Flat Earth Part 3

This is part 3 of 4. If you're following along at all, your contributions in the way of comments are incredibly helpful to me.

Globally Speaking

In matters of church and religion, those of us who have grown up in the west have not truly experienced the massive oppression that colonialism brings. Perhaps we’ve felt the remnants (more on this in a bit), but mostly we’ve just enjoyed being a part of the WE and perhaps from time to time thanked God for bringing us into life as a WE and not a THEM. If we were extra strong in our faith and love of others we might even pray for THEM from time to time as well, hoping that THEY would be able to experience our model, adapt to it, see the error and foolishness of their ways and come around to the good kind of living. Rare was the person who realized that the model of WE might not actually be the best model for THEM and that the model of WE might actually harm THEM if forced upon them and might actually even harm THEM if WE continued to live it ourselves, after all it had worked for us, right?!?!

A great example of the struggle in this is the story of St. Patrick. George Hunter has a great book on St. Patrick, “The Celtic Way of Evangelism”, relating it to today that I highly recommend as background reading to this. The bottom line here is that Patrick went to Ireland and instead of bringing with him a specific model of how to “do church” he instead came as a missionary looking and listening for the places God was already at work in the people that he and his band went to share life with. Out of this kind of looking and listening approach Patrick taught first one tribe and eventually hundreds of others how to see God in what they were already involved in, to share the story that unites them all and to tell it in the ways that not only fit their culture and life but came out of their culture and life. Instead of assuming that he brought God with him to this place (as in colonialism), he started with the assumption that God was already at work there. As the church grew exponentially in Ireland the Roman Catholic Church from which Patrick drew his education, tradition, ordination and beginning resources, took great notice. What it noticed was that their model was not being taught, replicated or explained. This was a problem and eventually became a very large one for the Celtic church and for Patrick. In a way colonialism “won” that round, but perhaps has lost the war.

Globally this kind of “gospel share,” by inserting our better people, traditions, methods and models on others, has been wide spread. In matters of the church it has been the dominate model of “missionary” work. Again, this model is hard but potentially satisfying for the US and not so great for THEM. This kind of Jesus imposed has not been well accepted, nor has this church which claims to want to share Him.

Questions
I wonder in what ways has colonialism shown itself in the world you live in?

In what ways have you seen it do "good"? Are there any?

In what ways have we seen its harm? Please expand your comments above just "spiritual" things.

Does re-imaging any of this lead us only to a "new and improved colonialism"? In other words are we only going to re-do this pattern with a different model OR can we truly set a new course?