I have seen people reading more than I expected here — mostly because I have been spending time with students — but to those who can sound out phonemes correctly comes a greater challenge: Normally, they don’t understand what they have just read.
Uche has told us that this is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the church here. People have such a hunger, such a desire to grow close to God, but barely any of them are able to read. The language here is a dialect of Arabic that does not even have a written form. They don’t read their language in either Arabic or in the Romanized alphabet, it exists only in the spoken form.
Therefore, the language of church services and Bibles is in English. This poses a greater problem, because even though some people do speak English, it is not their native tongue or the language of their heart, making some spiritual principles hard to convey in limited vocabulary. Even for those few who are literate, they often perceive very little of what they’ve actually read. I have met impassioned believers who sustain their walk based on very basic understandings of scripture. They desire to go deeper, but they encounter so much difficulty when trying to fully understand the scriptures that they struggle to read.
However, this same concept has humbled me in tremendous ways. I’ve met believers here who, in the fire and passion of God, have led their whole families to Jesus, visit the orphanage every day to teach the children about God, cast out demons from people in their community, heal the sick among them in Jesus’ name,have dreams from God that often come true, and regularly fast without food and water for days on end.
These people do all of these things with a tremendously simple understanding of the scriptures. For most of us reading this, the elementary level children in the Sunday School classes at our church probably have more comprehension of the scriptures than these people who are changing the face of their country for Jesus.
This humbles me beyond belief. Coming from a country that estimates our value based on the academic degrees we earn, I am seeing that the plainest understanding of Jesus, coupled with dependence on his Spirit and raw belief in His power, is what changes the world.
I come from a country where, if we want to grow closer to God, we listen to a sermon while falling asleep at night. Nearly every night in Yei, I fall asleep to the sound of fervent prayers in the church outside my window. Every morning, before sunrise, I wake up to their worship songs. I have never been to a place where I have seen people so relentlessly seek God as they do here. It is beyond humbling.
And yet, even with all of this, understanding scripture is still an enormous trial. Even though there is humility enough to go around when I see them live out their faith so radically with such a minimal understanding of God’s word, the pendulum also swings in the other direction. An overwhelming amount of people live under a spirit of religion. They carry a back-breaking spirit of guilt that sends them running down the aisle to get saved every time they sin. Holiness becomes theatrical, as they have to strive very hard to appear spiritual so that their judgments on other people seem justified. Greater even than the opposition of witchcraft here is the presence of this spirit, which leads many to false humility and secret burdens of guilt.
But God is breaking through. Despite the hardships facing those with sincere hearts, God is never fenced-in or held back. He promises that we will find Him, not if we get our theology right, but if we seek Him with all of our hearts.
God is so much bigger than illiteracy. I know this because today, I met David.
Today is a national holiday in South Sudan, SPLA Day. The country celebrates that, 29 years ago today, the south began to fight the north for their freedom.
Being the only three kawajas, we painfully stood out as we watched from the back of our truck.
Later in the ceremony, a man greeted us with a cheery “hello” and before we knew what happened, he had hopped up in the back of the truck with us.
Needless to say, we were a bit awkward, as we had no idea why he was in the truck with us or if he was going to heckle us. Most times here, such sudden things are not always good.
But as he began to talk to us, I noticed the ubiquitous Gideon pocket Bible he had in his hand. The first thing he told us was where he went to church.
He jumped up in the truck so he could talk to us about God.
His name was David, and his English was a little hard for me to understand at first. He leaned over to me and gave me his little Bible. He was pointing to Psalm 125.
“Will you read this to me?” He asked.
I obliged. As I read him each of the five verses in the chapter, he nodded his head and said, “Yes, yes.” I noticed that his wasn’t the usual “Amen, praise the Lord” that I’d heard after most readings. He made his statements as if he was agreeing with the words.
After I read the small chapter, David asked me what the verses meant.
As I explained the chapter in very simple words, he smiled and nodded. And then he said,
“Yes, that is what I thought it said.”
Then, as if it was just another point of conversation, he added,
“The Lord gave me a dream about this chapter last night and showed it to me in pictures. I saw a big mountain near God’s city, and there was a wall on the mountain. Then God told me that two kinds of forces came over the wall, one was deliverance and one was deception. God sends the deliverance, and Satan sends the deception. God told me that those who trust in the deliverance He sends will not need to worry about deception, because if we continue to trust in Him, we will not be deceived. But if we turn to the deception, then blessings of the deliverance will not be ours anymore. He said that the deception from Satan tries to rule over the righteous people, but if we trust in Him, this will not happen. As he said this, I saw God all around me, and I had peace in my heart.”
I was amazed.
“So how did you know that this chapter was the one in the dream?” I asked.
“Because God gives me dreams about the Psalms all the time, and in those dreams, He tells me in which chapter to find them. He does this because it is very difficult for me to read and understand the Bible. In my dreams, He speaks to me and shows me pictures so I don’t forget. It is better than reading them for myself, because if I just read it, I might forget. But I don’t forget a dream!”
Soon after, David shook my hand and jumped out of the truck.
I was speechless.
Just this morning, in our team devotion, we had prayed that God would overcome the barriers of illiteracy in South Sudan. And then God showed me that, while we sleep, He is up to the business of just that.
God loves us like little children. Sometimes, He even reads to us Himself.
Psalm 125:
Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,
Which cannot be shaken but endures forever.
As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
So the Lord surrounds His people both now and forevermore.
The scepter of the wicked shall not remain over the land allotted to the righteous,
For then the righteous might use their hands to do evil.
Lord, do good to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart.
But those who turn to crooked ways
The Lord will banish with the evildoers.
