The dress-mission

"Some of you, having come down from Judea, taught the brethren, saying : If you have not been circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you can not be saved." Acts 15. 1

An exhibition presents a retrospective of the history of a Pacific island, from objects and documents collected since its discovery by Westerners in the eighteenth century. A major break in the history of this territory occurred with the arrival of the first Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century. Before their Christianization, more or less forced, engravings made by the first explorers show smiling natives, usually dressed in a simple loincloth and dancing around their totems. A few decades later, the photographs show them sitting quietly on benches, in front of a church-hut, staring gravely at the goal. The most striking is the dress of the women: they exchanged their loincloth for a Victorian dress, long and buttoned up to the neck, in which they look embarrassed and uncomfortable - not to mention the incongruity of an outfit as covering under the heat of the tropics.

We do not ignore the procession of various evils brought by Western civilization as a result of the introduction of Christianity. But that Christianity has brought innumerable moral and spiritual benefits to these peoples can not be disputed. The violence of the tribes of these islands, their fear of death, their unhealthy relations with the occult world - all this has been, if not eliminated, at least largely attenuated by the impregnation of the Christian culture. But a fatal error has been to link true Christianity, that of the heart, to the external conformity to a culture of "missionaries", far removed from the local reality. No ! To receive eternal life, to be a good Christian, it is not necessary to put on a "dress-mission" (according to the name given by the natives to their new accoutrement) !

Although the form and the object differ according to the times and the places, the danger remains to bind the faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ to the respect of codes, rules, customs, which veil then the heart of the Biblical message. To prove that someone is truly saved or to fully integrate him into the life of a local church, it is not necessary to ask him to adopt the ways of doing the one who announced the gospel to him. To impose these changes exposes to a rejection of the faith because of the justified rejection of the imposed addition of the cultural straitjacket.

The true gospel is the same for everyone everywhere : it is an inner transformation by the power of the Spirit. And if it is necessary to change the outside, the Spirit will produce it in its time.

Source (Pleasing the Lord)