Above: Chris Howles teaching at Uganda Martyrs’ Seminary, Namugongo
Many of us brought up in the West are frequently told that we are masters of our own fate. Parents, teachers, and even politicians motivate youngsters by assuring them that ‘You can be and do anything you want if you work hard enough’ and ‘Your future is in your hands. Follow your dreams!’ The message is clear: our lives stretch before us as a blank canvas – our job is to seize the day and make it our own. What we make of our career, relationships, health and lifestyle is down to us. Our environment and surroundings can be manipulated to suit and serve us.
Yet in Uganda, such assurances of personal autonomy and fulfilment sound hollow. Financial instability is much greater. Sickness is more frequent. The effects of climate change are greater and more dangerous. People’s future, fate and personal fulfilment rarely feel within their own grasp. Many here perceive themselves to be subject to, and at the mercy of, forces well beyond their control. Consequently, the key question of life is not ‘Who do I want to be?’ nor ‘What do I want to do?’ but rather ‘How can I survive and thrive amidst the instability and unpredictability of this world?’
Unlike in the UK, the large majority of people here in Uganda believe that we all inhabit a world which contains more than what we can merely see and explain. The supernatural sphere is a daily reality. A late rainy season could be the consequence of collective community misdemeanors. A sickness could be a curse from a jealous workmate seeking his own promotion. A family grief could be a punishment from vengeful, unplacated spirits. A long-term unemployed university graduate bearing on her shoulders the financial hopes of a whole extended family could be a consequence of past wrongdoings in the lives of long-departed ancestors in the past. Fear of such spiritual powers and authorities is both natural and palpable among many here.
In this context of instability, anxiety and powerlessness, the good news of Jesus Christ brings sweet relief. Paul’s magnificent claim of Colossians 2:15 is not widely known or treasured in the UK, yet is a precious gift here in Uganda when sharing the gospel: namely that Christ, ‘having disarmed the powers and authorities, made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross’.
Those frightening and malevolent spiritual powers and authorities that so hold us captive are, through Christ’s sin-bearing, wrath-taking, Satan-conquering death on the cross, defeated. And not narrowly. Christ triumphs. The victory is total, even humiliating: those formidable and frightening supernatural powers are put on public display, defeated and disgraced, exposed and embarrassed. Christ’s resurrection guarantees it and his coming return will prove it, when he finally gathers all those he’s saved.
The same gospel of Christ, which saves people worldwide when proclaimed from Peru to Pakistan and from Albania to Angola, saves Ugandans too. Yet in these varied global contexts, different emphases of that same gospel resonate differently, like two people standing on opposite sides of a glittering multifaceted diamond, both enjoying different perspectives on the same beautiful object.
When I visit my Bible college students in their home villages and travel with them around their communities, I see that afresh. They move from house to house through banana plantations and along dirt tracks, speaking to neighbours and residents in their local language of Christ’s victory over those spiritual powers that so hold us fearful and captive. I observe in thankful awe as people grasp the precious message being shared, and it is not uncommon to see them kneel in their dusty yards, and embrace the peace, sanctity, and refuge that Jesus Christ provides through his death and resurrection.