It was my second trip to the island commonwealth of Jamaica, again to visit the brethren and to participate in the 1983 Bible School and Campaign. On my first visit, in 1979, I had been accompanied by Barbara, but that had been “preAdamic” times (Adam was born in 1980); we reckoned (rightly, as it turned out) that the accommodations for a mother and a three-year-old would not be very suitable!
Many thousands of Americans and Europeans visit Jamaica each year, sleeping and eating in luxurious hotels, frolicking on the beaches, and taking carefully-planned scenic tours. No doubt they return home with lovely memories of a tropical paradise, an idyllic combination of wind and sun, sand and sea. And so Jamaica is! But what they never see (and wouldn’t care to see, most likely!) is — just beyond the protected perimeter of fine hotels and white beaches — a struggling, restless, poverty-beset third-world country; a society riddled with unemployment, hunger (yes, real hunger), and disease. It is the privilege of a Christadelphian visitor to see behind the exotic facade of Jamaica, and to experience (if only for a few days, and in a limited way) the real heart of the people.
As I write this, the one memory of Jamaica in general that crowds out the others is the music — the loud, insistent “reggae” beat. You hear it in the streets, on the buses, from every radio within range in the towns and cities. Supposedly it affirms to westerners the carefree, fun-loving image of Jamaica. But one wonders, after a little observation, if it isn’t simply the most-readily-available “drug” to ease the pervasive feeling of hopelessness and emptiness in Jamaican life.
The brothers and sisters carry music with them too, but it is the “songs of Zion:” they may be heard singing in the kitchen as they prepare the meals, singing as they go about their daily chores. And singing, beautifully and enthusiastically, a half-dozen preliminary hymns while waiting for the presiding brother to announce the opening hymn for Bible class! And perhaps, again, the music serves the same purpose — to lift a people out of their hard everyday lives . . . but this time, into the kingdom! Somehow, in Jamaica the coming kingdom seems more real than it often does in America. One looks about at the broken-down vehicles, the poorly-repaired shacks, the ill-clad loungers and beggars, and the goats and chickens rummaging through the garbage. One breathes the casual atmosphere of anarchy and lawlessness, and witnesses on all sides the ceaseless pursuit of “good times” that just aren’t there. And he realizes — more absolutely than he ever does in “rich,” Laodicean America — that mankind desperately needs the kingdom!
The Bible School and Campaign activities reveal something of the “work-ethic” of the Jamaican Christadelphians, and not incidentally exhort us in our rather easy-going Bible School and fraternal gathering “holidays.” Consider the regular daily schedule:
7:00 Wake up and chores
8:00 Morning prayers and devotions 8:30 Breakfast
9:30 Daily Bible readings and discussion
10:30 Bible School session, with discussion (1½ hours) 12:30 Lunch
1.30 Another Bible School session (1½ hours)
3:00 Campaign activities (leaflet distribution, etc. This is, in case the reader hasn’t thought of it, the hottest part of the day!) — 2 hours or so
5:30 Supper
8:00 Public lecture: which usually takes the following format:
8 to 9 The formal lecture
9 to 10 Formal questions and answers
10 to 11, or
sometimes 12 Informal discussions, with as many as 25 visitors
And then to bed, to get up by 7 a.m. and start it all over again! This visitor reluctantly admits that, by Thursday, after four days of this pace, he was taking to his bed (foam rubber mat, that is!) for an afternoon nap, while some campaigners twice his age were heading out into a Jamaican summer afternoon (95 to 100 degrees) with more leaflets under their arms.
Because of financial and travel difficulties, the total number of campaigners was down by half from 1979. Thus, all this activity was undertaken by a work force of only 40 or so (several of which were mostly occupied with children or kitchen duties). But, such is the prevailing sentiment about the importance of gospel proclamations, that this was considered a sufficient number to hold two public lectures, at two places five miles apart, with all the attendant difficulties of transportation, advertising, and set-up (no small concerns in Jamaica) !
The American observer cannot fail to be impressed by the quality of Bible knowledge demonstrated by a number of the Jamaican brethren. Lacking most of the study materials that we take for granted (and too often consign, unread, to our bookshelves), but firmly committed to preaching work, the typical Jamaican brother is quite comfortable dealing with any imaginable first-principle subject. And he is not afraid to “tackle” anyone, any time! I stood next to one brother, baptized now about three years, while he went toe-to-toe with a Pentecostal minister on the nature of Christ, and quoted ten passages to every one from the minister! (And those passages came from a memory sharpened by use, not from a list carefully marked in a wide-margin Bible!)
It would be wrong to leave the impression that the ecclesias in this missionary area have no problems. As in other parts of the world, here too there are those who, having once turned from “idols” to serve the true God, still feel strongly the pull of the “world” and turn away from the Truth. There are also the difficulties so often associated with relative isolation: the occasional peculiarity of interpretation; and the shortage of marriage-age young people in Christadelphian circles, with the inevitable consequences.
But there are, in Jamaica, some of the most sterling examples of Christian discipleship that can be found anywhere in the world. To attempt to describe them in detail would no doubt be objectionable to the brothers and sisters themselves, who feel they are only doing in the circumstances what their Lord requires of them. Furthermore, such a chronicle would certainly leave unnoticed others just as deserving of recognition. So the temptation to extol individuals will be (rightly, I think) resisted. But this much I will say: The Christadelphian visitor to Jamaica leaves with a sense of wonder, undiminished by time and reflection, at the sacrificial lives of some of Christ’s servants. He feels somehow that he has been given a glimpse of first-century Christianity, more real than words on paper, or the simple recounting of facts and figures, can convey. He feels that, in the noisy cities and on the dusty back-roads of this exotic Caribbean island, there are men and women who truly walk with the Apostle Paul:
“With far greater labors . .. often near death . . . beaten with rods . . . on frequent journeys . . . in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness . . . in toil and hardships, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food” (2 Cor. 11:23-27, RSV).
And one leaves Jamaica with a sense of shame and inadequacy, upon realizing how easy it can be, in this free and rich society of ours, to settle into a safe, comfortably level of “service” to Christ — a level that never stretches us, that never tests us, and that leaves us with plenty of time and money for silly indulgences. Brethren, why is this so?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One