“You must respect Mother Mary.” This is the first thing that my friend Philip told me as I greeted him today. The day before I had called him during Catholic mass unknowingly and today he was telling me that I must respect the Catholic religion. We talked a little more about other things for a while, he invited me to have some saksak and stay over for some dinner but then he told me must go. He told me that he had to go heal someone from a sickness they had that lived close to our place.
I thought he meant maybe something like malaria or the common cold but he told me that someone had given them the sickness with the spirit he called Masalai. He grabbed some tangat leaves ,his Bilum, and his Bush knife and we headed back to our place. He told me he must take these leaves to the person and speak the name of the Spirit into leaves and that the Spirit would leave the man’s body.
This is the kind of thinking that plagues the people of Papua New Guinea. Religion has influenced them a little, yet they hold on tightly to animistic beliefs; afraid of all the spirits that are around them. This is the result of poor teaching and lack of understanding about the culture that they are teaching in. You’ll hear words like Jesus, God, and heaven but they don’t understand anything about what they mean and how it affects their lives.
This is why we came, to give them the understanding of what the Scriptures really say and to free them from the fear of animism and the spirits that they hold onto. This was a good reminder today, as I am learning language and culture to remember the big picture of why I am here and what I am here to do.