3. Hidden Gold
I have often wondered how much we really know about our own particular individuality and if, when the veil is finally lifted some day, we may marvel at how we missed so much of it. We know that physical attributes are transferred from generation to generation through DNA, but is it also possible that some of our spiritual sympathies and religious inclinations may be carried over in our very biochemical makeup?
This thought was suggested to me by a friend, who wondered if our subconscious awareness of certain prior events may well be the cumulative bequest of ancestry. I have thought of this often and believe she may be on to something. I’m not speaking merely of cultural influences, which are substantial enough; I’m talking about the collective memory of generations deposited deep in our being that can surface in ways we would never imagine.
Each time I visit a Hindu temple in India, I am conscious that the religious lives of the people worshiping there have been shaped and transferred to them around these temples for literally thousands of years. Their songs, their chants, their superstitions, their commitments, and their fear of spirits have all come to them across the centuries in the womb of their heritage. Can it be that the “beliefs of the forefathers are visited for generations”?
If that is so, how does one casually dismiss centuries of belief in his or her own religious lineage? How can one impulsively decide one day to disbelieve what one’s ancestors, those who have come from the same root, have believed since their culture’s inception? As my friend suggested, is there something “spiritual” in our biochemical makeup that comes from previous generations? Could this explain experiences of déjà vu, the thought of having been somewhere before or of having previously experienced something before?
This connection with past generations and centuries is one reason why it is very hard for anyone from the East to convert to Christianity. It is a much more intricate matter than in the West where, generally speaking, one thinks individually. In the East, one’s thinking is collective. As I see it, if it is true that heredity plays a role in the spiritual dispositions that are imprinted on our souls, Jesus’ declaration that each of us needs to be born again is even more profound. The DNA of generations past marks itself very deeply in us, and it takes a new birth for us to be able to see through new eyes.
My own DNA goes back to the very heart of my homeland’s religion. My ancestors were Nambudiris, the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood. They belong to the dominant caste of the South and regard themselves as the repositories of the ancient Vedic religion. Through marriage to the Nayars, the warrior caste, the Nambudiris enjoy a combination of power in doctrinal prerogative and in might of propagation. These two castes provided the bedrock of my ancestry.
But that pride of birth was dramatically broken in my lineage five generations ago, on my paternal grandfather’s side, in Kerala. There, in 1858, a young Nambudiri woman who had five brothers came into contact with Christian belief and was fascinated by what she heard. Evidently, she had been speaking with the missionaries at the Basel Mission, a German-Swiss Christian mission in her village. When the rest of the family learned of her interest, she was strongly rebuked, threatened, and warned not to visit the mission compound anymore.
As I understand it — and as was told to me by my grandaunt who lived to the age of 103 — on the day after this reprimand, as soon as her brothers left for work, my ancestor went to the missionaries to tell them she could no longer come. But while she was there, news arrived that a cholera epidemic was spreading rapidly throughout the village, which meant that everyone was ordered to be quarantined — wherever they were at the moment.
She could not leave the mission compound, and her brothers were not permitted inside to take her home. So she had to remain there for several weeks, much to her family’s displeasure. During that quarantined period, the young Nambudiri asked all her questions about Jesus Christ, and before she left that compound once the quarantine was lifted, she had made her heart’s commitment to follow Christ.
That woman was my great-great-great-grandmother, and her conversion started my ancestors on the road to the Christian faith. There was no question that hers was an extraordinary conversion, and very genuine. It had to have been a huge leap for her. She was immediately an outcast, disavowed by her family and society. Indeed, everything in her life was turned upside down. There was no home to go back to, no parent to find her a husband, and no one who would want her as a wife. I wish I knew the whole story because, from that point on, my heritage was going to change in dramatic turns. My life, which could well have been spent in the temples of Kerala, is now spent in a different world and with a different worldview.
So the missionaries became my great-great-great-grandmother’s family and cared for her needs. They even arranged for her to marry a fine Christian man. The only downside of it in that context was that he happened to be originally from a lower caste, a boatman. This twin step of a marriage to a man from a lower caste who was also a Christian sealed her eviction from her blood relatives. (Contrary to what is popularly believed, deep in the heart of India, especially with the Nambudiris, society is quite matriarchal. Her step of faith in Christ, therefore, was a bigger blow to the family than one might expect.) Despite these things, she had no doubt that this was the answer to the struggle of her soul. Jesus Christ was now the shepherd of her life, and her new beginnings were profoundly altering to her and to future generations.
No one knows how the name Zacharias was decided upon. It may be that the missionaries suggested the name because of the fact that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was a priest in the New Testament. It is also true that German Christians have used the name often; and if you go to Mennonite territory anywhere in the world, you see the name Zacharias quite frequently.
The Basel Mission churches in India still have quite a presence, especially around Mumbai, the teeming city formerly known as Bombay. In fact, I had the privilege of preaching in one during a trip years ago. At the time, I did not know of the connection between my Christian roots and the Mission, which has had a significant impact in India, as it has in my own history. There is only one other fact I know about this important tributary of my family’s heritage, and it is that one of my ancestors (from my paternal grandmother’s side) was an ordained minister under the Basel Mission, having married another high-caste convert.
As I consider these wonderful things, I greatly regret not talking more to my dad and his relatives about their story. Only now, as I see the Lord’s hand at work so clearly in my family’s tapestry, do I regret not seeking to know more about the pattern He has woven. You can become interested too late to realize how important your family tree is.
The grandaunt I mentioned was my best source of information. So I asked her, “If we came to know the Lord through German-Swiss missionaries, how did we end up in the Anglican Church?”
She smiled. “You’re the first one to ever ask me that question,” she noted. “I can give you the exact reason.”
You would have to know my grandaunt to know the precision with which she handled questions. In her professional days, she was a high school principal, and even when she was well past her hundredth birthday she read one book a week. A fascinating woman indeed — her silvery-gray hair, her face wrinkled and blotched with age, dark rings around her eyes, her sari all crumpled as she sat up in bed in the lotus position to talk to us in her soft but articulate voice — she constantly moistened her thick lips as she told us the story with a touch of nostalgia.
The German-Swiss missionaries who were involved in leading my ancestors, as well as many other Indians, to the Lord had a strange custom of cultural distance: they refused to allow Indians to participate with them in Holy Communion. Indians had to celebrate the Lord’s Supper separately. Sadly, this belief placed the German-Swiss in a superior posture to the Indian churchman and woman in what is the consummate act of devotion to Christ.
At the time, my great-grandfather Tobias Zacharias was a very prominent attorney. This discriminatory act troubled him greatly, and he took issue with the missionaries’ stance, declaring, “This is not right. We are now one in Christ. There should be no separation at the Lord’s Table.” But the missionaries, whether from higher authority or on their own, continued their policy. So, with much heartbreak, the family left that denomination of believers and joined the Anglican Church, where Indians were allowed to celebrate joint Communion with English Christians.
In the meantime, my great-grandfather was encouraged to take the issue to court for the sake of posterity and for the sake of the true gospel. He was told that this was the only way it would be resolved. So he battled it out legally until the English government passed a law stating that Indians had to be treated with equality. This meant allowing them into the fellowship of Communion within the church.
By this time, however, there must have been some hard feelings involved, because my family’s decision about a church was not reversed, and we began our journey into Anglicanism. Until the day we left India, the Anglican cathedral in Delhi was our home church.
As dramatic as my ancestors’ conversions had been, over a period of time in the succeeding generations, true belief in Christ dwindled into nothing more than a nominal adherence. There was no true personal faith and trust. Somewhere down the line, that first conversion in the Basel Mission compound was watered down, and the weeds of culture choked out the new life in the heart. Christianity became less a matter of faith than the fact that my family simply wasn’t Hindu or Muslim. We were all part of a great mix. There was intermarriage in terms of faith, and virtually every faith played into that mix.
Even as I say this, I cannot shake a certain feeling about Agnes Manickam, my grandmother on my mother’s side. She was a sweet, lovely lady. I don’t think I ever heard anything harsh or rude from her mouth, and she always brought a warm, caring, loving presence when she came to visit our home. We all loved it when she came, especially me, because it meant a break from the tension I felt from my father.
At that point, we were living in Delhi, and my grandmother made the trip northward by train from Madras. The journey took over two days, and our whole family went to the railway station to meet the train and bring her home. She was always such a glorious sight when she arrived. She would descend from the car with a simple magnificence, a porter carrying her old trunk and other bundles crudely tied up with sheets or saris. She unfailingly brought loads of sweets and goodies and mangoes for us, and she had a habit of affectionately biting our noses when she gave us our first hug, making us squeal, “No, Ammah, no!” Did that ever make some “after the pleasantries” conversation for us kids!
She was also a very reverent and ritualistic woman. She was very High Church, always making the sign of the cross on our foreheads after kissing us. I don’t remember that she ever talked about her faith or that anyone in our family engaged her on the topic. But the fact is, when it’s not an important issue to you, you tend to overlook the deep faith that may be in someone else. The subliminal impact of her life and the seeds that were planted by just being near her would be revealed years later.
There is a beautiful story by F. W. Boreham that reflects this. He tells of a woman who was sitting beside him on a bus. As the journey progressed and the conductor came around to check the tickets, the woman was dismayed to realize that somewhere during the ride someone must have dipped into her purse and stolen two gold coins, along with her ticket. Boreham reacts by saying how embarrassed he was because he happened to be sitting next to her and she kept giving him a look of suspicion. But thankfully, he said, the problem was resolved quickly when, digging her hands deeper into the purse, she found the coins. Promptly and with a red face she apologized, saying that it was her birthday and this was a new purse her daughter had given her. “The compartments of the purse were more elaborate and ingenious than she had noticed,” he said.
Boreham, in his inimitable way, titled his essay “Hidden Gold,” reminding the reader in the following words: “Now this sort of thing is very common. We are continually fancying that we have been robbed of the precious things we still possess. The old lady who searches everywhere for the spectacles that adorn her temples; the clerk who ransacks the office for the pen behind his ear; and the boy who charges his brother with the theft of his penknife that lurks in the mysterious depths of his own fearful and wonderful pocket.”* Often we are not aware of how close we are to that which we need but we think we do not have. In His grace, God has placed some hidden gold somewhere in all of us that meets our need at a desperate moment.
For some, faith is something like that. We find we have it at a time when all seems lost. The gold I had was of just such a hidden nature, and it would come to light only later. My grandmother’s faith, though not often spoken, came back to speak to me in a most profound way. Suffice it to say that somewhere in my ancestry God placed an investment in my very soul. It would shine in the years to come in a manner I never could have imagined.
There is another important line laid in my spiritual DNA. To me, this line has had as profound an effect on my life as my lineage that goes back to the Nambudiris. It was laid for me by the apostle Thomas.
Yes, the “Doubting Apostle.” I have always felt a special affinity with the one whom the church has seen for centuries as the disciple who had difficulty believing. I think of Thomas not as a doubter but as the “Questioning Apostle.”
Tradition holds that Thomas brought the Christian presence to India. Several notations in early church history refer to his coming here. Indian tradition has held tenaciously to this. We know that Barnabas went to Cyprus, and Paul to Greece and Rome. The one known as “the great doubter” was evidently commissioned to the second most populous nation on the earth and established the church here that remains to this day.
The oldest denomination in India is the Mar Thoma Church, named after the apostle. There are commemorative stones and inscriptions in Kerala marking his arrival. And there is a church in Chennai, high atop a hill overlooking the city, called St. Thomas Mount, a spot venerated by Christians and maintained in honor of the apostle. Church tradition in India holds that under Thomas’s ministry the queen of the area converted to Christianity. Her husband, the king, was enraged over this fact and had Thomas murdered while the apostle was on his knees in prayer. His body was brought to this spot for burial and later removed to Rome out of fear that his grave would be vandalized.
Several notable early church fathers, such as Ambrose of Milan and Gregory of Nazianzus, and other distinguished historians have made reference to Thomas going to India. There is also no compelling contrary evidence to Thomas’s being anywhere else, and every time I come to Chennai I visit St. Thomas Mount, a quiet, serene spot overlooking the massive city below. Inside the church, the wall is sequentially painted with two scenes from each of the twelve apostles’ lives: first, as the artist pictured them, and second, their martyrdom, with the killing of Thomas as the centerpiece. The devout who come here also believe miracles have taken place in that location. A sign outside the shrine reads, “If anyone has ever experienced healing or received graces, come and report it to this office.”
This shows the Indian culture’s propensity for the dramatic and the spectacular, yet these sentiments also reveal the culture’s desperate longing for healing. The people of India yearn for the physical touch of God, for the miraculous, because their need is so great with the deprivation all around. And of all the disciples, Thomas was the man for this cause. He was the one who declared, “I will not believe under any circumstances unless I see and feel the wounds of the Lord in his body.” In His loving grace, Christ offered Thomas that evidence.
Today, when faith healers come to India, they often prey upon a deep hunger that is connected to the physical. This ministry can easily become an exploitation of the masses. Yet I believe there are times when God does meet the hungers of a people. And it seems to be that, in a land where the physical needs are so pronounced, God often chooses to reach many by meeting their physical needs. It is significant to me, therefore, that the church in India was founded by one for whom the physical evidence of the risen Christ was indispensable.
There is another reason Thomas was the right man for India. Here was a man who needed a solid apologetic, some kind of hard evidence. He wasn’t just going to take somebody’s else’s word for it. When his closest friends spoke of seeing Jesus alive after the crucifixion, Thomas responded, “Show me.” He questioned them because he had to be sure for himself. And in his postresurrection encounter with Jesus, he made his memorable declaration: “My Lord and my God!” After that, nothing could stop him.
Think of it: Thomas came into a land that had more gods than any other nation. Hinduism alone has 330 million deities. India has an ancient religious culture whose origins date to history’s beginnings. There were the dark-skinned Dravidians in the South, India’s original inhabitants; into this realm came the lighter-skinned Aryans with their own mixture of paganism. That complex amalgam of the Dravidians’ and the Aryans’ beliefs gave birth to Hinduism. All of this is why it is impossible to write a systematic theology of Hinduism. It is just not monolithic; more often, it must be grappled with by studying its exponents. When you add to India’s religious history from ancient times to the present, you see the arrival of Islam, followed by the founding of Sikhism in an attempt to find middle ground. Today, India boasts of being the most religious country in the world. Eighty percent of India is Hindu, and if India and Pakistan had not separated, it would also be the largest Muslim country in the world.
But long before the incursions made by Islam into this complexity of 330 million deities came the apostle to whom Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The once-questioning Thomas — who was now the convinced Thomas — came to my homeland and dialogued with the skeptics and the religious, pointing them all to Jesus. He paid with his life. But the church he founded here remains one of the oldest in the world.
I was born in Thomas’s shadow, here in Chennai, six miles from where he was buried. Many times I have said to my wife, Margie, “If I were one of the Twelve, I could see myself saying exactly what Thomas did.” I can hear myself telling the others, “I can’t take your word for it. I have to see it for myself.” When I went into my studies in Christian apologetics, my mother often asked me how I thought up all the questions I had.
As I picture Thomas in his questioning of Jesus, and imagine the future that the Lord had planned for him, I think Jesus must have wanted to add, “Thomas, I am going to send you to a doubting and questioning people. The spear-thrusted side of mine will one day be yours for telling the world what you have seen, felt, and believed.”
Like the apostle, I have found myself in places of heated questioning, where I’ve had to present a witness — sometimes at the risk of my life. There are realities in the Eastern world today that I have to consider every time I go there. I’ve been to numerous Middle Eastern countries — some that are not open to a Christian witness — and have had to go in under the most highly sensitive security measures. The Lord has marvelously opened up these places for me, giving me the opportunity to present the love of Christ. Yet, to do this I have had to conclude that, though I don’t know what the Lord has ahead for me, I am committed to Him and to the calling He has placed on my life. I believe Thomas counted the cost the moment he made up his mind. I must do likewise.
There is a story in 1 Samuel 16 about the prophet Samuel coming to Jesse’s home and asking to meet his children, for God had an anointing in mind for one of them. Both Samuel and Jesse had their eyes on outward appearances, however, and were missing what God had in mind.
I chuckle, thinking how Eastern this story is. I can picture it. Indeed, years ago, if someone had given my father a written description of my life, and my dad had lined up his five children and been asked to guess whose life this would be, he would have pointed to any of the other four. He would never, by his own admission, have pointed to me; for that matter, neither would I have considered myself. Everyone, but especially my father, would say that my life has been the biggest shock of the family. Timidity and repeated failure do not provide a good mix for the kind of calling I have. Yet God made it possible.
In Psalm 16, King David writes this:
Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup;
you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
As I look back to the lines laid down by others in my heritage, I see Thomas’s impact in this country, in this culture, and in my own family, dating back to the Basel Mission in Kerala. Thomas’s conversation with Jesus would also figure very specifically in the origin of my own faith, which would come at the point of deepest crisis in my life. Like the questioning apostle, I had questions that were central to whether I even had meaning enough to live. And with meager similarity to my dear Nambudiri ancestor — my great-great-great-grandmother, whose life was ultimately turned upside down by her questioning — mine would be turned right side up in a circumstance that to this day brings me the mixed emotions of a somewhat aching, yet jubilant heart.
The lines were to fall in a strange way, but in a clear pattern.