This article was a revised one that was published under the title: HIGH CAST AND EDUCATED PEOPLE AS THE FIELD, in Planters, January to March issue, 1996, pp. 13-14. Though I detained the main message, I revised it now.
–Dayanand Bharati
Gurukulam, 2-6-2023
“Unteachability is the greatest crime.” Some of the most guilty in this area are the so-called high caste and educated people, because of their mental make up. This makes it a very complicated one in our efforts to present the gospel to them. Listen to the words of Sri Joshi Bharatkar in his letter to the editor of Our Link1 (September 10, 1991 issue):
“…Well, your ‘graduates’ may say that the Reality we believe is not a personal God as yours. True. We don’t believe in any personal god as the ultimate. We hold that the Ultimate should be an impersonal principle. But if you are mentally and spiritually underdeveloped you may need a personal god. You see, we are more advanced in the scale of evolution and we are not, like you, in the kindergarten of spirituality; therefore we do not need any personal God….We believe that we are divine and in fact everything is divine. You can easily see what a positive and glorious outlook we have towards everything. You call man a sinner, but we call him God. Therefore our philosophy must be superior to yours.” (emphasis added)
Such an argument is not new in our encounter with the so-called high caste and educated people. And how to reach them for the Lord is an art in itself.
The first thing that must be recognized is that in sharing the gospel to such people we are facing a different (and very subtle) kind of power encounter2 on the intellectual level. And to face it mere prayer and spirituality are not enough. With the help of God we must prepare ourselves to meet the needs of such people. Of course God shows His mercy to the humble and simple and opposes the pride of every form and kind. Yet at the same time the same merciful God does not exclude all such from His Kingdom, as ever since Paul throughout church history we come across some of the wise of this world who are humbled and turned to Christ.
“Win the winnable while they are winnable” may be a good principle, but it is also easily wrongly interpreted. While the churches and missions are implementing the principle in letter and spirit to reach the so-called low caste and tribal people, they seem to forget to ask the question of “why others are remaining unwinnable”? If the question is asked, “Why is there no response among the high caste and educated people?”, then the answering question must be, “Why are we not properly communicating to these people?” If the question is asked, “Why are people not confessing Christ?” the answering question would be,” Why is our message not touching hearts and convicting minds about the Lord?” And the real challenge before us is to face these questions with factual and truthful answers.
The gospel is both a revelation from as well as an initiative taken by God. The main reason for God to take the initiative to reveal His love for us is His concern for our salvation. So we, too, need the same concern in all our efforts to communicate the gospel to others. Of course simple faith will make one follow theLord and not a thorough understanding of the gospel. “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (I Cor. 1:21). But we must make every sincere effort to present the basic tenants of the gospel so that God can work from there to reveal His grace on our hearers. Otherwise all our labour to share the gospel itself becomes a waste. Let a man deny the Lord after a clear understanding of who God is and what he is before Him. THE GOSPEL IS NOT COMMUNICATED UNTIL THE MESSAGE IS UNDERSTOOD.
Concern is the basic human attitude which determines our communication. In other areas of life, a person wants to communicate because he wants to express his aspirations and expects that others will cooperate with him. But in sharing the gospel our sole aim is concern for others–for their salvation, not to quench some evangelical urge in us. So we must think about the ways and means to communicate the gospel according to the needs of our people group (or `field’). If love is the only motive for us to worship and serve God, the same must be also our motive in serving others.
“Total man needs total gospel”. Man is basically a person and not merely a thing. So in all our efforts to communicate the gospel to our neighbour we must approach him as an individual person. Particularly in our approach to the high caste and educated people, where response is almost always individual rather than family or group.
Here are a few facts we must keep in our mind in our approach to educated people. “Birds of the same feather flock together”. However much individual freedom is respected and allowed among such people, yet when it comes to the question of faith (particularly changing allegiance to a personal God from a caste based religious system) we must keep the family and community in mind. We should understand the Western Individualism from personal freedom when it comes to spiritual needs and sadhana. We should not do anything in a hurry in the name of “conversion” which will sever a person’s relationship with their own family and community. Individual care should be given within the individual’s own family and community so the person can grow in his/her faith and at the same time remain a faithful bhakta in his/her own community.3
Let me share the extracts from a Brahmin boy whom I helped to return back to his parents, making him understand to remain as a Hindu [Brahmin] bhakta of the Lord in his family than to become a ‘convert’ that too becoming a Full Time worker. I didn’t disclose his name, but shared only some extracts from his letter that he wrote me back on 13-02-1996. As no one should have cooked up this story, I am sending the photo copy of this letter hiding his name but leaving with his signature.
The mere transplanting of a person to another religious system or community, however valuable it may be to the Christians, will not help but rather hinder all our efforts to reach such people. MILK THOUGH LIQUID AND RICH, YET FISH CANNOT SURVIVE IN IT. So we must help people to become Muktinath’s Bhaktas, allowing them to live culturally and socially as they are. Regarding the unmuktivedic aspects in their community, without proper understanding about culture and society we should not rush to condemn or try to remove things from their lives. Give solid teaching about the Lord and allow each person to evaluate their own way of life based on his or her bhakti in the Lord. Remember Paul, who broke the Jewish captivity of the gospel as he never allowed a gentile to become a Jew (though the Judaizers tried to force this); yet at the same time he allowed the Jews to remain as Jews while following Christ. (cf. the comment of James D. Smith III in “Boundary Breaker” (Christian History magazine Vol. XIV No. 3 Issue 47, 1995): “…Historian Henry Chadwick wrote, `Paul’s genius as an apologist is his astonishing ability to reduce to an apparent vanishing point the gulf between himself and his converts and yet to “gain” them for the (authentic) Christian gospel.’”)
Another important (also very controversial) issue is that the best way to reach such people is to become a “tentmaker”. Particularly, never encourage any new `convert’ to become a `full time’ worker, even in times of extreme persecution. Likewise those Christian believers who have a real burden to reach people should think seriously to become tentmakers rather than to work as full time workers. Educated and high caste people will listen to the words of those who stand on their own legs, who can properly understand their aspirations and problems in life.
“Be a Roman in Rome” is applicable to every group that we consider as “Fields”. In this area even the Missiological Training Institutes should have special courses to prepare tentmakers to understand the world views of the so-called high caste and educated people, so that they can find ways and means to truly communicate the gospel to them. Instead of giving the same old message which is programmed in our mind, we must make conscious efforts to develop better methods. Much assistance in this direction can be gained from the writings of R. C. Das (especially How To Present Christ to a Hindu, but see also R. C. Das: Evangelical Prophet for Contextual Christianity, ed. H. L. Richard, ISPCK, 1995).
Muktinath came to the whole world and not merely to the downtrodden, depressed and deprived people. And in one sense the high caste and educated people also are deprived people as long as we neglect our responsibility to them to share the gospel. The longing is there in every human heart to respond to the call of our Lord, but we should learn how to give the living water in an Indian bowl so that people can taste and quench their thirst in Him.
There is much more that could be shared regarding the so-called high caste and educated people as “a field”. But reading articles or books on it won’t help us much. Every field deserves personal attention, care and study, and above all toil and concern to prepare it for cultivation. The missions have set a “traditional pattern” to reach the tribes and others, after retreating from their small beginning in the early part of history to reach high caste and educated people.4 If our aim is merely to increase the percentage of Christians in India, such a field will continue to be left uncared for in the days to come also. If our motivation is love for the lost, we will insist that new and effective methods be found so that from these needy fields also we can help some individuals to become the bhakta of the Lord remaining culturally and socially as they are.
One time I told one of the Top leaders of an indigenous organization that I am not interested in increasing the percentage of Christianity in India. I want to see that people assimilate the teaching of Muktinath in their personal life so that a transformation can come in our society integrating new values that our Lord imparts through His life and teaching. For this we should allow the Good News to incarnate in every culture and tradition rather than attempting to convert people from one faith to another to make them a member of another community.
Notes
1.. 1 Later when I met one top EU leader, he said that this letter published in ‘Our Link’ is not a true letter written by one Bharatkar, but an imagined dialogue.
2.. 2 This I wrote back in 1996. But now I won’t use the word ‘power encounter’. See my article ‘Sorrows of Satan’.
3..’Last Sunday I was talking to Amma. Suddenly the topic changed to God. I didn’t start anything about worship. Suddenly she said there is a superior power and I am believing in it. Immediately I said it may be in any name and you can name anything when you are worshipping. She agreed and she said there is nothing wrong in it and she is very much concerned about the culture and the activities created by the forefathers. I immediately assured her that I am in the same culture in which I was born and I am not at all changed by worshiping Jesus Christ. And I also said if I worship Jesus in the church, I will tell you and go. But I don’t want to do that. I am praying in my heart. There is nothing wrong with it. She said that it is good. If you go there without telling me I will not come to know about it. It is better if you tell the truth. Culture is very important. And she said that without changing your culture you can worship your god.
Actually, one of my friends took me to a Sai Bhakta. In front of me he started doing meditation on Sai. Suddenly he woke up and said that ‘I am not able to do meditation. Jesus is coming on that.’ I said this to my mother and she said it means Jesus is in your heart. And she is very clear about it. Immediately I said {to her}, ‘If I didn’t meet you I would have become a Full Christian, only because of you I am Brahmin now. He only advised me not to meet and mingle with any Christians and he only said you are a Brahmin and you are only a bhakta of Christ. And she accepted it. This is the first step God has opened to her….—P.K.R, Madras, 13-02-1996
4 Already a book was written with thorough research on this very topic and it is worth reading for those who want to understand why the Church and Mission terribly failed in this:
This is the last paragraph in conclusion:
The doctrine of evangelisation of India through education and the intelligentsia was evolved during the 1870s and 1880s and continued to be upheld till 1910. When this doctrine appeared to fail, it was rejected in favour of another, i.e., the evangelisation of India through the masses. A temporary setback to this perspective of evangelisation occurred during the 1920s when the foundations were also laid for the transfer of the leadership of the evangelic and Christian task from the missions to the Indian Christians. When the evangelic spirit re-appeared, it reaffirmed the reversal of the perspective of evangelisation, but witnessed the transfer of the leadership and the task of evangelisation from missions to India Church and Indian Christians.—A. Mathew, Christian Missions, Education and Nationalism: From Dominance to Compromise 1870-1930, Delhi, Anamika Prakashan, 1988. p. 237. This book is available in Open Library for reading only.
Dayanand Bharati,
31-12-1995,
Lucknow.
7.00. p.m.
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