by Lance Patterson
BBFI missionary to Kenya
“Come quick,” my wife called. “Ezekiel has fainted.” I ran to Ezekiel’s quarters and found him on the floor leaning up against a shelf, his eyelids half closed over sightless eyes. My son Jonathan helped me lay him down and I tried CPR for about 10 minutes, but he was already gone. At age 56, he had suffered a massive heart attack. Ezekiel had been our guard for 12 years and was a friend as well as an employee. My first thoughts were for his family and the difficulties that I knew would be coming with the funeral.
In Kenya, where unemployment is around 60 percent, when a mzungu (white man) hires an African for any length of time, the employee practically becomes his child. Ezekiel’s wife had died three years before and he had a 19- and a 14-year-old daughter living with him. He was also raising a six-year-old granddaughter. None of Ezekiel’s family was willing to take the orphaned girls, so they are living with us under our care.
When Ezekiel’s brothers and oldest son arrived to plan the funeral arrangements, we began to face a battle between darkness and light. In most Kenyan tribes, it is customary for a person to be buried where he was born. There is nothing particularly wrong with that tradition — Americans are buried in places of their own choosing as well — but the beliefs that go along with the practice here are a problem. Many Kenyans believe if a person is not buried in his home place, his spirit will haunt the family and neighbors for generations. It is called the “living dead.”
Ezekiel and his immediate family had all been saved. We had discipled them, and they did not want any of the traditions other than burying their “papa” at home. We held a memorial service at the mortuary before taking the body upcountry for burial, and there I realized not all the family shared the same faith. At the viewing, Ezekiel’s oldest brother spoke to the body and said, “Don’t stay here. You must go to the burial.”
We bought a suit and tie for Ezekiel, but the Luhya, Ezekiel’s tribe, do not put shoes on the dead. They fear they will not be able to enter heaven wearing shoes. They also remove the tie before burial so the spirit can get out of the body. Since the feet wouldn’t be seen in the casket we figured the shoes didn’t matter, but we refused to remove the tie.
This made many of the neighbors unhappy, and some became angry. We finally agreed to loosen the tie, but not remove it, and that was accepted. At the burial service we preached clearly that Ezekiel’s spirit was already gone (2 Corinthians 5:8) so there was nothing to fear.
Another Luhya belief is that nobody dies a natural death. Somebody always causes it. One of Ezekiel’s neighbors had fought with his family before, so many of Ezekiel’s friends decided he was guilty and were intent on burning that man’s house down.
At about 11 p.m. the night before the burial, a crowd gathered on Ezekiel’s property and started singing and dancing, some apparently getting ready to carry out the deed. One of our pastors tried to calm them down while police were called. Then the pastor preached to the mob for over an hour until one by one they drifted away.
At the burial, another of our national pastors preached, and many hands were raised indicating acceptance of Christ as Savior. The funeral ended peacefully and we thought everything was over, but we still had to face one more tradition. In the Luhya way, 40 days after the burial the family must return to the location where the person died to escort the spirit of the dead to the site of the grave. It is a pagan practice honoring the “living dead.” Ezekiel’s oldest brother wanted to bring a witch doctor to our house to offer prayers on the fortieth day. We absolutely refused.
This brother had been a police detective and we worried he would bring police and force his way in. We told him that if he did, he would have to take the three orphaned girls home with him, because we would no longer take care of them. We wouldn’t have done that, of course, but he backed down and the burial was finally over.
We constantly have to ask ourselves to what extent can we compromise with the culture in order to keep the peace and continue our ministry, or can we compromise at all? Paul said he became all things to all men in order to win some, but did he compromise biblical doctrine or give credence to pagan practices to win them? Very clearly he did not, and neither can we.
We made a slight concession to loosen the tie in order to soothe angry neighbors threatening to make trouble, but we refused to remove it. Instead we used the occasion to teach them that Ezekiel’s spirit had already left the body and was in heaven, and that they could also know they were on their way to heaven if they would put their faith in Jesus Christ. Many of them did.
People of all cultures and beliefs must be treated with respect, but ultimately, when Christianity confronts culture, culture has to give way.