lies and truth

I laughed tonight during a most mind-boggling conversation with Fernando as we heated up his water for tea. I laughed so that I wouldn't get angry.

Fernando works for us in the evenings as a security guard. As such, he spends the night hours walking around our apartment building, sitting guard at the front gate, and (who are we kidding?) sleeping. But it is comforting to know he is there.

Every month we give him a big bag of sugar and box of tea to help him stay awake during the long nights. And every night we heat up a thermos of water and Stefan chats with him. Tonight we got on the subject of the rats that also roam freely about our yard at night. Fernando noted that our neighborhood has some extremely large rats and that his wife had been asking him for some time now to catch them and bring them home (for food). Stefan asked him why he wasn't killing them and Fernando began to laugh and say that they were too big and too fast for him. So we joked about sending our son Christian down to help him.

And then Fernando said one of those things that people say here that you're not quite sure if you heard right. He said (roughly translated), "Well, they won't let me catch them because they know I'm going to eat them. But if you were to come down, they will let you catch them because they know you're just going to kill them and throw them out." And then he laughed. And we laughed. And then he said it again. And just to be sure he was saying what I thought he was saying, asked, "So, the rats have a preference? They don't mind to be caught to be killed and tossed, but they won't let YOU catch them because they know you will eat them?" He laughed and said "Yes." And he was dead serious. And Fernando knows I don't believe a word he just said, and he laughs and thinks I'm just an ignorant white lady. And I laugh because...

Well, because if I don't, I'll just get angry. Get angry once again at all the lies people believe. Granted, this is a somewhat "silly" or inconsequential lie that obviously doesn't have far-reaching consequences on his life. But it is just a small representation of all the deception that so many people live under here in Mozambique and accross Africa. And how those lies affect every aspect of their lives.

The other day I was working on a meal with Jacinta in our backyard. The kids were playing around us and suddenly she stopped what she was doing. She had been tossing peanuts in the air with a winnow. She waited for a while and then shyly asked if I wouldn't mind moving Wesley, who had walked in front of her and stood their watching. I directed Wesley to the side and then as Jacinta began working again, she explained that one cannot winnow when a young child is in front of the winnow. If she were to continue with the child there, the food that she was preparing would not "satisfy." In fact, the winnow would be cursed in such a way that from then on, all food that was prepared in it would leave a person feeling hungry. It would be necessary to get a traditional healer to "bless" it with traditional medicine before it would once again work properly.

In America we throw around the phrase, "The truth will set you free" as a trite saying. (Maybe because we are blind to our own lies that we cling to so tennaciously?) But really and truly, the lies around us here in Africa are so pervasive. And they are so crippling. And I'm reminded of the hold the Deciever enjoys on the lives of so many people around us through his lies.

"Walk in truth." Up until now I have tended to think of that phrase as a command to follow. An exhortation to live up to. But tonight I feel overwhelmed by the privilege I have of walking in truth. I'm overwhelmed by all the aspects of my life that God's truth has already impacted--by all the ways I'm free. I'm humbled by the responsibility of walking in truth--so that lies around me will be exposed and the people around us will come to know the joy and freedom that comes from knowing Truth.