MEANING FULL OR LESS
The meaning fullness or meaning lessness of human life is a hotly debated Question among modern philosophers. Among Christian theologians, the Heidelberg Catechism offers a number one Answer: “In life and in death I belong to my Savior, Jesus Christ; I am protected by my Father in heaven; and I am assured by his Holy Spirit that – living for Him now – I will receive eternal life. The Trinitarian depth of this declaration would take a long time to unpack.
Don McClure, Sr., a missionary in Africa for 50 years, and my father-in-law, knew the Answer. He wrote once, at the beginning of his ministry, “I often wonder what would happen in a human life that was totally dedicated to the service of God. I want to leave Africa dead tired and worn out. My college track coach always complained that I looked too fresh at the end of a long race. In the race of life, I want to go all out, all the way until I am completely exhausted in his service.”
In fact, Don never left Africa and his earthly body lies there even today. In ADVENTURE IN AFRICA, the painstakingly researched and well-crafted biography of Don McClure, Sr., this letter home to his mother is reproduced.
At the Gilo River Station on 28 March 1973, Beth Reimer was bitten by a small animal. That night she developed a high fever and chills. Thinking she might have malaria, Don McClure, Jr., flew in with chloroquine, but Beth did not respond to the medication. A few hours later Harold Kurtz flew into Gilo to take Beth and her mother, Ann, out to a missionary physician at Dembi Dollo. When the plane landed at Pokwo to refuel, the volunteer nurse observed generalized small hemorrhages over Beth’s entire body, suggesting massive infection. When they reached Dembi Dollo, Beth’s temperature was so high (more than 108 degrees) that it would not register on the thermometer; she was slipping away. Before Niles Reimer could get to Dembi Dollo, his sweet girl was gone. Every loving father can understand the desperation of Niles’s plea to God that Beth be raised from the dead.
On 29 March 1973 Beth Reimer (age eight) was buried behind the little Christian Church at Pokwo, which means “village of life”.
An American statesman once said that what Christian missionaries have done in Africa is almost beyond belief. “They fought superstition, ignorance, suspicion, and a terrible host of diseases. They walked for years across a dark continent to bring light, and many of them fell before they could even reach their destination. But of all their great sacrifices, the most pitiable are of their own precious children. Dear God, I saw the gravestones of children all over Africa.”
Today, in sharp contrast, for many parts of the Christian community, even this admiration for committed courage and inconsolable sacrifice has disappeared. World evangelism has become marginal and therefore optional.
In years past nearly every Christian considered how the Great Commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:16-20) applied specifically and personally to them. The force of that command appears to have weakened because so many people now believe that Jesus was wrong when he asserted, “No one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6)
Indeed a prominent group of Christian theologians insist that God has many names and Jesus is not the way, the truth, the life, but a way, a truth, a life. These thinkers are willing to admit that missionaries are often nice and well meaning but their lives are dedicated to a great futility and their efforts a colossal mistake.
In his wonderful SHANTUNG COMPOUND (1966), Langdon Gilkey responded to this conclusion as follows: “When one is not similarly committed to what missionaries do, then missionary work seems arrogant, fanatical, imperialistic, hypocritical, futile. On the other hand, approval is always available for sacrifices incurred by fostering ideas in whose worth one does believe, such as modern medicine, democracy, modern education, social equality, technology, and the like.”
The sad fact seems to be that while the Christian church is growing phenomenally in Asia and Africa, it is dying painfully in Europe and America. When, in 1885, the first Presbyterian missionary landed in Seoul, there were just over one half million Presbyterian churches in America and not one in Korea. Today there are just over one million Presbyterians in the United States and ten million in Korea. In Seoul I attended a 6 am service in a church of 20,000 with 10,000 kids in Sunday School.
I have always been fond of John Milton’s SAMSON AGONISTES, which is the story of Samson and Delicious. He was dumb enough to believe that she would keep the secret of his great strength, but she gave him a buzz cut and he left town. Hair today; Goon tomorrow. Samson’s later journey, Swiftly taken, is known as Gullible’s Travels. Milton’s dramatic poem ends with Samson “Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.” Even more haunting is the line that describes him so accurately and may now describe us as well: “Once thy glorious champion. Behold him in this state calamitous. “
charlesbpartee 