Measuring Success
by Charles LaRue
The Freethought Association co-sponsored the airing of a documentary at the Wealthy Street Theatre in Grand Rapids, MI recently regarding evangelical missionary work being done by the Global Ministries organization. Their goal was to reach those living in very remote regions on the planet with their Christian message. They also sought out those so far into the depths of the bottom- out- of- sight category of the human condition, whose disenfranchisement was so complete, that they had virtually no access to the ideas, material goods and resources available to those in the larger society; larger society referring to those free citizens with full rights and infinitely greater opportunities. Those on the periphery were referred to by the missionary organization as Tailenders, as they were considered to be the last people left on Earth to inflict with with their own personally held delusion; the Christian (but non-Catholic) mythology.The means they employed to spread their religious virus involved sometimes ingeniously cobbled together devices such as a tri-fold cardboard item with a stylus on one cardboard piece. The special-made record would have a hole in order to be spindled and another to insert a small stick to turn the record manually and thereby produce the audio. Another example of this ultra low-tech equipment was hand crank tape recorders used to spread the Word. Access to the grid or any power source was unnecessary and many of the recipients of these looked on even this crude technology as rather wondrous, producing as it did a disembodied voice, speaking their language, emanating mysteriously from these odd artifacts.
Being missionaries, and not relief workers or social service providers, they had no interest in assisting the indigenous people they encountered in matters pertaining to the real world of matter and energy; of disease, hunger, their plight from being uprooted or killed outright for being in the way of the rich and powerful from without, who wished to exploit them and their natural resources. The missionaries had no problem watching as the people they were there to convert suffered from easily changeable circumstances. After all, it was not their natural lives that they wished to enhance, but their supernatural essences (souls) that they desired to save. The gifts of the Western world that they could have given were withheld. Instead technical, First World, knowledge was used solely for spreading a religious meme.
When missionary work is criticized, it is generally on the grounds that the missionaries are infected with an arrogance; believing themselves alone to hold The Truth. Jesus, as the Christ, was represented as being the one and only Path, Door, Way to Salvation. All who do not accept this dogmatic declaration are destined to unending torture by the God that they feel is defined by the word Love. This God is not the deity of the rational person. It isn’t there to provide evidence or proofs or hold intellectual, enlightening discussions with Its human animals. No- It is just there to mete out a dichotomous eternal bliss for those having mindless blind faith, or, conversely, send the thinking, inquiring ones into a realm of eternal horror and agony. Still, if one IS so inclined as to believe in the nonsense of Christianity and a jealous, vengeful, Sky Daddy; and one is further of the belief that such dire consequences are truly at stake for those who do, or do not, receive and subscribe to the mythic concepts of a barbarous and backward nomadic Middle Eastern tribe from a time of staggering ignorance and credulity, then it can be understood (if not necessarily condoned) that those True Believers would be possessed of a great deal of zeal and determination to save their benighted, brown, heathen brothers.
My question, however, is not one regarding arrogance. After all, it could be argued that Westerners bringing the tools and knowledge to promote good hygiene, mitigate disease, give secular education, sanitation and even the means to reduce the numbers of unwanted and/or unmanageable pregnancies—these individuals, too, feel they are bringing something better to a people who are not up to the standards of those bringing these gifts. Both groups feel they are doing good work and improving the future prospects for other peoples. The Christian missionaries are more interested in the future going past the natural world of matter, while their secular counterparts are more interested in what can be done in the here and now to make for an improved future outcome on the earthly plane.
This all brings me to MY question—one that I do not hear asked when regarding missionary work. What is sufficient to qualify for success in the missionary worldview? How is their work quantifiable? How does one measure quality outcomes? What data are used? What tools may be brought into play to check on results or determine efficiency? When one group teaches another a method for reducing contamination in drinking water, or gives them medicines to protect them against diseases, or ways to reduce certain other health risks, these may all be measured, data accumulated, tests done and changes or adjustments made to better achieve the desired outcomes. The population being treated may have greater longevity, decreased childhood mortality, a sharp reduction in the spread of STDs, fewer instances of other diseases and infections that had, before, left preventable death and illness in the wake. One may readily discern if a child is learning to read and write or not. One may examine the blood of tribal members to detect pathogens…
But how do the missionaries measure success? Those in the documentary, seeking out the Tailenders, did not spend any quality time with the poor wretches whose immortal souls they were saving. There was no follow up done in order to check results. There were no questions administered to see how well those hearing the Word had absorbed the information. There was no head count to see how many were destined to flap avian wings and wear choir robes forever and, conversely, how many were to be cast into the Lake of Fire in eternal damnation. Some groups had a staggering multiplicity of deities they believed in. One would think that missionaries pushing their monotheistic vision, would at least want to ensure that the jealous Bible God wouldn’t have Its easily bruised ego hurt by having to share praise and devotion with so many other supernatural beings. But—this did not seem to trouble our intrepid missionaries. As long as Jesus was among the ectoplasmic legions, that was all that seemed to matter.
Besides there being no effort that I could see to quantify the number of converted or measure their new found allegiance to the strange new mythology, my question goes deeper—I wonder precisely how much information needs to be absorbed in order to create a convert to Christianity… Do they have to know the basic Old Testament outline? Or is all this skipped (or highly glossed over) so as to get to the New Testament? If rainforest folk are confused about the ways of desert dwellers, and their questions remain unanswered, is that OK so long as they can parrot a few lines of Bible text? How MUCH Bible text must they know? Do they only need to be conversant in the concepts of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Since these gospels are all in contradiction with each other throughout, is there a synthesized version that they are given which removes all the internal conflicts? Do they have to know the begats? Do they have to know the Patriarchs or the succession of Kings or which miracles Jesus performed? Do they have to subscribe to the Easter or Christmas stories… and how much of these do they need to know? If their religious notions also deal with the changing seasons—- and, indeed, make better sense of spring and winter patterns, do they have to chuck all they knew in order to believe that a Hebrew virgin’s half god issue explains the winter solstice or that a tortured carpenter who shakes off his death a few days after being thrown in a tomb explains the spring season?
Do they have to be able to recite the Song of Songs? Do they have to know about a guy trapped in a whale’s belly, or believe in snakes and bushes that talk? If they already hold to some pantheistic beliefs about supernatural agency being innate to the flora and fauna around them—but then are told that there is only ONE god BUT that supernatural agency is still potentially in everything from demon cursed swine to a prostitute who finds an empty burial tomband then are told that the new God they are to believe in dwells up in the sky but is also inside every one of us… and that there is a single Father but He is also a three- part deity… well, how much of this do they have to untangle and accept to become a certified, registered Christian?
Are they told that both Jesus and his invisible Daddy had little regard for those outside of a specific geographical and ethnic groupor that the Father is everybody’s God and the Son died to redeem all inhabitants of the planet for all time, even though both Father & Son seemed remarkably ignorant and disinterested in all beings save for those residing in a small patch of land in the Middle East. If some of the Tailenders SOMEHOW were able to make learning inroads into the natural mechanisms of the world, would they then have to cast all this hard won information away, so as to believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, that it is flat and the center of a system having only a greater and lesser light and pin pricks are spangled in a firmament with water above it? How much incorporation of one erroneous ancient myth can they have into their own erroneous myths and still have the construct be acceptable to the missionaries? Is it all or nothingYahweh or the Highway? Or can the firmament be made of thatch, the tempting serpent be a tree frog and the virgin being understood to give birth to the Savior orally? How many of the basic themes, notions and bits of content have to remain inviolable and intact to make the neophyte True Believer a Christian?
Do they have to believe that Jesus is silent at his sentencing as one story in the Bible has itor that he gives a little speech as in another? How much ancient world history must they be cognizant of? Do they have to understand the Roman society? How much do they need to know about the ancient Hebrews or the Greeks? Do they need to have an enormous fixation on foreskins and another group’s forebears? Do they need to believe in a God who is merciful and all- loving, yet drowns Its children and delivers entire tribes into the butchering hands of another, more favored, tribe? Must they subscribe to the grave sins of planting mixed crops, or wearing clothes of mixed materials, or must they only be cafeteria Christians, like the missionaries themselves, and only deem SOME parts of the putative eternal laws as sacrosanctsuch as viewing homosexuals as abominations? Must they make only one day of the week Holyand one that differs from that of those who fabricated the commandment in the first place? What if EVERY day was special and holy to them before? What if they were a tolerant and peaceful societywhat if they were Christlike pre-missionary incursion—-but are told that they are wicked and sinful unless they subscribe to the messages from a hand crank recorder?
If they had traditionally brought wrongdoers before the tribal elders for justice to be served and the judgment might have been making amends to the victim in some way—must they now turn to biblical justice and stone the baddie to death along with one’s disobedient son? Must they forgo all the wisdom of their culture to make room for the retribution-style justice of people who lived millennia ago?
Basically, I ask how many words of a book of foolish fables, horror, and occasional gems must they be able to parrot back to be successfully counted as converts? What if they get all but one word right and teach that to their children who also omit that one word? Will they be doomed to Hell? The Bible God was all about visiting agony upon the descendants of ancestral offenders, so this is probably the case. How much do they need to comprehend of what they can mimic? In Islam, even illiterate people are mandated to read the Qur’ran in its entirety, even if they cannot tease out any understanding from the printed page. Special allowances are made in Christianity for mentally defective individuals or those who die as babes without time for indoctrination to be commenced. Are there similar allowances made for those who are struggling to learn in vain—the doctrines and worldviews of a wholly different culture and time?
How do missionaries, dealing with a realm apart from that of nature and matter and reality, measure success IN the actual physical world? They cannot do a head count in Heaven (unless or until they are there themselves to witness) to see how many of those receiving their message won favor with Jesus. Since, apparently they cannot make any tangible measurements—or if they are able to, employing social science methodology—they do not do so, is their work, then, merely self- serving? That is, do they do their work only in order to accrue Brownie Points from the Lord—with the people they encounter only serving as tools to grease the tracks to Heaven for themselves? I’m just asking…I’m just curious about these matters.
