Literacy: One of the Great Miracle Cures for Limitations on the Human Spirit
Resolving the Limitations Illiteracy Places on the Human Spirit
WILLS POINT, TX — Gospel for Asia (GFA) issues an extensive Special Report on illiteracy, the dominant disabler to flourishing for millions around the world, and the miraculous potential of literacy that is able to change the lives of men, women and children for generations.
Few of us who have read all our lives understand the nearly miraculous potential of being able to read and write when illiteracy has been the dominant disabler to flourishing. Illiteracy is more dominant than poverty, more dominant than a chronic physical disability, and more dominant than even an oppressive social system.
We readers have long lost the joy of discovering that the squiggly marks on a page of paper can be interpreted or that the same kinds of marks can be learned and replicated with chalk, ink, pen or pencil. We don’t understand because we read and write and often take for granted the treacherous limitations illiteracy places on the human spirit as well as on human potential.
Perhaps one story from Gospel for Asia (GFA) will help us again remember the wonder of our own unrecognized reading and writing capacities. This is about Mandeepa.1
Due to the early death of her father, Mandeepa and her five other siblings were raised by a struggling mother. None of these six children were able to attend school, and at the age of 13, Mandeepa started to work as a household maid to support her single parent. Eventually, as is frequently the case, a marriage was arranged for Mandeepa, which quickly produced a son and a daughter.
At the age of 16, Mandeepa started attending a local church where the young woman received a Bible of her own — but having never learned to read and write, she, of course, only saw strange markings on the page. Her heart was filled with a longing to read the words and to learn more about the Heavenly Father the book taught about, but this was impossible, and the young woman was disconsolate.
Mandeepa’s husband was also illiterate. Their daughter was fortunate to attend school, but her growing ability to read only pointed out the lack in her mother’s education. How Mandeepa wished she could help her daughter with her schoolwork. This parental lack only increased the woman’s desire to read and write like her children.
Then the Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Women’s Fellowship at her church initiated literacy learning classes.
Mandeepa was now 32 years old, and after a year of study, she could finally read the Bible she had received 16 long years before. One of the first things she did when this “great miracle cure” began to have effect on her, banishing the shame and frustration of ignorance caused by lack of education, was to memorize John 14:15: “If you love Me, keep my commandments.”
Gospel for Asia points out that there are more than 250 million women in Asia today who are illiterate. It’s impossible for them to help their children with schoolwork. In addition, the instructions on medicine bottles, road signs, notices from the government and legal papers are all indecipherable — and this in a society that is increasingly dependent upon the written word. Those who desire to read God’s Word can’t do so. Technology can’t be accessed unless a user is highly literate. One must be able to spell, to read commands, to type letters that form words if the digital world is to be accessed.
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