When Claudia chose a seat in a room, she carefully positioned herself near an exit. In multi-story buildings, she took the stairs, never an elevator. Spelunking? Impossible! Claudia suffered from claustrophobia, a “morbid fear of being shut up in a confined space.”
Another kind of claustrophobia
Let’s shift gears. David Aikman, former senior correspondent for “Time” magazine, tells the stories of six “Great Souls” who shaped the Twentieth Century.
One, Nelson Mandela, led South Africa out of entrenched racism.
Earlier, Mandela, “banned” by the government, “could not meet with more than two people at a time – not even attending his son’s ninth birthday party.” Mandela wrote: “‘Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one’s spirit and introduces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn not only for freedom of movement but for spiritual escape.’” (“Great Souls” 84)
Reader, let Mandela’s phrase: “psychological claustrophobia” impact you.
Racism
Mandela’s collision course with South African apartheid (prejudicial policies codifying the “apartness” of races), eventually led him to much greater constriction – prison – for 27 years.
During his confinement to prison on dreaded Robben Island, sometimes he and other prisoners were ordered to dig a six-feet-deep trench. Directed to get into the trench, their white warders urinated on them.
How do we overcome such wicked racism?
And more
Another form of racism is tribalism. Two weeks before the 1994 South African elections, one tribe, represented by Chief Buthelezi, demanded sovereign nation status.
Mediation by Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, and Lord Carrington, later secretary-general of NATO, failed. Kissinger: “I have never been on such a catastrophic mission. Its failure has cataclysmic consequences for South Africa. (GS, 130)
To the north, genocide reigned, exterminating an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans, about 70% of the country’s Tutsi population.
What shall we say? Jesus associates such mind-numbing depravity with spiritual realities. John 10:10 – the devil “comes only to steal, kill (“thuó” – “to kill as a sacrifice”) and destroy.”
Back to South Africa
After Kissinger and Carrington left, Chief Buthelezi got in his plane to fly away. Doomsday loomed.
Michael Cassidy, head of a Christian ministry, African Enterprise, encouraged one negotiator, Washington Okumu, to continue. “The Lord will help you. We will cover you constantly with prayer.” (A Witness For Ever” 382)
Backstory – for a year, a thousand groups of South Africans had participated in a round-the-clock “Chain of Prayer.”
God answered some prayers extraordinarily. In this case, the compass on the plane that carried Buthelezi perplexingly began gyrating. The pilot returned to the airport.
Okumu awaited. He and Buthelezi had a “critically important discussion.” (AWFE, 383) They agreed to have final peace talks at the Jesus Peace Rally, two days later.
One more backstory: no official had wanted to authorize the rally at Kings Park Stadium until a lowly magistrate put his career on the line.
Would people hazard the danger and come?
Yes, April 17, 25,000 gathered to pray.
Why a “Jesus” prayer rally? 1 John 3:8: “The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.” How does Jesus destroy the Destroyer’s works? In part, Christian, and those who will yet trust him, Paul writes: 1 Cor 5:7 “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been killed” (“thuó” – “sacrificed”) – in our place. Jesus’ wiling sacrifice outflanks Satan, reconciling Jesus’ followers of all colors with God and each other.
At the rally, as people prayed, in the VIP lounge Buthelezi and Okuma began to find a way through.
Later, President de Klerk, Mandela and Buthelezi refined and signed the treaty produced by Buthelezi and Okuma.
As a result, April 27, 1994, the polls opened for South Africa’s first democratic election.
Cassidy wrote: “My home country peacefully dismantled apartheid, electing Nelson Mandela as president. Even the secular press used the word miracle to describe this breathtaking event. Behind the scenes, the church was on its knees or extending its arms to assist in any way” (“Christianity Today,” August, 1994).
Ongoing reconciliation
Afterwards, Mandela commented: “I saw my mission as preaching reconciliation, binding the wounds of the country, engendering trust and confidence” (GS, 61).
Aikman concludes Mandela’s story: “Above all else, we see the virtue of forgiveness emerging again and again. There must have been times when Mandela consciously chose to forgive incidents of injustice, brutality, and deprival to which forgiveness seemed a weak and unsatisfying response. It cannot always have come easily to him. Yet, decade after decade, Mandela chose to forgive” (GS, 123).
Mandela once told Jesse Jackson that he began to feel the power of prayer while in prison. In Jackson’s view, this spiritual journey caused Mandela to emerge from prison “unbroken, unbowed and unbitter. He radiated hope.” (GS 68)
Recognizing God at work
Mandela’s mother had him baptized as a Christian.
As a young man, he chose another way. Later he commented: “I attempted to make up for my ignorance with militancy.” (GS 90)
In subsequent years, “privately, Mandela was unequivocal about his Christian faith. Through it, he became a changed man.” (GS 68) And this changed man changed his country.
What about us?
Once, a Christian friend of mine worried about his children departing from the faith. A pastor asked: “Were they baptized?” “Yes.” “Then, see what God does with those who have been marked out for him.”
Each of us have a protective bubble of “personal space.” Has God’s Spirit invaded your space to change you through baptism?
One evidence of such real Spirit-transformation/baptism is prayer. The miracle of South Africa encourages us to pray. Let’s.
And, more.
Another friend had deeply offended his wife. He did substantial work of repentance. Then I asked his wife: “Are you willing to do the work of forgiveness?” She was not.
But the drumbeat of Ephesians 4:32 persists: “Forgive each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Friend, God helped Mandela do the work of forgiveness.
As we pray: “God, for Christ’s sake, help me forgive,” we may participate in the miracle of reconciliation.
Note 1: Ironically, for a word describing dreadful compressing constriction, claustrophobia’s origin is surprisingly broad. Dr. Benjamin Ball, a physician who coined the word, had connection to four(!) countries. He was Italian-born, French-naturalized and practiced medicine in Switzerland and England. In “claustrophobia,” Ball combined words from two(!) languages. First, Latin “claustrum” – “a bolt, a peg, a nail, all used as locks or bolts in primitive structures. They made something inaccessible, shut in, confined.” To “claustrum” he added Greek “phobia” – “fear.”
Note 2: The impact of the 1994 Rwanda genocide continues. 3/19, President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo visited Rwanda to sign the Kigali Genocide Memorial Book. He commented: “The collateral effects of these horrors have not spared my country, which has also lost millions of lives.”
Note 3: Google tells us that at least 108 million people have been killed in wars in the Twentieth Century. Estimates for the total number killed in wars throughout human history range from 150 million to 1 billion.
Note 4: The book, “A Witness For Ever” by Michael Cassidy tells the story of the miracle of South Africa in detail.
Note 5: Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu: “Had Nelson Mandela and all these others not been willing to forgive, we would not have even reached first base” (GS 64).
