Mission
I get to interview the director of a missionary organisation on Wednesday and already my mind is leaping ahead to the showdown. The scene: a too-quiet compound reminiscent of Waco in the outer burbs. Doug enters, a suave product of the post-enlightenment. The missionary is seated behind a desk, levitating slightly out of zeal. Our eyes lock. The battle is on! I launch many questions at him and the battle lurches to and from, despite my best intentions of producing a puff piece profile. Why does your website say your particular form of mission, bible translation, is the 'least colonialistic'? Does that mean you accept other forms are colonial? If Christianity was the first exclusivist religion with such successfully realised megalomania, why are there people still crying out for bibles in tiny dialect valley of Papua New Guinea? Why didn't God produce handy printed bibles for the heathens back then?

Sigh. As you can see, visualising this kind of showdown is quite satisfying. But I suspect this is just a misplaced fantasy with the director filling in for my caring and Catholic mother who still has hopes of me returning to the fold. Why is it strangers are so much less fearsome than family?