The Power of God in Liberia / Top 10 Books of 2021 | SL 3.3 (December 2021)
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The Power of God in Liberia
My class in Liberia at the end of the last day, from left to right: Christian, Richard, young Morris, old Morris, Morlai, Shadrach, and Clarence.
One of the strange pleasures of teaching pastors for the global church is that I travel to places and see slices of human life that most of us never have the opportunity to see. In recent years Liberia has been made infamous by the Ebola epidemic and a long series of brutal civil wars. The scars and ethnic tensions of the civil war remain and massive economic challenges lay before them, but Liberians are proud of their national identity and hopeful for the trajectory of their country.
When I first met him, Dyonah Thomas was passing through the Training Leaders International offices in Minneapolis on his way to give a presentation at Columbia University in New York on behalf of his work with The Carter Center. At the time he was also working with the UN overseeing community mental health aspects of the Ebola response. But for Dyonah there was a deeper passion—bringing theological education to the pastors of Liberia and all of English-speaking West Africa. There was only one seminary in Liberia at the time. Its tuition was prohibitive for many working pastors and the theological perspective of the school was questionable.
A view of a Liberian “neighborhood”
So Dyonah eventually walked away from his prestigious jobs with The Carter Center and the UN and started offering non-formal training in partnership with Training Leaders International. Over 100 pastors attended, making it our largest training site anywhere in the world. The need was there. The teaching took place in thatched buildings pitched over concrete floors on a recently cleared plot of land.
The transformation of that plot of jungled land where the school now stands is a testament to God’s power and the hope of theological training. In order to accomplish his dream, Dyonah needed a location for training. He eventually discovered a suitable plot in a residential community on the outskirts of greater Monrovia. The land was corporately owned by the community and they were willing to sell for a reasonable price, because the plot was demon possessed.
This tangled lot was perhaps two acres, and on it there were three large trees. These trees were considered sacred—the focal point of a series of animistic, coming-of-age ceremonies for young women. During the ceremonies female shaman or witch doctors practiced rituals including female genital mutilation that bound the young women of the community to spirits that were believed to dwell in these three trees. The trees were covered in splattered blood from the rituals and the spirits were believed to be connected to the women through the trees that bore their blood. Part of the reason that the community was willing to sell Dyonah the land for a song was because they believed it was a raw deal for him. He couldn’t use the land for anything because the power of the spiritual forces there was too strong. If he were to try to clear the land to build, the women who were spiritually linked to these trees would begin to die and all manner of misfortune would befall the project. Dyonah bought the land.
Dyonah Thomas in front of the Grace Life well. The well is on the spot where one of the sacred trees previously stood.
No one will die, he proclaimed. The confidence of this assertion was laughable to the community—particularly to the spiritual matriarchs who conducted the rituals. The people from the community blew their money on a huge party. But Dyonah brought his church to the site of their new home and they prayed. They prayed against the spiritual powers in the name of Jesus Christ and they prayed for the work that God would accomplish on that land. Then they cut down the trees and began building. Days passed. None of the women in the community became sick. No one died. And the building continued apace, without disaster. They constructed a series of slabs and thatched huts that would serve as temporary church buildings and classrooms and eventually provide a home for a primary school. After this they laid the foundation for the seminary.
The seminary building is under construction but in full use.
From a Western, modernist perspective it might not be surprising that no one died and the building projects moved forward, but for the Liberians in that community it was a demonstration of undeniable spiritual power. Dyonah, his church, and their God had triumphed over the spiritual powers that dwelled in those trees and bound those women. It was a clear sign that Dyonah’s God was more powerful than the traditional gods. As a result, many of the very shaman and witch doctors who used to conduct those rituals repented and turned to Christ. Today some of these women worship in Dyonah’s church on the very spot where they used to conduct their rituals.
Today there is a day-school for children, there’s a church (which Dyonah pastors), and there’s a well of water that serves the whole community. A modern seminary building with three large classrooms, offices, dorms, kitchen and, of course, a library and bookstore is entering the final stage of construction. The transformation is phenomenal and God has accomplished it against economic odds and in the face of spiritual powers of darkness.
Students debating points of exegesis and church practice on the break
Last month I had the privilege of teaching Old Testament Exegesis to a group of seven men who are pastoring churches throughout Liberia and Sierra Leone. These students are in the first year of their Masters of Divinity degree at Grace Life Seminary. Over the course of the week we focused on the book of Proverbs as a way of thinking about how to do faithful theological interpretation of Scripture.
These guys were serious students, a pleasure for any teacher. Throughout the week they showed quick minds and sincere hearts in engaging the material. I got to know one student, Shadrach, a bit better than the others. He recently left a promising career working in administration for a senior member of the Liberian government in order to pastor the church his late father had been leading. On Sunday, I preached at Shadrach’s church and spent a long lunch learning about some of the challenges he is facing in life and ministry. These challenges are significant and are not mine to share here, but Shadrach is a talented young leader with massive potential. My prayer for him is that his theological training instills humility in him and that he is able to shape his pastoral work and preaching more and more to God’s word in an authentically Liberian way.
Preaching on Psalm 1 at Shadrach’s church
For me as a teacher, this is the crucial step. I can teach about the Bible, I can model faithful practices in interpretation, I can share openly about my experience and my context, but I am limited in my understanding of their context. Student’s like Shadrach who are bright and motivated enough to grasp the lessons from class and appropriate them to their context give me great joy. Pray that the Spirit would work in the lives of these students so that the power of God would be more and more visible in Liberia.
With Shadrach after the service
You are Training Pastors to be Faithful to Scripture & Strengthening the Global Church
- Glad to be home after a jam-packed but very successful three weeks of teaching and conferencing in Africa and America. I really enjoyed my time with students at both Grace Life Seminary (Monrovia) and William Tennent School of Theology (Colorado). My paper was well-received at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, I got traction on a few projects, and I made good connections with several other scholars.
- My essay about discipleship methods in Haiti was published on the Plough website a few weeks back, you can read it here: “Read Your Bible Everyday? How Haitian Christians helped me rethink a mantra.”
- In the short term, there is one major goal on my list: finish the PhD! This month I’m working on revising and re-writing the introduction. Pray with me towards a late-Spring submission. (Feels scary to type it out loud.)
Thank you. Your prayers and support empower everything we do.
My favorite books I read in 2021
Top Ten Books in 2021
Just in time for all your Christmas shopping, here’s my top 10 books from 2021. Of everything that I read through the year, these books left the strongest impression and were the most meaningful to me. They are listed in the order that I read them, rather than from best to least best or anything like that.
1. The Dutch House by Ann Pattchett
This book restored my faith in novels and grabbed me like few things have in recent years. It traces the lives of siblings, Maeve and Danny, who grow up in a gorgeous but austere, historic home. While it is a paradise of sorts, their parents are largely absent and Maeve and Danny become responsible for one another. I found it to be meaningful and resonant as these children find their way into adulthood, wrestle with the inexplicable decisions of their parents that shape their lives forever, and end up making some of the same mistakes. Although it is less “quirky,” the mood of this rich novel landed close to Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. Nostalgic, poignant, sincere. (Also, I’m not much of an audio book person, but the audio book is read by Tom Hanks, and I have it on good authority that he nails it.)
2. Piranesi by Susanna Clark
Piranesi is a modern myth with deep tendrils into our past. The story takes place in a great House—an alternate reality that is part labyrinth, part museum, part austere landscape. The lower levels of the House merge with the ocean and it floods with the tides and the storms. Piranesi is the lone character for most of the book, narrating his experience within the House as he tries to piece together a narrative from his own meticulously kept journals. He doesn’t quite know how long he has been there. His memory has slipped away from him and in its place he has constructed his own personality as best he can. But Piranesi is a scientist. He’s meticulous in record-keeping and in observation and he is intent on serving the House and on figuring out who he is and how he got there. Reading Piranesi is like being inside a Greek myth that merges with the modern world. Susanna Clark is a master of ambiance and mystery. The book is a real page-turner while being metaphysical, if not down-right theological at the same time. I class this book with C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, and Clark is clearly indebted to him. If you read, look for allusions to Lewis’s work.
3. How We Change (And 10 Reasons Why We Don’t) by Ross Ellenhorn
I first heard about this book through a helpful interview with the author on the excellent podcast, “The Art of Manliness.” Ellenhorn’s book comes from decades of research and clinical experience working with various kinds of people stuck in patterns of behavior that they want to change, including serious addictions. In How We Change, Ellenhorn graciously maps out the processes involved in turning over a new leaf. He shows that change is never about will power vs. problem, but involves a network of factors working against you or shoring you up. This more holistic view helps us to be realistic about processes of change and also—most importantly—helps us to be gentle with ourselves. Perhaps the central insight is that we have good reasons for not changing and until we acknowledge those reasons and have some grace with ourselves we will struggle to do differently. Ellenhorn’s approach applies equally well to dieting as to alcohol addiction. Whether you want to start going to bed a bit earlier, being less anxious, being more productive, or give up a long-standing overpowering addiction, there’s good help here. The book is a bit long and occasionally feels circular. Not all the chapters came at me with as many revelations as others. But, How We Change came to me at a moment when I was processing a number of things in my life. More than any other non-fiction book I’ve read this year, I feel it has brought lasting change. I often recall the ideas that Ellenhorn lays out in his book, and I think they have truly helped me to walk a more honest path in my own mind before God. And that helps you to change and to be more present and loving to others.
4. Educated by Tara Westover
Holy smokes. Educated has certainly made the rounds the last year or two, being on major book club reading lists and the like, and it deserves it. This blazing memoir is the story of how Tara Westover went from an uber-fundamentalist Morman home in rural southern-Idaho where her parents did not educate her to earn her PhD in intellectual history at Cambridge in her 20s. Its not just that her parents were fundamentalists, but that there were severe mental health issues as well. They refused to educate their children at all, they refused to participate in modern medicine in any way shape or form, and they routinely put their children in life-threatening situations for no real reason. But when you’re a kid, you don’t know anything and they are your parents and you trust them. (I cannot even communicate the craziness of some of these stories—you must read the book!) In her late teens, Westover started to realize she had to get out. Her older bother had managed to secretly teach himself high-school and study for the ACT so he could go to college and he encouraged her to do the same. With almost everything in her life working against her she studied until she got a high enough score that she could convince Brigham Young University she was “home schooled” and gain admittance. Meghan read it and then I read it—we both burned through it in about two days. It’s the kind of book where you repeatedly shout “What!?” and “Are you joking me right now!?” and things of that ilk. It is a roaring page turner, and it’s beautifully written. But the thing that brings it all together is Westover’s sincere struggling with an incredibly difficult personal history. She manages to write honestly about the horrific things her parents did while still managing to honor them as her parents, even when she ultimately has to walk away from them in order to maintain her own health and sanity. A tour-de-force of courage. (Disclaimer: There really are a lot of horrific stories in the book regarding mental health, physical danger/abuse, and the like, so this won’t be for all readers.)
5. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark
Imagine if Charles Dickens and Jane Austen had a baby and that baby wrote a massive fantasy novel. After being blown away by Piranesi, I decided to pick up Susanna Clark’s massive breakout novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It is set during a fictional revamping of the Napoleonic Wars, when magic had vanished from England for close on 300 years. A group of “theoretical” magicians, i.e., scholars who study magic but do no practice it, meets regularly in York. All is well until Mr. Norrell—a “practical” magician—storms onto the scene to revive English magic. Together with his dynamic understudy, Jonathan Strange, they wage war against Napoleon, against the inhabitants of Faerie, against the anti-magic establishment, and against each other. Clark writes in an absorbing and perfectly tuned pastiche of the great 19th-century British novels (she really is tacking off Dickens and Austen). The book revels unapologetically in its massive length and this is indeed a huge part of its appeal. Clark indulges in scenes and develops large subplots and a web of vivid characters. It is a 800-page-turner (with footnotes!). But there is so much going on here. In my opinion, the book is a sort of allegorical commentary on the state of modern academics, again with strong metaphysical components. Will you be the practitioner who changes the world (and looses themselves in the process)? Or will you be the cautious researcher who resists change (and therefore preserves a certain amount of internal integrity)? And to what extent do these alternative approaches actually depend on one another?
6. Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer by C. S. Lewis
I reread Letters to Malcolm this year and it deeply resonated with me. The book is an extended reflection on prayer written as a one-sided series of letters between friends on the topic. This is basically a “fictionalized” example of a practice of correspondence that Lewis regularly engaged in during his life. Lewis “gets” me. I found over and over again that Lewis was addressing the feelings and challenges I face in prayer in a way that made sense to me. Earlier this year I shared some of my favorite passages. Although its hard to sum it up or boil it down, the heart of the book rests in his appropriation of Martin Buber’s famous I-Thou formulation. Prayer is a relationship in which we seek to bring our true selves before the real God. May it be the real “I” who speaks, and the real “Thou” I speak to.
7. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
When Janie was born in Feburary, I decided to redress a glaring lacuna in my personal literary history and finally read some Jane Austen. Meghan has long considered Jane Austen perhaps her favorite writer, and, to be honest, there are few figures in the history of letters so universally acclaimed and so influential on the entire form and history of the novel. I read Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park, but if forced to pick just one, I think Mansfield Park was my favorite. Her sense of characters, their interactions, and her moral insights are phenomenal. And she uses perfect—if old fashioned—prose and a wicked sense of humor to draw it all out. One of the central themes in Mansfield Park is the triumph of good character over magnetic personalities. A lesson brilliantly sketched that the church and our broader society desperately needs now.
8. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
I can’t help it with Donna Tartt. I’ll read anything she puts out. She is an excellent writer and her massive novels read with an ease that belies the decade she spent writing each one. She so seamlessly weaves high literary reflection with grimy plots and characters that move. In a nutshell, the book is about a boy named Theo whose beloved mother is killed in a freak accident at the Met when he is 13 years old. He becomes a de-facto orphan navigating his way from New York to Vegas and back as he grows into adulthood with a priceless work of art in tow. It drags him down to a strange underworld which almost destroys him. I think Tartt is working with her best theme, the struggle to discern the true character of beauty, to honor it, and reconcile it with the brokenness of life. As I sit here I can hear the characters speak, I can picture their carriage, I can see Vegas and Soho as she describes them. I won’t say much else about The Goldfinch, after all she won the Pulitzer for it back in 2014. I found it totally engrossing, deeply evocative, and hauntingly poignant. More than any other book except the The Dutch House, it swept me up.
9. After Humanity: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man by Michael Ward + The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis.
After Humanity is the newest offering from the best C. S. Lewis scholar, Michael Ward. Ward wrote the phenomenal Planet Narnia a decade or so back and now he has followed it up with a book about C. S. Lewis’s most difficult book, the thin little philosophical volume The Abolition of Man. Ward’s book offers a forty-page introduction to The Abolition of Man that situates it within Lewis’s career and 20th-century thought, particularly the philosophical trends at Oxford in the 30s–50s—honestly, this introduction, which contains a clear synopsis of Abolition, is worth the price of the book. The bulk of the Ward’s book then takes the form of a thought-by-thought commentary on Lewis’s book. In short, Lewis is arguing for the objectivity of virtue and for the need to train children in such a way that it shapes and builds their virtuous capacities. Lewis closes the first chapter with his haunting image of “men without chests,” that is men who have lost the heart component that integrates head and gut into a humane whole. The final chapter is a haunting condemnation of the trajectory of society away from affective rational discourse toward a kind of subjectivism where the angriest people are deemed correct. I reread Abolition alongside of After Humanity and found it rich and timely.
10. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This was my first time out with Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, “who,” according to the committee, “in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” Never Let Me Go is about three friends, Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy (the narrator) who grow up together at an elite boarding school in England called Hailsham. As the story of their lives together unfolds from Kathy’s perspective, the reader slowly realizes that something is strange about Hailsham and strange about these three lost children’s lives. They have no parents, they live in a cloistered world thin on facts about reality, and adulthood holds for them a strange set of purposes and a tragic end. Never Let Me Go is sometimes considered a sci-fi novel, and that is true to the extent that it is set in a scientifically altered version of our world, but it belongs to that class of sci-fi that is uncannily similar to our would, realistically imagined, and hauntingly plausible. The amazing thing about the book is how Ishiguro leverages the low-fi set up to explore the depths of human relationships and how potently he captures the loneliness and lostness of the characters. It is a sad book, but masterfully accomplished. A profound meditation on the human cost of scientific decisions and developing technology.
Merry Christmas and happy New Year from the Kirks! (Rue, 4; Willa, 2; Janie, 10 months).
Pray With Us
- Pray for the students at Grace Life Seminary in Liberia. Pray that they would have the necessary provisions to continue their study. Pray also that God would help them to appropriate their learning and apply it effectively in Liberia. Pray that the church there would thrive.
- Pray for Dyonah and his vision for Grace Life. Pray that the building project would come to completion, that more people would come to faith in Christ, and that he could continue to recruit the right students for the seminary.
- Pray for my writing and research as I really head into the final stretch. Pray that I could re-write my intro by Christmas and then begin to make progress on chapter 5.