Out of Fear

When western evangelists first came in contact with Urapmin the new ideas of Christianity were taught as a higher standard of law. I can only imagine how humiliating it must have been for the Urapmin to have been innocently living their lives, oblivious to anything other than their own tradition, and then being told by a group of foreigners, who are only obliviously adhering to their tradition, that the Urapmin values were all wrong. Which of the two traditional values are right? 

This makes me wonder if the reason why the Urapmin took on Christianity is because they were scared. Some of the Urapmin admitted to being scared of the Westerners. This fear can easily make Urapmin pedestalize westerners and their beliefs because the westerners brought many new things to the Urapmin, such as salt and matches. This would seem to be an irrational action because a set of beliefs held by people who are more advanced or have things that you do not, does not necessarily make it better than another set of beliefs. By introducing new things to the Urapmin society, it created a desire for something they never even knew existed. It seems easy to fall into the trap of thinking that with new knowledge, and no other resources to explain life, that the new knowledge is law, when presented with something new that totally changes your perspective of reality. I think the humiliation faced when the Urapmin were told they were wrong in addition to the fear of being wrong again has caused them to more easily accept the western beliefs. 

Laurence Yu