Cannibal Culture

October 22, 2007, 10:00 pm; posted by
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Best of Job, September 2006.

I read in Smithsonian about a tribe in New Guinea that still practices cannibalism. The writer went deep up a dark river and found them, eventually, living in houses adorned with bones — with a life-expectancy of 31 years, from a cocktail of disease, war and famine.

Tenderly gaining their confidence, he discovered that they eat those they believe are witches or warlocks, whom they blame for slowly eating their loved ones from the inside out. If someone dies slowly, they blame it on the ones who spent the most time around them…

The brain is our tastiest part, I guess.

The most galling thing was how the writer (and the Dutch missionaries downstream, who had decided not to convert them, in order to save their pristine culture) “teared” up because so many of the people were leaving the jungle to seek life elsewhere.

Within 30 years, he stressed, these people’s way of life would be lost forever.

Which is, of course, 30 years too many.

I remember arguing with Dr. Arensen about this in class once. While he was one of my top three favorite teachers of all time, I took exception when he said a certain African culture was “leagues” ahead of the West because they didn’t have a word for “stealing” — the implication being that there was, therefore, no stealing in their culture.

I asked him if a culture lacked a word for “adultery,” but still practiced it, would it therefore not be a sin?

His exact words I don’t remember, but I recall him outclassing me with extreme and surgical precision…not dissuading me, but silencing me most definitely.

But…

Pristine, untouched — I see the pricelessness of these things in human terms. But while drawing a peace with evil religions, backward societal practices, and life-ending hygienic practices may be cerebral, literary and scientifically comforting, through the lens of Christ, it is still very, very selfish.

I find no reason to embrace Islam on any level. I embrace the Muslim, but only with the caveat of Christ.

I will never make that truce under the guise of accepting them on the basis of my greater depth and understanding — because it’s just selfish to not want to be hated for it.


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