Friday, March 02, 2012

Something to Think About

“One of the really interesting stories to me is the story of Chief Joseph and after they’d cheated him out of everything, and they’re putting him on a reservation, they said “Why don’t you want to go to the reservation? If you go to the reservation, we’ll give you schools.” And he said, “We don’t want schools.” And the government of the United States said “Why don’t you want schools?” And Chief Joseph said “If you give us schools then churches will follow.” And so the United States government said “You don’t want churches?” And his father, Chief Joseph’s father was a Christian and Joseph was baptized in the church and rejected Christianity, and he said, “No, we don’t want churches.” They said, “Why don’t you want churches?”

And this is a very telling statement, he said “When we have churches it will teach us to argue about God.”
And we can argue about a lot of things, I know, but we shouldn’t argue about God.

It’s very difficult for me to understand why the church has been so reluctant to speak with Native Americans about Christ in whose name their land was stolen. Maybe there’s a little bit of shame or something. Which might even be appropriate. But the past is past and people need the Lord. And I think when an injustice has been done, people need to go the extra mile. You can’t undo what’s been done, and there’ve been injustices done to people of all races and all creeds and etc. But I think that there has to be some kind of healing. And I want to be a part of that.” - Rich Mullins (from an interview)