This
book is made up of extracts from the letters of Christoph Friedrich
Blumhardt to his son-in-law Richard Wilhelm, a Lutheran missionary in
China in the decades before the First World War. That the ideas
expressed are over a hundred years old is often surprising, as they
have a very contemporary feel.
Blumhardt's
message is summarised in Charles E. Moore's introduction like this
“Jesus claims the whole world for his own, not just the Christian
world. No one is separated from Christ's love – neither the
“unchurched” nor the “pagan”, and especially not the
oppressed.”
There
are two major themes, one about the universality of God's love, and
the other that one of the key barriers to people encountering that
love is the behaviour of Christians.
Blumhardt
has a deep respect for those of other religions, he is writing in a
context where missionary and colonial narratives were intertwined –
the Western Missionary was an agent of the colonial project to bring
“civilisation” to what were seen as primitive native populations.
Blumhardt's approach instead seems to be a forebear of Vincent J.
Donovan's Christianity Rediscovered – rooting an articulation of
the Gospel in the traditions and world view of those you are wishing
to reach.
Blumhardt
writes with humility and self-awareness, for example he says that “I
may be stupid and clumsy – I may even commit grave sin – but my
true self, which is created in God's image, belongs to God. Neither
sin nor death can change this fact.” And out of this awareness of
both his own weakness and God's enduring love he finds the basis to
engage with others. He sees many around him struggling, but they
have been “set free simply by my reminding them, 'You belong with
me, because you and I belong to God.'” We should come alongside
people and then encounter God together, as equals.
This
approach is tragically lacking in the Church around Blumhardt, he is
blunt in his criticism... He believes that we need to have a ministry
that meets people's practical needs, because “If people had to rely
on what pastors typically do for them, we would be in a bad way. We
can't live from sermons” But it is not just that he sees the
practices of the Church as irrelevant, it is actively blocking the
encounter with God's love – he writes that “overly religious
Christians with all their piety cannot bring the life that God
wants.”
And
what is wrong with being “overly religious” is, in Blumhardt's
view, that it breeds self-congratulation and arrogance. In one of
those punchy moments Blumhardt declares that “I find it
incomprehensible that people who call themselves devout believers
consider themselves better than other people... There are hundreds of
thousands of people who seek to do the good and honest thing but who
rightly refuse to go to church or have anything to do with religion.
This happens because so many Christians stand above others. The
world has had enough of that.”
But
for me what is painful about this analysis is that I think many in
our society today still react to the Church in exactly this way –
Christians are seen as smug and judgemental – and to be honest all
too often it is a case of “if the cap fits...” And somehow
despite the fact that this probably doesn't apply to the majority of
Christians it is still a common external encounter with the Church.
Alongside
the main themes Blumhardt also gives some other really useful advice
and pointers.
He
reflects that “Most people who get all worked up about injustice
are motivated by a sense of rage... the mistake is to think that
turmoil must arise from resentment and be sustained by anger. The
breakthrough that comes from God is based on love.” Here I think
the important point is the phrase “sustained by anger” - I think
it is OK to see the injustice in the world and react with anger, we
might look to Jesus clearing the Temple of the money changers as an
example of this response. But our ongoing work to change the
situation can not be “sustained by anger” because to hold anger
in your heart over a long period is corrosive to your own being. It
is perhaps a problem that we often confuse being “angry” and
being “passionate” - maybe outwardly these two states can look
similar but when we look to the likes of Gandhi and Mandela, yes
there was great passion but inside there was a calmness which can not
be borne out of anger.
And
finally he had some words of encouragement, knowing that the
missionary methods that he was putting forward are those of the slow
burn... “We can only do what lies in front of us every day, and
will often do so with much sighing, for it all seems in vain. Yet I
believe that there is progress taking place quietly, and that a new
time is being prepared.”
