Whoopsies… I managed to disrespect one of the people we were serving at the City Feed last week—and I didn’t even know it.
Well first of let me tell you what City Feed is—City Feed occurs every night of the week at 6p and it is when Love Story takes food downtown to the city center and feeds all of the homeless people that show up.
It is absolutely incredible and a wonderful testament of living out what God has called us, as the Church, to do—“The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same” Luke 3:11.
It is wonderful—Love Story has been doing this for years and have thus built relationships with many of the homeless men and women here in PE (Port Elizabeth).
So back to last week, our second day going to City Feed; Kricket (I believe) was having a conversation with a man there that seemed to be flustering her a little bit due to the guy talking in circles. So, me being me, I wanted to hear what that conversation was about, so I went over there and then he turned the conversation towards me.
So during a spirt of boldness, and a lack of understanding of what he was saying, I asked him “what do you believe?” And he recoiled, saying that I was just trying to push my beliefs upon him without respecting him or his culture.
And to be honest, he wasn’t 100% wrong—I did want to share my beliefs with him; after all I would love to see everyone saved and meet them once again in heaven.
However, I was very confused as to how I was being disrespectful towards him because, after all, I had asked him what he believed first, so I was confused.
But the conversation seemed light-hearted enough, so I continued to say, “no, I want to hear what you believe and then I can tell you what I believe.” After all, the evangelism advice/training I’ve received from other people say to do that in order to have it sound more like a conversation rather than just shoving my ‘religion’ down someone’s throat. And I was enjoying it—the going around in circles; I knew right away that I wouldn’t have the chance to share, but I genuinely curious about what he believed.
Well during that whole conversation I managed to learn that he believes in ancestors and that I offended his culture somehow—to be honest, I didn’t understand how, but I kind of just let it go.
The just a couple of days ago Luke, the founder of Love Story, brought it back up and explained to me a bit more about what happened.
Although the guy kept talking about how I was offending his culture and how he believes in ancestors and not much else, Luke explained that the actual offense had nothing to do with what was being said but rather the fact that it seemed, to the guy, that I—a young, white female—was attacking him and belittling him—an older, black male.
Whoopsies…
Not that that was my intention at all, but if that was how he perceived it I was at fault.
Even though we haven’t had another chance to talk about beliefs we have become friends at City Feed and now even have a handshake… not that I get the handshake right, but nonetheless.
So that was my failed-ish attempt at evangelism and my lesson in cultural respect—moral of the story, there is always a lesson to learn.
