Paradox

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

Matthew 10:39

There are a lot of paradoxes in the Bible. To be rich, we have to give. To live eternally, we are supposed to die to ourselves. To be first, we should be last. One of the most confusing is Matthew 10:39- "Whoever finds his life, will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

I was very dissatisfied with a book I recently finished about a Zulu girl who was evangelized by the Catholic priests in the Convent mission her neighborhood. The book was named after the heroine, Kisimusi, a Zulu word meaning Christmas. It was written by Father Thomas Calkins, a Servite missionary who experienced living in the bush country for more than twenty years. The beautiful and sensitive Kisimusi was caught between the tribal and pagan practices of her people, and her ardent desire to obey the Christian God and His ways. 

One night when she was staying in her kraal, the Zulu homestead, instead of sleeping in the mission where she was also studying, she could not resist the call of the handsome Zulu boy who came knocking at her hut. Back at the mission she found she was pregnant and was conflicted. If she went to the powerful witch doctor, he could help her get rid of the baby and she could continue her studies and become a nurse. But her new religion forbade going to the wizened old man who hated her for abandoning the beliefs of her ancestors. She decided after confessing her sin to a priest and much prayer, to go back to her kraal and her people, and wait for the baby to come. When the witch doctor arrived to cure one of the old women of the kraal, he saw Kisimusi was there and he decided to get his revenge. He put some potent herbal mixture in her beer secretly and she got very very sick. The priest was called. He heard her confession, and gave her the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. He then brought her to the doctor in town. There was little the doctor could do as Kisimusi was bleeding to death.

As I read this, I was unhappy that the witch doctor was not caught and punished. Kisimusi was laid to rest in a hole in the ground amongst her people, and the priest gave a short simple homily about how Kisimusi would live forever with God, no more pain, no more suffering, no more conflict. He said that because she trusted in God, she triumphed over sin and death. All those who were listening, her mother and other relatives who could not understand the way of life Kisimusi chose, felt stirrings of understanding at last.