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Bruchko, by Bruce Olson

I've been asked to do a book review in Church on Sunday.  You fortunate people get a preview!  It just so happens to be my favourite biography and one of my two or three favourite books overall.  I've only read it a dozen times....

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When I was asked to review a book this morning, there was only one choice I could make. It is a biography I have read many times, learning something new each time and being challenged and encouraged in my faith.

This book has the strange name of ‘Bruchko’, which I will explain in a few minutes. Some of you may know it by its other title – For this cross I’ll kill you.

Church Times, when they reviewed it in the 1980s stated it “Deserves to be read alongside the Acts of the Apostles.” High praise indeed – and entirely justified.


The story starts in the 1950s, in Minnessota in the United States. Bruce Olson, in his mid teens, attended a church that was more about ritual than a relationship with Jesus. From a friend’s church and from reading the Bible for himself, he discovered that God called each of us to a relationship with him and we were all accountable for our own actions, regardless of upbringing or our parents’ beliefs.

When I first read this, at around 17 years old I drew a lot of encouragement from it. Nobody else in my family were Christians and when I became ‘good living’, as my Granny called it, they didn’t get it. I was in a similar situation to Bruce, though thankfully I was never locked out of my house at night because I was late home from a Bible study!

Bruce continued his studies as a promising young linguist and by age 19 should have been starting university. He was, however, convinced God wanted him to be a missionary. After writing to a few missions agencies he was told to go to Bible college and re-apply in three years time – this didn’t alter the fact God wanted him to be a missionary in South America right now.

So Bruce scraped the money together for a one-way plane ticket to Venezuela. The missionaries in Caracas completely disowned him because he came without the proper backing from home. He wasn’t impressed with them anyway because as far as he could see, they were more about teaching people to follow Western culture than to follow the teachings of Christ.

Eventually his money ran out. So with no friends in a foreign country he had a big dilemma. At this point I would probably have given up, headed for the British Embassy and pleaded for a ticket home. Bruce took this as his call to head into the jungle with only a mule for company.

His trip into the jungle was interesting. Bruce already knew the natives didn’t want anything to do with white men. Being beaten and bruised and having a five-foot arrow sticking out of his leg soon after reinforced this. Even near-starvation to death and a bout of dysentery did not shake his conviction that his calling from God was to remain there to tell the people about Jesus – even though they had nothing in common, not even a language.

After five years, and after crossing into Columbia without realising it, Bruce had few friends in the Motilone tribe who turned out to be peaceful, if inward-looking people. He had learnt their language and their culture but had little impact. They had given him the name Bruchko – hence the name of the book.



Then his friend, Bobarishora (or, Bobby) asked many questions about Jesus. It was very sudden and came about as Bobby realised the prophecies in the Motilone culture about a tall man with yellow hair pointing them back to the God they had lost touch with, were fulfilled in Bruce – a sort of John the Baptist to the jungle. Bobby, a young leader in the tribe, put his faith in Christ and at the next tribal get-together told the entire tribe of his faith. Soon after, they had all accepted Christ.

The story doesn’t end here. Their land was fertile and rich with oil and many white settlers wanted these uneducated Indians off the land. In Christ they were, for the first time truly united and stood together to preserve their heritage. Forty years later, Bruce Olson is still in Columbia and is a citizen of that country. His life has been given over to teaching the Motilone of Christ while helping them come to terms with western civilization.



You may wonder how this happened so suddenly. Something that really struck me in this story was the contrast between Bruce Olson's ministry and that of other missionaries he mentions who tried to to convert the Indians to western culture as much as Christianity wheras Bruce took on-board Paul’s teaching about being a Greek to the Greeks, and so on and showed them Jesus through Motilone traditions and culture.

I’d like to read a passage from 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 – he had to laying down his own personality and culture because his culture was completely alien to them.

I don’t have time to fully do this wonderful story justice or to tell you of witch doctors, poison, beatings and torture and murder. It even has a couple of romances in it. It is simply a fantastic story - so fantastic I’ve read it around a a dozen times over the years, being inspired and challenged and learning something new every time.

It’s simply a story of what can be done when one person completely forgets about himself and lets God do the work. It then becomes a story of a tribe who are now having a huge impact on their country simply by believing and letting God work. My words cannot do it justice – simply read it for yourself.

Some people are thinking they would read it if they had a copy. It’s just as well I’ve put a copy at the back of the church which anyone can take, on condition you either pass it on to someone else in the church or leave it there for someone to pick up. If you don’t get the book, check out the web site - bruceolson.com.

If you want your own copy, it will cost a tenner from Wesley Owen though Amazon can do it for less. As it happens, the sequel I’ve been waiting fourteen years for is published this week and I intend to be first in the queue.

Dawkins' God

Two books I want to mention - Richard Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker' and Alistair McGrath's 'Dawkins' God'

First - the Blind Watchmaker. Hardly the sort of book to see promoted on a theological discussion board, but there you go.... At school, I failed to properly grasp the mechanics of evolution because it was either badly taught or we were too busy harping on at the teacher with "but my (non-scientifically trained) minister says....." Consequence - teacher tells us to learn off a few facts and quote in the exam. Oh, and a bundle of people who fail to understand any of how it is meant to work. Some, who did their homework, concluded science disproved God (because Dawkins says so).

The Blind Watchmaker is a brilliantly clear description of the thinking behind evolution. I don't agree with 100% of what he says but for anyone wanting to seriously engage with the thinking unbeliever, a knowledge of this book is vital. If your unbelieveing friend has not read Dawkins for themselves, they are probably well-acquainted with his 'disciples'.

One big problem though - when it comes to science Dawkins is well researched and brilliantly argued. Then he leaps to religion and writes it all off as fantasy, showing a lack of research in that area. Religious people are condemned as mentally unsound and God's existence written off with zero evidence. Indeed, God's existence is written off for being beyond understanding (as if ten-dimensional membrane theory is easy to understand).

The title draws from William Paley's 'Watchmaker' analogy, from the 1850s (a watch is so complex, it couldn't arise by chance - it needs a designer and maker, etc - likewise the world is full of complex structures, etc). Using Paley - who by the time of Darwin was out-of-favour in the church for causing more problems than solutions is a reflection of how Dawkins picks on a few selected examples of religion and writes the whole of religion off as sheer madness. Anyone familiar with his work will have seen this - his fanatical hatred for religion is as zealous as any fire-and-brimstone preacher.

Such is his contempt for proper theological work that heavyweights such as John Stott, John Blanchard and others have been ignored when attempting to create a debate with him - instead Dawkins often refers to a 1970s University debating society incident as proof of why debating with Christians is a waste of time.

Thank heaven, then, for Prof Alistair McGrath- a heavyweight Theologian and scientist, lecturing at Oxford. As well as being a professor in Theology, McGrath studied the natural sciences at Oxford to PhD level. He has an excellent command of the history of both science and theology and the current state of both. Carefully and respectfully he examines Dawkins' writings, all the way back to his post-grad thesis, showing that when it comes to science Dawkins is generally unbelievably thorough in his research. He also examines Dawkins' views on God and with disarming ease shows Dawkins to have little credibility in this area - Dawkins' research and lack-of-understanding are worryingly poor for a man with such a place in public thought-forming.

The Blind Watchmaker, from a scientific perspective is clear and well written. Dawkins' insistence that you must agree with him (or you are mad) and therefore conclude God does not exist (or you are mad) is worrying. Such is the force of his rhetoric I would not ask a 'weak' Christian to read it without being prepared to sound-off to an older believer. He is persuasive, until you go away to think about it. So many of his ideas are in popular culture though that anyone wanting to broaden their horizons should read it. DO NOT read it though without 'Dawkin's God' or further research, lest you mess your head. It is a dangerous volume - but, very influencial to those we want to reach and will help us understand their ideas. Didn't Paul know the Greek philosophies?

Dawkin's God - a vital companion to the Blind Watchmaker - clearly shows that when it comes to demonstrating current thought on evolution (which, of course, is subject to revision), Dawkins knows his stuff. It also shows that scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and other leading names think science far from disproves God's existence: science explains the data, based on available evidence, not how the data arose or what evidence may be missing. Dawkins' God also shows that when it comes to discussing religion, Professor Dawkins should stop embarassing himself with ill-researched nonsense.

I've been reading...

Well, I've been reading lots and not blogging it. In brief, the following are worth a read:

The Five Pound Look - Tom Houston, inspired by Prince Philip in the 1950s sees the world on a Fiver.

A Generous Orthodoxy - Brian McLaren is a liberal to the fundamentalists and a fundamentalist to the liberals, and quite thought provoking.

Poldark - miners in 1700s Cornwall. Quite good.

That'll be all for now...

From Eden to Exile - David Rohl

An on-going annoyance of mine is the tendency for religious people (or, ultra-evangelical Christians) to spice up archaeology, science and so on in an effort to keep the party line. One such example is the aftermath of archaeological digs in Palestine in the early 20th Century. To cut a long story short, it was a case of “Keep what looks good and ignore/bury/destroy the rest”.

Of course this resulted in the 1950s/60s archaeologists digging deeper and concluding that as far as historical accuracy is concerned, the Old Testament is rubbish. A key point has been the insistence that the Pharaoh mentioned in Exodus (when Moses led the people out of Egypt) was Ramesses. Based on that date, the Hebrews are credited with an Egyptian military/economic recession that happened a few hundred years before they supposedly left; Joshua arrives to find Jericho has been a heap of rubble for a few hundred years (but is later credited with demolishing the place); and so on.

A revolutionary idea (well, I thought it obvious), is that the date of the Pharaoh is in error. Put Moses in the time of an earlier Pharaoh and all that stuff about battles with Joshua fits the record. The Hebrews earlier arrival in Egypt and Joseph (of the many-coloured coat) are in the Egyptian record too, it seems – just a few hundred years earlier than anyone was looking.

Still, many people think that archaeology disproved the Bible in the 50s/60s. It didn't – it just disproved the fiddled results.

Eden to Exile – well worth a read, whether you are religiously inclined or not.

Contact - Carl Sagan

I am finally getting round to posting book reviews from, oh, nearly a year ago...
Contact is the only novel written by Carl Sagan, who spent his academic career researching very difficult topics in astronomy and physics. "Oh great", I hear you say, "It's a geek's book..."
Actually... no. True, Sagan does explain some really difficult topics in very easy to understand terms. This can't really be avoided though, as the story's main character is an astronomer involved in deciphering the first message Earth recieves from space. Sadly for us, it's a relayed version of our own first high-powered transmission - The Berlin Olympics in 1936. Yep, what's it say for humanity that the first transmission we make that could be recieved Out There is of a load of people goose-stepping past Hitler?
This leads onto an encoded message, Ellie's own philosophical / spiritual journey, the journey of other people, and Sagan's reflections on the state of humanity.
It's really well written. Indeed, I wanted to applaud at the end. I was given it by a friend at Uni who I've lost touch with now - the book didn't do it for me in 1995 but in 2005, it was a brilliant, thoughtful, thought-provoking journey.