Back to Title Page & Thesis Index

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Christian Spirituality

As inhabitants of this planet, we are on more than a trip through empty space
spinning around a small yellow star. We are each on our own special journey of life,
filled with adventures, dangers, joys and sorrows. Our travels take our bodies through
pleasures and pains, our souls through satisfactions and disappointments, our spirits
through enlightenments and darknesses. We have the taste of eternity in our beings and we
long for "the Good," but we are all forced to acknowledge the reality of an imperfect
world around us. And before our sometimes hopeful, sometimes weary eyes, we all face the
inevitability of an open grave. As we each make the journey to its end, there are so many
choices, so many crossroads at which our pathways take a bend for the better or for the
worse. In the midst of this common journey of life, those choices which affect our
spiritual lives are usually those which either give purpose to our existence or rob life
of any meaning at all.

The Christian is one who comes to a decisive crossroad of life. Like the traveler
in John Bunyan's classic, Pilgrim's Progress, the Christian comes to a Cross-road where
hangs suspended the man named Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God. At that Cross and
at that turn in the road, the Christian makes a critical choice that changes the course of
his or her journey radically. The believer in Christ chooses to pursue the way of God as
revealed in the Bible. He or she is called to follow a new direction in life guided by
the Holy Spirit. Yet not all Christians pursue this calling with the same intensity and
zeal. There are those followers who only straggle at a distance behind the determined
footsteps of the risen Savior on his active pathway in today's world. And then, there are
others who cannot but accept the challenge of total commitment to their Master and Lord.
The one overshadowing feature of these dedicated lifestyles seems to be a persistence in
getting to know God better and in learning how to show love to Him by pleasing service.
This devoted commitment in a follower of Jesus Christ is what we generally call "Christian
spirituality."

Though many Christians often do follow the Lord "afar off," yet every true believer
desires to be closer to God, to walk more worthy of our calling. We are helped along in
our own spiritual journey by the fellowship of believers, as we pray for one another and
encourage one another with supportive prayer and instruction from the Word of God. But at
times we are challenged to new levels of progress through the testimony of trailblazers in
Christian spirituality. We study how they have faced that trinity of spiritual
distraction, "the world, the flesh and the devil." We learn from their wrestlings with
the mystery of God's periodic silence. We note and often try to imitate the various
patterns of meditation, prayer and service through which they found a closer walk with
God. Their lives are spiritually attractive. We want what they had. And we nurture our
understanding of Christian spirituality by assimilating the insights shared from their
experiences.

This fact has prompted the study that is before you. Others have made similar, more
extensive compilations of spiritual biography. One very edifying work, and highly
recommended, was done by the late chancellor of Wheaton College, V. Raymond Edman. His was
a collection of short, spiritual biographies of several who discovered a greater depth to
their Christianity.⁽¹⁾ Edman's purpose was to challenge believers with unanimous
testimonies to a fuller experience of abundant life in Christ. I also hope to challenge
my reader to fuller spiritual experience, but the main purpose behind this book is
somewhat different. In this study I explore the spiritual lives of only three
individuals, but from different cultures. They were chosen for the quality of their
spirituality, as well as for the diversity of their backgrounds. The varying cultural
environments of each, the social contexts within which they grew up, and their different
formational religious experiences have worked together to influence how each has viewed
the priorities of "the devoted Christian life." Observing how these contextual influences
affect their spiritual lives helps us to understand why spirituality is intimately wedded
to real life. We do not see an external array of qualities laminated artificially onto
their personalities. Instead we see an internal relationship with God unavoidably
manifesting diversity because of the earthbound humanness of their lives. Yet at the same
time, we can see in them a common stream of concepts and patterns which help us approach a
more universal description of Christian spirituality.

My ultimate hope is to arouse in you a desire to learn from those who believe
differently. We in the West especially need to acknowledge how much our concepts of the
Christian life are rooted in our own cultural backgrounds, rather than in "pure Gospel
truth." There is a richness in the fruit of the Gospel within other cultures that
compliments rather than conflicts with our own views of spirituality. We need not wait
for heaven to benefit from the gathering of saints from "every nation, tribe, people and
language."⁽²⁾ We inhabit a cosmopolitan world that shrinks more rapidly with each new
advance in global mobility and communication. As far as I know, cultural barriers to
Christian unity can be overcome only through cross-cultural experiences. The same could
be said for the denominational barriers that separate the Church. In a real sense, "the
denomination" is a truly cultural entity, a subculture in itself. If through these
biographical sketches you gain a thirst for that unity for which Christ prayed (John
17:20-23) and become more open to a deeper, cross-cultural understanding of the Body of
Christ, my goal in this study will be achieved.

Richard Lovelace has written: "True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity;
it is simply true humanity released from bondage to sin and renewed by the Holy Spirit."⁽³⁾
This definition may seem too simple, but Lovelace correctly places the emphasis not on the
"mystique" surrounding noted spiritual individuals, but on the reason why they are labeled
"spiritual" at all. The basic foundation for spirituality is the experience common to all
Christians of being renewed by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit. Thus, living a
spiritual life is possible for all whose faith has laid claim to the salvation offered in
Christ Jesus the Savior. But new life must grow. There must be an ongoing recognition of
Christ's lordship, a maturing in love and in our obedience to God. This need is often
what draws us to study the lives of spiritual leaders past and present, to be encouraged
by the testimony of their spiritual journeys. They have had success in "the way to
holiness" or "the way of man's full possession by the Father through Christ in the
Spirit."⁽⁴⁾ They have not been granted an extra portion of God's grace, nor has the Holy
Spirit been given to them in larger measure. What we notice in them as so worthy of
imitation

. . . is that their principal, indeed their sole, aim is to escape from
self-love and to give themselves wholly to Christ, the Son of God. They do
not ask or desire--indeed, they deprecate all such asking or desiring--any
extraordinary powers, any unusual divine instructions, any sight or vision of
Christ. They ask only God's help to identify themselves with Christ in his
love of the Father and of all men. They follow the path that all must follow
if they would see God, but they follow it to the summit of the mountain.⁽⁵⁾

Many names come to mind when we think of those who have influenced our
understanding of Christian spirituality down through history.⁽⁶⁾ Anthony and the desert
fathers laid much of the foundation for that which was to follow in the rest of the Roman
empire. Augustine and Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom, all were bishops of
importance, but they chose the ascetic life as an expression of their spirituality.
Founders of monasteries, such as Martin of Tours, John Cassian, and Benedict of Nursia,
fostered not only missionary expansion into Northern Europe, but also provided
institutionally for the preservation of spiritual life in the midst of an increasingly
political church life. Religious orders committed to spiritual life and work sprang up
rapidly in the Middle Ages under leaders such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi
and Ignatius of Loyola. Priests, monks and nuns, such as Teresa of Avila, John of the
Cross, Richard Rolle, Thomas à Kempis, Julian of Norwich, Fenelon and others, began to
produce devotional literature which has remained popular even today. We could go on and
on citing not only religious clerics but unlearned lay writers such as John Bunyan and
Jeanne Guyon, or noted preachers such as John Wesley and Charles Spurgeon. They walked
closely with God and wrote about it.

Examining these classical writers with the motive of deepening personal
spirituality is a rewarding experience. Also, appreciating today's variety in Christian
worship and lifestyle is difficult without some grasp of how Christian spirituality
developed historically. However, our classical knowledge of spirituality comes from a
Western orientation both in its formation and transmission. This is important to keep in
mind, because in analyzing the spiritual experiences of individuals from diverse cultural
backgrounds we will almost never find a purely non-Western development of Christian
spirituality. Hebrew concepts influenced the thinking in New Testament times. Greek
concepts dominated the development of thinking in the early church. And Western concepts
have helped form Christian theologies in non-Western cultures where Western missions
planted the Gospel. In this respect, the heritage of Western Christianity is all
Christendom's heritage.

Unfortunately, this gives Western Christians a temptation toward cultural pride.
Europe and North America in the last two hundred years have been the sending bases for
world missions. Eugene Nida points out that the Western "missionary's belief in the
superiority of his message has too often influenced him to think the same about his own
culture, and this danger of identifying Western culture with the Christian message has
been all too evident."⁽⁷⁾ Missionary communication can become a propagation not only of the
Gospel but also of Western ideals and values. This is not a true picture of Christ's
intention for the world. Orlando Costas explains the result of this error:

The Jesus proclaimed in far too many situations in the Two Thirds World has
been given faces that are not only removed from the cultural, social, racial,
economic, and political reality of the people, but also of the very witness of
the New Testament Gospels.⁽⁸⁾

Everywhere we go in the Two Thirds World we find distorted reproductions of
Jesus Christ. Whether by imposition or reaction, whether as a result of the
cultural transplantation that accompanied colonialism or the cultural
rebellion that such an oppressive experience provokes, we are hard pressed to
recognize the true face of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New
Testament.⁽⁹⁾

Proper indigenous development in church-planting missions around the world flow
from an awareness of these mistakes. It is to the credit of many modern missiologists that
today's missionary boards are emphasizing a keen cross-cultural awareness as prerequisite
for all debutants. We are hopefully coming to realize that our heritage within
Christianity is certainly not limited to what comes to us from our own cultural sources.
Nor can we capture all that is in Christianity by only observing how it interfaces with
the particular culture to which we belong. As A. J. Appasamy says in his introduction to
the life of Sundar Singh:

As Christianity takes root in different countries with their ancient
philosophic and spiritual cultures, certain elements of its teaching receive
new emphasis. The religion of Jesus Christ is for the whole world. It is so
infinitely rich that different nations with their characteristic gifts
interpret and emphasize this or that aspect of its teaching. . . We feel sure
that the tributes which are laid at the feet of Jesus Christ by different
countries are of great value to the whole Church.⁽¹⁰⁾

The kingdom of God is expanding into all the world, as the Lord intended. Our
vision of the Christian faith should not be dwarfed by the perspective we have from our
cultural backgrounds or even our denominational experiences. What occurs in the life of
the Body of Christ in all countries and in all cultural expressions becomes the treasure
of our corporate Christian experience. Not to esteem these expressions as precious is to
deny the unity of the Body of Christ and to be guilty of a very damaging cultural idolatry.

What is Culture?

Discussing the importance of cross-cultural understanding in the study of
Christian spirituality requires a familiarity with culture itself. What is culture? And
how does our own culture limit our observation of other cultures? We will have tremendous
difficulty grasping the total meaning within this word simply because it includes the
totality of all other meanings in our everyday world. H. Richard Niebuhr says that "in
human existence we do not know a nature apart from culture."⁽¹¹⁾ Within its definition are
the definitions of everything else we perceive in our lives. This makes it a hard concept
to define in a few words, if we are able to define it at all. One anthropologist says,
"Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it
goes the less complete it is."⁽¹²⁾ If this is true for the anthropologist who is working on
analyzing one particular culture, we can be sure that for the purposes of this book, any
definition we could come up with will be only partial and very general.

The difficulty in defining culture is its immensity. It is not easy to envision
conceptually all that "culture" entails and all the intricate complexity of
interrelationships encompassed by it. From "The Willowbank Report" of the Lausanne
Committee for World Evangelization the following definition gives us a taste of this
extensiveness:

Culture is an integrated system of beliefs (about God or reality or ultimate
meaning), of values (about what is true, good, beautiful and normative), of
customs (how to behave, relate to others, talk, pray, dress, work, play,
trade, farm, eat, etc.), and of institutions which express these beliefs,
values and customs (government, law courts, temples or churches, family,
schools, hospitals, factories, shops, unions, clubs, etc.), which binds a
society together and gives it a sense of identity, dignity, security, and
continuity.⁽¹³⁾

Our culture is so much a part of us that we are actually little aware of it. It is so
large that we do not notice it, so starkly apparent that we overlook it. But let someone
from another culture begin to behave in our presence according to a different set of
values, following a strange pattern of foreign manners and customs, and our ears prick up,
our eyes widen. Immediately we are well aware of an inbred allegiance to more familiar
patterns and customs. We acknowledge the existence of our own culture, even if only by
comparison with the "foreign" way of life that the stranger brings into our midst.

Anthropology, especially cultural anthropology, is a relatively new science.
Although much has been written, all the research is not yet in. All the conclusions
about the nature of man's cultural behavior cannot yet be finally drawn. But of primary
significance for our present purposes are three things about culture upon which all
anthropologists are agreed: "it is not innate, but learned; the various facets of culture
are interrelated"; and "it is shared and in effect defines the boundaries of different
groups."⁽¹⁴⁾ Taking some time to think through these characteristics of culture is
foundational for gaining the full benefit of the chapters that follow.

First, culture is not something we are born with. We are born into it. It is not a
private matter but something even bigger than the present society which possesses it. It
is the composite product of several ancestral societies before it. Victor Barnouw
defines culture as "the way of life of a group of people, the configuration of all of the
more or less stereotyped patterns of learned behavior which are handed down from one
generation to the next through the means of language and imitation."⁽¹⁵⁾ The fact that it
is "learned behavior" does not mean that it can be easily unlearned. Nor can anyone
thoroughly "learn" another culture by excursive visits into it. Yet, the strongest
cultures, the ones that survive for generations, are of necessity open to change. In the
scheme of history, those cultures which have not been able to adapt to necessary changes
have either become extinct or have been irreversibly absorbed into other cultures. This
ability to change leaves room for new ideas. The revolutionizing ideas of the Christian
faith need exactly such a capacity for innovation both in individuals and in a society.

Secondly, one aspect of culture touches all other aspects. This is especially
important in considering how a person's culture affects his or her concept of
spirituality. People of various cultural backgrounds who embrace Christ are not only
transformed by the introduction of new ideas into their thinking. They must also adapt
those new ideas into livable patterns. The transforming concepts of Christianity come to
individuals from a foreign cultural source, whether it be the ancient cultures of the Old
and New Testament times or the modern culture of the missionary who first brings the
Gospel to them. But people also bring to Christianity a whole dynamic pattern of thinking
into which Christianity must somehow practically fit. If the Christian faith is to be
real to the individual believer, it will touch and be touched by all the other aspects of
that person's cultural perspective.

And third, culture as a manner of life gives a cohesiveness to a society and
separates it from others. This separation can often be so strong as to disallow one
group's learning from another. Barnouw again says, "Equipped with a collection of
stereotypes with which to face the world, man is apt to lose sight of possible alternative
modes of behavior and understanding."⁽¹⁶⁾ In studying the spiritual concepts of someone
from another culture, we are apt to judge from the viewpoint of our own standards of
spirituality. This is an aspect of culture which can hinder mutual growth in spiritual
understanding. It can block the valuable sharing of edifying experiences, merely because
those experiences are clothed in a dress different than we are accustomed to. In
attempting to investigate Christian spirituality in those from other cultures, we must
simultaneously endeavor to know ourselves better. We are compelled to recognize how our
own culture affects our viewpoints, if we are to open our minds to a cross-cultural
understanding.

Most of us like to think of ourselves as fairly open-minded and unbiased
individuals, but we underestimate the strength of our own culture's influence. In gaining
a cross-cultural understanding, the first item on the agenda must be to acknowledge the
reality of our own cultural formation. By no choice of our own we are born into a
specific social environment. As we grow up, a particular cultural mind-set becomes ours
by constant exposure. How we look at the world, at life in general, even at God, takes on
a characteristic pattern which approaches that of our family, friends, neighbors, and
other peers. Each particular cultural belief fits within a framework that supports or is
supported by other beliefs. We never really decided on accepting or rejecting these
beliefs. They were inherited by more or less coercive social learning mechanisms.
Hopefully, we can learn to appreciate other cultures, but we can never rise "above" our
own culture and have "a truly supra-cultural perspective."⁽¹⁷⁾ Knowing this can help us
understand our own reactions when first meeting a foreign cultural belief in isolation
from its total setting. Eugene Nida points out the usual problem that occurs:

When we are shocked by the behavior of other peoples, it is usually because we
erroneously assume that they have our experience and our background, or should
have if they do not, or should think as we do, regardless of background. It
is not that they lack a background; theirs is simply different from ours.⁽¹⁸⁾

Cross-cultural understanding begins in earnest when we realize that all behaviors or
expressed beliefs of those from another culture have meaning within the framework of their
cultural background. As long as we are ignorant of that background, we will be in the
dark about what that behavior or particular belief means. So, the likelihood of
misinterpretation in communication is extremely high. We must try to learn something
about the basics of the person's culture. That task, depending on how serious we are
about understanding another's culture, may take quite a commitment of time and effort.

Culture and Spirituality

Meditation on the Incarnation of the Son of God helps clarify the reason why
culture has so much to do with spirituality. Jesus made a journey from heaven to earth.
We often ponder the significance of Christ's earthward journey without considering the
environmental context that He left behind. Little is known from Scripture about the
culture of heaven. From our limited, earthly perspective, much is left for speculation as
to the manner of life in heaven, the way things are done there, the customs and
orientation of heavenly activity. All who plan to go there can anticipate an
extraordinary, extraterrestrial, cross-cultural experience. But Jesus came from the
opposite direction. He came from a heavenly cultural environment to dwell on this planet
within the context of a particular human culture. He grew up learning how to speak a
certain dialect, how to eat in a certain manner, how to dress properly for a male in a
particular point of time in Judean history. Most important, He learned to express the
truth of God in a pattern of language that would effectively communicate spiritual reality
to the minds of His audience.

The Incarnation of Christ, then, also had to be an "enculturation." We should not
be surprised that the spread of the Gospel has also been an enculturation in every society
where it has found acceptance. As Michael Reilly says in Spirituality for Mission, when
the Gospel has taken root indigenously, it has been because "the Word of revelation has
been received, understood, and interpreted according to the thought patterns and
institutions of the various cultures to which it was presented,"⁽¹⁹⁾ Reilly goes on to
explain:

The particular style of life and the thought structures of a certain milieu by
necessity affect the way Christian revelation is received, understood, and
lived in that milieu: they cannot but have repercussions upon Christian
thought and theology and the ensuing Christian life style. The Church and
culture are mutually interpenetrating dimensions of God's activity in the
world.⁽²⁰⁾

This observation touches the heart of a cross-cultural understanding of Christian
spirituality. Spirituality "consists in the style of a person's response to the grace of
Christ before the challenge of everyday life in a given historical and cultural
environment."⁽²¹⁾ The spread of Christ's Gospel will stop where it finds no room for
expression in real life. It will not penetrate a culture where the manner of its
expression is so tied to foreign elements that it forces the convert to commit cultural
suicide in order to live "Christianly." An effective transmission of the Gospel of Christ
requires an intelligent cross-cultural restatement and embodiment.

We see how the early church grew very rapidly in the first century. Although the
proclamation of the Christian Gospel began in Judea and had many Jewish elements in its
style of expression, it was its ability to adapt to the surrounding Mediterranean culture
that allowed the message of Jesus to spread so fruitfully in the world at that time.
Orlando Costas explains that the Jewish cultural heritage was the "primary mediator of
early Christian faith."

But when Christians began to spread their message throughout the Roman
empire, they had to borrow new concepts and categories to communicate and
express the meaning of their faith in a religiously pluralistic world.
Hellenistic culture, in all its complexity, rose to the occasion, providing
the new mediational tools for the Christian faith, since it represented the
dominant cultural influence of the Roman world.⁽²²⁾

Religious concepts wedded to one culture must pass through a cultural transformation in
order to be acceptable and understandable within another cultural context. We may try to
discuss the naked truths of Christianity, but they will always come out dressed up in our
own particular cultural clothing. They must. "Just as Christ became flesh and dwelt
among men, so propositional truth must have a cultural incarnation to be meaningful."⁽²³⁾

The truths of the Gospel are changeless, but their transmission is open to as many
creative means of communication as there are cultures and sub-cultures. The model example
of this is Christ's own method of the parable, conveying truth about God and His Kingdom
through domestic stories and colloquial expressions. The Christian message and the life
of faith must both be spoken and lived out in the everyday, real world. Again, Reilly
says,

The Christian life does not exist in the abstract. It is lived in the
interchange which takes place between the basic New Testament vision, the
particular theological insights of an age, the very diverse demands and forces
of particular cultural situations, and the traditions that men inherit.⁽²⁴⁾

We will surely discover some similarities between ideas of Christian spirituality from
various cultural viewpoints. But there is no laboratory distillation process whereby we
can boil down life in Christ to its essence apart from its "flesh and blood" cultural
expression. The result would be an unreal, sterile, unlivable abstraction. There are
certainly elements of culture which ethical Christian living cannot tolerate, but much of
culture is simply functional, not immoral. As Lovelace says, "Once faith is exercised, a
Christian is free to be enculturated, to wear his culture like a comfortable suit of
clothes."⁽²⁵⁾

Kosuke Koyama, a Japanese theologian, has done some extensive thinking about how
Christianity interfaces with culture. He encourages us to engage in what he calls
"Particular Orbit Theology":

The incarnation of the Son of God means that "he eats with them" (Luke
15.2). When we "eat together", do we remain silent? A silent meal is a
terrible experience. The noisier the better! What language do we speak?
Chinese? Malay? Japanese? Yes. We speak our particular language. But how
can we communicate even in a particular language if we are ignorant of the
common "whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just . . ." of
the particular community into which we are born and in which we have been
brought up? Here is an exciting aspect of engaging in theology. I call it
"Particular Orbit Theology" (POT for short). Theological thinking cannot live
outside the particularity of history. . . You are Chinese. You are Indian.
You are Thai. You are a Filipino. You are a Singaporean. Wonderful!
Absolutely splendid! That is your place in POT. You speak the language,
don't you? You understand your people . . . Engage in POT! In fact, there
is no other theology! And when you engage in POT you must not forget one
thing--which belongs to the blood and flesh of the people and came to them
through their own "proud history"--to incorporate into the heart of your
theology "whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just . . ." of
your community. If you fail in this, your theology will "ghettoize" you, and
you will become a theological "Frankenstein" walking without your own
"nose, ears, and eyes"!⁽²⁶⁾

In presenting Christ cross-culturally, Koyama asks these rhetorical questions:

Is it possible to have an unseasoned and raw Christ? Isn't it true that
the incarnation of the Son of God means his "in-culture-ation"? Wasn't he a
Palestinian Jew? Doesn't this mean that imagining an unseasoned and raw
Christ is as absurd and impossible as a de-Hebraized Yahweh? Does this then
mean that one must not simply reject the "pepper and salt" of any culture,
but attempt to see what kind of pepper and salt is seasoning Christ, and try
to present a well-seasoned Christ in co-operation with the local pepper and
salt?⁽²⁷⁾

There is an incredibly superb example of this incarnation of the Gospel into a
culture entirely by means of the culture's own modes of thought. In his book called
Bruchko, Bruce Olson tells the story of how he went to dwell among the Motilones, a tribe
of fierce South American Indians. Even other neighboring tribes of savage Indians
cringingly feared the murderous ways of the Motilones. Through a series of miracles,
Bruce was able to live with them and learn about their culture. It was five years before
he tried to communicate the Gospel to them in a way they could understand it. He not only
had to win their confidence and learn their language well. He also had to discover the
way they saw the world and how they reasoned about life. At a strategic point in his life
with them he was able to share the meaning of the Gospel through the channel of their own
folklore, using metaphors from their own ideas about the universe and life.

What did the Gospel end up sounding like in Motilone? Well, Jesus was the Son of
the Great God whose trail the Motilones had left long ago when they had become greedy and
were deceived by a false prophet into looking for a better place in the jungle. Like the
man who became an ant in a certain Motilone legend, Jesus became a Motilone and walked on
their paths for a time. The Motilones killed and buried Jesus, but the Great God brought
Jesus' voice back into Him and He returned to God. The blood of Jesus can now cover the
ears of all who will tie their hammock strings into Him, so that they will no longer be
deceived. And when Jesus' voice comes into a Motilone's mouth, not even the evil spirits
can ever steal it away. All of this news has come from the leaves of God's banana stalk,
the Bible.

How was all of this shared to the tribe? The first Motilone convert sang it for
fourteen hours as he swung to and fro from a hammock twenty feet off the ground with his
chief who sat next to him repeating him line for line. Bruce Olson describes his own
feelings of distaste at hearing this echoing song and tells how God spoke to his own heart
on the subject of His sovereign use of culture:

Inside me . . . a spiritual battle was raging. I found myself hating the
song. It seemed so heathen. The music, chanted in a strange minor key,
sounded like witch music. It seemed to degrade the Gospel. Yet when I looked
at the people around me, and up at the chief swinging in his hammock, I could
see that they were listening as though their lives depended on it. Bobby was
giving them spiritual truth through the song.
Still I wanted to do it my way . . . until I heard Bobby sing about Jesus
giving him a new language.
"Can't you see the reality that he is giving to them?" God seemed to ask
me.
"But Lord," I replied, "why am I so repulsed by it?"
Then I saw that it
was because I was sinful. I could love the Motilone way of life, but when it
came to spiritual matters I thought I had the only way. But my way wasn't
necessarily God's way. God was saying, "I too love the Motilone way of life.
I made it. And I'm going to tell them about my Son in my way."⁽²⁸⁾

Many of us can identify readily with Bruce Olson, and we need not relocate to a
Columbian jungle to face our feelings. Even within the denominational melting-pot of the
United States we can be "repulsed" by the strange manner in which other Christians pray
and worship in comparison to our own group's style. We can sit in a church service and
feel very uncomfortable about what's going on around us. Depending on how open or closed
our attitude is toward the experience, we can walk away from that service either with new
spiritual insights or with religiously indignant "hard feelings."

There is a unity in the Body of Christ for which Jesus prayed, but it has been
little realized by the majority of the Church down through its history. The true impact
of the words, "I pray . . . that all of them may be one, Father, . . . so that the world
may believe that you have sent me,"⁽²⁹⁾ is often a life-changing revelation. Some believers
may neglect the practical implications of Christ's prayer by some very non-earthly
interpretations, such as supposing this unity to signify that future heavenly experience
of all departed saints. But Jesus' words are unavoidably clear: "May they be brought to
complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them as you have
loved me."⁽³⁰⁾ The world must somehow witness this unity and, by seeing it, will know that
Jesus was sent by God the Father.

But this unity is one of spiritual brotherhood in Christ and not uniformity. The
Church in Africa and the Church in North America are one Church, but in the context of
those two geographical locations, the Church will wear different ecclesiastical clothing
and even emphasize diverse concerns in their doctrinal focus. The Holy Spirit who resides
in the Church as it lives in different cultural locations is one Spirit. Part of His work
is to creatively adapt spiritual truth to meet specific human needs in each environment.
The Incarnation of Christ exhibits a pattern of divine wisdom in God's way of
communicating truth to humanity. The truth does not change, but God allows it to have
changes of wardrobe according to the cultural needs of the "flesh and blood" creatures
bearing His image on this globe. Paul expresses this concept in his ability to live
culturally different in different situations. He says, "I have become all things to all
men so that by all possible means I might save some."⁽³¹⁾ The truth of his message did not
change, but because the intent of the message was to win all people, no matter what their
cultural background, Paul felt the liberty to adapt his message to his audience, whether
he addressed the Greek or the Jewish mind.⁽³²⁾

During the missionary era of the 1800's the West went to the world. Now, at the end
of the 1900's, the world has come to the West. Amid the world's harsh political
situations of the past few decades a new member of Western society has emerged: the
foreign refugee. In recent years the term "boat people" has become commonplace, and they
arrive not only from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, but from closer neighbors, Haiti and
Cuba. Once Westerners would have had to make an exotic journey to visit Afghans,
Iranians, and East Africans. Now they are renting houses in our neighborhoods. We are
eating at their restaurants. They are serving us as salespeople. And immigration to the
West has become a more accessible option for skilled or well-educated foreigners, or for
those who have family already established in Western countries. Africa and India have
landed, Central and South America are moving North, and the Pacific isles have anchored on
the mainland. The influx of the world to the United States is especially remarkable.
Thousands of Chinese students are enrolled in our universities. Europeans are here in the
mechanic shops to repair our foreign-made cars. Tagalog is the most common language next
to English among nurses in most of our hospitals. Avoiding cross-cultural experiences is
an impossibility, since they occur now almost on a daily basis.

For the spiritually growing Christian, however, there two other experiences that
cannot be avoided. First, learning to share the Gospel cross-culturally is now no longer
solely the obligation of the trained foreign missionary. Since representatives of the
world's cultures are rapidly becoming our next-door neighbors, the task of sharing the
Gospel today will take not only solid biblical and theological understanding, but a
certain level of skill in cross-cultural communication. And second, an ongoing tutelage
under the Holy Spirit implies a diligent effort to investigate the wisdom of His
revelation of Jesus within the context of other cultures. From the times of the early
church until now, one believer's growth in Christ has enriched the spiritual life of other
believers. This pattern of mutual edification among believers is one of the beauties of
the Church, the Body of Christ. We of the 20th century must reckon with the Christian
life in a kaleidoscopic panorama of cultural expressions. Before us today is an
unparalleled opportunity for learning from the dealings of God in the lives of brothers
and sisters in Christ from foreign lands.

In the following biographical studies you will meet three lives from different
cultural backgrounds. They were selected not because their ideas on Christian
spirituality are strange or exotic, but because their spiritual experiences in Christ are
deep. The varied emphases that all of them make as to the priorities of Christian
devotion have not escaped the influence of their own peculiar cultural contexts. But
neither can I boast of total objectivity in my presentation of their lives. Nor can any
reader claim a pure impartiality in encountering them. We, too, bring with us to this
study our own peculiar frames of reference, forged in our own particular contexts. There
will be a strong temptation to digress in our thinking from biographical observation to a
posture of critical analysis. Encountering certain theological themes will provoke
questions for debate. Though it is impossible, and even undesirable, to set aside our own
viewpoints as we meet these men, our purpose is not to determine in what areas they are
theologically right or wrong. Our investigation anticipates a divergence of ideas about
Christianity and spirituality stemming from the diversity of cultural contexts behind each
person studied. I am encouraging you, as I myself have tried to do, to set aside for
awhile my preconceived conclusions about Christian spirituality and become open to learn
something new. In examining the directions these men have taken on the spiritual path, we
may come to understand more about why we ourselves believe and behave the way we do. By
this small sampling, we will hopefully grow in our appreciation of the magnificent breadth
of the Christian faith's interface with the earth's diverse population.

All three biographical sketches come from the twentieth century, an age when the
availability of printed information has increased the global exchanging of ideas. We will
be investigating the life and thoughts of a Brazilian bishop, an Indian holy man, and a
Chinese Bible teacher. Unfortunately, a limiting factor in the variety of my selection
was that their works are readily available in English. Economic and commercial factors do
play a role in what is published and available for study. But as awareness of the need
for cross-cultural understanding is generally increasing today, we can hopefully expect a
broader interest in cross-cultural Christian studies. My intention in this short book is
not to make any final statements, but to turn the light on a field of exploration needing
much more light than I can offer at present. These chapters, then, are only a beginning,
an introduction to what may follow in the study of cross-cultural Christian spirituality.
The considerations shared here, using these three Christian lives as examples, will
hopefully lay a foundation for further thinking. As accessibility to publication and
translation increases, we soon may be able to explore examples of spirituality in
Christian lives from Uganda, Iceland, Haiti, New Guinea, Egypt, or the land of the North
American Eskimo. And if they do not migrate to our door, or write books that we can read,
perhaps we will have opportunities to go to visit them at home where their Christian
spirituality is in cultivation.

top of page -- next chapter
__________________

NOTES

1. Raymond Edman, They Found the Secret (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1960).
2. Rev. 7:9 NIV (New International Version).
3. Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 1979), 19.
4. Thomas M. Gannon & George W. Traub, The Desert and the City (Toronto:
Macmillan, 1969), 9.
5. M. D. Knowles, The Nature of Mysticism (New York: Hawthorn Books,
1966), 45-46.
6. For an excellent, short introduction to classical Christian spirituality
covering briefly the main figures in Church history, see Urban T. Holmes, A History
of Christian Spirituality: An Analytical Introduction (New York: Seabury, 1981). For
a voluminous study from a Roman Catholic viewpoint, see Louis Bouyer, History of
Christian Spirituality (London: Burns & Oates, 1963-69).
7. Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures (New York: Harper, 1954), 68.
8. Orlando E. Costas, "Proclaiming Christ in the Two Thirds World," in Sharing
Jesus in the Two Thirds World, ed. Vinay Samuel & Chris Sugden (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1984), 5.
9. Ibid., 6.
10. A. J. Appasamy, Sundar Singh: A Biography (Madras: Christian Literature
Society, 1970), 13.
11. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1951), 36.
12. Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), 29.
13. The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, "The Willowbank Report,"
in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, ed. Ralph D. Winter & Steven C.
Hawthorne (Pasadena: Wm. Carey Library, 1981), 509.
14. E.T. Hall, Beyond Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 1977), 16.
15. Victor Barnouw, Culture and Personality (Homewood, Ill.: The
Dorsey Press, 1963, 5.
16. Barnouw, 6.
17. Lloyd E. Kwast, "Understanding Culture," in Perspectives, 361.
18. Nida, 14.
19. Michael Collins Reilly, Spirituality for Mission (Maryknoll:
Orbis, 1978), 36.
20. Ibid., 41.
21. Gannon & Traub, 10.
22. Orlando E. Costas, "A Radical Evangelical Contribution from Latin America,"
in Christ's Lordship and Religious Pluralism, ed. Gerald H. Anderson & Thomas F. Stransky
(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981), 150.
23. David J. Hesselgrave, "Christ and Culture" in Perspectives, 366.
24. Reilly, 44.
25. Lovelace, 198-199.
26. Kosuke Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1974), 45.
27. Ibid., 87-88.
28. Bruce E. Olson, Bruchko (Carol Stream, Ill.: Creation House,
1978), 152-153.
29. John 17:20-21 NIV.
30. Ibid., v.23.
31. l Cor. 9:22 NIV.
32. See Acts 13:16-41; 17:22-31, where, in his sermon in the Jewish synagogue
of Pisidian Antioch Paul makes many references to the Hebrew Scriptures, whereas in
Athens he quotes nothing from the Old Testament but uses quotations from pagan poets
to make his points.