today, because we had a snake in our house last night.  Everyone but me was in bed.  I had been at my desk and walked out into our sitting/dining room (the main area of our house) to turn off the lights.  As I walked in, a dark slithering form inched across the rug, right in the middle of the four chairs where our kids had been reading books before bed.  It was not so large, about 3 feet long and fairly slender, and not so fast due to the coolness of the night.  I called Scott and Luke to come with weapons, and Scott took the lead pipe we keep under our mattress and killed it with a few solid blows.  It released a putrid stench, and it’s blood smeared our floor.  We’ve had a few very small (juvenile) snakes in the house a long time ago, and cobras in the yard, but the sight of this fully grown snake penetrating the safety of home, well, it was unsettling, as if evil incarnate had come to fight back.

But this morning I sensed a good lesson in this image.  The snake was no match for Scott.  Yes, people suffer and die from snake bites, but invariably those occur when the person comes upon the snake in the bush of an overgrown garden, or when the snake slips into a home seeking warmth at night and goes unnoticed.  Unseen snakes are dangerous.  But in one on one open combat, a human can prevail.  The Evil One tries to slip unnoticed, causing harm by stealth, but will be defeated when seen and recognized.  

Defeated, but the bruising will also take a toll.  Please join us in prayer this weekend.  I will try to post some prayer guides by tomorrow.  If we could only crush corruption, apathy, infidelity, passive-aggressiveness, tribalism, fear, defilement of school girls, and other insidious evils with a lead pipe!  Instead we must pray and persevere, we must bandage our bruised heels and march on.