Who Says?

The Start of a Journey

I grew up in a pastor’s home in a small town called Rustenburg, in the Rep. of South Africa, about 60 miles from Johannesburg, the home of 6 million people. My pre-critical childhood faith was formed as a pastor’s kid who had to navigate life in an apartheid society, in a small church plant with not much money to feed 5 hungry mouths. Going to school bare feet was a normal part of my early life. And yet, in spite of our obvious poverty (which I did not fully comprehend at the time), I recall many fun theological conversations around the kitchen table. My Mom liked to cook and we liked to eat and in many ways my childhood faith was sorted out in the kitchen.

Like all of us, life is not just a simple linear process. I had to go through adolescence, facing peer pressure, girls, my own sexuality and like most of us test my faith outside the safe world of my mother’s kitchen. All of a sudden, without realizing it at that time, I was entering the critical phase of my faith journey. “Why” became one of my favorite words. “Who says” came in at a close second. Usually, in my normal teenage experiment with independence, I tested the boundaries of the safe predictable world my parents wanted for me. It was at this stage of my life that I began to form concepts and language as a way to express what I believe. At the same time much emphasis was laid on micro-ethics; don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t drink, don’t go to movies (and don’t date girls that do), and guilt and shame quickly formed the undercurrent of my spiritual journey. Whereas Catholic kids had to go through the trauma of having to confess their sins to their local priest behind some curtain in the sanctuary, I had an annual rhythm to release my guilt and shame; it was called youth camp. This annual rhythm was my way of making sure that I was okay with God.

Of course the hand-me-down story of my faith, enforced by the culture around me, told me that the color of my skin and my protestant faith was just a little more deserving of God’s love than anyone outside my very small world. And yet, from very early on I was a very curious kid. I was one of those kids who wouldn’t let my Dad off the hook with easy, lazy and short answers to complex questions. I wanted to know; “Why are we here?” “Who made God?” “Why do we have servants?”

And so my story begins… The truth is we all have childhood stories to share. We all have to make sense out of the stories that’s been handed down to us. What aspects of our spirituality were life limiting and what aspects were life giving. And this is where I think we should start our conversation as we kick-off our first Pub Theology conversation. In my theological world it is the question of prolegomena (What are first things to be said?) What do we all have in common as human beings? What makes us human? How do we know we are acting as humans are suppose to. Who sets the standards? And here is my favorite one “Who says?”

See you on Sept 20th at 7pm

~ Johan