Chapter Ii — The Motive And End Of Christian Missions
CHAPTER II
THE MOTIVE AND END OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
THERE is a good deal of misunderstanding as to why we are undertaking Christian missions and as to what we are really trying to do. A very severe criticism is beating upon this whole question of missions from many angles and sources. Personally I welcome it. If what we are doing is real it will shine all the more. If it isn’t real, the sooner we find it out the better.
We have been called international meddlers, creed mongers to the East, feverish ecclesiastics compassing land and sea to gain another proselyte. From the other side comes the criticism that we satisfy a racial superiority complex when we go on helpful service to other nations; that we are the kindly side of imperialism—we go ahead and touch the situation in terms of schools and hospitals and human helpfulness, then imperialism comes along and gathers up the situation in the name of empire; or that capitalism takes over and exploits the situation as intrepid missionaries open it up. Again it is said that it is a bit of spiritual impertinence to come to a nation that can produce a Gandhi or a Tagore. Finally we are told that the whole missionary movement is a mistake, since, as non-Christian investigators tell us, the last command of Jesus to go into the world and preach the gospel is an interpolation, hence the whole is founded upon a mistaken idea.
These are serious criticisms and must be met fairly and squarely. If this whole question of missions is to hold the affections of the church in the future, we must be sure that we are about a business that commends itself to the mind as well, for what does not hold the mind will soon not hold the heart. Besides, let it be noted that if Christianity isn’t worth exporting it isn’t worth keeping. If we cannot share it, we cannot keep it.
Some of the motives that were valid in the past are not holding good to-day. In the days when I volunteered to be a missionary the prevailing thought was that here is a cataract of human souls pouring over into perdition and that we were to rescue as many as possible. Rightly or wrongly, this idea is no longer prevailing as a motive for foreign missions. Then at the close of the Great War there was the feeling that democracy was the panacea for the world’s ills, and that America, being the embodiment of the democratic ideal, should loose democracy, permeated with Christianity, upon the world. A good deal of the thought underlying the Methodist Centenary and the Interchurch World Movement was pervaded with this idea. We now see that democracy, fine as it is, is no panacea for the world’s diseases, that paralyzing evils can flourish in a democracy as flagrantly as in an autocracy. A thoughtful Hindu, after reading Bryce’s Modern Democracies , put it down and remarked to a friend, “After all, democracy is only an ideal, and that ideal will never be realized until the kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven.” We must go deeper than democracy.
Then there was a time when we thought we were there in the East to Westernize it in general. I remember very vividly an address given twenty years ago by a prominent Christian editor, on the lines,
“Out of the darkness of night
The world rolls into light.
It is daybreak everywhere.”
The whole address was a recounting of electric cars in Bombay, and American plows in Africa and dress suits in Japan as a sign that it is daybreak everywhere! I am frank to say that I would not turn over my hand to Westernize the East, but I trust I would give my life to Christianize it. It cannot be too clearly said that they are not synonymous. We have seen as by a lurid flash during this last war that much of our civilization is still held under the sway of pagan ideals. Who was it that prayed, “Oh, to see the world with the lid off”? Well, we have seen it with the lid off, and the grim form of our pagan past leered out of the depths at us. That pagan past was controlling much of the submerged life of our outwardly brilliant civilization. To see many of our modern cities with the lid off would cure us of an easy optimism. No, paganism is not a thing to which we can point on the map and say, “It is here,” “It is there.” It is not a geographical something, but a matter of the spirit, and there may be vast areas of thought and purpose and spirit that are still pagan on both sides of the world. Paganism may be either in East or West.
As yet there is no such thing as a Christian nation. There are Christianized individuals and groups, but the collective life of no people has been founded upon the outlook of Jesus. We are only partially Christianized. That does not mean that we are not appreciative of and thankful for the Christianization that has taken place, nor are we blind to the fact that our civilization is probably the best that has been produced so far in human history, but we are not measuring ourselves by ourselves, but in the white light of the person of Jesus.
We want the East to keep its own soul—only thus can it be creative. We are not there to plaster Western civilization upon the East, to make it a pale copy of ourselves. We must go deeper—infinitely deeper—than that.
Again, we are not there to give its people a blocked-off, rigid, ecclesiastical and theological system, saying to them, “Take that in its entirety or nothing.” Jesus is the gospel—he himself is the good news. Men went out in those early days and preached Jesus and the resurrection—a risen Jesus. But just as a stream takes on the coloring of the soil over which it flows, so Christianity in its flowing through the soils of the different racial and national outlooks took on coloring from them. We have added a good deal to the central message—Jesus. Some of it is worth surviving, for it has come out of reality. Some of it will not stand the shock of transplantation. It is a shock to any organism to be transplanted. I have seen a good many star preachers visit the East and have their messages translated. The result has often been disastrous. After the rhetoric and fine periods had been eliminated as untranslatable there was not enough basis of ideas to go over to be reclothed in another language. Some of our ecclesiastical systems built upon a controversy lose meaning when they pass over into a totally different atmosphere. But Jesus is universal. He can stand the shock of transplantation. He appeals to the universal heart.
We will put our civilization and our ecclesiastical systems at the disposal of India to take as much as may suit their purposes. But we do not insist upon these. We will give them Christ, and urge them to interpret him through their own genius and life. Then the interpretation will be first-hand and vital.
If this viewpoint hurts our denominational pride, it may help our Christianity.
If we are not in India to do these things just for what purpose are we there? We believe there are three great elemental needs of East and West: an adequate goal for character; a free, full life; God. We believe that Jesus in a supreme way gives these three things.
Each system must be judged by its output, its fruit. “The outcome is the criterion.” What are we trying to produce? The ends of the different systems of thought and faith may be summed up as follows: Greece said, “Be moderate—know thyself”; Rome said, “Be strong—order thyself”; Confucianism says, “Be superior—correct thyself”; Shintoism says, “Be loyal—suppress thyself”; Buddhism says, “Be disillusioned—annihilate thyself”; Hinduism says, “Be separated—merge thyself”; Mohammedanism says, “Be submissive—assert thyself”; Judaism says, “Be holy—conform thyself”; Modern Materialism says, “Be industrious—enjoy thyself”; Modern Dilettanteism says, “Be broad— cultivate thyself”; Christianity says, “Be Christlike—give thyself.”
If the end and motive of Christianity, and therefore of Christian missions, is to produce Christlike character, I have no apology for being a Christian missionary, for I know nothing higher for God or man than to be Christlike.
I know nothing higher for God. If God in character is like Jesus, he is a good God and trustable. The present-day doubt is not concerning Christ, but concerning God. Men wonder if there can be a good God back of things when they see earthquakes wipe out the innocent and the guilty alike and innocent little children suffer from nameless diseases they did not bring on themselves. But the distracted and doubting mind turns toward Jesus with relief and says, “If God is like that, he is all right.” As Christians we affirm that he is—that he is Christlike in character, and we say it without qualification and without the slightest stammering of the tongue. We believe that “God is Jesus everywhere” and Jesus is God here—the human life of God.
If God thinks in terms of little children as Jesus did, cares for the leper, the outcaste, and the blind, and if his heart is like that gentle heart that broke upon the cross, then he can have my heart without reservation and without question.
If the finest spirits of the human race should sit down and think out the kind of a God they would like to see in the universe, his moral and spiritual likeness would gradually form like unto the Son of Man. The greatest news that has ever been broken to the human race is the news that God is like Christ. And the greatest news that we can break to that non-Christian world is just that—that the God whom you have dimly realized, but about whose character you are uncertain, is like Christ. I have watched the look of incredulity come into the faces of men in India as that announcement is made. But incredulity gives way to the thought that God ought to be like that, and that in turn to the thought that he is . “I have thrown over everything in my belief as to the future life,” said one of the most brilliant Hindus, “except the continuity of human existence and the consistency of the character of God.” The consistency of the character of God had been fixed for him by Jesus, concerning whom he said to me, “Jesus is the highest expression of God we have ever seen.” That consistency of the character of God is fleeting and intangible until Jesus fixes it forever in the soul.
Further, I know nothing higher for man than to be Christlike. The highest adjective descriptive of character in any language is the adjective “Christlike.” No higher compliment can be paid to human nature than to be called Christlike. When India, a non-Christian nation, wanted to pay her highest compliment to her highest son, she searched for the highest term she knew and called Gandhi a Christlike man.
We thoughtfully throw down this ideal before the philosophers of the world, the statesmen, the moralists, the reformers, the religious thinkers, and we say to them: “Brother men, this is what we are trying to produce. We think it is worth while to produce Christlike character. Do you know anything finer and better? Do you know of any nobler goal? Is there any pattern which you have conceived that surpasses this in being just what life ought to be? If so, show us, and before God, we will leave this and seek the other.” I believe that the lips of the world are dumb and silent before the question of finding anything better. In the realm of character Jesus has the field. In the struggle and clash of ideals for human life his is the fittest to survive. Men need a goal for character and Jesus is that goal.
But men need more than a goal, they need a free, full life, for life is crippled and dwarfed. A Jewish lady in India said to the writer: “You talk to these people of religion. What they need is bread. Look how starved and pinched they are. Why don’t you give them bread?” India does need bread and needs it desperately. No one can stand amid the appalling poverty of India with the average per capita income less than five cents a day, and where forty million people have never known a full stomach and will never know it from birth to death, and not feel the desperate need of helping India to get bread—more of it and quickly. Our industrial schools, our experimental farms, our cooperative banks and numerous other endeavors at economic uplift prove that we are keenly alive to the need of helping India get bread.
But a great, unbiassed economist came to the conclusion that “almost every economic evil in India is rooted in religious and social custom.” Every time you try to lift India economically you run into a custom that balks you. Therefore, while I thank God for every endeavor to help India to get more bread, I believe that the best way to give India bread is to give her Christ. For Christ makes life free .
Moreover, I want to see India politically free. This does not mean that India must necessarily be without the British Empire. I personally hope that she will remain within it. But without self-determination India will not make her real contribution to the world. Seeley was right when he said that “moral deterioration is bound to set in in any subject race.” While I believe that England has given India as good government as one nation is capable of giving to another, nevertheless, I am convinced with the nationalist that “good government is no substitute for self-government.” I want to see India stand upon her own feet. But the real shackles that bind India are within. Loose her there and freedom from without is that moment assured.
After Mahatma Gandhi’s release from prison I asked him what, in his opinion, was the reason for the collapse of his movement while he was in jail. He threw the question back on me and asked me what I thought was the cause. I replied that I thought that since life finally came to the level of the habitual thinking, the cause lay back in the thinking of India. In the mind of the Mohammedan there is gripping him in the inmost places the thought of Kismet—everything is predestined by the sovereign will of Allah. When he gets under difficulties the tendency is to tap his forehead and say: “What can I do? My Kismet is bad.” It is more or less fatalistic. On the other hand the Hindu has lying back in his mind the thought of Karma—that we are in the grip of the results of the deeds of the previous birth. When the Hindu runs against difficult situations he usually says: “What can I do? my Karma is bad.” It too is more or less fatalistic and consequently paralyzing. I suggested to the Mahatma that under the spell of his personality India forgot both Kismet and Karma and was creative, the national life was purified and impossible things accomplished. But when he was taken away the older and deeper ideas of Kismet and Karma reasserted themselves, and under the difficulties that confronted her India sat down. The movement collapsed. I suggested that, as he well knew and practiced in a wonderful way, there was a third ideal of life, namely the cross. Now the cross never knows defeat for it itself is Defeat, and you cannot defeat Defeat. You cannot break Brokenness. It starts with defeat and accepts that as a way of life. But in that very attitude it finds its victory. It never knows when it is defeated, for it turns every impediment into an instrument, and every difficulty into a door, every cross into a means of redemption. So, I concluded, any people that would put the cross at the center of its thought and life would never know when it is defeated. It would have a quenchless hope that Easter morning lies just behind every Calvary. It was therefore my considered belief that India will never permanently rise until both Kismet and Karma are replaced in the mind of India by the cross.
As Doctor Tagore puts it, “Things come up to a certain place in India and then stop.” The reason for this I feel to be in the above. Almost every economic, social, and national evil roots back in cramping custom. I believe, therefore, that the best way to make India free economically, socially, and politically is to give her Christ.
India has always had the genius for addition, she has lacked elimination. She has absorbed everything that has come along, but she has eliminated little, hence her life is burdened and crushed. Life depends almost as much upon elimination as upon absorption. India needs a dynamic power to help her cleanse, to let go.
The women of a lowly caste in Gujerat
Upon each succeeding birthday add to ankles
And to arms a ring of heavy brass until when age
Creeps on, weighted down through life with this
Accumulation of the years, they totter to their tasks,
And then the burning ghat and the dreadful realms of Yama.
Custom decrees it shall be so.
Thus I saw our aged India weighted down with
Accumulated custom and sapping superstition,
With scarce strength left to lift herself
To stand upright among the nations.
She raised her eyes, weary, but spiritual still,
Full upon me and seemed to say,
‘Adopted son of mine, if your love be true
Loose from me these weights and set me free,
For I would serve, but mind, my son, be gentle,
For by long association they seem a part of me.’
O, master of my heart, give to me the touch of
Gentle power that I may help to loose our Bharat,
Mindful every moment how thy nail-pierced Hand
Didst gently loose my shackled soul
From many a chain of lust and clinging selfishness
And bade my happy soul be free.
I believe that the dynamic that India needs is Christ. Whom the Son makes free is free indeed. India needs a free, full life. And Christ is Life .
But more, the deepest need of the human heart East or West is God. The Indian people are the most God-stirred people on earth. But the impression I gather is that it is a stirring rather than a possession.
The whole situation was summed up to me in this scene: I was sitting in the cool of a wonderful Indian evening with an old philosopher. He was the finest type of India’s thinkers, deeply read in his own philosophy and acquainted with the philosophy of the West. The spell of the quietness and calm of the evening was upon us as we discussed the questions of God, life, and destiny. In the midst of the conversation he slowly stroked his beard and said, “I am that Ultimate Reality, but I do not know it yet.” As I sat there meditating upon his words I seemed to see before me India sitting and through the voice of the old man affirming, as she has affirmed through the centuries: “I am that Ultimate Reality,” and adding, “but I do not know it yet.”
A few days later I saw him again. He was distressed and burdened. “My country is not free. She is divided and paralyzed. I can’t seem to see any hope.” Such was the burden of his plaint that day. His heart would respond to no other note.
The next day I came again and he was radiant. “Oh,” he said, “my heart has been so happy today. All day long the prayer that ——— gave us has been ringing through my mind, ‘Thou art our Father, teach us how to know thee as Father.’ Oh, that is it. I have peace to-day. That is what my country needs.” But before he was through he added with a little touch of sadness in it, I thought: “If this will only stay. But it doesn’t seem to stay.”
Do you get the picture: India affirms, “I am that Ultimate Reality,” but adds, “I do not know it yet,” and then finding no foothold in or power from that Impersonal Essence termed Ultimate Reality, sinks into despair concerning the real world about her: “My country—is there any hope?” Then there is the lighted-up moment when she sees a glimpse of the Father and exclaims: “Oh, that is it. I have peace to-day. This is what my country needs,” and then plaintively ends with, “It doesn’t seem to stay.”
Just what is lacking there? Certainly not fine philosophic earnestness and spiritual receptivity. But when it comes down to the place of joyously getting hold it eludes. Was there any need for Christ there? Could he do anything in that situation? As India asks with Philip, “Show us the Father and it sufficeth us,” would he not stand and quietly say, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”? Would he not fix the fleeting vision of the Father and make it a permanent experience of life? And out of that possession of the Father would there not grow the dynamic that would help one not to despair of conditions around one? Would not that lighted-up moment become a part of life itself? The innermost depths of my being cry out that this is so!
It is an actual fact of experience that when you deepen the Christ-consciousness you deepen the God-consciousness. Jesus does not push out or rival God; the more I know of him the more I know of the Father. I do not argue that, I simply testify.
Now, if any people on earth should have found God apart from Jesus Christ the Indian people have earned that right. They have searched for God as no other nation on earth has ever searched for God. If sheer persistence of search could have found God in joyous clearness, then the Indian people have earned that right.
But it is precisely this lack of the joyous sense of finding that strikes me as I go about India. “You are the boldest man I have ever seen,” said a Hindu after an address. “You said you had found God. I have never heard a man say that before.” There was no credit to me—not the slightest. I had looked into the face of Jesus and lo, I saw the Father! But India has not had that face to look into, and as a consequence the vision of the Father is fleeting.
If this sounds dogmatic, then let India herself speak. My friend Holland gives this illuminating incident: He had had a discussion with an able Hindu judge and the judge had got the better of the argument, so he said in a kindly way: “Well, after all, there is not much difference between us. You Christians are converted when you find God in Christ. We Hindus are converted when we find God in ourselves.” “With this difference,” replied Holland, “that in those countries where Christ is known conversions happen. I could take you to visit hundreds of my Christian friends in this city, Indian and English, and as you talked to them you would gather just this impression of light and discovery and inspiration of which we have been speaking, whereas I do not know of a single Hindu student that gives me the impression he has found.” The judge’s face fell, his tone dropped and he said to Holland, quietly: “You are perfectly right. I know more Hindus than you, Aryas, Brahmos, Theosophists and Orthodox; I do not know one who has found” ( The Goal of India , Holland, p. 209).
With the exception of one man who said he was a jiwan-mukta, that is, one who has found living salvation, a man whom the audience smiled upon and did not take seriously, I have found India God-stirred, but still seeking. There is not yet that sense of finding.
But Jesus actually does give men just that . More, he gives a goal for character and a free, full life. Is there anyone else who can give men those three things? Is there anyone else actually doing it?
I asked an earnest Hindu one day what he thought of Christ. He thoughtfully answered: “There is no one else who is seriously bidding for the heart of the world except Jesus Christ. There is no one else on the field.”
Sweep the horizon—is there anyone else?
Yes, Mrs. Besant announces a coming World Teacher. She puts forth Krishnamurti, a Brahman youth who is to be the incarnation of Christ. (Even here she naïvely acknowledges the supremacy of Jesus, for it is to be an incarnation of Christ .) He has given forth his first installment of world teaching and has received divine honors in India and in the West. I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of rather lovable disposition, of mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him swear in good, round English! I came away feeling that if he is all we, as a race, have to look to in order to get out of the muddle we are in, then God pity us.
There is literally no one else on the field and, nothing else on the horizon. It is Christ or—nothing. Matthew Arnold says: “Try all the ways to peace and welfare you can think of and you will find that there is no way that brings you to it except the way of Jesus. But this way does bring you to it.”
What, then, have we in Christianity that is not found in any of the other systems? I was asked by an ardent Arya Samajist that very question. “What have you in your religion that we haven’t in ours?” He expected me to argue with him the question concerning what moral ideas and philosophic principles we had that they did not have. I answered, “Shall I tell you in a word? You have no Christ .” Just there is the great lack of the non-Christian faiths. Fine things in their culture and thought—we admit it and thank God in real sincerity for them—but the real lack, the lack for which nothing else can atone, is just—Christ. They have no Christ. And lacking him, life lacks its supreme necessity.
Sadhu Sunder Singh, the great Christian mystic, clarifies this in his conversation with a European professor of comparative religions in a Hindu college. The professor was an agnostic as far as Christianity was concerned and interviewed the Sadhu with the evident intention of showing him his mistake in renouncing another faith for Christ. He asked, “What have you found in Christianity that you did not have in your old religion?”
The Sadhu answered, “I have Christ.”
“Yes, I know,” the professor replied, a little impatiently, for he was hoping for a philosophical argument, “but what particular principle or doctrine have you found that you did not have before?”
The Sadhu replied, “The particular thing I have found is Christ.”
Try as the professor might, he could not budge him from that position. He went away discomfited—and thoughtful. The Sadhu was right. The non-Christian faiths have fine things in them, but they lack—Christ.
But someone objects: “Aren’t they getting along pretty well without Christ?” My answer is that I know of no one, East or West, who is getting along pretty well without Christ. Christ being Life is a necessity to life.
A Brahman came to me confidentially one day and said, “Your addresses have been very much enjoyed, but there is one thing I would suggest. If you will preach Christ as a way, all right, but say that there may be other ways as well. If you do this, India will be at your feet.” I replied, thanking my brother for his concern, but said: “I am not looking for popularity, and it is not a question what I should say. It is a question of what are the facts. They have the final word.” I should be glad, more than glad, if I could say that there are others who are saving men, but I know of only One to whom I dare actually apply the term “Saviour.” But I do dare apply it to Christ unreservedly and without qualification. A Hindu said to me one day, “You are such a broad-minded Christian.” I replied: “My brother, I am the narrowest man you have come across. I am broad on almost anything else, but on the one supreme necessity for human nature I am absolutely narrowed by the facts to one—Jesus.” It is precisely because we believe in the absoluteness of Jesus that we can afford to take the more generous view of the non-Christian systems and situations. But the facts have driven us to Jesus as the supreme necessity for all life everywhere.
We disclaim, then, that this is international meddling. There is no more meddling in this than when Copernicus discovered a center around which our planet revolved and shared his discovery. It caused upset and heart-burnings to many who thought the geocentric view was sacrosanct. We now see that the disorderliness caused by this announcement was nothing compared to the vast and incurable disorderliness which was everywhere when men were thinking away from the center. We announce that we believe that we have discovered the center of this moral and spiritual universe—the person of Jesus. That causes confusion and upset. But when men once find that center they find that an orderly spiritual universe comes out of chaos. But we do not impose it upon men, we share it with them.
We also repudiate the idea of gaining mere members; we want character, and if there is any feverishness in our effort, it is that we are feverishly trying to set our own house in order. We need it as much as anyone else.
As for the satisfying a racial superiority complex and being the forerunners of imperialism and capitalism, let us say that Jesus is the one Figure that stands blocking every road of political and economic exploitation in the East. He is troubling exploiters everywhere. He has got hold of them. They cannot grab and exploit with quite so easy a conscience as they once did. Moreover, amid the racial clashes and bitterness there stands one who is the Son of man. Racialism withers under his real touch. He is the Friend of Men.
When we are told that India produces her great men, Gandhi and Tagore, and that it is therefore impertinent to go to the East, we reply thanking God for the greatness of these sons of India; we are proud of them and grateful for them, and grateful also for the part that Jesus is having in molding them into greatness.
As for the “Great Commission” being an interpolation, we reply that this has not yet been proved; but even if it were, we would still be committed to this whole enterprise of sharing him with the world, for it is not based on a command, but upon the very nature of the gospel itself, upon him. Last command or no last command, we must share him, for the necessities of human life command us to give a Saviour such as Jesus. Out of the deep necessities comes the imperious voice, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” If we hold our peace, the stones—the hard, bare facts of life—will cry out.
Further. He and the facts not only command us to go, but he, standing in the East, beckons us to come. He is there—deeply there, before us. We not only take him; we go to him. Of this vivid and tragic truth, he gives us a vision in that glimpse of the last day: “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” The righteous cry, “Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?” The amazing words fall from his lips: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these . . . ye have done it unto me.” Whom do we feed when we feed the hungry of India? That pinched man before me? Yes and more—our own Christ is hungry in that man. And when I put the chalice to the parched lips of India—to whose lips do I put it? That man athirst before me? Yea, more, for my own Christ is again athirst in him. I do not have to take Christ to India—he is there in the perpetual incarnation of human need. When we do it to them we do it to him. “This whole question is vascular: cut it anywhere and it will bleed.”
If Christ is in this, I do not see how we can be out of it.
To sum up: We are there because Christlike character is the highest that we know, because he gives men a free, full life, and, most important of all, he gives them God. And we do not know of anyone else who does do these things except Christ. But he does.
And to the heart that has learned to love him it is irresistible to think of him hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, naked and a stranger in the throbbing needs of our brother men.
We take them Christ—we go to him. He is the motive and the end.