From Katie: Communicating Clearly

I asked my friend Andrea if she would tell me the story of the first man and the first woman.  (To read the story, click here.)  The tale involves a man who had a dog that could shape-shift into a woman.  The man stayed with the woman-version of the dog, and from the two of them came all the people of the world.

In summing up the story, Andrea said, “And that’s why women aren’t as clean as men.  Because we have one rib from a man, and one rib from a dog.”  The women here don’t think much of themselves, mainly due to messages such as this one that have been drilled into their heads.  They don’t believe that they are good enough to talk to God; only the men (or maybe a really, really wise woman) would attempt that.  Bottom line, they are no better than a dog.

We are not the first to expose the Nahuatl to ideas from the Bible.

They throw around words like “baptism” and “blessings” in a story of the devil eating a young girl on her way to a party.  They have mixed in the beautiful image of God forming Eve with one of Adam’s ribs into a story that makes women universally unclean.  They know about the man in a big boat after the world was covered in water, and yet they fear rainbows.  They know Jesus as one of the saints you can manipulate with gifts of corn and peaches.  The Spaniards began “converting” the Nahuatl as long ago as the 1500s.  A priest still comes and blesses the surrounding mountains and valleys so that the devil will “pull back a bit.”  The Nahuatl do not lack exposure to ideas from the Bible.  What they lack is understanding of message of the Bible.

Every comment I have ever made to Andrea about truth from the Word has been met by the affirmative.  She nods her head and says, “Yes, that’s true.”  She asks if I’m afraid of the dark and I say that God will never leave those who know him and so even when I feel alone I know He’s with me.  “Yes, yes,” she says.  “That’s so true.”  I know that if I told her tomorrow that Jesus was the only way to have right relationships with God she would agree with me.  If I said, “Andrea, Jesus died for your sins and if you believe in him you will be TRULY clean,” she would say I was right.  Does that mean we’re on the same page?  Of course not.  She would still feel alone—still be scared of the dark—still consider herself unclean.

We want the people here to know the truth.  We want their understanding to be apart from, not mixed in with their current worldview.  And because we feel that the burden of being clear is on the teacher, our team has resolved to learn to speak the language fluently, while we build relationships that give us the chance to be heard.  We know that the job before us will take time and we thank you for your faithfulness to those on our team and to the Nahuatl as we labor.