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6. Witnessing in dialogue

What does all this mean to the contemporary Christian witness to people of other faiths? Do we have a witness to offer? Is it legitimate to share the gospel? How do we go about it?

 

Let me begin with an incident that illustrates some of the issues.

 

For some years, I was the minister of the Methodist Church in Jaffna, a town in the northern part of Sri Lanka. My home was near the municipal open-air theatre, intended for cultural events in the community. The theatre, however, was often rented by new church groups to organize evangelistic "crusades" - an insensitive and unimaginative way of describing Christian wit­ness, common unfortunately even today. I had only to stand outside my gates to listen to the animated open-air preaching through loudspeakers, often by foreign visitors, ably interpreted into the local language.

 

In one such "crusades" the organizers decided to "mobilize" the local pastors and congregations. Next morning I had four visitors calling on me at home, inviting me and the congregation I served to become "part of the crusade".

 

I decided not to hide my displeasure at the way Hinduism was portrayed and attacked at the previous night's preaching, obvi­ously based on an inadequate and very superficial grasp of its teachings.

 

Jaffna is a predominantly Hindu town. The relationships between Christians and Hindus had been carefully built and nurtured over decades. The Hindus respect the right of Chris­tians to bear witness to their beliefs. But Christian witness should build community and not disrupt it. We should respect the fact that Hinduism is a vital and living religion and that we have much to learn from it. Our witness has to be an encounter of commitments in which we share our faith with them. I spoke along these lines.

 

The visitors were surprised and looked at me with some suspicion. "Are we not under the command to preach the gospel and to make disciples of all nations?" asked one of them, reminding me of the great missionary commission in Matthew 28:18. "Jesus also commissioned his disciples to be his wit­nesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth," said the foreign preacher in the team. To anyone from the USA, Jaffna would certainly look like the ends of the earth.

 

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The local pastor reminded me of St Paul's words: "Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel."

 

It was a reasonably friendly conversation on how to bear witness to Hindu neighbors, but I remained unconvinced to the end about joining the "crusade". After a prayer, which reminded us of the "urgency to preach the gospel to perishing genera­tions", the team left my home.

 

This was a painful experience. For I deeply believed in witnessing, and yet had to turn down an invitation to participate in witnessing. I have returned to this incident many times when reflecting on Christian witness.

 

One of my difficulties had to do with making the famous passage in Matthew 28 as the basic rationale for witnessing. Biblical scholars have problems with this passage, for the Trinitarian formula would suggest that the particular formulation comes from the early church, and not from Jesus himself. For even in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples baptized the believers in the name of Jesus and not in the name of the Trinity. That came later.

 

My difficulty, however, did not arise from problems concern­ing the authenticity of the passage. I had a far more fundamental problem. Do Christians bear witness to Jesus Christ because they are under a command or a commission to do so? Do Christians go about converting and baptizing others because Christ has asked them to do so? This was the problem I had with the group that met in my home.

 

We meet this argument all the time. Every time one speaks about dialogue with people of other faiths someone would invariably bring up the question of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. "But are we not under an obligation to bear witness? Jesus has commissioned us to make disciples of nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", they would say.

 

Much of the crisis in Christian witness has to do with the fact that it is done for the wrong reasons. Is it not true that many Christians are more convinced about their own responsibility to be witnesses than about the need of others to hear the gospel? Is it not a fact that a number of "crusades" are arranged out of a sense of duty and not because we care. It is not because the organizers know and love the people whom they address, and

 

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want to share their lives with them, but because they wish to fulfill the mandate to preach the gospel and make disciples.

 

How can we allow Christian witness to arise out of self-interest and a sense of obligation or self-fulfillment? A rereading of the scriptures, especially of the account of the ministry of Jesus, shows that the biblical understanding of witness is quite different. It has to do with incarnation, with self-giving, with setting up the signs of the kingdom, with accepting those who are not accept­able to others, of sharing our lives.

 

There are of course other models, as in the specific situation in the Acts, where the disciples bear witness to the resurrection to a community that had lived through, or at least heard of, the crucifixion of Jesus.

 

The rationale people give for witnessing is often revealing. Gandhi, for example, took the Sermon on the Mount as one of the bases for his mission among the people, and he subjected himself to the discipline involved in the teaching to which he bore witness.

 

One problem in making the Great Commission the basis of Christian mission is that all kinds of people without either the right or the spiritual candor to give witness set themselves up as persons who have been commanded to give witness. Here witness becomes counter-witness.

 

Another difficulty has to do with "making disciples" which is often equated with conversion in the sense of moving from one religious community to another.

 

The Bible, by and large, talks about believers, not about con­verts. In Jesus' own ministry, people did not have to move from one community to another, but from a self-centered life to a God-centered life. Repentance had to do with a radical renewal of rela­tionship with God and one's neighbors. Jesus preached that God's kingly rule has come into our lives and challenged people to order their lives according to its values. He showed no anxiety to convert people from Judaism and to set up a rival community.

 

It is of course true that a number of persons took up disciple-ship, called themselves by his name, and after the resurrection the church became a historical reality. But can we say that the gospel message or the fact that believers became an identifiable community provides a biblical basis to speak of others as "unreached millions"? "Unreached by whom?" asks Stanley

 

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Samartha in one of his essays; the fact that the preacher has not reached a place or spoken to a people does not mean that God has not reached them. On what basis can we speak of the people of other faiths as "those who have not come to the light"?

 

Of course, one is aware that these attitudes are not characteris­tic of all persons who are engaged in evangelism, or in all efforts to preach the gospel to large numbers of persons. This is by no means an argument against Christian witness. Such witness is wholly legitimate; it arises out of a profound spiritual­ity that fills our life as we encounter Christ. That cries out to be shared, but it can only be shared in humility.

 

All that we seek to show is that there is also a strong biblical basis for a new context for Christian witness, namely, the context of dialogue. It is rooted in the Bible insofar as it is expressed in the life and ministry of Jesus himself.

 

Not that dialogue is a new tool for mission or that one engages in dialogue in order to manipulate others. It simply means that witness can and does happen in dialogue. The WCC's Guidelines on Dialogue puts it this way:

 

...we do not see dialogue and giving of witness as standing in any contradiction to each other. Indeed, as Christians enter dialogue with their commitment to Jesus Christ, time and again the relation­ship of dialogue gives opportunity for authentic witness. Thus... we feel able with integrity to commend the way of dialogue as one in which Jesus Christ can be confessed in the world today; at the same time we feel able with integrity to assure our partners in dialogue that we come not as manipulators but as genuine fellow-pilgrims, to speak with them of what we believe God to have done in Jesus Christ who has gone before us, but whom we seek to meet anew in dialogue.1

 

What then is the spirit in which we can bear Christian witness which is biblical and at the same time authentic?

 

Some time ago, my colleague in the WCC who publishes the Monthly Letter on Evangelism asked me to write a letter to a Christian in Sri Lanka who wishes to be a witness to the Hindus. I wrote the following letter. It is an attempt to articulate how Christian witness can still be offered in our time, but in an attitude and spirit that respect our neighbor as a child of God.

 

1 1979, p. 11

 

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"Dear Ranjith,

 

"You have asked me to give you some advice on bearing witness to Christ among your Hindu neighbors. The Hindus believe that anyone who has an experience of spiritual truth has the right to share it with others. They, therefore, do not object to authentic witness. It is important that this trust and openness to witness should not be used for manipulation of one religion by another, but for a genuine sharing of religious experience and truth as we have come to perceive it. It is in this spirit that I put down some of my own thoughts on this matter.

 

"I am pleased to know that your interest in witness arises from deep convictions about Christ which have actually fashioned your own life. Why do I make a special point of this? There are some Christians who would argue that evangelism is based on the 'command' to preach the gospel. They would say that the validity of the gospel message is not dependent on the preacher and that the message has its own effectiveness.

 

"This is not the place to argue the theological validity or otherwise of such a position. But I know that the Hindus will not separate the preacher from the message, the evangelist from the gospel, the truth from its manifestation. This arises from a long-established Indian tradition that only a person who has had a spiritual experience can have authority to impart it to others. 'Can anyone recommend to others what has not been profoundly true to oneself?' they would ask. 'And, how can we believe what is said, unless we see its effects on the one who says it?'

 

"That is why doctrinal claims about Christ, or belief state­ments on what God has done in Christ, leave the Hindus unimpressed, even though they have a great respect for Christ as a spiritual leader. Anyone who wishes to witness to Hindus should not ignore the long-established Indian tradition that the person and the message he or she gives cannot be separated. This is a simple but profound rule of the thumb used in India - if it is a good message, it must be both heard and seen!

 

"I know that many Christians have problems with this attitude. They would want to separate the message from the messenger and want to preserve the integrity of the message itself. But this is not a 'selective treatment' that the Hindus give to the Christian preachers. In their own history they have always applied this principle to distinguish truth from error. This is how

 

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Hinduism functions as a living religion without a centralized authority to lay down the essentials and the limits of what they should believe. Instead of reacting too quickly to this attitude, you should ponder very deeply about it, relating it to our own Christian history. Perhaps we must also meditate on Christ's invitation to the disciples in Acts 1, where the emphasis is on 'you shall be my witnesses'.

 

"For the same reason, witness to the Hindus can never be based on any prior absolute claims about Christ. Such claims hinder rather than help Christian witness. Let me give an example. A preacher stands in front of a Hindu and proclaims: 'Christ is the only way; there is no salvation except through him.' However sincere and well-meaning the preacher may be, the Hindu will consider him or her as being both intolerant and arrogant. Why? They see in such a statement an implicit refusal to consider any other way. This they consider as intolerance. More seriously, such a statement or such claims preclude and deny anything others may have to say on this subject, even without giving a hearing to it. Nothing hurts the Hindus more. They cannot even understand why Christians have to say such a thing. This does not mean that the Hindu denies the witness of the preacher. They would admit that this may be profoundly true for the preacher. Christ to him or her may have become the 'only way'. But they would argue that such a statement has no validity outside the preacher's own experience and conviction. It becomes true once again only when another person comes to the same conviction for him or herself, and is able to experience and see Christ as the way. This may appear to be an artificial distinction to some Christians. But this has a very important bearing on witness to the Hindus. They believe that the hearer should recognize the truth and should not be forced to accept it.

 

"If you ask me to single out one factor that has been the greatest hindrance to genuine witness, I would say that it is these absolute claims that some Christians make for Christ. The decisiveness of Christ must be a matter of experience and should never be the subject of preaching.

 

"Again, some of the evangelists behave as though they are bringing God for the first time to the Hindus. The Hindus are amazed at such an idea. To begin with, how can God be 'taken'

 

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anywhere? The whole creation lives and moves in God. God's own witness has never been absent at any time or in any place. More importantly, the Hindus have a spiritual tradition reaching back over four thousand years of seeking to understand the mystery of life and its relation to God. Within it there is every shade of theological opinion; a variety of philosophical reflec­tions on God ranging from atheism to strict monotheism. Many modes of relating to God have been tested over centuries — meditation, good works, yoga, the way of devotion, the way of love. Much more importantly, there have been within the Hindu tradition great spiritual giants whose experience of God, spiritual excellence, and life totally devoted to God's service can neither be denied nor ignored. To know Hinduism and the Hindus at their best is a humbling experience to any Christian. Here we are confronted with a living spiritual tradition tested and tried over centuries, within which there is an undeniable experiencing of God's grace and love.

 

"Faced with this reality, what can an evangelist do? Some simply deny that this spiritual tradition has any validity at all. They would say that the whole matter is a 'human' attempt and that Hindus can never have the actual knowledge of God until they know God through Christ. Others choose simply to ignore the whole thing. They pretend that the Hindus have had no spiritual history behind them, and behave as though the world was born only yesterday!

 

'"What does this mean?'" you would ask. 'Are you not arguing that Hindus do not need the gospel? Are you not, by implication, saying that there is nothing new that you can take to the Hindu as Christian witness?'

 

"That is a valid question, but the real challenge to witness also lies in that question. The Hindus already have some of the loftiest ideals any religion can offer. If you want to engage in witness to the Hindus, therefore, you should think very deeply about this and know why you want to witness to them. And, whatever you offer as witness should be credible insofar as it is seen to be true to your own experience, and should have been seen by the Hindu to answer specific questions one has about one's life and destiny. That is why it is important to know them personally and to share our message in ways that make sense to them, and answer the questions that they ask. If we frame both

 

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the questions and the answers how can there be any effective witness? Please look up the many ways in which Christ dealt with people.

"As I have said at the beginning, there are no basic problems in offering witness to Hindus, because Hinduism is an open-ended religion able to consider, test and incorporate any spiritual experience that may prove to be beneficial to human­kind. Precisely because of this openness, it also would reject any meaningless claims that are not backed by actual spiritual experience.

 

"Apart from these points, which in a sense can also apply to any witness situation, there are some specific matters you should remember. These concern the thought-patterns in which the Hindu operates.

 

"In the Bible the human predicament is depicted in the framework of 'sin-fall and alienation from God'. Many of the ways we understand the significance of Christ speak to this framework. A good example is the understanding of Jesus as the Christ - the Messiah. The concept and all that it means were well understood within Judaism and the church that was evolv­ing out of it.

 

"But the Hindus understand the human predicament within an entirely different framework, using such concepts as Karma, rebirth, cycles of life-processes, etc. How do they perceive the human condition? In what way can the good news become incarnate within this tradition? These are points worth ponder­ing. There are some who feel that this is an unnecessary preoccupation. 'All people are alienated from God; they are in sin; and what is needed is the direct presentation of the gospel,' they would say. You should consider whether this is really so. The Hindu religion, culture and belief are so entrenched in the Indian heart and mind that it is difficult to imagine a Hindu who does not operate on the above thought-form consciously or otherwise.

 

"Let me mention just one more point. This relates to the presentation of the gospel and the expectation on how it should be received. Some evangelists think that the gospel message is a 'package-deal'. They would insist that Christ and all that Christians have come to believe about him (Savior, Son of God, Redeemer, etc.) should be accepted by the hearers. Often

 

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this package includes baptism and church membership. In an earlier age, this also included a change of name, dress and culture! If you want to witness to Christ to a Hindu, you should first get over the 'package' idea.

 

"The Hindus would accept Christ as a great teacher, guru, saint, etc., and one should never attempt to enforce one's own understanding on them. It is of interest that even Christ's disciples had various perceptions about who Christ was, and they grew in their own understanding with the passage of time. What is wrong with it? Let Christ be to them whoever he will be to them. The 'package' concept was among the factors that alienated Mahatma Ghandi from Christianity as a religion.

 

"Let me conclude with a word on our attitude to the act of witnessing itself. The most important lesson I have learned from the ministry of Christ is the great integrity with which he approached people. The Hindu is not an object for conversion. He or she is a fellow-pilgrim with whom we share the decisive impact Christ has had on our own lives. Even as we do so, we should be prepared to listen to any witness he or she may have to offer to us. Their lives may be greatly enriched by our witness. Similarly, we may be enabled to see the unsearchable riches of God through their witness to us.

 

"In such a witness situation a Hindu may recognize a challenge to Christian discipleship which he or she may want to accept openly in freedom. On the other hand, the Hindu may see no reason why he or she has to make such an open commitment of discipleship to Christ.

 

"Can you, in both circumstances, accept the Hindu as your brother or sister who stands, like you, within the unfathomable love and grace of God?

 

"If you can, then you have received the spiritual maturity to be a witness of Christ to the Hindu.

 

"Love, Wesley"

 

The letter was an attempt to place Christian witness within the context of dialogue, and to show that an open and genuine relationship with people who live by other faith traditions is in no way contrary to the biblical faith. Nor is our willingness to listen and learn from others.

 

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It should be admitted, however, that in the context of our new attitude to religious pluralism one should highlight some of the biblical themes that have not played a central role in the church’s self-understanding in the past. The recovery of these would provide a theological basis that will make dialogue the natural Christian way of life in religiously plural situations. It is to these we turn in our final chapter.