TEACHING THE BIBLE IN INDIA
(Written in India)  

Teaching foreigners on an American campus is a common experience for a professor, for we have tens of thousands of students from virtually every country in the world in our colleges and universities. I had many young ladies from foreign countries in my classes at Texas Woman's University, especially from Southeast Asia. It is far less common and distinctly different when it is the professor who is the foreigner and he is teaching in a cultural setting greatly different from his own. I have now done this in numerous nations of the world — Japan, Korea, Thailand, Uruguay, Taiwan -and I always find it a delightful challenge. Sometimes one can teach in English in these situations, but usually it is by translation. One would suppose that teaching by translation would be a serious obstacle, but it has its advantages. Every teacher who is given to abstruseness and verbosity should be required occasionally to teach by translation. He will find it an exercise in clarity and conciseness. In teaching through a translator one cannot easily hide behind a lot of verbiage. He learns to "put a point on ii," which is not a bad rule for any and all teaching.

Teaching the Bible in a foreign country has its hazards, particularly in a third world country, for the Bible has been translated and interpreted through the centuries by first world scholars. It is very difficult for us to see the Scriptures through third world eyes. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, for instance, the third world Christian is likely to see himself as the man who was beaten and robbed by thieves, while those who "pass by on the other side" are professed Christians of rich countries. He sees his own country as the poor, the oppressed, the captives, and "those of low estate" that God and the Bible defend and that Christ came to deliver. But non-poor Christians somehow miss the emphasis given to the poor in the Bible.

If you are teaching a class in India you may have a man in your class who only the day before bore his dead baby to the river on the back of his bicycle, decked with garlands, for he had no money for ceremonial cremation. A student may have a critically ill parent or child and no money for medical help. Some will have rotting teeth and no money for a dentist. If your students can read and write, they may be the only ones in their families who can, illiteracy in this country being as high as 50%. By contrast, it is less than 1% in Japan, the nation with the highest rate of literacy in the world. Some of my students here were raised in an orphanage, forsaken by their parents who were too poor to keep them. Baby girls, who are worth less in third world cultures, are often left at the gate of some orphanage.

How will a class of students representing such a culture interpret the Bible, and how will they view their foreign teacher, who is to them a rich Christian? And how is the teacher affected when he is aware of the gulf between them? There is the story of a professor that came from an American Bible college to teach for a while in these parts. During a layover in Calcutta he dared to walk about the city, where one sees incredible squalor and wretched souls dying on the streets. The professor hurried back to his hotel room and took refuge there until a flight could deliver him from such cultural shock. What happens when such a one is in a class situation with students who live in such a world?

And the questions are different. It may be simple enough to teach one how to become a Christian, but suppose you are in India where it is against the law to convert anyone from Hinduism or Islam until he is 18 years of age, and even then it is risky, for the convert may lose his place in society and even be forsaken by family. If you run an orphanage and have kids ready to be baptized at age 12 or 14, what do you do? If you baptize them before they are 18, the government might close your operation and cancel your visa. Already the government has stopped the flow of new missionaries, allowing the older ones to remain until they die off. Orientals understand the meaning of baptism and do not consider anyone a Christian until he has been baptized (to the consternation of the Baptists who are here!), so a young person can make a profession of faith (and some have advised that they should then start taking the Lord's Supper) with a view of being baptized at age 18.

It is also simple enough to teach a class Paul's sermon to the Athenians in Acts 17, where he proclaimed "the unknown God" as one who does not dwell in temples made by hands nor served by the art of man's devising in the likeness of gold, silver, or stone. But how do you respond when a student points out that if he says such things to his Hindu neighbors, who have such temples and devices of precious stone, that they will be offended and accuse him of sacrilege? We can always point to the offensive character of the gospel and remind students that Christ himself was killed because he taught unpopular truths, but it is easy for one to say that who will soon be gone and will not have to suffer the abuse of being a Christian in a pagan world.

I pointed out that Paul in Athens, even when surrounded by idolatry, showed respect for the people's religion. He did not criticize or make fun, but set forth the positive qualities of the God they acknowledged they did not know. And he quoted from their own poets and philosophers and drew truths from their own sources. We too can draw truths and values from the great non-Christian religions, recognizing that all truth is from God, and use them to point to God's highest and most glorious revelation of Himself, Jesus Christ. I also observed that beyond what they might say to their Hindu friends, who know little of a religion of love, forbearance, and forgiveness, that the lives they live before them as caring Christians will speak louder than words.

Christians in pagan cultures must see themselves as "God's little flock" and as "a colony of heaven," to use meaningful Biblical images, and concentrate on being what the Church of Christ should be in this world, and act upon the great truth taught by our Lord, that the world will know that we are his disciples by our love one for another. We reform India by reforming ourselves. We make India Christian by making ourselves Christians. And when persecution comes, we will glorify God in it, recognizing that the called of God have always been persecuted and that the Christian faith has flourished most in time of great trial.

We must build an altar for God in each of our homes in that our children will be taught the Bible, we will pray together, and share the hope of eternal life. However dark the pagan world around us may be, we will love and respect all people, especially the untouchables, and we will, like our Lord, give women a place of respect and dignity and treat them as equals.

As Christians in the third world we will not expect or demand a distribution of wealth from our sisters and brothers in rich countries. Their riches is their problem, not ours. We will put our hope in God and do the best we can, recognizing that at no time in history has poverty been solved through the good graces of the rich. As poor Christians we will help those who are poorer than ourselves. It has always been the case, as with the aged. It is the old that take care of the old, not the young; and it is the poor that take care of the poor, not the rich. — the Editor