Children of Another God?

I was recently on a week-long eco-tourist expedition to the Amazonia region of Colombia, on the border with Venezuela.

I saw and did lots of interesting things and among them was extended contact with indigenous communities. I listened to a couple of legendary stories, one of which is widely known in the communities around the small city of Inírida in the department, or state, of Guainia.

The city is surrounded by wide, fast-flowing rivers, thick jungle and broad savannas. For most of the year, the only way in or out is by plane or boat. The rivers are full of fish which are continuously chased by frequently breeching river dolphins.

The stories I heard had striking similarities to those in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and I was struck by the similarity in their moral messages as well, as in the story of Princess Inídira.

“Little Mirror”
According to the legend of the Puinave people, Inídira, whose name means “Little Mirror of the Sun,” was very beautiful and sang as beautifully. Lots of men attempted to win her hand but used lies and fraud to do so. She wasn’t interested in any of them. Her only love was for the little mountains of Mavecure – three, almost vertical monoliths of granite along the Inídira river, about 30 miles from the city of Inídira. The mounds are estimated to be about 3,500 million years old. We struggled to climb one of them.

But back to the story. Along came a prince named Yoy from the kingdom of Vichada, now the name of one of 32 Colombian departments. Yoy, finding himself rejected by the princess like all the other suitors, decided to drink a concoction made from puzana, a plant used to conjure up love.

When the prince gave some of the drink to Inídira, she “went crazy, running off in all directions.” The hills of Mavecure gave her refuge and hid her. Subsequently, she was changed into the Flor de Inídira, the Inídira flower, for which the city and the river are named. And the dozens of water falls that rage off the Mavecure hills when it rains are the princess’ tears. In the end, because of his enduring, selfless love, Yoy won over the princess, who presumably again took human form.

In a visit to one indigenous community, we were shown huge boulders containing inscriptions and drawings believed to be thousands of years old, placed there by the community’s ancient ancestors. The indigenous guide told us that he believed in the religion of his ancestors and its supreme being. He rejected the faith of his parents and grandparents who, along with the whole community, had been evangelized in the 1940s by evangelicals from New York.

The evangelicals, he said, had insisted that his ancestors reject the legends and gods of their people. Since he refuses to do so, he is a persona-non-grata in his community. My heart went out to him because, I’ve been told, rejection by one’s community is among the worse things possible for these and other members of indigenous communities.

But who’s to say that the God worshipped by his ancestors and by him is not the same who is worshipped by the Christian evangelicals, or by other Christians, Jews and Muslims? Doesn’t God reveal him/herself in different ways in different cultures and ages?

I’m reminded of the story of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian Bible. In Athens, he preached in synagogues and in the marketplace and was troubled by the sight of the many idols worshipped by Athenians. A group of philosophers hauled him off to the Areopagus, a sort of court that was also a place for debate.

Strange Ideas

“May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?” the philosophers asked. “You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” The author of Acts adds this aside: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” Sound familiar?

Anyway, in his answer, Paul noted that Athenians were “very religious,” mentioning that he had noticed among the idols an altar “to an unknown god.” It was this God, he said, that he wanted to explain.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands,” said Paul. “And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” God wants people to “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.”

Paul didn’t reject the Athenians or their beliefs, nor did he try to force his God upon them, knowing that God had already planted the seeds of faith in them.

That should be kept in mind when people searching for God, especially believers, are faced with the seemingly contradictory beliefs of others.