19. The Uninteresting, Unromantic Truth
Chapter 19
The Uninteresting, Unromantic Truth
Amy was relentless in her effort to describe precisely how things were, without artificial sweeteners or colors—“The God of Truth, it seems to us, does not ask for paint when the word comes to His servant. ‘Write the things thou hast seen.’” How else could people know how to pray for the work? How could they begin to fathom what heathendom meant?
Toward the close of the nineteenth century a mission society asked Amy to write of her experiences. She wrote as she had always written in her Scrap letters—the straight truth. It would not do. The committee returned the manuscript as too discouraging. Could she make it a bit more palatable? She could not. It went into a drawer. In 1900 two friends from England visited her for several months, itinerating with the Band, seeing what Amy saw. When they learned of the rejected manuscript, they asked to take it home and try to find a publisher. They succeeded, and Things as They Are appeared, enhanced by photographs taken by one of the friends. Although the writer of the preface called them “thrilling chapters,” many readers in England found them anything but thrilling. Could things be so terrible? Where were the dramatic conversion stories needed to draw crowds to missionary meetings? Years later Amy learned that a committee of Christians had met in India to ask that she be sent back to England because of the disturbance her book had created.
Because missionary reports generally included more about successes than about failures, Amy tried to shift the weight to the other side. It is more important that you should know about the reverses than about the successes of the war. We shall have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact of the reverses is so little realized, and the needed reinforcements are not forthcoming, as they would be if the position were thoroughly understood. . . . So we have tried to tell you the truth—the uninteresting, unromantic truth.”1
In order to strengthen the credibility of the book the publishers felt it necessary to include in the second edition letters from missionaries certifying the facts.
“I am not surprised that anyone unacquainted with mission work in India should be staggered at the facts narrated in Things as They Are” wrote one. “But as one who has worked for nearly thirty years in the heart of heathenism, away from the haunts of civilization, I can bear testimony that the reality of things far exceeds anything it would be possible to put into print.”
Indians also testified to the authenticity of what Amy had written. “I fancied I was living my old life among Hindus over again. I can honestly corroborate everything said in regard to the religious and social life of the Hindus,” wrote Pandita Ramabai. An editor from Madras, Krishna Ram, added, “The question is often asked whether a high-caste Hindu convert can live with his own people after his baptism. It is only those who know nothing of the conditions of life in India, and of the power of caste as it exists in this country, who raise the question.”
The incredulity of the mission-minded public did not alter Amy’s resolve to present the unsweetened truth. After Things had gone to press the following story appeared in Scraps:
In the Flower Village there is an old Brahman widow who is dying of consumption. I took her cough mixture and stuff to rub on her head to ease the pain, and visited her again and again, trying new remedies (suggested by a medical missionary who is staying with us) and doing all I could think of, so far as she would let me, to help her.
As a rule a Brahman is very suspicious about anything given, and many a struggle this old widow had bet ween her desire to get all she could out of us and her fear of being given anything which would, as she put it, “draw her into the pit of pollution,” our religion. I knew we could give her nothing which would cure her, and told her so; at first she did not believe me, and most greedily grabbed at everything, haggling over the bottles and corks (we don’t give bottles as a rule, we give medicine, the people bring their own bottles) and trying to “do” me in every possible way, only always guarding herself from danger by refusing anything which looked powdery, for we are supposed to delude the unwary by getting them to eat, drink, or inhale some sort of powder. We put it into plantains for children (so we never can give plantains or indeed any eatables to children—often I want to give sweets to the dear little mites, but I never do). We put it in milk or medicine or simply sprinkle it on the pages of our Bibles; all this is believed except by those who know us well. So the old Brahman was careful. She would take a pill and crumble it in her fingers, “this is nothing but solid powder, I want a liquid!” She would hold the cough mixture up to the light—“There is powder floating in it. I want a clear mixture”—or else it would be, “I want nothing which has to be taken internally. I want external remedies. Give me something to rub on.”
She was quite sure that if only she went on changing the remedies often enough I would get tired of bringing wrong ones, and would produce the one genuine article which she was certain would cure her. “Why don’t you bring it?” she would say, after every fresh trial. “Don’t you know that by helping a Brahman you will acquire great merit?” She never dreamed of being in the least grateful for what we were trying to do. She was condescending a long way down to let us do anything for her.
At last it seemed to dawn on her that if we could we would have cured her, and that as we had not, it was evident we could not. So she had no more use for us. But though she must have made up her mind about this before I went yesterday, she did not show it at first. I was allowed to sit humbly at her feet on the outside verandah, while she sat up on the doorstep. “Be very careful not to touch me,” she reminded me as usual, and then let me read to her. “For ten rupees could one buy such a story?” This was about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Then, “As you have no medicine for my body, have you got a medicine for my soul?” and I gladly told her yes. “By means of this soul medicine will my soul regain its health?” Oh how gladly one said yes! “And how may one drink this soul medicine?” So I told her. “Then by listening to the Words of God and believing them one receives this soul medicine? So the medicine is received through the ear instead of the mouth, and absorbed by the heart, instead of by the digestive organs?” She seemed to have got it very clearly. “There is nothing else to do? One has only to listen and let the words ‘catch’? Then one understands them and one’s heart believes them and so to the soul comes health. It is not difficult,” she said.
Then she turned with a sudden twist and flung the two medicine bottles into my lap. “So that is how you delude us!” she said, but the words came with a sort of hiss. “First you tried to get me to eat your powder done up in a pill, then you tried to get me to listen to your Book’s words which, it appears, by entering the ear, affect the mind and the heart!” Then, raising herself up and glaring at me like an old tiger cat at a mouse, she pointed with her skinny old hand to the street. “Go! Do you think I will allow your medicine to get to my heart? Go! You have no medicine that will cure my body. I want none to cure my soul. Did you ever know a Brahman drink your medicine? Go!”
She used the word used in speaking to a servant and then, addressing the onlookers, went on, pointing to me in a very disdainful fashion. “Does she think I bore the contamination of her presence—she who eats flesh and mingles with low-caste people—for the sake of her soul-deluding Book medicine? Let her go. I have no use for her. I have no use for her Lord Jesus. Let them both go!”
Were the Scraps accomplishing anything? Amy wondered. “Do not say, ‘Oh, they interest us.’ I do not care about ‘interesting’ you. One’s being in India is costing too much to make it worthwhile to spend a day in a month, ten months in the year, in merely interesting you. . . . Nothing is worth doing at all, nothing is worth writing, which does not do something which will last.”
A few lines from On the Threshold of Central Africa, by M. Coillard, spoke for Amy: “If those friends who blame . . . could see what we see, and feel what we feel, they would be the first to wonder that those redeemed by Christ should be so backward in devotion, and know so little of the spirit of self-sacrifice. They would be ashamed of the hesitations that hinder us. But we must remember that it was not by interceding for the world in glory that Jesus saved it. He gave Himself. Our prayers for the evangelization of the world are but a bitter irony so long as we only give of our superfluity and draw back before the sacrifice of ourselves.”
1. Amy Carmichael, Things as They Are, p. 158.