WE ARE LOOKING at the enrichment that comes through Jesus—the cultural enrichment. When Jesus said, “I came not to destroy but to fulfill,” (see John 10:10). He said something vastly important. Many think that the coming of Christianity to a people means that we wipe the slate clean of past culture and write on it an alien culture mediated through the West, making it mostly a Western culture. This is a serious mistake.
Jesus is the Son of Man, as if all mankind were in travail to bring forth such as He. He is the desire of the nations—those incoherent, often unconscious, desires expressed in various ways, come to completion in Him. When you see Him you see what you have been looking for, but haven’t quite known what it was. It is a kind of homecoming to the homeland of your soul. Jesus is at home in every race, in every land. You have the feeling that He knows you and understands you and wants to give you the best which you have been unconsciously seeking.
If Jesus fulfills the highest in the Greek and the Jewish culture. He also fulfills the highest in Hindu culture. If the Greeks sought wisdom and the Jews righteousness, the Hindus have sought sanctification. If sanctification means “to be set apart,” then the Hindus have sought that set-apartness very strenuously. The Brahmin tries to maintain a ceremonial and outer cleanness by not touching anything defiling. The ascetic goes apart from the world to merge himself into Brahma. All of these have failed. The sanctification of the Hindu has resulted in a physical apartness—an outer sanctification that covered an inner pride. The pride of being different—and superior. But it was a sanctification that was outer and empty—and is passing away.
Divine Father, Thou art turning our wisdom into foolishness, our righteousness into pretension, our sanctification into sanctimoniousness. We see in Jesus the real. The rest is unreal. We thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: No holier-than-thou attitudes today, for Jesus is holier than I am, and I am at His feet.
