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by Mark Chew

I bought this book by recommendation of Avery's friend Jim, with the intention of reading it little by little this semester, but once I started reading, I couldn't put it down, which is rare for me. This book is a narrative by Bruce Olson of his experiences in preaching the gospel to the Motilones, a murderous Indian tribe living in the jungles of Columbia. The title of the book is the name the Motilones gave Bruce Olson.

If you're busy this semester but you still want to read a good Christian book, I'd recommend this one to you. It's fairly easy reading since it's a narrative, yet it's not just a story of God's power. As Bruchko tells of how God worked through him, the difference between the Motilone culture and ours naturally brings up issues that we wouldn't ordinarily think about in our world of American Protestantism.

The biggest issue he made me think about is "how much of Christianity as I know it is a byproduct of Chinese-American culture, and how much of it is based on Scripture?" For example, I often hear phrases like "accept Jesus into your heart" or "accept Jesus as your personal Savior" which aren't found in Scripture, but which do contain Biblical truths. There is nothing wrong with these phrases, in my opinion, but reading this book made me realize that we can't just go into any random culture and expect people to understand these phrases the way we do. In explaining spiritual truths to the Motilones, Bruchko loved them enough to first make the effort to understand their culture, then come up with meaningful phrases like "tie your hammock strings into Christ" and "walk on Jesus' path" to explain the same things.

Bruchko also made me think about other things like how love for others (in his case for a murderous tribes of Indians) truly comes from God. I can think of five times that he almost died and many other times he was sick for months. Yet in all of this, he never complains or tries to make the reader feel sorry for him. Rather, he explains how he had great hope in these trials because of his love for the Motilones and his knowledge that he was at the center of God's will.



 

 

By: Karen Wickboldt

Bruchko is the autobiography of a young American man who, at 19 years of age, left home to be a missionary in South America. Although the mission board had refused to sponsor him, and his family and friends thought he was crazy, he went with a one-way ticket, $70 in his pocket, and a sure conviction that God was sending him. Through an amazing course of events, God led him to the Motilone Indians, a Stone Age tribe in the uncivilized jungles of Columbia and Venezuela. Previously, no white man had ever escaped alive from a meeting with a Motilone, nor had any white man learned their language. When Bruce Olson first encountered these people, he was met with a Motilone arrow searing into his thigh, and taken captive. In the ensuing weeks, he suffered excruciating pain and sickness, as well as filthy living conditions and a strange diet, but eventually the Motilones accepted him as a friend, and God made the way for him to share the gospel with them.

The thing that really struck me in this story was the contrast between Bruce Olson's ministry and that of most missionaries. Rather than trying to convert the Indians to a white man's religion and an American culture, God gave him the creativity to show them Jesus through Motilone traditions and culture. I like a passage in the book where one unsaved Indian chief from another tribe gives Bruce Olson his feelings about the Christian converts in his tribe, "Why, they've rejected everything about us," he said. "They won't sing our songs now. They sing those weird, wailing songs that are all out of tune and don't make sense. And the construction which they call a church! Have you seen their church? It's square! How can God be in a square church? Round is perfect." He pointed to the wall of the hut in which we sat. "It has no ending, like God. But the Christians, their God has points all over, bristling at us. And how those Christians dress! Such foolish clothes…"

"I thought of the Indian Christians I had seen at the missionary compound. They had been taught how to dress in clothes with buttons, how to wear shoes, how to sing Western songs.

"Is that what Jesus taught? I asked myself. Is that what Christianity is all about? What does the good news of Jesus Christ have to do with North American culture? Were the missionaries making a mistake in their preaching? Of course, it probably made them happy to see the Indians dressed like Americans, singing "Rock of Ages." But was that the only way Jesus could be worshipped?"

It would have been impossible for Bruce Olson to simply walk into the Motilone tribe and start preaching the gospel. It was only by him laying down his own personality and culture and enduring much suffering that God was able to use him to lead souls to Christ. This book is a testimony of what God can do through one person who has counted the cost and laid down all for Jesus Christ.