Content and Motives

Vincent Donovan lived in Tanzania before and after it achieved its independence from Britain. He was there as the British national anthem was sung for the last time, the British Union Jack being lowered, and the new flag of Tanganyika flew for the first time. He was a Catholic missionary living in Tanzania (then Tanganyika) in the late1950s through the 1970s. He spent his time there with very little of the comforts which we enjoy, living among the Masai and later the Sonjo people. He watched his hometown disappear out of the back of a train, he learned Swahili and the Masai language, and he lived in tent without access to running water. He writes to his family and friends to kiss the faucets and taps at home for him. In one of his letters home, he says, “...it is not easy work. It is hard. It is discouraging. It is thankless. It is lonely. But I wouldn't willingly change it for any other work in the world.”



Donovan taught the Beatitudes to a people for whom mercy was a vice and not a virtue. “They told me that a man who was wronged by another man was not a man unless he worked out his own revenge...,” he writes. “This revenge is not an empty word... I have seen it worked out in the most horrible forms. I have reached the point of not being able to be shocked or startled at anything anymore. But I couldn't help thinking how unfit I have become for chatting with the Sodality women of St. Bridget's in Connecticut about their difficulties in arranging a cake sale.”



He endured these difficulties in order to bring his religion and his gospel to the people of Tanzania. His letters home to his family and friends make evident his compassion for the people he lived among. But what was his message? What is the content of the religion he traveled so far to spread? The content of his gospel which he taught is written in The Missionary Letters of Vincent Donovan:

“Once there was a young maiden, a virgin, who was very beautiful and very good. She was so beautiful and so good and so holy... that God wanted her for Himself. ... And so that girl, who was called Mary, agreed, and she became the espoused one of God Himself. ... And so after some time, God, by His invisible power, without even appearing on earth, placed a child in Mary's womb... He was the greatest warrior and chief who had lived up until now. ... Every brave man can join the tribe of Christ. ... Christ is our head and he needs brave, good warriors for his tribe and his chiefdom.”

All those years of preparation and travel and hardship to bring them a message of works, a message which says God will accept your goodness, if you have enough goodness. No mention is made of the reason man needs a savior (sin), and no mention of Christ's death and the purpose of Christ's death (atonement). Donovan left out all discussion of sin consciously. To teach the doctrine of original sin, he said, was to engender hopelessness. “The Sonjo and the Masai consider their ancestors beautiful...it is no part of the Christian message to tell them that they are not...that their ancestors and their peers were and are steeped in sin...” So in an effort to not bring them any bad news, he ended up with no gospel at all.

Sometimes it is tempting to think that we ought to be approving of all things done from a caring motive. We are told by the world that it is unloving to disagree with people. It is even called hateful to say that another person's beliefs are wrong. Like a child who dislikes discipline, we are told that to love someone means to approve of them and all of their choices. But just as a wise parent knows that love sometimes requires hard truths, being loving sometimes means telling someone that they are wrong. Christians are accused of violating society's law of non-judgment. The god of tolerance loves everyone- almost. There are a handful of ideas one can be disdainful of, like the truth claims of Christianity, and one will still consider themselves open minded and tolerant.

The command to love one's neighbor is meaningless without further explanation. What does it mean to love someone? Whose notion of love are we to emulate? Some people come up with their own notion of what love looks like; they invent their own ethical code, and they expect others to live by it. And those codes can be as detailed as any organized religion. But Christians are to define love according to the Scriptures. It is God who is the law giver.

Paul writes in Philippians 1:17 that it is the message, not the motive, that is central. “Some indeed preach Christ from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill: The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains; but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.” Paul is obviously not saying that it is good to preach from selfish ambition. But the gospel can change hearts apart from the motives of the one bringing the message.

So when we pray for missionaries, we ought to pray that their message would be undiluted. We need to pray that God will make His people able to faithfully communicate His truth. It is in this way that the church is “the golden casket,” as described in O Word of God Incarnate, “where gems of truth are stored.”