Hello everyone! Since my last blog, I have traveled from Cusco, Peru to where I am currently in Ferkessedougou, Cote D’Ivoire in Africa. I am typically about a month behind on my blogs and so even though I am in Africa right now, this blog will be about my time in Cusco, Peru.
“Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy” ~C.S. Lewis
If you have heard about Cusco, Peru before it is likely that you heard of it in connection with Machu Picchu. Cusco is the closest large city to Machu Picchu and, as a result, there are all different types of people there visiting, or even people who loved it so much they decided to stay. The tourist part of town is fairly segregated from the part of town where the Peruvians live and so it is just like its own little world in that part of the city. My team and I were staying in a hostel/cafe in the middle of the tourist area, and so we got to experience firsthand what it is that draws all these different types of people to Cusco, beyond Machu Picchu.
One of the things that I immediately noticed about Cusco is that it is an extremely beautiful, but strange place. The stores and restaurants and everything really are quite eccentric and very hippie-ish, for lack of a better word. Hippie-ish is not the word that the tourists and people in that area use; instead, they use the word “New Age”, but just to help you visualize it, it is very similar to a hippie kind of atmosphere. It was amazing to me how spiritual the city was. There were relatively few Christians, but there were many tourists who had come to experience and participate in this New-Age movement. It was very common to hear people on the street or in restaurants or wherever talking about good energy and bad energy and things like that. My team and I even visited a magic shop where people use pendulums and other methods to allow the energy to move the pendulums and thus guide them in decision-making or providing resolutions to problems or whatever it may be. A lot of this draws upon the ancient Incan religion, Pachamama, with other things thrown in as well. People that participate in the New Age experience will participate in rituals that involve smoking types of cactii which is supposed to help them tap into the spiritual world and the energy that exists within it, while they go on a trip basically. My team and I also ran into a Pachamama shaman on one of our hikes, and we were able to talk to him a bit and hear his opinions about God as well as share ours. Another time, we were in a cafe watching a man who was meeting with one of the indigenous shaman trying to learn everything he could about the New-Age/Pachamama religion. He was clearly very serious about learning, because he was vigorously taking notes and asking many questions. Between the shaman and all of the people within the New-Age movement that we met, it was very clear that they were searching for something. They felt that there was more to life than what they had known in the various countries they came from, and they were in Cusco because they believed that maybe, just maybe, this New-Age movement was the answer.
It was very strange to be exposed to such a foreign religion and I couldn’t help but wonder, what makes these people turn to this instead of turning to Jesus? The vast majority of the people involved in this were from the U.S. or Europe, besides the indigenous shamans, and so they almost certainly had heard of Jesus before. They had clearly come to the realization that they had a void in their soul/life, and so why did they turn to the Incas and not to Christ? After talking to a few of the New Age participants, a theme began to develop. We talked to the Pachamama shaman about God and he said that yes, he had been exposed to Christianity/God/Jesus before. He was very open and honest with us, and he was just a wonderful person to talk to. During our conversation, he revealed to us that when he was 5 years old he ran away from home because his parents would beat him constantly. He is 65 now and never once went back to his parents. He left them for good at the age of 5! It was clear that he was still suffering from the effects of the hurt and pain he experienced at such a young age as he began to cry when telling us this story. Another time, we talked to one of the volunteers at the magic shop we visited. He grew up in a Catholic home and so he definitely was familiar with Christ. However, when he was older, he came out as being gay and the church and his family rejected him. Are you beginning to see the theme? Almost every time that we talked to people involved in the New Age/Pachimama religion, we broached the subject of what they thought about God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, and almost every time they described the hurt and pain that they had experienced at the hands of others, oftentimes within the church. As a result, they wanted nothing do with the church, God, Jesus, or anything else.
I began to realize that the New Age/Pachamama religion was an escape for people. They knew that something spiritual existed, but they associated their past pain with Christianity and so that wasn’t an option. I think we can all see that many people do the exact same thing in the U.S. whether they are aware of it or not. They experience pain at the hands of a person who is associated with the church, and so they associate that wrongdoing and hurt with God/Jesus as well. Then they are missing something, and so they try to fill the void. Maybe we don’t fill the void with something as strange as the New-Age/Pachimama religion, but there are plenty of void-fillers, or idols, that we use. Maybe it’s the idol of alcohol/drugs, or the idol of sex, or the idol of job success and promotions, or the idol of sports obsession; whatever it may be, it always falls short in making us happy. And so if you are searching for something, I will tell you the same thing that my team and I would tell the people we met. The rejection and pain that you have experienced at the hands of others, even Christians, has nothing to do with the way that God feels about you. God loves us and has always and will always treat us perfectly! We all have free will to do what we choose and so that leads to us abusing that free will and acting in a way that hurts others. We are all imperfect and because of that we treat each other in very imperfect ways sometimes, but don’t confuse that with God treating you in an imperfect way. God loves you and his heart hurts just as much, if not more, than ours does when we are hurt. So stop running from God and be honest about whether or not you have allowed your past hurt/pain and resulting anger to skew your vision of who God is. Allow the love of Jesus to the heal the wounds of the past and be free from that! There is so much more waiting for you on the other side of your pain/hurt/anger and I hope you will stop searching and begin to see that only one path leads to fulfillment, love, and salvation and that is Jesus Christ! May God bless you all abundantly!
Thank you for reading my blog! I will post one more blog after this one about Peru, and then I will begin writing about my time in Africa! Internet is limited here, but I will try to continue writing offline and then post my blogs when I have internet. I hope you are all doing well!
