In discussing my background, I indicated that even before I converted to christianity/pentecostalism, I was being driven by an insatiable thirst for truth and right- living. My thirst lead me to read a lot of books. This I continued after my conversion. I still had the quest to understand. My immediate pentecostal church community could not fully satisfy me and I was proving difficult to deal with. I still remember a sermon which I took to be a response to my incessant questioning. This sermon seemed geared towards convincing me that the carnal or fleshly christian could never understand the things of the Spirit. It further encouraged that we should seek God and not ask too much lest satan use that against us. Anyway, "Paul told the Corinthians that his coming to them was not in great words of learning but in the power of the Spirit". SO I decided to continue my search alone through studying the bible and other theological works; a path that would later lead me to theological seminary of the denomination my congegration belonged to. Thus the anti-intellectualism that informed the praxis around me was a problem and a personal struggle.
The second thing that I struggled with concerned the often repeated phrase "... and God (the Holy Spirit) said to me...". This would be heared in testimonies and preachings. Another statement which would come up before preaching or as an introduction was: "I asked the Lord what I should talk to you about and the Lord showed/ told/ me ...". These statements and others like them disturbed and confused me greatly. Even though I began very early to preach, I could never seem to be able to say them. I began to wonder whether other people were having experiences which for some reason I did and could not have. I prayed. I read. I asked around. But I could not get a clear answer. This lead me to ask one brother who was prone to say these things to lend me his theological seminary books on preaching (he held a junior degree in theology). As soon as he did, I poured myself into them. I gained a lot concerning hermeneutics and exegesis from these books but I could not find how he could make the statements he was making. My preaching improved significantly as my grasp of scripture improved. My sermons were well received and I became one of the regular preachers occasionally called upon. But underneath lay a general disaffection with these 'pentecostal shibboleths'.
The third matter with which I struggled concerned the manner in which scripture could mean almost anything and nothing at all through appealing to personal revelation supposedly given by the Spirit. Of course, there were no outlandish meanings being bandied about. But then I found the idea that there was no one text with a particular meaning very disturbing indeed. The position that seemed to be taken was that the Spirit would determine the meaning of any text any time and that as a consequence thereof we needed to remain open to and receptive of any interpretation 'the Spirit would inspire'. This was a problem for me. For how could any one ever challenge another's declarations in the context of preaching or discussing Scripture if the Spirit inspires each one differently?
The fourth issue which I found troublesome, concerned the confused cultural conservatism this group of pentecostals espoused. My problem here was firstly cultural conservatism and secondly the confussion attending such conservatism. Pentecostals appropriate the Bible literally. This is demonstrated by the words of the president of the oldest and probably the largest pentecostal denomination in South Africa. In his opening speech at a Decade of Unity Conference in 2006, the president urged the gathered members of his church to read the bible literally... . I would submit that this literalism in the hands of the kind of pentecostals I grew up among- meant that whenever certain African practices were mirrored in the Bible, particularly in an approving manner, then they would follow that practice and hold it to be the word of God. No thought would be exercised to try and understand what the context was. Confusion would set in when some African practices were thrown out simply because it appeared as if the Bible spoke disapprovingly of them. Again there would have been lack of investigation of the context. Let me give an example of this schizophrenia. Among my people -Basotho, we cut our hair after a funeral of one of us. But because somewhere in Leviticus and Jeremiah this act is spoken of disapprovingly, Sotho pentecostals would then stop the cutting of hair after funerals. But they keep a lot of customary practices including the bohadi or lobola (a practice whereby the groom pays to the bride's family a certain number of cows failing which the bride's father or uncle refuses to allow the marrying of the two. In lobola negotiations, a cow is the currency used in matrimonial exchange. Normaly money is paid and may equal the price of a cow multiplied by the number of cows asked for).
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