What is faith?
What does God expect us to do for other cultures and faiths?
God sends missionaries all over the world to the uncivilized and cannibalistic people. He wants them to evangelize as many people who does not know the existence of God and convert them. As a Christian, I should also try to get together with God in spirit and with the words, spread God's word to other people. It would be great if i could convert one person into christianity, just like mr. Don Richardson converted many sawi people.
How does Faith relate to the world in which we live?
Faith is something that people have on their belief. In this world has many countries and each countries hold different kinds of world views and beliefs. The people have faith in their religion. Even small tribes of cannibals have their belief and traditions or culture. The faith relate to the world we live in because every people have their beliefs about something.
What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?
First, we should observe the culture of people and respect it. The countries' or tribes culture is very precious and important for those people who respect the culture. Don Richardson first observed the culture of the Sawi and gradually, after the problems and conflict happened , he slowly taught some of the Sawi's culture and traditions were wrong, like giving the Peace CHild, and as he introduced the story of Jesus and his sacrifice to save all people from sin. So if i were a missionary, i would first listen and observe if the culture of one's belief is good or bad, and fix some of the traditions by introducing the christianity.
What should we do?
What should society do for "uncivilized cultures" like the sawi?
Since the world is growing and technology is advancing, the uncivilized tribes should also get a new life and meet new ages to survive. Missionaries are there to fix the tribes' belief into christianity and teach the uncivilized societies how to live in comfort. Therefore people all over the world could support the uncivilized groups by donating money to the organization who supports the native tribes.
What does Jesus want us to do for the sawi?
As I probably mentioned before, Jesus wants his followers, any christians, missionaries, or etc to evangelize the word of God because Jesus loves everybody. All humans are equal therefore even uncivilized sawi got the chance to be converted.
What do mission organisations do for these people?
Mission organisations basically help the poor or uncivilized cultural tribes. No matter how hard or will take long to understand the tribes' language and speak them, missionaries hang around with the tribes in a small cottage and heal the sick, give advice to the people who had done bad crimes, and gather groups of people to share a gospel.
Who or what is Peace Child to me?
How different is your modern culture from the sawi tenents?
The culture of mine or my country is very different from the old sawi tenents. In the sawi tenents, there are some rules that are so barbaric. They had such law like practicing cannibalism, using the waness bind on people, and gross custom of touching dead family member's corpses called gefam ason. Overall, the sawi tenents usually include cruel and merciless laws, however in our modern cultures, there are no cannibalism or no touching corpses. There could be something similar to the waness bind like setting traps on one person to order them to do what benefits the user of the waness bind. One of the basic difference of my country's culture or other countries like china, america, japan, or etc is that there is no polygamy going on. THe sawi had several wives and most of them were from killing their old husbands and winning them over. The polygamy was one of the practice that probably happened in every countries' ancient century, however the world is now so civilized that only monogamy stays in place. The country or tribes who practice polygamy is probably so uncivilized and because they do not know the other world culture outside.
Also the Christian cultures are opposites to the Sawi tenents. Sawi also had a myth about birds and the reptiles which is about mortality vs immortality. Christian believes that God created the world and since the beginning, Adam and Eve had caused Sin to appear so all of us humans became mortal. Sawi at first enjoyed the story of Judas betraying Jesus because the theme about that story included fattening for the friendships, which is a most common way to kill their friends, or precious companions. Because of this theme, sawis cannot trust fully each other. However, Christians believes betraying is the worst thing one can do especially to Jesus.
The last difference and the major one of the old Sawi tenents and Christian culture is that Sawi used the term peace child which is used to make agreement, deal, or peace treaty with other tribes. Peace child are taken care of real sacred to the other tribes because once the peace child is dead, the treaty will be broken. Peace child is given by his or her father and mother. This is sort of similar to God being father and Jesus being his son and Jesus was the 'peace child' to the people in every world. Jesus was a major enormous peace child which forgave people's sin and counted for all the people not just the israelites, all the people in the world. Overall, Peace child in Sawi culture is small and Peace Child in Christian culture is huge.
Must Do Question
Choose a representative passage from this novel that holds particular significence to you. Type it in and comment on its significance.
This passage usually appears in many different phrases in the book. Everything Mr. Don Richardson prays to God comes to an answer. When he was rescuing his family in the crocodile infested river, he prayed to God for his family to be safe and God answered to his prayer and by the time MR. Richardson had rescued his family members, all of them were safe and sound. In this phrase, Don and carol was praying to God and reading the bible to hope for a miracle to Warahai, who suffered almost to death. They prayed for him to rise in feet again and God answered the prayer. The next day Warahai rose from the 'dead' and the miracle thad Don Richardson and Carol hoped, happened.
It seems that God answers his servants prayer very quickly and the servant needs it hurriedly. Whenever Don prayed for an answer, the answer came so soon. My point is that Whenever i pray to God, I hope he answers fast just like he did to Mr. Richardson. Although when i pray, it is not always about the other people, some prayers are mostly about me. Even though it is mostly about me, i still hope that God answers my prayer, only when i am in need of help desperately.
IF you are going to post, focus on one question and comment about it.
