Well, it’s the beginning of the ninth month since we started out on our little journey in the pursuit of the concept of “goodness”. Somewhere along the line the journey morphed into a rather formalized investigation of the basic elements of our everyday Christian beliefs.
I was requested, or rather challenged, by friends and family, to see if we could tone down a lot of the praxis, lore, and customary jargon used by our inherited religious cultures, and make an effort to simply turn our basic beliefs into the vernacular. I had been reminded of C.S. Lewis’s admonition, “if you cannot turn your faith into the vernacular, either you do not understand it or you do not believe it.” I decided to accept the challenge and to share the results with my favorite readers – you.
Now, in my eighties, I have come to realize that one of the most unique and wonderful gifts ever given to me by a loving God, was the gift of being able to travel to most of the far corners of his created earth. For over thirty-five years, I have been able to visit and interact with literally millions of God’s beloved children in over 150 countries of this world. My trips and encounters were not on commercial ocean cruises or 5-Star Safaris. Sometimes, I lived in the villages – slept, if necessary, in the huts and tents. Sometimes, I was invited to palaces and was privileged to stay in the homes of presidents and kings. I had meetings in places ranging from the House of Lords in London to the main government offices in Beijing and Moscow, Johannesburg, and Jerusalem. I also spent a vast amount of time in the pathetic and abysmal medical institutions across the world, trying to help them become better off by equipping them and training the local doctors and nurses, so that the local people and their loved ones could experience better health and a longer life.
In all of those ventures, I tried to be a curious and astute observer. I carefully recorded most every venue and meeting in my over 6,000 pages of journals. I also tried to be diligent in recording cultural, economic and religious observations from the different tribes, communities and civilizations.
Over the years, I was extremely intrigued with the observations about the way the God of the universe deals with the millions of his children in far-away villages, obscure governments, and primitive countries. I was also intrigued with the history of the civilizations that for centuries have resisted and scorned the efforts of a loving God who has patiently tried to show them the advantages of righteousness and goodness.
I remember well the trip I took to Bombay (Mumbai), India in 2004. From Bombay, I flew on to the city of Kolhapur, and then we traveled by auto to the city of Miraj, where I had been requested by the Medical Benevolence Foundation in Houston, Texas to assess the Wanless Hospital. When we finished our investigations, our interviews, and our photo documentation at the Wanless Hospital, Dr. Bidari and I got into another auto and on Monday, June 20th we traveled to the Lafayette Hospital in Nipani, India.
All along the roadway there were groups of people walking and clanging cymbals and playing sitars and carrying orange banners of silk. They were dignified people -- most of them were dressed in white. I inquired as to who they were. Dr. Bidari explained to me that they were pilgrims who admitted they were sinners and were making treks to the temples to pay physical and financial sacrifices to have their sins cleansed away.
They would take three or four weeks out of their lives and travel about 15 to 20 miles a day across the country, sleeping out in the fields or in some sympathizer’s farmyard until they reached their destination. They would punish themselves along the way to enhance their likelihood of being cleansed from their sins once they attended the temple. Some were walking on the sharp stones and carrying their shoes. Some would fast their food.
One man impressed me especially. He would stand -- then fall the length of his body. The length of his body would determine where he would stand up next to proceed with his next fall. He would cover about a five- or six-foot distance with each fall and that was the way he would travel, five or six feet at a flop. I studied the folks as best I could as we would approach and pass the groups. They were mostly middle-aged men and women. The men always led the group of a dozen to 30 in count. The women walked lock-step at the rear. I could see that it was a very solemn occasion for each. The sincerity and determination etched in their faces convinced me of their seriousness.
Dr. Bidari told me that the system was quite a temporary thing in that as soon as they completed the ritual, they would head right back into whatever indulgence it was from which they were trying to be cleansed. So, the next year they would have to take off another three to six weeks from their regular duties and proceed on another walkathon for cleansing.
In my travels, when I would encounter such episodes, I would try to record them and then use the hundreds of hours sitting strapped in an airplane seat, traveling to the next destination, to process what I had seen and heard and try to make sense of all of it. When it came to the religious episodes, I marveled at the fact that even in the darkest and most remote areas of the world, the people, somehow, have a sense of right and wrong and realize when it is that they have done wrong and know when they are sinners and that they need to do something about it. That’s amazing!
For evangelical Christians and strong denominations to have been in India for as long as they had been, we sure hadn’t gotten the simple message of Christ’s plan of simple salvation, sacrifice, and forgiveness across to the hurting population of India. Less than 5% of all the population of India claimed to be Christian.
Perhaps, that is why at this stage of my life, I am trying to see if I can cut through all the “groupism” and theological confusion in the market place of goodness, and come up with an intelligible, lucid, and uncomplicated presentation of “simple salvation” in the vernacular of today.
At this point in the journey, I felt that it would be a good thing to stop and take a deep breath -- and then get on with the enchanting challenge. There’s more work to do.
Next Week: The Born-Again Life