Hippies and Missions

W. Carl Ketcherside

[Page 187]

     Please don't let that title fool you! There isn't any real relation between the two terms, although there well could be. But in this case it happens to represent two ends of a conversation. Not long ago I had a chance to visit with Matthew Ikeda. It was a pleasure which had been too long deferred. Matthew is a brilliant and perceptive young Japanese. He was an orphan in Tokyo when immersed by a missionary of the restoration movement persuasion. Now he is laboring with a group of saints in northern Indiana, while teaching a course on "The Psychology of Abnormality" at a nearby university and working on his doctorate at the University of Chicago.

     I had been wanting to talk to him about several things. One was the development of the hippie sub-culture in our affluent society. We discussed the motivation behind the flaking off of these young intellectuals, and what they hoped to attain through the use of psychedelic drugs and mind expansion experiments. We explored briefly the results which might accrue from smoking "pot" or "grass" but my primary interest was related to why so many are rejecting Christianity in favor of Zen or Ch'an Buddhism, or some other form of Oriental religion or philosophy. I think we concurred at almost every step of our analysis of the "Flower Children."

     Then we moved into another area of mutual concern--the missionary program in various parts of our world. I have been perturbed about a great many of our attitudes and practices. One is the transportation of our American factionalism and grounds for debate to other parts of the earth which are not historically conditioned to receive them. One has to be reared in our parochial areas of partisan ferment in order for it to make any sense to him. All of the furore about our loyalty to Jesus as the Son of God, being tested by an attitude toward cups, classes, colleges, instrumental music or the millennium, can only serve to confuse Buddhists or Brahmans.

     It is a little silly when you think of our having five or six different kinds of "Churches of Christ" in Africa based upon what segment in America furnishes the financial pipeline to the missionaries. A lot of people, basing their judgment on what tourists and movies they have seen, think Americans are a bunch of screw-balls anyway and it is regrettable that we work overtime in the name of Jesus, trying to prove how correct they are. Most areas of the earth have enough confusion of their own without allowing us to come in and stir up an international religious hullabaloo by moving in some of the molehills which we have inflated into artificial mountains.

[Page 188]

     Matthew pointed out another thing that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of others, and that is the practice of some of the missionaries and of a goodly number of their stateside visitors who "talk down" to the groups which they address. For instance, a preacher from the United States who is called upon to speak to a group of young Japanese who are college students gives them a lecture on "first principles" on the Sunday School literature level. One can understand how this would appear to those who are students of philosophy and eager to share in those concepts which probe the meaning of life and the universe.

     I suspect the day is fast approaching in the increasingly improving intellectual climate, when one will not be respected merely because he is an American, and comes from a land where you can purchase "education" in an affluent social structure. And I'll not be too greatly surprised if a lot of countries decide they can get along without "ambassadors for Christ" who tend to confuse western culture and mores with citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. When we present Jesus to people of another nation we are not generously and gratuitously offering something that is ours to them, but we are merely calling attention to Someone who is also theirs. We do not "take Christ" to Japan, for He has already been there!

     Because of the shrinking world in which we live I hope to increase my personal association with a great many of those who represent other peoples, nations and tongues. I want to do this, not alone because of what I can convey to them, for that is little indeed. I want to share in their insights for my growth and development. If God needed all of us to make up His family I certainly need all whom He has adopted into it whatever their race or color! Surely we must strive to understand one another.