Caption: “How could you give me food without salt?”
Source: The Lamp, Malawi, March 2006, p. 9.

I had a chance to talk about this cartoon with my Mozambican friend, Semo. He said he sometimes preaches a sermon with the theme, Eu vou-te arranjar, “I’m going to fix you.” He said this is the line men often use when threatening their wives with physical violence. “Who arranged this beautiful wife? God! And now you want to ‘fix’ her? That’s not ‘fixing’ that’s ruining.” We talked a bit about Paul’s teaching on men, especially the idea of the pater-familias who ruled his house in New Testament times with a heavy hand. The little book of Philemon seems pretty dull to us today, but it must have been dynamite in Colossae. It would be hard to imagine a master taking back a runaway slave without punishment and even being asked to call him brother. Our conversation turned to the subject of churches in Mozambique that are often run by little dictators. Semo mentioned one case where the pastor’s wife and children lived in fear of him. And he related to the congregation in the same way.

Image: These posters on the side of a petrol station in Salima are part of a public awareness campaign in Malawi combating HIV/AIDS.

The central expression of humanity is the family and the interrelation of the sexes and generations. And no civilization will be healthy where the concept of the family is twisted. I believe that in the person of Jesus Christ we have someone who through his own example is able to transform us into real men. That’s why Paul points to Jesus in Philippians as the perfect model. He was God by nature, but he humbled himself by choice. In a place like Philippi, men were praised for their power. Jesus achieved exaltation through humiliation. I’ve got a long way to travel on Christ’s path to exaltation.

Update: My wife said she recognized the family in this picture. I’m not sure who she was talking about since something was boiling over in the kitchen and she had to run out of the room.