Nothing New Under the Sun

What does man gain from all his labor
At which he toils under the sun? (1:3)

The Protestant work ethic pervades so many success stories.  Too often, either vocational training or entrepreneurship training, or both, fail to have the desired effect.  Then someone looks deeper into the underlying attitudes and superstitions of the trainees. The phrase “colonization of the mind” suggests that some people really believe (perhaps subconsciously) that they cannot compete.  Or their work ethic has been undermined by a sense of entitlement.

This was a busy week at C4L.  Another NGO called Phakamani rented the facility to train its own staff for 5 days.  A round table of member groups of our provincial youth organizations forum was held for 2 days.  20 high school learners are boarding on campus for a year.  So we had 30 - 40 guests at every meal!  What does man gain from all this labor?  Indeed.

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless (1:12)

At the time that Ecclesiastes was written, most work was done under the sun.  The Industrial Revolution had not arrived yet, nor the Productivity Revolution ushered in by Frederick Taylor in the 20th century.  Solomon had no air conditioning or elevator music.  It is as hard to square the Protestant work ethic with this Old Testament classic, as it is to reconcile the hopes and dreams of the Africa Power and Light Company to the notion that everything under the sun is meaningless!  But then Solomon had never heard of terms like photo-voltaic or photo-thermal.  We see what is done under the sun as optimistic – not absurd!

Thami and Sibusiso have just completed their Assessor training.  Last month they did their Facilitator training, so they are now able to both train other youth and sign the graduation certificates.  This follows on from their technical training last year, as Plumber and Solar Technician respectively.  C4L is now “fit for service” to provide accredited training to youth .  The first Solar Technician course starts February 21st and the first Plumbers course on Feb 28th.  Walk with us!  This is not meaningless, it is pro-poor and environmentally friendly!

And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment – wickedness was there
In the place of justice – wickedness was there (3:16)

Even the church does not escape this penetrating insight.  In one chapter of Revelation, it is called a harlot.  That is wickedness.  But many church-goers will be surprised to hear the Bridegroom say “Depart from me”.  Along with that Protestant work ethic came a pretty deep suspicion of pleasure!  Puritanism collided with hedonism.  Gnosticism reared its head again with an over-emphasis on spirituality – at the expense of the physical (including the arts, liturgical worship - especially sacred dance - and the deception that “sex is dirty”).

This week C4L sent an appeal to a dozen church organizations to help fund a poster campaign.  I was bewildered by the diverse reactions.  One reply questioned whether that was even ministry.  Another ordered 85 posters – one for each church in their denomination!

Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun (4:1)

The poster has a back-wash photo of Jimmy Mohlala, one of those local leaders who paid the ultimate price in what the press is now calling “the January murders”.  At the top of the poster is written “17 Reasons to Demand Transparency”.  Then comes a litany of the 17 names, by year, from 1998 to 2011.  At the bottom it reads: “Good leadership is not possible without good leaders”.  May the winds of Egypt blow to Mpumalanga!

Again I saw something meaningless under the sun
There was a man all alone
He had neither son nor brother
There was no end to his toil
Yet his eyes were not content with his wealth
“For whom am I toiling?” he asked
 “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?” (4:7-8)

This reminded me of The Giving Pledge.  Billionaires no longer need to toil, they need to enjoy being well off!  A new layer has been added to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Self-actualization is no longer the most sophisticated need.  It is: giving back, saying Thanks.

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
    Wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner (5:13)

The corollary of that new layer in Maslow’s hierarchy is that hoarding wealth can be hazardous to your health.  I wouldn’t know!  But I can tell you that emptying yourself out for other people is scary as hell – but my health is bearing up!

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. (8:14)

 
There is a jazz club in Maputo called Shithappens.  That might serve as a paraphrase title for Ecclesiastes?  Fine citizens like Jimmy Mohlala get gunned down in their own back yards while dictators like Mubarak get 30 years at the helm.  C.S. Lewis would have called it “nonsensical” but the writer of Ecclesiastes is much more solar!

Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun (9:9)

This one hurt most.  Could this explain why the church seems to peddle Divorce as the holy way past a broken marriage?  Brought to you by the makers of the Protestant work ethic and Puritans Against Hedonism.  It is not the Christian way, and certainly not the African way.

Contentment
I made a short list of some things that are not new under the sun, but as good as ever:

• Bread and butter
• Cold mineral water
• A spectacular sunset
• Sitting beside a fire in the dark
• Reading a psalm
• Swimming on a hot summer day

Individual Exceptions Don’t Absolve Collective Guilt

It reads like an African story, maybe even a plot-line for Scandal!  He had 13 children by 4 women – 1 daughter and 12 sons.  Two of these women were his wives.  So he was a polygamist.  They were sisters.  The other two women were maids – one deployed by each of the two wives to procreate more children.

Jacob tricked his older brother out of his birthright.  So he had two flee into exile, where he met his match – an trickster called Laban, his mother’s brother.  The bride price for his daughter Rachel was 7 years employment, but it didn’t seem long to Jacob as he loved this lady so!  But on his wedding night, his uncle slipped Rachel’s older sister Leah under the veil, forcing a second 7-year contract on him. 

However, on the 7th and last day of that wedding feast, Jacob did receive Rachel “on credit”.  In one week he went from being single to having 2 wives.  His first wife Leah bore him seven children – six sons then a daughter.  Rachel did not produce children at first so she offered her maid Bihah as proxy.  It worked, as she bore 2 more sons.  Not to be outdone, Leah deployed her maid Zilpah as well – and she produced 2 more sons.  Then Rachel came right and mothered 2 sons – Joseph and Benjamin.  One BIG happy family?

Well, not exactly.  Dinah had no sisters so she looked for friends in other homes.  In her socializing she was noticed by the Mayor’s son, who dishonored her.  However, he genuinely fell for her, and sent his father the Mayor to negotiate lobola for her with Jacob.  This posed a challenge, for she could not marry someone who was uncircumsized.  As a result, the Mayor agreed that he, his son and all the men in Shechem would be circumsized.  Ouch!

This left them vulnerable, unable to defend themselves.  Two of Leah’s sons (Simeon and Levi) committed one of the most heinous crimes ever recorded… on the third day of the collective male suffering through this act of attrition and good faith, they murdered every man in town, pillaged the city and absconded with its women and children.  Their father Jacob never forgave them, even on his deathbed.

Jacob also deprived Reuben of his birthright.  (First his own brother Esau and then his eldest son!)  He passed this on to Joseph, the eldest son of his beloved Rachel.  This was because Reuben got a little too close to his auntie Rachel’s maid, Bilhah, who while not technically his mother, was one of the 4 mothers of his father’s 13 children.


Communal responsibility

In the light of the background above, it is easier to contextualize the act of the older brothers turning on Joseph.  “Here comes the dreamer” they scoffed when he came into sight on an unexpected visit.  Some think that the 4 sons of the 2 maids would have ranked the lowest, and resented him most.

All the other sons at this point (assuming Benjamin came along later as the “late lamb”) would be sons of Leah.  Six in all.  Plus the four sons of the 2 maids.  Joseph was the first son of Rachel, and perhaps there was a rivalry within the family?  Was it just plain jealousy?  (For Jacob showed favoritism to Joseph.)

They were going to kill him and cover it up.  But Reuben, acting in his capacity as the eldest, convinced them to throw him down a pit.  In fact, he came back later intending to free Joseph only to find the pit empty.  To his dismay, brother Judah had made a counter-suggestion that they sell him to a passing caravan as a slave.  Double bonus!  They get rid of him, and get some money out of it too!

It was several decades before they met again.  The tides had turned.  Joseph has risen to become the second ranking government official in Egypt, under the Pharoah himself.  He had foreseen famine based on the Pharoah’s dream and was put in charge of disaster mitigation.  For seven years he built up a strategic reserve.  Regional drought arrived in the eigth year, and Jacob sent ten of his sons down to Egypt for food aid.  He kept Benjamin at home, not wanting to risk Rachel’s only remaining progeny.

Joseph was a trickster like his father Jacob and his great uncle Laban.  He put his brothers through the paces, even holding Simeon as surety so that they could go back home and bring Benjamin down to Egypt too.  But on their return, Jacob refused to let them take Benjamin.  Until in the second year of famine the hunger became unbearable, and he had to relent so that they could go down and get more assistance from Joseph’s food bank.

This time, Judah offered himself as surety to his father Jacob, that Benjamin the youngest son would not be harmed.  In fact, it was when Judah finally implored Joseph to let Benjamin go based on this personal guarantee, that Joseph finally broke down and disclosed who he was to them.  He couldn’t take it any longer because after the callous and cruel way that they had treated him as a youth.  He now saw them protecting the youngest and knew that they had changed, because they came to see the gap that a missing brother left in family life.

There were individual exceptions to the collective crime (Plan A)… Reuben convinced the brothers not to kill Joseph, just to fake it (Plan B).  Judah suggested that they rather exploit it as a money-making opportunity (Plan C).  Simeon was held as surety by Joseph.  Then Judah offered himself as surety to his father to protect the youngest brother.


Collective Guilt for Climate Change

Individual exceptions do not absolve us of collective guilt.  Wangari Maathai won a Nobel prize as a green crusader.  She said we should take what we need, not more, and leave the rest for future generations.  Yet the plunder continues, the African symbol being rhino horns.

As the Durban conference approaches, we have to come to this point that the brothers of Joseph came to.  They took a wrong turn.  They exchanged a brother for money.

Collective guilt can be ascribed by generation.  For example, the baby boomers.

It can also be ascribed by race.  For example, the disparity in terms of sharing resources under apartheid.

It can even be ascribed by class.  Desmond Tutu complains about the level of littering in Africa, but poor people’s first and foremost concern is not environmental responsibility.

Inheritance may have been the deepest issue in the story of Joseph, the older brothers resenting that the eldest, Reuben, had lost his birthright.  It had passed to the youngest, Joseph.  In the case of Climate Change, the younger generations are the ones who have been robbed of their inheritance.


Leaving a legacy for youth

It is too late to put back the non-renewable resources that have been used up greedily by a generation.

But it is not too late to redress disparities, lest they become structural.

As for class, one does not have to be rich to be responsible.  But attitudes of resentment and fatalism are encroaching African values.

No one will be affected more by future Climate Change than our youngest brothers and sisters.  They need to be alerted and resourced to fight the good fight against environmental degradation.

Einstein said that you will not change the current state of crisis by applying the same thinking that caused the crisis in the first place.  That’s precisely what Joseph was doing to his brothers – ensuring that they were thinking differently from they way they thought when they sold him out.

As much as we need individual acts of courage and wisdom in this eco-Struggle, what we need to do is ALL CONFESS our need for a new way of thinking and acting.

This begins with adopting a youth-led solution to the new problem which is apropos of the Pharoah’s dream.  The fat years of the present are going to cause some lean years in future – of depleted resources, extinct species and global warming.  The Pharoah put the Solution into the hands of a youth who was a foreigner.

Too Close for Comfort

I was asleep in my room this week when burglars broke through a window and got into my cottage.  Only a locked wood door separated them from me, snoring obliviously.

They nicked my LCD screen, my cell phone, my external hard drive, my camera and my flash drive.  They found two sets of keys, one to my front door and one to the C4L bakkie.  So they let themselves out and tried to start the bakkie… without success.  They appear to have left in haste, as I found my brief case behind the bakkie, open and all the papers strewn around it including my passport.  Later we found the car keys in the grass near the brief case.

Much of that day was spent tidying up… fixing the burglar bars that they bent to get in, police reports, the fingerprint team, getting a new cell phone and SIM card.

I knew these routines because the week before, burglars broke into the C4L Board room during the night and stole my laptop.  Worse of all was the loss of a lot of data.  It is really disorientating and you lose so much time with the aftermath, rebuilding databases, etc..

Prayer Partners

Here’s the thing…  I had taken my laptop to South Sudan, where I created a mailing list on it called Prayer Partners.  From there, I sent out weekly dispatches.  Even since my sudden return from Juba, I continued to keep the people on that list informed – at a more personal and frequent level than C4L Bulletins.

But alas… I lost that list with the laptop.  So today I am getting around to trying to replicate it – on my desktop at home.  Luckily that escaped the robbery… although later in the day when I could not print, I realized that the printer cable had been detached – so the burglars were interrupted and left before they could get the tower disentangled.  It's a thumb-suck... I can only guess at who was on that list.  And I can't ask those who were not to remind me!


Deteriorating Security

Sadly, I don’t see this government being very preoccupied about crime.  Former police commissioner Selebi is now in jail.  His successor Cele is now in court defending himself against misconduct.  The trickle-down to local level is that the police are fatalistic.  For example, when I asked the guy taking fingerprints what his recovery rate is – how many perpetrators have been caught this way – he could only remember 3 cases.  That’s not 3 %!  That is 3 cases.  He did not hold out much hope.

One Zambian colleague told me that no matter whether I was a missionary or a champion of poor and unemployed youth, I am seen as a “farmer” (boer) and C4L is seen as a “farm”.  He said frankly that this will not change, and that I should take the appropriate security measures.  He suggested a big electric gate at the entrance to C4L, which would forever change our ethos of openness and accessibility, especially for those on foot. (Which is the way most people arrive here.)

I can only think back to the years that I spent in Angola, during a war.  It was tense and risky, but we believed what a senior missionary there once told us there – that “there is no place safer than where God wants you”.  So this incident does not scare me away.

Comfort?

I have often quoted Dorothy Day’s philosophy ““comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”.  That is our role as leaders of nonprofits.

So I guess that it is fitting, especially at Lent, to ask ourselves if our comfort zone is getting to big?

In Africa, especially in the context of poverty, the Prosperity Gospel is very popular.  It is to explain to someone who grew up malnourished, how St Francis of Assisi was inclined to give away his family fortune and take a “vow of poverty”.  Perhaps that is more fitting for some one who comes from among the “haves” and wants to work with the “have-nots”?

But neither do I buy poverty as a rationale for crime.  Certainly the disparity in South Africa must cause a lot of jealousy, resentment and temptation.  But who says that poor people do not (or worse yet, cannot) have their honesty and dignity intact? 

It seems to me that contentment is a virtue for both rich and poor.  John the Baptist’s ministry can be summed up in two words – contentment and sharing.  He did not say that if you had two shirts that you should give them both to poor people who need clothes.  His message was to give away what you do not need.  Is that not contentment?  St Basil the Great wrote:

The bread which you do not use
Is the bread of the hungry
The garment hanging in your wardrobe
Is the garment of him who is naked
The shoes that you do not wear
Are the shoes of one who is barefoot
The money you keep locked away
Is the money of the poor
The acts of charity you do not perform
Are so many injustices you commit

He was truly on John the Baptist’s wavelength.  Contentment can also work on the other side of the tracks, not as an opiate but to create the conditions for honest development.  This is what disturbs me about the talk of nationalizing the mines.  There may be some advantages in this, as it has been tried in different countries, and in some cases like Botswana it succeeded.  But some attitudes suggest to me that poor people would trade their dignity for wealth.  At that stage I preach contentment to them too.  Warwick put it this way:

He gives not best who gives most
He gives most who gives best
If I cannot give bountifully
Yet I will give freely
And what I want in my hand
I will supply with my heart

Crime is robbing Africa, not just of its wealth, but of its dignity.  This is a greater loss - spiritual burglary.