By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
The question as to the definition of ‘what is a number’, get most people off balance as they would relate it to visible signs, symbols or figures that represents what we know written as a one all the way to a billion of anything we want to measure. Some look confused to a thing, the concept of numbers, a subject that they have ever learnt from the elementary school levels to this moment.
It is only when asked a follow up question as to whether letters can also represent a number, for instance as in Roman Numerals, that others get it, yet still some get even more confused.
The conclusion drawn after a productive debate on this numeracy subject always is that anything written down whether a symbol, a sign, a letter or a figure can represent a number upon agreement and understanding, This is any number from zero to a trillion according to the configuration chosen be it metric or imperial conversions or other systems developed over the years.
The question remains, what is a number? Well, a number is a representative of quantity, however we desire to represent that quantity. This is according to scholarly sources tested and accepted as a fitting definition.
The above takes us to the truth in humanity which is that nothing is enough or adequate for man/ woman in a system of measurement that humans designed by their own understanding. Though in the scheme of things, God the supreme creator is a God of order and has no limits. This is why we should put our trust only by looking to the sky since with our human designed systems, nothing is ever enough. The rich want more as much as the poor desire enough. What is a number after all is said?
The quotes this week are a final extraction from a book about mission and its early affects on societies far and wise. It talks about how this influence did not only change beliefs but it reconfigured cultures and how people in those areas reached had their tenets of self-awareness mostly abandoned as they started looking more outward to external sources for hope and happiness. I am sure that the few selected quotations listed below from this book will enlighten you to one or two life lessons. Read and enjoy:
DECOLONIZING MISSION by Harvey C. Kwiyani
“The larger American culture is full of narcissism, which has permeated the church, while the church and other Christian ministries make prominent targets for those with narcissistic personality disorder to set up shop and consolidate power ….. ‘I continued to be surprised that in some contexts, narcissistic tendencies are renarrated as gifts for the church – that bullies are excused as ‘confident,’ that manipulators are excused as ‘good strategists,’ that a chameleon-like personality is seen as ‘adaptable.’ The church has proven to be a haven for narcissists. Once inside, they can behave as they wish with little fear of repercussion, especially if they are talented or charismatic individuals. They do as they please, often to the detriment of the community and to the church.”
“A new form of of commerce was, for Livingstone, the way to evangelize the continent. Livingstone and many of his friends carried out a massive campaign in England. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the son of the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce, was one of Livingstone’s key evangelists on the subject of commerce in Africa. Henry Rowley compiled a collection of Samuel’s speeches and the theme of the significance of commerce for mission runs through them all. At a USPG event in Leeds in May 1860, Wilberforce explained: —— What is the connection between the Gospel and commerce? There is a great connection between them. In the first place, there is little hope of promoting commerce in Africa, unless Christianity is planned in it; and, in the next place, there is very little ground for hoping that Christianity will be able to make its proper way unless we can establish a lawful commerce in the country, because there is at this moment an unlawful commerce which checks the spread of Christianity. An unlawful commerce has got possession of the land, the immediate result of which is, that it supplies the necessities of the loading men of that country.”
“…… much of the missiological discourse in the west is written by Westerners for other Westerners and is usually designed to address issues of Western concern. Due to the Western nature of the entire enterprise and its impact around the world, a great deal of missiological discourses in Africa, Asia and Latin America also reflect Western interests. Many non-Western missionaries will speak of their own cultures in the same manners as the Westerners. For example, Western missiological thought on traditional religions of the world still shapes how many non-Western Christians think about their own religious heritages. Case in point: African Christians tend to echo Westerners when they speak of African indigenous heritage. Many still describe it as as animism and believe they have been called to bring it to an end. Of course, the word ‘animism’ is used pejoratively – ‘Africans are so primitive, they believe that all natural objects and phenomena have a soul.”
“Consequently, African fiction from the 1950s and 1960s is filled with narratives that expose the harmful impacts of both missionary activity and colonial rule – realities that for many Africans were inseparable and experienced as two sides of the same oppressive system. Just as the missionary enterprise was closely associated with the imperial expansion of the West, in African literature the word ‘missionary’ was also attached to this expansion effort and, as writers like Mongo Beti suggest, was often taken to imply ‘the earliest foot-soldiers of colonial empires’ or ‘colonial administrators’. ……”
“Pentecost is the first missional event that ever happened in the Christian Church. The world was not only represented in Jerusalem on that day. New Christians, by virtue of becoming followers of Jesus, were invited to take the gospel of Jesus to the ends of the earth. Such a missionary movement would have to be diverse and multicultural. This ought to be characteristic of mission in the twenty-first century. The whole Body of Christ ought to serve in mission together. The world has changed in ways that make twentieth-century missiology totally out of context. God calls Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Westerners and everyone else following Jesus to share the good news wherever they are and wherever they go. A snapshot of twenty-first-century missionary movements has to look like global Christianity.”
