What I am Digesting:
Title: Spirit of the Rainforest
Author: Mark Ritchie (recounting stories told by Yanomamo shaman)
Year Written: 1996
Why I Read It: Recommended by someone trying to help me with my spiritual journey. I think he suggested this book for two reasons: First, it challenges my world-view that we all have lenses/windows to God - that we can learn more about God by learning to see him through the lens/window of other cultures and religions. Second, it is a great story of how God enters into a relationship with some people who are part of culture that was completely isolated from Him.
Background:
Spirit of the Rainforest is the story of the Yanomamo Indians as told through the eyes of Jungleman, one of their most powerful and influential shaman.
The Yanomamo live in the rainforest. Their culture is very primitive - hunt with spears, fight with clubs, live in huts, minimal clothing, etc. There are about 10 - 15 tribes, and each tribe is lead by a shaman.
The shaman spend a good amount of their time in the drug-induced spirit world. In this world they develop intimate relationships with certain spirits (to the point of having sexual intercourse with them). Somehow these spirits lead the shaman to other villages where they can see what is going on there as well as help them inflict pain and even death on the competing tribes - especially infants and children. In the physical world, these spiritual raids often manifest themselves as disease. The spirits also inform the shaman when another tribe has attacked them as well as promise protection from other tribes.
The Yanomamo are motivated by pride and revenge which creates a dysfunctional cycle - they are constantly out to get payback and they hold grudges for decades. As a result they live in constant fear of each other; many of them starve to death because they become so fearful that they don't leave their huts to go hunt for food.
For the most part (there did seem to be some exceptions), they treat their women like property. Women have no status in their culture. They are useful for chores, raising children, sexual intercourse, and are good bartering material if a family is lucky enough to have a desirable daughter.
They do have limited interaction with white people which they call naba. These tribes are often visited by missionaries and anthropologists. The Yanomamo are desirous of naba things - watches, clothes, motors for their boats, medicine, etc.
Ritchie centers the story around Shoefoot. He is the first Yanomamo Indian converted by missionaries. Being a shaman, Shoefoot "throws away" his spirits to accept Yai-Pada, The Great Spirit. As a result his tribe becomes peaceful and prosperous. They no longer live in fear; they no longer seek revenge; they treat their women with dignity, respect, and loyalty.
Over time, through Shoefoot's evangelistic missions to other tribes and other tribes visiting their village, several shaman become converted and and consequently experience the same peace and joy.
Impact of book / Takeaways
1. I can see why my evangelical friend recommended this book to me. The book seems to support the evangelical understanding of the spiritual world - existence of demons who are in war against God. They are evil, manipulative and deceitful. The Yanomamo are completely deprived; they have no relationship with God and you see the results of this manifested in their day to day lives - see description of their culture above.
2. Prior to the conversion of Shoefoot, there did not seem to be any redeeming qualities in their culture. There was nothing that would make you think that they had any relationship with God whatsoever. Remember, my world-view states that we all have windows to God and we can best learn and know him by looking through the windows of other cultures, religions, etc. This book challenges that assumption - there did not seem to be anything worth valuing from the Yanomamo "window". Either my theory is complete hogwash (very likely) or the Yanomamo "lens" was very dark indeed.
3. The Yanomamo did not come into relationship with God on their own. It was only through the work of a missionary family that the first conversion took place.
4. In my opinion there are two heroes in the book - the missionary family and Shoefoot. The lives of this missionary family are very inspirational - an entire family moved in with these people to the point where they were seen as part of the tribe - part of the family. Sacrifice. Bravery. Passion. No comfortable home, no Comcast, no college football games to watch every week, no electricity, no telephone, no washing machine, no supermarket, etc. Missionaries like the ones described in this book really make me question my lifestyle.
I admire Shoefoot because of his ability to see outside of his lens. He was open-minded enough to truly evaluate what the missionaries were sharing with him. To throw away his spirits must have been a very hard thing to do - remember they depended on them for guidance and protection. To throw them away was very bold. To accept Yai-Pada he had to reject everything he had been told his entire life as to what was true. Hundreds of Yanomamo come to experience peace and joy because of open-mindedness and faith of this one man.
5. In the book you learn of "Irritating Bee", the name given to one of the anthropologists who visited their villages. Spirit of the Rainforest challenges a book written by Irritating Bee (Napoleon Chagnon). As of 1996 Chagnon's book about the Yanomamo was the all-time best selling anthropology book. It made the case that the Yanomamo were living in Eden - at one with nature, paradise, etc. It criticized missionaries for wanting to change them by influencing them with white-man ways - especially Christianity. Spirit of the Rainforest (as described in its appendices) definitely stirred up the world of anthropology. It suggests that Chagnon at a minimum did not truly see things as they really were (saw what he wanted to see) or even worse that he had a secular humanist agenda he wanted to push forward and used the Yanomamo for that purpose. In either case, Spirit of the Rainforest painted a much different picture of the Yanomamo as was described in Chagnon's book.
Reading things like this makes me wary of trusting the writings of others. If I had read Chagnon's book and had not read Spirit of the Rainforest, I am sure I would have accepted Chagnon's writings as accurate. It would have supported my world-view of all culture's ability to see God - just in different ways. I probably would have agreed with him that the missionaries were probably just doing harm, etc. It makes me want to ask what else I have read or watched and accepted as true when in reality it was just someone manipulating facts to push their own agenda or justify their own world-view.
6. A troubling question still lingers in the air. Whereas Spirit of the Rainforest does a great job of challenging some of my assumptions, it only affirms one of the core questions driving my desire to find a new world-view: What happens to all the Yanomamo who were born and died prior to the conversion of Shoefoot? Eternity in hell - eternal suffering and torture?
Some might say, that since they never had a chance to hear the gospel (nobody there to preach it to them), then they are not held responsible. I have two responses to that: First, the bible itself says that none are without excuse. Second, if you take that stance, then are we sending people to hell by sharing the gospel with them? If ignorance is truly bliss, and if we know that almost everyone will reject the gospel because of the cultural inertia (think of how hard it must have been for Shoefoot and Jungleman to throw away their old spirits when that is all they had known and been taught their whole lives and how many Yanomamo - almost all of them - continued to reject the gospel even after seeing the obvious fruit in the lives of Shoefoot and his tribe), aren't we sending them to eternal torture by making them responsible?
This book does a great job of challenging my thinking and has become a new data source for the background program running in my mind; however, it still does not satisfy the troubling question I have regarding the evangelical understanding of how God plans to redeem the world. If the evangelicals are right then billions of people (just like the Yanomamo) are going to experience horrendous suffering for all eternity even though they never really had a chance to come into a relationship with God. If that is true it makes me question God's character (is he really all loving?) and/or his competence (is he really all powerful?).
Somehow, the pieces are not all fitting together. The journey continues.
