Summer Reading

I’ve been reading an interesting book lately. It’s been great preparation for my upcoming work as a full-time missionary with Living Hope (http://www.livinghope.co.za/). It’s about alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. Part of my work in Cape Town will be among the Xhosa people, millions of whom populate the area’s townships and informal settlements. A few years ago, a white South African journalist, Steven Otter, went to live in one of these townships, Khayelitsha. His book by that title is an insightful look into the Xhosa culture and the complexity of post-Apartheid relations between blacks and whites.

Otter makes it clear that life in the townships offers ample opportunity for substance abuse and other excesses. Monogamous relationships are rare, which helps explain the high rate of HIV and AIDS. But Xhosa culture also features some endearing qualities, particularly an emphasis on community and selflessness. Everyone, it seems, knows everyone else. Family is of paramount importance. And the what’s-mine-is-yours mentality is essential to enduring in such an impoverished environment.

Having spent some time in a Xhosa community, Red Hill, on my two previous trips to Cape Town, I had an idea of how harsh life can be in the townships. Otter’s tale confirmed this, and gave me a greater understanding of it. I remember meeting a guy in Red Hill last October. He was probably in his early 20s, and he was out of work and drunk on a Monday morning. He invited me to his home, and as I sat and talked with him and three of his friends – all of them smoking and drinking from 40-ounce beer bottles – he told me of how desperately he wants to be free of his addiction to alcohol.

His cry for help reminded me of what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans: “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. … What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:18-19, 24-25)

Indeed, only Christ has the power to truly transform lives. It is this truth that permeates all which Living Hope does in serving the people of Cape Town. And it is this truth that I intend to share as I join in that effort.