Going Native, Only Goes So Far With Natives!

"There are those who try to live a totally Muslim-style life in order to reach Muslims within their own culture. Years ago I heard about a western missionary who tried something similar in India. He dressed as an Indian, ate Indian food, and lived in an Indian house. However, he was “sahib” (teacher). So he moved to a very poor part of town and identified with the poor. He got a job on a road construction crew, and people still called him “sahib.”

He asked the men around him why they used that name for him. They thought for a minute and then told him that it was because he used a toothbrush. He got rid of the toothbrush and used a stick to clean his teeth. And people still called him "sahib". One day, in desperation, he asked a wise man why he was not considered an Indian. The main replied, `It is because your mother was white.' No matter how hard we try, we can never completely identify with our Muslim friends, not because of outward cultural issues, but because of Sociological issues."

("Contextualization and Community. Roland Muller. In "Encounter the World Of Islam", Lesson 7 extra Readings online to text)

Mission Helps "Disentangle the Irrelevant" ?

“One keen observer is convinced that 100 million middle-class Hindus await the opportunity to become Christians – but There are no churches for them to join which respect their dietary habits and customs. Is the kingdom of God meat and drink? To go to the special efforts required by E-2 and E-3 evangelism is not to let down the standards and make the gospel easy- it is to disentangle the irrelevant elements and to make the gospel clear. Perhaps everyone is not able to do this special kind of work.”

(The New Macedonia. Ralph D. Winter. Perspectives, 4th edition, 2009, William Carey library pg 356)

Indian Legend says there are 330 million gods in Hinduism?

“Indian lore contains a well-known tale about a Hindu man who spent his entire life as a kind of theistic census taker. He went from village to village, house to house, occupation to occupation, caste to caste, inquiring at every location about which deities were worshipped at that place by those people. After traveling throughout India and recording the names of all the deities who were worshipped, tradition states that he chronicled the list in a great book. The number is traditionally held to have been 330 million. When the weary traveler finally returned to his home village, exhausted and in his ninety-third year, he was asked to count how many gods were in his book, He spent seven years counting the gods, and at the end of the book he wrote the grand total—one. He declared in his dying breath that there is “one God worshipped in India.”

The author goes on to make this Missiological claim.

"This story symbolizes the classic problem concerning Hindu theism, and it is the reason why the Western assumption that Hindus are polytheistic is not as simple as the observations of a casual visitor to India might indicate. On the one hand, popular Hinduism seems to have no end to gods and goddesses who are worshipped and adored. On the other hand, India is known throughout the world for its intricate and sublime philosophy that teaches there is only one ultimate reality."

(Timothy C. Tennent, Christianity at the Religious Round Table: Evangelicalism in Conversation with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2002. p. 38.)