More details on Sudan

This is the third post about Sudan.

I realized I was a bit lazy with my last post.

Here are some more of the details about what I was doing in Sudan.

I was in Nimule, which is just across the border from Uganda. You can find in on Google Earth. I am not going to be putting up GPS coordinates for the school because they are still in a lot of danger from the Arab government in the north. The peace treaty has been working well for the last few years, but no one expects it to last long.

The reason the school has been a target is that it sits right on the main road connecting south Sudan to Uganda. Also, the majority of their students are being prepared to be chaplains in the SPLA, the army of South Sudan.

I had about 40 students. Most of them were intending to go on to be chaplains, but some were training for ministry in general. Their English and prior education varied drastically. Some had already finished some other Bible training program; others had even finished primary school. That made teaching a bit difficult. We had to go over and over certain points to hammer everything in.

That being said, you could see intelligence shining through in certain individuals. The problem was more lack of training and knowledge than anything. Even the most intelligent men were ignorant of things we in America would take for granted.

A good example of this: One of my sharpest students asked this question, "If there were no cameras when Jesus was alive, how did they make the Jesus Movie?" He was referring to the film that many mission organizations show to villages. He simply assumed that what he was seeing was really the life of Jesus. This simple, naive approach was really common. It wasn't stupidity that created the question, but lack of experience and knowledge. I had to constantly remember that as I taught.

African Christianity has some serious doctrinal flaws.( I say that as a sweeping generalization, to which there are obvious exceptions.) One of the most frustrating is legalism. Many Christians here believe very emphatically that good works will save a person. They believe that going to church and doing good works is all that is necessary.

Teaching John, with its huge emphasis on belief, went totally in the face of that. Even still, it was very hard to get through. The heartbreaking part was seeing how much of their ideology could be directly connected to the old style fundamentalism that was imported from America, where Christians don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t wear shorts to church, where they are found every Sunday, and every respectable man wears a tie and takes Sunday off. Horrible.

The other major problem in Sudan is Roman Catholicism. Very few Americans seem to grasp the true message of the Roman church, or understand what it is doing in places like Sudan where there is no other church or school. Many people in Africa ask, “Are you a Catholic, or are you saved?” Not only do Catholics claim to be "not born again," they are proud of this fact about themselves. The gospel of justification by works, through the Roman Catholic Church alone, has been rooted deeply in people’s spiritual consciousness. Catholics are deliberately steered away from studying the Bible.

The reason Roman Catholicism became so prevalent here is that during the wars the only people that stayed behind to do ministry were priests and nuns. Many of these won’t even let Christians pray for those who are in their hospitals or schools. The dividing line between the true gospel and “another” can be clearly seen here, even if in places like America it is cleverly disguised by theological terms and ecumenical rhetoric.

Needless to say, studying John really shook up a lot of thinking.

The facility where I was staying is pretty nice. There is no running water, but they keep reservoirs full for showers and sinks. There is no electricity, but they run a generator for three hours each night. I watched a lot of DVDs on the TV they have there.

Like I mentioned before, the roughest part was not being able to leave the compound without an escort.

The weather was really nice. We had a lot of rain, usually in the evenings. There was lots of thunder and lightening. Really beautiful. The last time I was there it was very dry and I described it as a desert. This time, after months of rains, everything was lush and full. There was green everywhere.

All in all: a good experience.