A Positive Influence on Culture

I am teaching a course this semester to our freshman honor students entitled Exploring Humanity through Film.  We watch films one night each week that illustrate key phrases of the Apostles Creed.  This week we watched The Mission by Roland Joffe.  Even though it premiered in 1986, its powerful message gives it holding power to the present.  The story takes place in the 1750s in South America where the present-day borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet.  If you know anything about that part of the world, you know the area is just upstream from the world-famous Iguaza Falls.

The plot line of the film chronicled the ministry of Jesuit missionaries working among the Guarani Indians.  I suppose the film intended to inform viewers of how missionaries and their outpost mission got caught in the winds of conflict brought on by the economic and political tug-of-war between Spain and Portugal for this land and its people.  That message came through loud and clear, and I understood it well.  The film left me with deep feelings of support for the missionaries and their converts who found themselves caught in this battle.  What's more, the film reminded me of the struggle that continues to this day between Christian ministry and geopolitics around the world.

However, as I went home following our class viewing, the images I had just witnessed began to speak to me about other very important truths.  The film reminded me, first, of the high price of Christian evangelism.  The first Jesuit missionaries who climbed the wet rock wall of the Iguaza Falls to take the gospel to the Guarani Indians found themselves at the business end of deadly spears.  In fact, the film opened with a scene of a Jesuit missionary being tied to a wooden cross by the locals and thrown into a swiftly moving river that took him over the falls to his water grave.  But, that didn't stop the missionaries.  Oh no!  Others volunteered to climb the falls and reach this new tribe with the Good News of Jesus Christ.  The price of Christian evangelism remains just as high today as Christ's followers continue to go where they are not welcomed and stay until the people can't let them go.

Another powerful message of the film spoke to me of how the Guarani Indians' acceptance of Jesus Christ into their hearts and community changed their entire culture for the better.  Let me note just a few of those changes:

1.       The gospel transformed them from a warring people who dispensed violence to anyone to crossed into their territory to a loving people who forgave others, including a slave trader (played by Robert De Niro) who once hunted them like animals to sell to the Portuguese.  Rather than killing him, as they once would have done, they welcomed him into their community following his conversion to Christ.

2.       The gospel transformed these people from a life filled with superstition about what lay just beyond the dense web of their jungle home to a simple faith that trusted completely in God their Creator.  What a transformation from a society of people hiding under the jungle's brush when the first missionaries arrived to a society that boldly worshipped God out in the open even as their Portuguese attackers shot them down in innocent cold blood!  They willingly died for the cause of Christ.

3.       The gospel transformed them from a survival society of just getting by to one that prospered from the rich bounty of the plantations they organized, ran, and exported produce from.  In fact, the Portuguese later wanted to control their mission because of its prosperity.  This prosperity gave them as much market power as the nations of Spain and Portugal had in the region.  John Wesley witnessed this economic / lifestyle lift of the gospel in his ministry to the English.  German economist and sociologist, Max Weber, researched and documented this lift in northern Europe in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  He detailed his findings in his still popular book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930).  His proposition, known as "the Weber Thesis," was neither deterministic nor an advertisement for capitalism.  Rather, he simply showed that once people respond to the Christian gospel message they change their lifestyles for the better, work harder, and become more productive citizens.  This lift certainly manifested itself in the mission of San Carlos with the Guarani Indians.

4.       The winsomeness of the gospel also lifted them in other areas like the production of arts and crafts.  This once primitive people excelled with superior woodworking craftsmanship equal in beauty and complexity to craftsmen of today.  They also participated in orchestras and choirs to produce some of the most beautiful and technically perfect music imaginable.  They did it, not to win a woodworking or music competition, but to glorify God their Creator.

5.       I was especially impressed with the way the Indian chief went head to head with Cardinal Altamirano.  The pope sent the cardinal to South America to oversee the transfer of control of the land to the Portuguese.  The theological gobbley goop of an argument offered by the cardinal to the Indians convinced none of them.  They logically reasoned in ways that made perfect sense.  They didn't have the formal education, the fine clothes, or the ecclesiastical power of the cardinal, but they certainly used their God-given common sense in ways that proved that they had a better understanding of how the mission should proceed than did the cardinal.

I gave these observations from South American history and evangelism to make an important point.  When a society accepts the Good News of the gospel message and invites Christ to live and work among them, that society changes for the better.  Individuals are transformed from the inside out; this leads to a change in the entire society.  It's not just a lateral change - that is from one way of doing things to another equally valid way.  No, it's change that brings a lift to individuals personally and to society as a whole.

Most of us have been recipients of that positive lift for so long that we easily forget how powerful and beneficial its impact is upon us.  Many of us were born into it; others of us experienced it early in our lives.  Let us never forget the power of the gospel to change individuals and to change entire societies.  Society needs for us to not forget this important truth.

Why am I bringing this to your attention on this "Faith and Culture" webpage?  I'm calling it to your attention because our culture, so influenced by a postmodern approach to life, wants to neuter the impact of the Christian message with its call to religious pluralism, subjectivism, and relativism.  Songwriter Lewis Jones had it right, "There's power in the blood!"  Power to forgive sins.  Power to change lives.  Power to change whole societies. 

If we listen to the soothing song of the politically correct naysayers, we Christians will be lulled to sleep and rendered ineffective at changing our society for the better.  What happened in northern Europe in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was no fluke of circumstances.  Max Weber proved that.  What happened in South America with the Guarani Indians cannot be wisked away as simply religious and political imperialism.  Self-denying missionaries invested their lives in taking the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.  That investment paid off in the lives of precious souls for whom Christ died.  Not just for eternity, but with an improved lifestyle in the here and now.

We hear a lot these days about the need for re-inventing ourselves as a society.  General Motors reinvented themselves; now they call themselves "The New GM."  My wife and I both drive GM vehicles, so we got a letter from the new president of the New GM appealing to us to remain loyal customers.  I hope the reinvention works; I like my truck!

Reinvention can benefit us in many ways.  But the call to reinvention need not happen with the gospel message.  Yes, we should employ new and better methods of translating The Message to a new generation.  But we don't need to change The Message itself.  It has as much power today as it had 260 years ago with the Guarani Indians.  It has as much power as it had 2000 years ago with the early church.  I submit to you that what God is calling us to do is to proclaim - and live out in our daily lives - the gospel story.  Then watch the Spirit of God change lives and, in the process, change society.  It's the best hope for our faith changing our culture.

Now click on the discussion button and add your thoughts on a question or two about this subject.  We'd love to hear from you.