There is a 100 year old story (legend) told by the great Indian follower of Jesus Sadhu Sundar Singh. (A Sadhu is a Hindu ascetic.) The story is about a Brahman man—a high-caste Hindu—in India who fainted from the summer heat while sitting on a train at a railway station. Someone ran to the faucet, filled a cup with water, and brought it to the man in an attempt to revive him. But in spite of his condition, the passenger would not accept the water because it was offered to him in the cup of a man belonging to another caste. Then someone noticed that the high-caste man had a cup on the seat beside him; so he grabbed it, went out and filled it with water, returned, and offered it to the man, who now readily accepted the water with gratitude. At this point, Sundar Singh would tell his audience that missionaries from the West had been offering the “water of life” to the people of India in a foreign cup. Therefore, they were reluctant to receive it. However, Sundar Singh was offering it in their own cup, so that they were much more likely to accept it. In other words, as an indigenous member of the Indian culture, Sundar Singh was able to offer up the Gospel in an indigenous form. Now they could understand the message within the context of their lives.
Unfortunately, the American church has mistakenly supposed that she has been communicating the Gospel in the language and the context of the culture. Perhaps, the message and methods of the early twentieth century worked back then, but for the last 50 years the strident call has been falling on increasingly deaf ears. We have not been offering the water of life in their cup. We’ve been offering it up in ours—a cup forged in modernity and revivalism, with words and idioms of a bygone era. I call it a King James message to a Stephen King world.
Meanwhile, the culture has left us in the dust, while we have become more and more culturally incestual. Some who would criticize the Amish practices of isolationist customs and behaviors are just as separatist in their traditions and programs.
The Campus Crusade tract The Four Spiritual Laws depicts a familiar picture to most Christians of an uncrossable canyon between man and God which must be bridged by the cross of Jesus. Unfortunately, before that message will be heard, there is an equally uncrossable and ever-widening gap fixed between church culture and popular culture. And it is a crevasse that must be bridged by the church.
In places and circumstances where people have been less receptive to the message of the Gospel, several scholars have tried to understand and plot the journey to faith. James Engel in his 1975 book What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest? shares what has become known as the Engel Scale. Expanding on Engel’s work, Paul and Sue Hazelden began working on a modified Engel Scale in 2000 which is a bit more broad. It includes people who have no “God concept” at all. And, finally Frank Gray of the Far East Broadcasting Company developed the Gray Matrix that expands their work. His matrix includes not only the cognitive elements of the Engel Scale but also attitudinal aspects—a person’s receptivity to the message—on a two-dimensional model with vertical and horizontal axes.
These will not be explained here, but they can be studied separately by accessing the links provided. Believe me, they are an invaluable resource for anyone who is trying to understand the progression toward faith and how important life context is in that process. It is also a valuable tool for the church to recognize that most of its efforts will not reach to people any further away than about a negative four on the Engel Scale. And most church programs are designed for people in the “C” quadrant (higher knowledge and receptivity) of the Gray Matrix.
In part two we will include what it might look like to offer the water of life in their cup.
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