Prayer and Oppression

This quotation is from Christianity Today, God's Refuge for Missionaries, by Eddie Byun:

"We're all familiar with the term culture shock.  But when it comes to missionaries, we often neglect the impact of culture stress: the regular [and continual] stressors that consciously and unconsciously hit a person living in a different culture.  Culture stress can lead to many different ailments such as anxiety, insecurity, fatigue, lack of joy, illnesses, discouragement, fears, anger, irritability, resentment, and homesickness.

One place I experienced culture stress most vividly was Guinea, Africa, where several of my friends were serving as missionaries.  Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world.  Before pulling out, the French destroyed plumbing lines, water wells, and all the paved streets, basically crippling the country into poverty and forcing it to start from square one."

This excerpt from Byun is good, but it doesn't go far enough.  He talks about the culture stress for missionaries, but he does not refer to the oppression trauma of the people and culture of Guinea.  The Bible uses the following words to define oppression trauma: crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill.  This is exactly what happened under the seventy years of the French colonization of Guinea.  Which included foreign Guinea to be a part of the evil save trade.

If intercessory prayer combined with doing justice was applied to Guinea, could it reduce the oppression and heal the trauma of the people?  If so, this would do more to release the stress the missionaries feel than just praying that the missionaries be sustained during this difficult ministry.


"I, Janet Pickar, have recently been to Haiti a number of times.  The trips, the rough road, the hours spent traveling, etc sound horribly familiar to what Byun experienced.  I noticed he described Guinea as 'extremely poor', but he did not mention it had been extremely oppressed."

To help understand the trauma of Guinea, remember that biblically oppression both smashes the body and crushes the spirit.  It may be one of the most demonic activities that takes place on the face of the earth.