Malawi, the Bible, and the West

It struck me some time back that the Bible doesn’t take as much translation to make sense in Malawian culture. In my experience, people who read and explain the Bible need to spend a good bit of time trying to get inside the ancient audiences’ heads to recapture the original impact of a particular set of words. And the more your culture is different from the ancient culture, the more you have to study and use your imagination to get it.

This leads to my point. The culture here in modern-day Malawi seems to be more similar to the Palestine of Joshua, David, Nehemiah, and Jesus than is modern-day America. It first struck me when I was listening to someone use examples from Kings and Chronicles to illustrate good leadership. He was speaking to an audience of chiefs and somehow I think all those stories of good and bad rulers made a lot of sense to them. And it wasn’t because they went through the intellectual gymnastics to put themselves in an ancient culture’s shoes. It is because they are a lot like the guys in that ancient culture.

I’ve always thought I have a little more connection to the agricultural illustrations in the Bible since I grew up in a family that lived by farming. This has actually been a minor point of pride with me because I think most people only have an intellectual understanding of a great harvest with few laborers to harvest it. And they don’t quite grasp the significance of a seed that must die before it can become a new life. I think it is legitimate for me to claim a deeper understanding of these things since I have measured the price of a good crop in sweat, lost sleep, bruised knuckles, and patience.

But if I can make this claim, most of the people here can make it ten times over. And there is also much more they have in common with the Ancient Culture. Here are a few things I have seen:

Irregular or Insufficient Rain Bringing Famine. This is a problem now because last years’ rains were not good.

Salt is a treasure. We read about Christians being like salt in the world and we have to realize that this was not said in our context where the cost of salt is about the same as sand. It was in a place where people knew that salt is a treasure that gives life to an otherwise bleak diet. Here, I have seen people and even Chiefs clinging, begging, and cheating to get salt. Try eating unsalted bread or pancakes sometime and you will see why.

Witchcraft and even Child Sacrifice. There are the sections of town where you get car parts or food and there is the place you go for witches. You can go through the capital city and see all the witch-doctors’ booths with their strange concoctions on display. I have even heard people tell us their children cannot walk to school because they will be caught by the witches and killed so their parts can be used in certain rituals. I do not know how pervasive this is.

Beggars – the Blind and the Lame. Perhaps half the beggars here keep a stark physical deformity on display -- blindness, a leg that is three times the normal size, a foot that is doubled around backwards or missing altogether . . . You start to recognize them after a while. Even in a large city the same people turn up over and over again in different places, always asking for money. They don’t have many prostheses. The beggars remind me of the stories in the gospels and Acts.

Corrupt Tax Collectors. The way to make money here is to go into government. Enough said.

Polygamy – Especially with Rulers. Chiefs often have many women and even many wives. They are expected to. There is a dark and horrible belief that, if a man sleeps with a virgin, he will be cured of AIDS. And, as a point of hospitality, a man may offer his young wife to an overnight guest. It is only considered rape if the man did not offer her. This is reminiscent of some of the darker stories in the Old Testament.

Masters and Servants. Malawi generally does not have slavery in the sense of one person owning another. But it does have big households with many people hired to do everything – cleaning, cooking, gardening, laundry, ironing, shoe-polishing, driving, guarding . . . Nice houses are built with servants’ quarters. Servants are often paid less than $50 per month and they treat their employers like masters. They’re expected to.

“Possessed” People. I have heard it said that the main difference between rich people and poor people is that the poor people do not have the luxury of hiding their problems. I think there is some truth to this. In our society people’s mental troubles are generally hidden from view. They are medicated and counseled, and for the people and times where this is not enough, they are kept in a place out of sight until it is resolved.

Here, people with mental troubles here are presumed to be bewitched. They live untreated and in full view. Those close to them will have to choose between fear and retaliation toward the one who is thought to have bewitched them.

Again, I don’t mean this as a critical analysis of either system but as an observation of how this one might be closer to what we find in Biblical times.

Outside Oppression. Malawi was dominated by the British for nearly 100 years. The British knew how to make things run in some ways, but they were still an occupier. And the people resented it. It deprived them of the dignity of being equals. I think this is something in common with first-century Jews in the Roman Empire.

I had been thinking of all these things, then a couple of mornings ago, I sat down to read the Old Testament book of Ezra. Ezra was angry about how the people were living so he gave three days notice for all the men to assemble in one place. He said that anyone who did not come would have his property seized. I don’t know for sure how these Malawian Chiefs call a council and get such good attendance but I’m guessing they use some of the same tactics. When they had all gathered, Ezra told the people in very definite terms to mend their ways. And they responded, “You are right! We must do as you say. But there are many people here and it is the rainy season; so we cannot stand outside. Besides, this matter cannot be taken care of in a day or two, because we have sinned greatly in this thing. Let our officials act for the whole assembly” (Ezra 10:12-14, NIV). Somehow I could almost see this very scene – albeit with different details – being played out in a Malawian village.

Really, I think modern-day Malawi (outside the cities) is probably more like the Ancient Culture than it is modern-day America. Which leads me to another impression I have had: going to Malawi is a lot like time-traveling. It is going from a post-industrial to a pre-industrial world. I know a lot of people who have wistfully wondered what it would be like to go back in time to medieval Europe. Well, you can’t do that. But you can go to another place in the world where people are just as different and just as intriguing. It’s not medieval Europe by any stretch but it is probably more like that than your suburban neighborhood.

And yes, I am arguing that you should come see me. When you think about it, this modern world allows you to walk into a pressurized metal tube then walk out haggard and bleary-eyed two days later into a strange and wonderful iron-age world. Imagine putting the Bibles’ cultures and medieval Europe into a blender, pouring Africa sauce over it, and placing it in one of the world’s most beautiful climates. Visiting is an incredible experience – the sort of thing we’d give our firstborn to do if it wasn’t so accessible.

Now, in writing this, I have committed a few crimes. The greatest of these is to have conflated all the Biblical cultures into one. There are many different cultures over time in the Bible and, at any given time, the Bible tells of several different cultures interacting with each other. And of course Malawi is not uniform either; any given place in Malawi is not really like any given place in the Bible. But there are striking parallels that could very well make understanding the Bible more natural for Malawians than it is for most Western Christians. In this, I think they have an intuitive insight that we never will.

These are the witch doctors' booths in Lilongwe.


These are the children who, we are told, cannot go to school for fear of being killed by witches.