NOTES ON A WORLD TOUR
Leroy Garrett

“God so loved the world that he gave . . .”

My recent trip around the world gives me a deeper appreciation of the relationship between loving and giving. Surely it is the love that gives that is real, and certainly giving without loving is meaningless. If one loves enough, he will give, and give liberally, even himself if need be. God so loved that he gave his most precious gift. Somehow this takes on more meaning as one goes out to see the world with all its troubles.

I am not sure that I ever saw a really hungry person in America, and certainly not a starving one. I would be hard put to find a grave anywhere in this country where I could say, "This person starved to death." Our nation is well fed, if not over fed; our children can get an education; most of us are employed, and we can read and write; we have clean, comfortable clothes and houses that have several rooms; we even have electricity and running water, automobiles and automatic washers, radio and TV, tissue paper and soap and shoes. We have beds in which no more than two people have to sleep, and we have refrigerators that keep our food for days ahead  — blessings that are no longer commonplace to one that has walked with those who live in Southeast Asia or India.

Besides all this we are free, at liberty to move about as we please. And free to think and to worship and to create, and even to criticize. America is indeed a blessed land, and after my recent experiences I shall never again take her for granted. The world that I see out my window looks different to me now. Even Denton, Texas, looks not quite the same, for even this small Texas city is just 14 hours from Saigon. My teaching at Texas Woman's University seems more vital now  — there is a greater sense of urgency. There is neither time nor reason for mediocrity. The world needs us, the best of us. We must so love that we will give.

One does not have to go to India in order to know about the stark poverty that abounds there, but he feels much closer to it when he sees families sleeping on the sidewalks in front of the hotel where he is comfortably situated. One can read about the troubles of South Vietnam in the press, but it is different to walk the streets of Saigon and to hear for oneself the testimony of teachers when they say, "It seems to me that our only hope is the United States." Yes, we all understand that millions of children in this world are hungry, but that sober fact tugs at your conscience when a child tugs at your coat begging for food. We all know what war and political fratricide can do to a great people like the Chinese, but when one visits the refugees from Red China in Taipei and Hong Kong he learns more than what he finds in books.

True religion is a love story between God and man. Christianity is the story of how God so loved the world that he gave His own Son. God so loved the world! This great truth impressed itself upon me many times as I looked out upon this tragic, agonizing world of ours. My visit to Jerusalem was marred by the ugly fact that the Arabs and the Jews are indeed in a real war that occasionally gets quite hot, and one that has continued more or less since the days of Ishmael and Isaac. The millions of India struggle to keep from starving while they carry on their religious feuds and the more serious conflict with China. Saigon and most of Southeast Asia is nervous. So much of the world lives in fear and uncertainty as well as ignorance and poverty.

It is this troubled, neurotic world that God loves so much that he gave Himself for it. It is for a suffering humanity that our Lord died. We must look often at the Cross and remember that God loves like that. As children of God we too are to love the world. We may not be of the world, bur we are in the world, and our task is to leave it better than we found it. This involves falling in love with it. One of our poets has said, “God forgive us for looking at the world with a dry eye!”

We can hardly claim to be Christian if we have not cultivated a passion for the souls of men and a concern for their physical welfare. The child of God should think of his mission in this world as the alleviation of human suffering. And we can all stand where we are by making the Church of God what it ought to be as “the pillar and ground of the truth” and by building America to that level of excellence that will make her a benefactor to all nations as well as an example of freedom. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” We cannot all enjoy the inspiration that comes through world travel, but those of us who are so blessed can share the experiences with others.

It was a Fulbright grant from the Department of State that enabled me to spend seven weeks in Free China (Taiwan) and to proceed from there on around the world. I visited twelve nations, including such famous cities as Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Saigon, Bangkok, New Delhi, Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo, Athens, Paris, Heidelberg, London, and Glasgow. I had audience with some important people, the most famous being Chiang Kai-Shek, while the most stimulating was Prof. William Barclay of the University of Glasgow. I swam in the Mediterranean at Beirut, floated in the Dead Sea in the wilderness of Judea, and waded out into the Jordan River until it got too deep. I saw the Suez Canal and the Red Sea from the air and took hikes alongside such famous waters as the Nile, the Seine, and the Thames.

I visited the renowned museums of Jerusalem, Cairo, Paris, and London, and lingered at such impressive structures as the pyramids in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India, the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, the Acropolis and Parthenon in Athens, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and Westminster Abbey in London. But more important than things whether rivers or mountains or buildings, are ideas and the people who hold them, and it is this aspect of my experiences around the world that I prefer to say the most about.

My stay in Tokyo was only a stopover of two days, but I made the most of this short time. The richest experience was the fellowship I enjoyed with the saints that met at the Ochanomizu Church of Christ, who were nearly all Japanese. Brother O. D. Bixler, who has been a missionary to Japan for over 40 years, ministers to this group. Not only does he speak good Japanese, but he understands the oriental mind and has great respect for it. He has great love for the Japanese and has made many personal sacrifices in order to tell them about the Christ. Reputedly he is premillennial, which means in view of the way our people practice Christianity that other of our workers in Japan will have little to do with him.

Even though Brother Bixler is responsible for the humble beginnings of some of the more highly publicized efforts in Japan, such as the Ibaraki Christian College, he has chosen to step aside and let others carry on the work, for, as he puts it, "There is plenty of work for all of us." If his brethren had rather not work with him in the service of the Lord, he is quite content to work for the Lord alone, and that without any ill will. "If you want to labor for Christ in this work, you take it and the Lord bless you in it. I'll go do something else." Such seems to be Bixler's attitude. He is a soft spoken, mild mannered, dedicated man who is willing to work quietly and unobtrusively  — and he has been at it with great sacrifice since 1919 right there in Japan! Sister Bixler spoke of the temptations to return to the joys and comforts of America, but "we just couldn't do it, for we felt we would be divorcing the Lord."

The thought I had as I visited these fine people was this: what kind of Christianity will the Japanese learn from those brethren of ours that have a religion that will not allow them to enjoy brotherhood with such dedicated Christians? The oriental mind is too magnanimous for this kind of littleness.

It is common knowledge that Japan is now more westernized than any of the nations of the Far East. It is a moot question, however, as to how deeply this westernization penetrates Japanese culture. Some contend that it is only skin deep, that Japan is only superficially wearing an American facade, and that at heart the culture is grossly oriental and always will be. others believe that the country is truly evolving into a "western" republic, and that it is more than willing to bury and forget its imperialistic past.

I did not have "rhe feel of the orient" while in Tokyo. I was surprised to find it so much like the great cities of the West. The people are busy and prosperous, and their attitudes appear to be more like Americans than the Chinese. A big department store in Tokyo on a Sunday is much like a Gimble's on a Saturday. Christian churches in Japan are much the way they are in the West. Some Christian missionary efforts enjoy phenomenal success, and there seems to be a spirit of revival in the air. It remains to be determined, however, just what effect Christianity is having upon the Japanese where it really counts.

The same is true of the American occupation. General MacArthur was wise in permitting the nation to retain its Emperor, even when our allies demanded that he abdicate. The emperor publicly denounced his divinity, but he remains as a symbol of 2700 years of Japanese tradition, and he will always he thought “divine” by the masses, but only in the sense that orientals think of men as gods, an idea that occidentals have never really understood. To the Japanese the emperor is somewhat like the pope to Roman Catholics, or something like what “Old Glory” is to a patriotic American. The Japanese have always been puzzled over our pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth and handling it with a reverence fit only for deity. In turn the Japanese are often seen dragging their flag in the dirt and handling it with utter indifference, to the dismay of Americans, for to them a flag is no more than decorative bunting. The emperor is their flag, and he is divine in that he symbolizes a national tradition that was born of the gods.

We really cannot tell yet about how much Japan has changed, or even what changes would be desirable. Few of us are ready to say that she should become like ourselves. My short visit brought me in contact with people that struck me as unusually bright and alert. These intelligent people would certainly make wonderful Christians, but I think we err if we expect Japan to become Christian in a western sense. We must not overlook the fact that a nation’s religion and culture are closely related, and it may be that the kind of Christianity that the Japanese would cultivate in the light of their own history would be a better representation of what Jesus intended than what we in the West have come up with.

My Fulbright grant was for study in Taiwan, so it was here that I spent most of my time. For six weeks at Tunghai University in Taichung we sat with Chinese artists, politicians, scientists, educators, ministers of religion, philosophers, and historians. Some of it was exciting and vital; some of it was boring and inconsequential. As a whole it was a fabulous experience that left me with a deeper understanding of the complexity of world problems. There are no easy solutions, and some of them appear past finding out. Surely it will take us generations to unloose some of the tangles we are in. The so-called “China problem” is, for instance, so involved and so replete with our own political blunders that we have not yet begun to solve it. India is in such straits that one hundred years of concentrated problem-solving efforts will not be enough, and conditions there could well get worse before they get better. And it looks as if the cards are stacked against the Free World in South Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia, so much to that it is going to be very difficult to do anything that will really help. And so it is around this turbulent world of ours. My dentist got it right when he said to me the other day (under conditions that prevented my reply!): “Then I take it that you conclude that this old world is in real trouble.”

(to be continued)