Luthuli - Bound by Faith to struggle against apartheid

 I don't remember who recommended Albert Luthuli's biography to me, but it was eye-opening and instructive across a variety of fronts. It seems like he could fairly be described as South Africa's MLK or Gandhi, a leader of a great struggle who consistently applied the principles of non-violence despite tremendous pressure to do otherwise.

 In Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith, Scott Couper details the life of Albert Luthuli, the long-time leader of the ANC who led the resistance against apartheid in South Africa on non-violent terms and was the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. 

 

Albert Luthuli, 1961 (britannica)

 The political aspects of his life were somewhat interesting, though he died decades before apartheid was broken down. However, the background of his life and family, along with his thoughts and commitment to a genuine biblical faith in the public square and while seeking both peace and justice, were more interesting to me. The biographer quotes him in various places, and it is beautiful to see how Luthuli's understanding of Scripture both catalyzed, organized, and 'bounded' his public work. His 'social activism' sprang from his beliefs about the divine-image-bearing of all the humans around him. On the one hand, it caused him to pursue comprehensive change in the way that non-Europeans were treated in South African society. Yet, on the other hand, it stopped him from pursuing violence as a means to achieve that good end. Others decided to use violence and sought his support, but his record stands remarkably clearly about his own convictions. (You can read some of Nelson Mandela's defense of the use of violent sabotage here as recorded at his trial in 1963-1964.) 

 Couper quotes from Luthuli's autobiography, Let My People Go, regarding Christian living, being part of society, and work:

Adams [College] taught me what Edendale did not, that I had to do something about being a Christian, and that this something must identify me with my neighbor, not dissociate me from him. Adams taught me more. It inculcated, by example rather than precept, a specifically Christian mode of going about work in a society, and I had frequent reason to be grateful for this later in life. [italics original, bold mine]

Elsewhere, Luthuli spoke of the fact that living as a Christian was 'not a private affair without relevance to society'...

It was, rather, a belief which equipped us in a unique way to meet the challenges of our society... which had to be applied to the conditions of our lives; and our many works - they ranged from Sunday School teaching to road-building - became meaningful as the outflow of Christian belief.

 

 Listen to these powerful lines from his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 1961.

I also, as a Christian and patriot, could not look on while systematic attempts were made, almost in every department of life, to debase the God-factor in man or to set a limit beyond which the human being in his black form might not strive to serve his Creator to the best of his ability. To remain neutral in a situation where the laws of the land virtually criticized God for having created men of color was the sort of thing I could not, as a Christian, tolerate. (Source)

Moses' poem about life's brevity and futility (Psalm 90)

With its introductory note, Psalm 90 is placed in the context of Moses’ life, you can easily see how Moses could write a psalm like this as he lived to watch nearly all of the adults around him age and die in the wilderness. The brevity of life and its difficulty and the wrath of God must have often seemed very near to him.

As I read this beloved poem again this morning, I was struck by themes that echo within it, like mortals' troubles and divine responses. As you can see in the diagram, it seems to me that the first 2 verses form a sort of introduction of praise establishing the setting of God’s eternality or existence beyond the clutches of time. In verses 3-4, humans’ return to dust is mentioned and given as a command; this is matched in verse 13 by a call for God’s return, and both are followed by a concern for length of time.

Following that, there is the issue of being swept away in the temporary, dreamy, impermanent joy (of life’s morning) followed by the fading, withering sorrow of the evening, in verses 5 and 6. The response to this in verse 14 is that the Lord who is our dwelling place can satisfy us not only in the morning, but also the whole day long with joy.

Verses 7 to 11 directly bring out the theme of God’s anger and our unhidden sins, and we learn that the brevity of our lives is connected with these points. (In my opinion, the KJV translation draws out the emphasis in verse 10 on the extreme brevity of mortal life better, reflecting the Hebrew as ‘the days of our years’. In other words, even if  we count each individual day of all of our years, life’s still naturally going to end very quickly and sadly.) The response to this in verse 15 is that the Lord can give gladness to offset the affliction and evil of many days and many years.

Finally, there is a response to the ‘toil and trouble’ of verse 10 at the end of the poem (verses 16 and 17). Instead of us wasting our energy in meaningless, quickly-ended toil, may the Lord work on behalf of His servants. (Isn’t that beautifully backwards!) Beyond that, God’s favor can turn our toil and trouble into meaningful work.

The psalm hinges on 2 points in this way of organizing it. After the foundation of God’s immovable reality outside of our temporal troubles and our living within the Great Reality has been laid, verse 12 summarizes the first part of the psalm by asking that God teach us to count each day in order to gain wisdom through acknowledging life’s passing nature. Such an awareness of our mortality and futility can lead us away from futility. Secondly, in verse 17, we find that the favor of our Lord can reverse life’s futility and actually establish the work of our hands! Life can not only be joyful; it can also be meaningful when the Lord’s face shines on us. What stunning grace!

 

NOTE: Not all the psalms end in such a happy resolution; for example, Psalm 88 does not exude any explicit hope, at least when considered on its own. 

Children of the Alley - thoughts and quotes

  In our ISRME book club, we just finished discussing Naguib Mahfouz's Children of the Alley this week. It's an interesting book, and it might help you to know that it is an allegory before it starts. I didn't figure that out for over 150 pages. Then things started making more sense. 

 

 The book  considers a variety of themes related to life and religions (and their similarities and differences). These include our human addiction to numbing ourselves against reality and a regular returns to the question of injustice and why the Almighty does not intervene with it more directly. As well, the book seems to me to have a special focus on the human desire to 'return to Eden', though of course that's not the way it's labeled. In the quotation below, 'the mansion' is that allegorical equivalent for an Edenic closeness to beauty, rest, and the divine.

 If the past could be forgotten, the present would be wonderful, but we will keep on staring at that mansion, which gives us the only glory we can claim, and causes all the misery we know.

There is also an interesting progression of thoughts about the nature and place of work in human life:

Working to eat is the worst curse of all.
...

Then [Adham] yawned more deeply. “Work is a curse!” 

“Maybe so,” whispered Umaima, “but it is a curse that can only be defeated by more work!”

...

Arafa’s eyes were bright and he spoke intensely. “But leisure isn’t the ultimate goal! Imagine spending your life free and at leisure. It’s a beautiful dream, but it’s so ludicrous, Hanash. It would be so much better to be freed from work so that we could work marvels.”
...

“So why are you so hard at work?” 

“Because work is all I have,” Arafa sighed.

One final tidbit...

"But every tragedy, however great, eventually becomes a mere fact of life."