“GOD’S KEYS IN MAN’S CULTURES”

The Santal story rocked the foundations of accepted missions methodology in churches across Europe. In 1867, missionary Lars Skresfrud was baptizing Santal Christians every day, and thousands more were begging for the Gospel! How could these people, who had been steeped in spiritism for centuries, so readily understand and accept the Gospel?

As Skresfrud began learning the Santal language and culture, he heard mention of a Deity they called Thakur Jiu, a Name meaning “the Genuine God.” Curious, Skresfrud inquired of a Santal prophet Who Thakur Jiu was. The missionary was astonished when he learned the story behind the Name. According to the legend, the Santal’s forefathers had known and worshiped Thakur Jiu, but they had abandoned Him to worship “the spirits of the great mountains.” Therefore, Thakur Jiu abandoned them to serve the gods they had chosen.

That legend, passed down from generation to generation, kept hope alive in the hearts of the people that someday Thakur Jiu would reveal Himself to them again. Therefore, when Skresfrud preached of the One True God of the Old Testament, he was not introducing a new, foreign religion. Rather, he was fulfilling a centuries-old legend that God had placed in the Santal culture.

The legend of Thakur Jiu is what is called a redemptive analogy. George Anderson defines a redemptive analogy as: “[An] aspect or area existing in every culture studied so far, which foreshadows redemption … a vehicle of communication built into that society to make the relevance of the Gospel clear to that particular people.” God has placed in every culture around the world keys that will unlock doors of understanding. It is our responsibility to contextualize the Gospel to fit with these keys. If Christians understood the extent of God’s workings in the cultures of men, and the effects of contextualizing the Gospel, they would be motivated to move beyond their comfort zone and reach the world.

Contextualization refers to the process of effectively relating the Gospel to people of another culture by placing the Gospel in context with their culture. To do so, the missionary must learn the language and culture of the people he intends to reach. He must be aware that such keys exist, and he must be open to use what God has prepared for him.

Sometimes these redemptive analogies appear as legends passed down from generation to generation. Such was the case for the Gedeo of Ethiopia. The Gedeo worshiped in fear a deity they called Sheit’an, but they also believed in a benevolent but distant God they called Magano. They explained, “We sacrifice to Sheit’an, not because we love him, but because we do not enjoy close enough ties with Magano to be done with Sheit’an!”

In 1940, a man named Warrasa grew weary of living in bondage and besought Magano to show Himself to the Gedeo people. That day, Warrasa saw a vision of two white men building houses with shiny roofs under a sycamore tree near Warrasa’s home. The vision also showed Warrasa identifying himself with these strangers. Warrasa and other Gedeo seers began prophesying that soon Magano would send messengers to teach them how to worship Him.

Eight years later, Albert Brant and Glen Cain arrived in Dilla, Warrasa’s hometown, seeking to establish a mission station there. They wanted to build their homes in a shady place, and they found the perfect location under a nearby sycamore tree. As the missionaries preached the Gospel, thousands of Gedeo believed. After all, this was not a new, foreign religion. This was the satisfaction of a centuries-old legend and the fulfillment of a specific vision. In just forty years, there were over four thousand believers in two hundred churches across Gedeo territory.

The Karen of Burma were another people who had a God-given legend. For centuries, they worshiped demons. They lived in complete darkness, except for one ray of hope kept alive by a handful of prophets. That hope was that someday they would be freed from their bondage to the demons and would be able to worship Y’wa, the One True God.

The Karen believed that their ancestor was a brother to the Europeans’ ancestor, and that both had been given a copy of Y’wa’s Book. The Karen brother lost his Book, but the European brother kept his. The legend continued that someday a “white foreigner” would come from the West on “white wings [sails],” and he would restore Y’wa’s Book to the Karen.

George and Sarah Boardman labored for several years in Rangoon, Burma, without seeing many converts. They had a houseboy named Ko-Thah-Byu, who happened to be a Karen. Ko-Thay-Byu got saved, and then he realized that Boardman was the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy! The two went to a nearby Karen village in Tavoy, and hundreds of tribesmen flocked to meet the “white foreigner” and hear his message.

Boardman and Ko-Thah-Byu spent hours reading and preaching the Book, for the Karen had hungered after it for centuries. From that one village, the message spread faster than the preachers could travel. They often arrived at villages where a group of Karen had already believed and was ready for someone to come baptize them! By 1858, tens of thousands of Karen had been saved, hundreds of churches had been formed, and Karen missionaries were being sent out to other tribes of Burma. The legend of Y’wa’s Book was the key God placed in the Karen culture.

In other cases, God places within a culture a custom that pictures salvation. For the Sawi people of Irian Jaya, this custom was that of the tarop tim. Don Richardson took his wife and baby to the Sawi village of Haenam in July 1962. After spending weeks in language study, Richardson began teaching the Sawi men about God: Who He is, what He can do, and His purpose for creating mankind. While Richardson explained Christ’s ministry, the Sawi seemed uninterested, until he told of Judas’ betrayal. Then, they whistled, chuckled, and tapped their chests in awe and admiration as they heard how a close companion of Jesus had betrayed Him.

In Sawi culture, betrayal and treachery were idealized as great virtues. The ultimate betrayal they called tuwi asonai man, which means “to fatten up with friendship for an unexpected slaughter.” The Sawi idolized Judas for pulling off the ultimate tuwi asonai man. They saw Jesus as simply “the object of Judas’ treachery.” How could these cannibals ever understand salvation?

During the time period when Richardson was teaching, the villages of Haenam and Kamur had been at war. However, they decided to make peace after Richardson announced his intentions of moving upriver. The morning the villages were to “sprinkle cool water [make peace],” they met together, with much emotion, music, and drama. A father from each village brought his infant son to the center of the activity.

As Don Richardson watched in amazement, each baby was given his father’s name, and the fathers exchanged their sons. Each man then took his newly adopted son back to his own village, crying out, “Those who accept this child as a basis for peace, come and lay hands on him!” Each villager filed by, and by placing their hands on the adopted baby, promised to keep peace with the enemy village as long as the peace child lived.

Don Richardson had just witnessed a ritual as ancient as the Sawi themselves: the making of peace through a tarop tim, a “peace child.” The belief was this: “If a man would actually give his own son to his enemies, that man could be trusted!” This was the key Richardson had been searching for!

Richardson preached that Christ was the Peace Child God gave to us when we were at war with Him. Also, since the peace only lasted as long as the peace child was alive, the villages would eventually be freed from their treaty and begin fighting again. The Sawi began to understand that the best they could offer was not good enough to make peace forever.

The peace child was the key that was needed to open the door of understanding for the Sawi. As the Gospel spread, hundreds of tribesmen were saved, laid aside pagan practices, and made peace with warring villages. God’s Peace Child reconciled the Sawi to Himself.

To see another example, consider the Asmat people. These were cannibalistic headhunters, living deep in the swamps of southern New Guinea. One would think that such “backwards heathen” would need years of teaching before they could understand a spiritual concept such as the second birth. Would they? Perhaps they would not.

The Asmat, like the Sawi, had a strange custom of making peace. The two warring villages would meet together, and men from both villages would stretch out side by side, face down on the ground. Each wife would stand over her husband, placing one foot under his chest and another under his hip, making a long tunnel between the legs of the women and over the backs of the men. Then, children from both villages would crawl through this tunnel.

As each child came out of the tunnel, he was picked up, bathed, cuddled, and rocked like a baby. Here was the key: to the Asmat, that tunnel pictured a birth canal. Children who crawled through were “reborn” into the enemy village, thus making them part of a new family, reconciling the two warring factions.

An Asmat headhunter could understand better than the sophisticated Jewish teacher Nicodemus that peace and reconciliation only come through a second birth! A missionary could approach the Asmat with the mindset that he was the intelligent American coming to instruct the ignorant savage, and he would totally miss this key. Or, a missionary could be open minded, looking for ways to contextualize the Gospel, and he would see and use the redemptive analogy God prepared for him.

How important is it for a missionary to find and use these keys? What difference does it make if the Gospel is not contextualized? For the Indians on the Mavaca River in Venezuela, the difference was eternity in Hell. For missionary Stanley Dale, the difference may have been a premature death.

The Indians of the Mavaca River in Venezuela had lived in darkness for so many years; surely they would be happy to turn to freedom in Christ! However, when the missionaries came, they ignored many aspects of Indian culture. The square church building may have looked nice on a prayer letter, but the people who were supposed to fill it knew that round was the only proper shape for a building. A square building was weird and unacceptable.

The few natives who did receive Christ were soon rejected by their families, not because of Christ, but because of the white man’s strange customs. Every national Christian learned how to sing Western hymns and wear Western clothes. To become a Christian meant to adopt a new culture. That is not what our Savior had in mind when He commanded us to preach to every creature!

Thousands of miles from Venezuela, on the opposite side of the world, missionary Stanley Dale began his ministry in 1961. God had given Dale a heart for the Yali people of Irian Jaya. Sadly, after seven short years, Dale and a fellow missionary were killed by hostile natives.

Dale’s methods of evangelism were quite confrontational and often culturally unacceptable to the Yali. God did use him to prepare a way for later missionaries, and he did see some souls saved during his ministry. However, the greatest harvest among the Yali came after the discovery of the osuwa key.

The Yali belief system involved osuwas, places to which warriors could run in battle. The osuwa was a place of refuge. Any man inside was safe from attack. What a difference it made for the Yali to see Christ as their ultimate Osuwa, where they could find refuge for their eternal souls! If Stanley Dale had found and used the osuwa key, would his life have been taken, or would his killers have been saved before 1968? Only God knows.

God has gone to great lengths to see that every people group has a key that will unlock their door of understanding. Considering the work He has done in preparing people to be saved, what is the responsibility of Christians to those people and to the Lord? First and foremost, all Christians must be obedient to His command to go. Oswald J. Smith expressed the idea that some Christians are willing to go and ready to stay, but we ought to be ready to go and willing to stay.

Once a missionary actually reaches the field, he must work hard to learn the culture along with the language of the people he wants to reach. To be able to contextualize the Gospel, he must be able to think outside his own culture. The missionary must understand not only what the people do, but also why they do it. He cannot find the key in their culture unless he knows their culture.

The evangelism of the world is not an impossible task. God has prepared the way, and it is the responsibility of those who know Him to make Him known. Smith stated: “Christ alone can save the world, but Christ cannot save the world alone.”

“I have seen the vision and for self I cannot live.
Life is less than worthless unless my all I give!”