Become One
By David Berg - March, 1973
You can't very well tell people that you love them if you don't make the slightest attempt to learn their language, customs, culture, history, religion, characteristics, nationality traits, etc., which are all a part of them. We can hardly hope to understand them fully or reach them effectively without showing a genuine loving interest in who they really are and what they're really like, insofar as we possibly can in the time that we have.
This has always been a part of the secret of the success of every truly faithful missionary: A genuine endeavour of identification with the people, a true loving sample of God's Love and a clear presentation of His Message in some way that they can understand, including learning their language, adopting their customs and dress, eating the food they eat, sometimes assuming their citizenship and above all, not only trying to know and understand them well, but to actually become one of them as Jesus did! He not only ministered to their spiritual needs, but He also spent a great deal of time ministering to their physical and material needs, healed them when they were sick, fed them when they were hungry and shared His life and His Love!
I thought even as a little boy that all missionaries should adopt the citizenship, customs, language, dress and even wives and children of the people to whom they minister. I have always been leery of missionaries who didn't even like the people to whom they ministered and who refused to become one of them or adapt themselves to their ways, much less marry them or allow their children to marry them or receive the same education, culture and language of the people of their field. If you really love them, you will become one of them, marry them and give your sons and daughters to them! Missionaries who send their children home for their education or refuse to let them fall in love with the natives of the field in which they're ministering and are so glad to be able to take trips home as often as possible are not my idea of a missionary!
But to go to the field, to become one of the people, to consider that your home and your people as Ruth did with Naomi, and never again be interested in returning to that foreign country where you were born and once called home, loving both the country and the people where you now live and never wishing to depart from them except by the Will of God––to live with them, love them, be one of them and never leave them––that's my idea of a missionary!––It's a marriage!––Forever!––Why not?––That's what Jesus did! And last but not least, like Jesus, to die for them!––That's my idea of a missionary and apparently it was God's idea also, for that's what He sent His Son to do and that's what Jesus did for us!––How can we do less for them? God gave His only Son and Jesus gave His only Life, and lived it just for us, with us, as one of us and died for us!
But it took even more than this!––He had to even live in us and do it for us by His power! When it comes to the showdown, only the supernatural, miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit of God Himself can really do the job and really win their hearts, bring them to a decision and cause them to be born again as a new creature, a new citizen of the Kingdom of God! Only God can do this––but they must see Him doing it in us first of all! As Moody used to say, "The only Bible the World reads is the one bound in shoe leather: You and me!" They must see this miracle-working power at work in our own lives, as a genuine living sample and proof that it can happen! This is our major witness!
I am also convinced that what Jesus said is still true, regardless of nationality, country, colour or creed: "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me!" There is no difference! The heart of Man is the same the World over and his heartaches and sorrows and sins and pains and fear of death are the same! His longings, loves and hunger for God and His Truth, for joy and happiness and peace of mind, are God-created and the same in men the World over!
We've found the same message, the same method, the same love, the same life, the same power, the same Salvation, the same Jesus and the same God work just as well in any language or in any land with any people! His same Word is just as true and just as powerful and just as moving, and His same Spirit is just as great and just as omnipotent and all-loving in one country as in another!
However, we must become all things to all men in order that we might win some! Therefore, there are certainly differences in approaches––to the Roman as a Roman, to the Jew as a Jew, to the Greek as a Greek and to the Japanese as a Japanese! It's a matter of communication in order to make our message understandable and our witness comprehensible and our lives interpretable in the terms, languages and even gestures that they understand, and this may truly be more difficult in some cultures and languages and under certain conditions and in the face of certain taboos, oppositions, religions, governments, customs, backgrounds, ways of thinking etc., than in others.
So we need to learn all we can about a people as well as become one of them––in fact, in order to become one of them––so we can truly communicate with them in a language they understand so that they get the message loud and clear.