Ellen in Paraguay

On Thursday I went grocery shopping and ran into a guy from church. He didn’t have a cart or a basket, and when I asked why, he explained to me that he was bored at home so he decided to walk around in the air-conditioned grocery store, poor guy! It worked out really well for me though, because he helped me order my meat, and get my vegetables and bread weighed, and carried the majority of my heavy bags back home! Anyways, he took advantage of shopping for meat to bring up my “strange” eating habits. I eat fairly normal by north American standards I think, including some type of meat almost every day (a meal without meat is not considered real food here) but the Paraguayans who can afford it, and probably even those who can’t, eat a ridiculous amount of beef, chicken and sausage. Almost every Sunday we have big asados BBQ’s where even the women eat a pound or more of meat. I tried to explain my reasons to my friend, such as about social responsibility (a lot more people can live off the grain it would take to feed a cow, rather than eating the cow), that it’s expensive, that it is healthy to eat smaller amount, and besides, I just don’t like it that much! He kept probing, until finally he revealed to me that the reason he is so interested is because witches don’t eat meat. According to common Paraguayan belief, meat is a prime source of energy for the body (true), and when you don’t eat it your body is weak and therefore it easier for demons to enter into you (probably not always true). I started asking questions to others, hoping there was just this one guy who held to this belief, and unfortunately it seems even the most reputable sources consider it a valid point. Of course I bought up fasting, the case of Daniel and his friends, and the fact that some people can’t even digest meat well, but is was not enough to convince.

What I learned from this first of all was that I could never be a vegetarian here, not that it was even socially possible before I knew this. Secondly, it reminded me once again how different our cultures are and sometimes it is so difficult to see things from another’s point of view. The people here see a demon in everything, and demonic power is very real. Karen says there are witch doctors here, and if your baby has diarrhea you can take him to the doctor who will turn him upside down, hold him by one foot and say a few words, and the baby will actually be healed. There are people in our church who before they were Christians would take part in pagan rituals, like dancing on hot coals. The strange thing is that after they became Christians, they could no longer go over the coals without getting badly burned. The skeptic in me doesn’t know how to respond to this information. I want to explain away their experiences somehow or not believe them. But whether or not these things are true, the fact is that many many people here live in fear. If these beliefs are so deeply instilled that even some mature Christians are uneasy in their thoughts, how much more is the general population suffering from these evil spirits that are almost tangible to them?
I don’t write these things to impress you with our “spiritual warfare” here, or so you can think Paraguayans are naive and living in a former age. I just want to show the need for freedom and some of the hurdles the Christians message has to overcome. I highly recommend a short story called “the Gospel According to Mark” by argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. It deals well with how paganism is so deeply rooted in the native culture, how “it’s in their blood,” and what it looks like when these beliefs encounter the gospel. I don’t want my friends here to be afraid, and I want to take their experiences seriously and try to understand better.