The Wolf

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep."

-John 10:11-13

I'm auditing a class with Tony Campolo this semester, which has been awesome, because all he does for 2 1/2 hours is tell stories, which is great because I love stories more than just about anything in the world. And Tony, in all his scandalous charismatic messiness, has quite a few to tell.

I wanted to share one from tonight:

Tony started out talking about Fidel Castro, how he came into power and the point when he made Cuba a communist nation. At the time, Castro sent away a great deal of religious leaders, declaring the nation to be atheist. But there was a large group of pastors that he gathered together. In more words or less, he told them "look, I am making this an atheistic communist nation, so I'd really like you to leave. But, it's also a democratic communist nation, so if you want to stay, you may, but just know... if you stay, I am going to make your lives miserable."

Despite Castro's warning, many of the pastors stayed, and he did, indeed make their lives miserable. One of his tactics was to have them loaded up in the back of a pickup truck and brought to sugar cane fields, where they were made to harvest the crops for long hours. Now, sugar cane was harvested with machetes, and as one was cutting, the machete ultimately drove into the leg of the harvester multiple times during the day. These pastors would go into the fields, day after day, and come out, legs and hands all bloodied.

As time went on, some of the pastors began to leave, and the jobs of others grew harder. Now, on top of their work in the fields, they each had 5 or 6 churches to preach at, 5 or 6 congregations to care for, impossible numbers of people to visit. The number of pastors continued to dwindle until only about 25-30% of them were left. These were the ones that kept on and stayed, despite the oppression that was guaranteed them as a result of that choice. They pressed on, cutting down sugar cane, cutting up their legs, and serving their people.

This was the historical background we were given before Tony casually told us that somehow, several years ago, he managed to land himself a lengthy phone interview with Castro. As they were talking about all sorts of political and churchy things, their conversation turned to something like this:

Fidel: "Tony, tell me I am the wolf." 
Tony: "Uh, alright. Yeah, Fidel. You are the wolf." 
Fidel: "Yes. I am the wolf. You know, Jesus told a story to the Pharisees about the difference between shepherds and hirelings. The hirelings were the ones that fled because they did not care for the sheep like their own. But the shepherds were the ones that loved the sheep so much, they stayed and gave themselves in defense. I am the wolf. I came, I made hell, and the hirelings fled. But the shepherds stayed."

Then Fidel told Tony that the shepherds -- the pastors who had endured -- are what motivated him to change the constitution. Though it has separation of church and state, Christianity is now flourishing in Cuba.

I'm not entirely sure yet why I like this story so much, but I do.

On a different note, I also learned that the Roman Empire really came to be merely because the Roman men drank their wine out of the wrong cups. Excellent story. But alas, I have to go read my riveting astronomy textbook, so that one will have to wait for another day.