Even though the Christian missionaries meant well in referring to Mwari as the Shona name for our Christian God, Mwari—the Shona’s god—has such a deep meaning in different ways than the Christian understanding of God. Figuring out what language to use in the contextualization process would be very difficult because there’s a fine line of balance between A) wanting to contextualize Christianity into terms the people will understand more clearly while B) not taking away from their own culture and identity. This is something I still struggle with trying to comprehend. What would you do?
I am learning every day how the rich meaning of words are lost in translation from other languages to English. I can understand why substituting the Christian god for the Shona’s god could create problems.