Scripture Use

Part one of a chapter from Bruce Olson's book Bruchko, a true story occurring in the traditional Motilone society of Colombia, South America. It illustrates the component of music in a culture and the use of innovation to effect cultural change. Olson, Bruce, Bruchko. Charisma House 1973, 1995, pages 140 - 146. Used by permission. Thank you, Strang Communications.

I was lying in my hammock after the morning hunt. The women were cooking, and the acrid smoke of the fires, mixed with the smell of roasting monkey, made me drowsy. Soon it would be time to eat. I was hungry.
I heard a commotion in the other end of the home and lifted myself up on my elbow to see what was happening. A little knot of men and women had gathered around Abacuriana, a young, slender, man. I caught a few of his words.

"Tiger . . .  I couldn't move . . . . " He was talking excitedly.

Two men in hammocks near me got up and started toward the cluster of people. "Hey, Chanti." I called to one of them. "What's going on?"

He came over to my hammock. He seemed nervous.

The Tiger Speaks

"Didn't you hear?" he asked hoarsely. "The tiger spoke."

"What tiger?" I said, confused. "Spoke what? What are you talking about?"

"The tiger spoke! He spoke!"

I shook my head. "Chanti, tigers don't speak. And if they did, who would care what they said?"

"Oh," he said, "when the tiger speaks we are in big trouble. Big, big trouble."By this time, his eyes were rolling.

"Okay, thanks," I said, and let him go.

The whole house was in an uproar. All work stopped. Those who couldn't get close to Abacuriana stood on the perimeter of the crowd and talked, or walked swiftly to the door and stared outside.

I got out of my hammock. The chief was standing at one of the doors. I drew him aside.

"I want to talk to you," I said. "What does it mean that the tiger spoke?"

"It means we're in for big trouble," he said.

"But what kind of trouble? What could a tiger say that would be dangerous?"

"I'm going into the jungle to talk to the tiger. He'll tell me."

"But chief," I said, "tigers don't talk. This is nonsense."

He gave me a quick, hard glance. "Look," he said, "you don't know anything about the jungle. You don't know how to hunt, you don't know what to eat. You can't keep up on the trail. What makes you think you know anything about tigers?"

Oppression in the Village

There wasn't much I could say. I looked at him in nervous astonishment, while he stared coldly into the jungle. Then, with monumental effort, he squared his shoulders and walked out of the house. I watched him cross the clearing and disappear, alone, into the trees. I turned. Everyone in the home was looking at the area where he had disappeared.

He was gone until late afternoon. Everyone waited for him to return. No one worked. A few men tried to carve arrows, but they would stop often and stare into space. There was very little talking. People walked restlessly around the house, and their restlessness was transferred to me. I couldn't sit still. What was going on? I had never seen anything like this. The house seemed to be pressed down by a huge, invisible hand.

When the chief came back, people immediately huddled around him. He waited to speak until everyone had gathered. His face was tired and drawn. He seemed to have aged ten years.

"The tiger says that the spirits will come out of the rocks tonight. They will attack this home. Lives will be snuffed out. Languages will cease. There will be death."

In profound silence, the chief walked off and got in his hammock. People wandered off by themselves.
What on earth is going on? I wondered. Where did all this fear come from? What does it mean, that the tiger speaks and spirits come out of the rocks?

It was obvious that something really terrifying was happening. These people were not normally superstitious, and I had never never seen them really frightened before. They routinely faced poisonous snakes and dangerous animals, and never showed a trace of fear. If they were afraid now, there must be something worth being afraid of. But what was it? How could they fight it?

Bobby's Fear

I found Bobby outside the home, staring off into the distance. He glanced over at me when I came up.

"Bruchko, can Jesus be taken out of my mouth?" he asked, a tense edge of fear in his voice.

"Bobby, what is this all about? What does it mean that the tiger speaks? What does it mean that the spirits will come out of the rocks?"

"The spirits come out of the rocks," he said. "They try to kill. Sometimes only one dies. Sometimes many die. In Ocbabuda two months ago seven died."

"How do they die?" I asked. "What kills them?"

"The spirits kill them, Bruchko," he said. "They die in their hammocks because the evil spirits tear their language away from them."

"Bobby, does someone always die?"

"Always," he said.

The air seemed thick. What did this mean? Why did I feel under so much pressure?

"Can Jesus be taken out of my mouth?" Bobby asked again, looking out into the jungle.

I didn't know how to answer him. I had never before dealt with demon powers. I felt frightened, too.

"Can the devil kill me now that I walk in Jesus' path?" he continued. "Bruchko, what am I to do?"

"I don't know, Bobby. You'll have to talk to Jesus yourself. He is the only one who has the answer to your questions. He will speak to you in your heart."

He hesitated, then walked off into the jungle. I immediately felt regret. Why hadn't I given him some advice? What kind of spiritual father was I?

But I didn't have any advice to give.

I went for a long walk into the jungle. I was not only frightened but confused. "Tigers can't talk," I told God. "What is happening here?"

Songs to the Spirits

When I got back to the home it was nearly dark. As soon as I entered the clearing I heard strange, high wailings and incantations. The house was swaying back and forth, as if possessed by the devil himself. The incantations were jumbled. They went up and down, gathering force, then dropping. The air seemed electric. I was almost afraid to enter.

Inside the fires cast an eerie red glow. I saw that the house indeed was swaying. All the men, high up in their hammocks, were swinging and chanting to ward off the devil. The women were on the floor, clapping large rocks together. Their eyes -- like the eyes of the men -- were tightly closed.

Bobby's Faith

Where was Bobby? Was he in this place? Suddenly I was afraid for him. He was the only Motilone who had begun to walk Jesus' trail. Had he given in to this fear and superstition?

Then I saw his hammock. He was in it, swinging. I almost turned back and into the jungle. But something restrained me. He was my brother.

I grasped one of the poles that supported the house and began to shinny up toward Bobby's hammock which was almost twenty feet above the floor. The bamboo bent under my weight and I wondered if it would hold me. But Bobby's welfare was the most important thing in the world to me just then. Hand over hand, I pulled myself up. When I got high enough, I looked into Bobby's hammock. His eyes were open. He had a big smile on his face. The song he was singing was different:

"Jesus is in my mouth; I have a new speech.
Jesus is in my mouth; no one can take Him from me.
I speak Jesus' words.
I walk in Jesus' steps.
I am a Jesus' boy.
He had filled my stomach, and I am no longer hungry."

As I clung to the palm tree pole, Bobby looked straight at me. He was safe. He knew Jesus. He was doing the thing I should have had the vision to suggest. He was keeping the evil spirits away by singing a song of Jesus.

I joined him in the song. All that night we sang. When dawn came, no one had died. It was the first time in anyone's memory that the spirits had walked and no one had died.

No one commented on Bobby's song, yet I could sense that the other Motilones had a new interest in him and in his relationship to Jesus. It wasn't particularly outward; that wasn't the Motilone way. But the evidence was clear.

Seeing a Change

And Bobby began to change. In the months that followed his commitment to Jesus, he became less proud. When he visited other homes, he accepted food immediately instead of forcing himself to go without it to demonstrate his strength. That stubbornness had not made him very popular among the other men, though they respected him for it. Now they noticed his new attitude and wondered what caused it.

I was eager for Bobby to tell them. He could do it more effectively than I, I was sure. I tried to encourage him to share his experiences, and was upset when he didn't. Was it because he didn't care enough about the other Motilones? I couldn't be sure.

But I was trying to squeeze him into "the mold" and didn't realize it. News has no real significance to the Motilones until it's given in a formal ceremony. In my excitement over Bobby's spiritual experience, I wanted him to do things the way they would have been done in North America. I wanted him to call a meeting and tell about Jesus, or corner his friends and explain what Jesus now meant to him. But thank God he waited until he could do it the Motilone way.

Word spread that there was to be another Festival of the Arrows. There was excitement in the home. The Festival was the only time all the Motilones gathered together.

Pacts would be formed. Arrows would be exchanged, and the men forming the pact would have a singing contest. They would climb into their hammocks and sing as long as they could, relating legends, stories, and news or recent events. Often their songs would last twelve hours, without interruption for food, water, or rest.

The Festival of Arrows

People streamed into the home. There was lots of noise and food. Old friends greeted each other, and swapped stories. People were looking at Bobby in a new light. Word had spread about the night the spirits had walked and no one had died. He was looked on with respect, and some curiosity. He had married, and was accepted as a man.
An older chief named Adjibacbayra took a special interest in Bobby. His reserved air made him appear dignified. However, he had a lot of curiosity, and on the first day of the Festival, challenged Bobby to a song. Bobby was pleased, and immediately accepted.

They both climbed into a single hammock twenty feet off the ground, and began to swing back and forth. Bobby sang first, and Adjibacbayra imitated him, following line for line. Other men also had challenged each other to songs, and were singing.

Bobby's song was about the way the Motilones had been deceived and had lost God's trail. He told how they had once known God, but had been greedy and had followed a false prophet. Then he began to sing about Jesus. As he did so, the other men who were singing stopped. Everyone became quiet in order to listen.

"Jesus Christ was incarnated into man," Bobby sang. "He has walked our trails. He is God yet we can know Him."
The home was deathly still, except for Bobby's wailing song and Adjibacbayra's repetition. People were straining their ears to hear.

My Misunderstanding

Inside me, however, a spiritual battle was raging. I found myself hating the song. It seemed so heathen. The music, chanted in a strange minor key, sounded like witch music. It seemed to degrade the Gospel. Yet when I looked at the people around me, and up at the chief swinging in his hammock, I could see that they were listening as though their lives depended on it. Bobby was giving them spiritual truth through the song.

Still I wanted to do it my way . . . until I heard Bobby sing about Jesus giving him a new language.

"Can't you see the reality that he is giving to them?" God seemed to ask me.

"But Lord," I replied, "why am I so repulsed by it?"

Then I saw that it was because I was sinful. I could love the Motilone way of life, but when it came to spiritual matters I thought I had the only way. But my way wasn't necessarily God's way. God was saying, "I too love the Motilone way of life. I made it. And I'm going to tell them about my Son in my way."

I relaxed, able at last to find real joy in Bobby's song. It continued for eight hours, ten hours. Attention didn't slacken. It got dark inside the house. Fires were built. Finally, after fourteen hours, they quit singing and climbed wearily down from their hammock.

Hearing the News

Adjibacbayra looked at Bobby. "You've communicated a true news item," he said. "I too want to suspend myself in Jesus. I want to pull His blood over my deception."

That night a spiritual revolution swept over the people. No one rejected the news about Jesus. Everyone wanted Him to take them over the horizon. There was tremendous jubilation. Sometimes it was quiet and people would talk to each other in little groups. At other times, the joy would break into spontaneous singing. It went late into the night.
God had spoken. He had spoken in the Motilone language, and through the Motilone culture. He had not even had to use me.