In World Dominion for September-October, 1943, there appeared an article entitled "Spiritual Therapeutics," which I wish all our denominational workers could read. The article deals specifically with the need of missionary appointees' being given opportunity to study, or to receive a course of instruction, concerning the customs habits, and ways of life of the people for whom they are to labor. Since much in this article applies with equal force to those in the homeland whose work contributes in any appreciable measure to the healing of sin-sick souls, I take the liberty of quoting some paragraphs for the benefit of readers of the Ministry.
"Surely the analogy between the man or woman who devotes his or her life to the healing of the body, and the one who proposes an equal lifetime devotion to the healing of the soul, is complete. Each must know something--and the more the better—of the range and use of the means of healing, and have at leact an eq,-1 knowledge, if that is ever possible, of the object of his ministrations. The would-be physician begins with the study of the human body, its anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc.; then he comes to pharmacology, and, in his clinical work, he learns how to apply the healing art to those conditions he has come to know and understand.
"Not so the would-be healer of souls. With him there is intense preparation of his own mind and intellect. There is intensive study of his materia medica (the Bible); but of therapeutics—how to apply his materia medica, or of the spiritual anatomy and physiology of the mind and soul of his patient—he is left in sublime ignorance. . . .
"How difficult it is for us to disentangle the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God for men's salvation, from the age-long accretions of custom, habit, and ways of life that go to make up the social structure of our Anglo-Saxon culture. And how hard for the young missionary to grasp the idea that these form no part of his message, and may only prove a hindrance to its acceptance. Much that we consider correct and decent in social intercourse may be repulsive to peoples of a culture other than ours, just as their habits and equally strict code of etiquette may shock our sensibilities. A naked savage may be as true a gentleman, by his tribal standards, as any product of Eton and Oxford ; while the product of our public school and university may appear an ill-mannered boor in the eyes of a Chinese shopkeeper.
"Is it too much to hope that, in the great forward movement to take the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth, for which we hope and plan in the postwar period, the bearer of God's healing grace for stricken mankind will be given some instruction concerning the mental, spiritual, and social world of the people to whom he proposes to bring the remedy for all their sins and sorrows, and the solution of all their human problems ? If the Christian's message is to be assimilated by the African, for example, it must, as Edwin Smith says, 'be translated into the idiom of the African soul.' "
The writer wonders "whether the theological colleges which prepare men for the ministry have any knowledge of the real world in which their candidates must minister. Whether the last part of Isaiah is exilic or postexilic seems . . . 'somewhat unimportant compared with the tragic realism of men and women who are discovering that the way of the transgressor is hard.'"
Even here in North America there are people of various social customs, with varying sensibilities as to etiquette and culture. Those of our workers who have not had the benefit and blessing of special instruction in "spiritual therapeutics" should seek by every means to make up for that lack. May God help all who seek to emulate the pattern of the Master to discover how to translate our message into the soul idiom of those to whom we seek to minister, whether it be here in the homeland or in lands afar.
