Our family lives in a village, but not just a village, a tribe, the Lawa Tribe. Our village, Na Fon, is around 100 miles outside of the city of Chiang Mai. While we are expected to abide by the national laws, there is no law enforcement close to us. We essentially abide by our own laws as a village. We have an elected person that provides a form of governance over our village.
We have a temple with monks who take care of the temple and provide spiritual leadership to our village. There is also a spirit medium who ensures the spirits in the village are being taken care of so they do not torment us.
Our homes are very close to one another. No one is really alone. We take care of one another and look after one another. When there is a wedding, everyone comes together to help prepare the food and celebrate. When a family member dies, the village comes together to help make the food, plan the funeral, receive guests, and be near through the pain. Village members have access to the chairs and supplies within the temple when hosting a large ceremony so there never is concern as to whether there is enough of something. We do life together as a village and as a tribe.
For hundreds of years, Buddhism was the only religion of the Lawa people. We honored our ancestors and what they established religiously by continuing our Buddhist & animistic rituals.
This is why it was so offensive that our family would suddenly choose a different faith. Buddhism teaches that all religions are good so we didn't really think our choice to follow Jesus would result in such persecution. Yet, we soon understood that our choice to follow Jesus broke the unity our village had always lived in.
When we chose to follow Jesus, we didn't add this faith to our Buddhist faith. We actually renounced Buddhism. We chose Jesus believing He was the only way to Heaven.
Suddenly, we were the only family not attending the temple ceremonies. We were no longer taking our morning alms out to the monks to provide them food in exchange for good merit.
We no longer were making sacrifices to the spirits. In fact, we removed our idols. The spirit house that once stood outside providing housing for spirits so they wouldn't enter our own house and torment us was taken down. These actions caused a tremendous amount of fear in the hearts of our friends and family. In their minds, we were "sittin' ducks" sure to be destroyed by the spirits.
To walk away from Buddhism and choose Christianity felt like a slap in the face of our tribe and our family. It felt to them as if we were saying we no longer cared about them if we were willing to walk away from the faith of our ancestors and choose a new faith. It wasn't just any new faith, either, but the faith of the western world, as they saw it.
When just my brother became a christian, not many knew in our village. Even when my parents got saved, it did not cause a big uproar because I was living with them and resisted them. However, when I gave my life to Jesus, everything changed because now an entire household had now come under the lordship of Jesus. For the first time in our village Jesus was being given complete worship in one home.
The reality is that the persecution we have faced, along with new believers in our village, is because Satan is mad. While the attacks come through friends and family, the truth is...
We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. We wrestle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over the present darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Eph. 6:12
Comments