FOUR MURDERED IN SORCERY ATTACKS
By PNG correspondent Liam Fox
Four people in Papua New Guinea have reportedly been killed in the latest sorcery attacks in the country's highlands.
The Post Courier newspaper says it has spoken to someone who witnessed the murder of four people in the jungle outside Goroka in the Eastern Highlands yesterday.
The eyewitness said angry villagers murdered four elderly siblings they suspected of using sorcery to kill a young woman who died during childbirth on Sunday.
The paper said the three sisters and a brother were "executed" and their bodies thrown off a cliff after someone told the villagers they had seen the siblings eat the young woman's heart.
The provincial police commander Augustine Wampe has told the ABC the murders have not been reported to police.
The belief that unexplained deaths are the result of sorcery is widely held in PNG.
Fear is at work in that place.
From our western perspective, this story is foolishness. "Those poor, uneducated people," we think. We see the enormous holes in logic this story presents. Sorcery? That stuff is all smoke and mirrors. "Someone" told the villagers... Who is someone? Why aren't they named and taken to task for their accusations? Then there is the angry mob. They believed this accusation? They believed it so much they killed 4 people? Why didn't the villagers let the police look into it? What is wrong with them? Why do they act this way?
Fear is at work in that place.
The predominant worldview in PNG is Animism. (Click here for a good definition) People who live with this worldview have certain presuppositions that affect all they do, say, and think. At the core of Animism is Power. Power is the ability to control life. Animists are constantly seeking it. The are not seeking power for themselves, but rather they are seeking where the power lies. For them, all is connected, both in the seen and the unseen worlds. If all is connected, then one needs to find out where the power is so one can align with that power. Whether that power is "good or bad" is immaterial. You only seek to keep the world at bay.
Can you imagine living like this? You would constantly be searching both the known and the unexplained to make sure you are not "offending" the current power. And the power is constantly shifting, moving, affecting you and everything around you in new ways. You can never really know if you are aligned with the power that will be most beneficial and keep you from the most harm. Living in fear is the only available response! But I believe that there is hope, for God is the source of all power.
Your worldview affects EVERYTHING. Your expectations of how your world functions are based on these many underlying presuppositions that are both taught outright, and learned through culture. Do not think you are immune; that you have it all figured out. The way you think is just as twisted, just as far from the Truth. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6)
There is only one way to be free of fear, to know the truth, to be made whole. There are consequences to the way you think, just as there are consequences to the way "they" think. So know what you believe. Question it, challenge it, test it, just as you question what an animist believes.
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