Not ashamed

Right now I'm staying at the home of Pastor Simon in the sub city of Dwarka in Delhi. Last week he was visited by a friend of his, Pastor Amrit Ashish, his wife and three boys. The family lives, ministers and works (making handcrafted cards) in Dehradun, a city in north India situated between the Sivalik Hills and the Himalayas. I met Amrit four years ago at a conference in Dehradun.

During the course of our conversation, Amrit remarked on the number of Western "missionaries" he's seen who've come to India and acted in speech and in lifestyle just like the Hindus they were trying to reach, until you could hardly tell any difference. He's not the first Indian pastor I've heard decry this. Last time I was in India I stayed in Mussoorie, a hill station in the breathtakingly beautiful foothills of the Himalayas, with Pastor Edwin Daliya and his wife Nivedit (daughter of writer and speaker Vishal Mangalwadi). They told me similar stories. One couple they knew had even begun attending services at a Hindu temple. The challenge in India is impressing upon people the complete separateness of the Christian life, the absolute claims of our Messiah. Pastors often work long and hard at this only to find that Jesus has been accepted like another vitamin supplement: Probably beneficial, possibly negligible, doubtfully harmful--a dietary hedging of your bets. Hindu deities in India number 330,000,000. Jesus numbers 330, 000, 001.

Needless to say, Western "Christians" coming and attending religious services at the temple (an extreme example, granted) doesn't make the job of local pastors any easier.

Likely from the get-go, in most of these cases, the missionaries started out with an inordinate desire to be culturally "correct" and inoffensive. Inordinate because when you are too conscious of being correct, you are focused on yourself and not on loving those around you. Better to forget yourself, commit the occasional faux pas and concentrate on loving people; better a blundering bonhommie than a stilted "correctness. People want a flesh and blood human being they can relate to, not a floating enlightened Westerner. They want to be loved, not forced to endure Hans Solo attempting Yoda.

Amrit told of a Western missionary admonishing worshippers at her home to sing their praise songs less loudly. As Armit tells it, the Christians weren't being obnoxiously noisy; rather the missionary was concerned that her neighbors would hear all the Jesus clamor and set her down as an ardent Christian. Nobody likes to be pigeonholed, right? To be put in a little box, to be classified as narrowly prejudiced? (Perhaps she was concerned about her safety--he didn't say.) Of course, this undercover Christian mentality is universal, and I needn't look very far to see it in operation. I want to be Christian, but not too Christian, lest I'm thought strange, narrow or, what is worse, simple. While I smile indulgently at the attempts of eager Christian brothers to bring Jesus into every conversation, I inwardly congratulate myself on my more sophisticated and nuanced approach to evangelism. So nuanced, in fact, you often don't even know I'm doing it. Kapow!

How much happier would this missionary--and I--be if the words of Paul infused us.

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me ... For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." Galatians 2:20, Romans 1:16