The Secret of God and the Other Faith
A hundred years ago evolution was much in the air. Everything was thought to be the result of long development. So it was taken that religion also must have developed; and as monotheism—belief in one God only — is the highest form of religion, this must have come very late in the history of mankind. Among the simpler races it was not expected we should find belief in one God; in fact, it was doubted whether there would be found any clear idea of God at all.
This idea was not altogether unreasonable. When a stranger tries to study the religion of a people he does not know, he first becomes aware of actions and ceremonies, some of which seem to him very strange.
In quite a number of cases the people themselves cannot give a reason for what they do; that is the way the ancestors said things were to be done, and so we do them. Then the visitor will be told stories, myths. Out of these he may be able to construct a picture of the way these people think and of what they believe. Next he may be introduced to the world of ancestors and spirits. But there in most cases it stops. These simple people are quite clever enough to keep their secrets and not to tell more than they wish to tell.
The secret God
So it came about that the great Robert Moffat, who lived for forty-nine years among the Tswana people in South Africa, and translated the whole of the Bible into the Tswana language, believed that the Tswana had no word for God, and no idea that only one God exists. He was mistaken.
A scholar named Pater W. Schmidt, of Vienna, set to work to study the simplest people he could find, such as the aboriginal Ainus in Japan and the pygmies of the rain forests in Africa. He wrote twelve big volumes on the Origin of the Idea of God. He found that, in almost every case, the very simplest peoples had a surprisingly clear idea of the one great God. At first scholars were sceptical; but now it is generally agreed that, though many details need to be further studied, the results of Schmidt’s work, backed up by that of many others, can be accepted as correct.
What do they know of God?
We are dealing with hundreds of peoples, and millions of human beings. Naturally, among them there are many and great differences. But the following points hold true for a large number of peoples:
- The God they know is the one who made all things. Not many of these peoples are like the Hebrews in thinking that God just spoke and it was. They believe that there was something in existence, and that God shaped it and so it took on the form of things as they now are.
- He is the guardian of the rules and customs of the tribe or clan. The big eye, the sun, and the small eyes, the stars, are always watching; children are told that, if they do anything wrong, they will not be able to hide it.
- They think that he gives the rain. The rain comes down from the sky; that must be because he lives beyond the sky and sends down the rain from where he lives.
- Among many people the idea exists that once long ago God was very near to men, so close that human beings could reach up and touch the sky. But then someone (in most stories, as in Genesis, a woman) did something by which God was gravely offended; so God went far away; the sky is far beyond our reach, and God is someone whom we cannot see.
Many questions remain unanswered. My ancestors are not your ancestors. Is my God also your God? The Kikuyu in Kenya believe in a great God, whom they call Ngai, and who lives on the top of Mount Kenya. But is he also the God of all the other people living round about? We find the same question being asked in the Old Testament. At one time the Israelites thought that their God, Yahweh, could be worshipped only in the land he had given them. If they were driven out of that land, they would not be able to worship him. Only very gradually did they come to understand that he is the God of the whole earth and of all the people that dwell in it.
Do these simple people worship the great God? Often the answer seems to be no. If asked why, the answer may be, little people like us cannot approach a great God like that; so we approach him through the ancestors and spirits, who are nearer to us than he is, and also nearer to him than we are. But among some peoples the great God is worshipped in reverence and fear. A European who accompanied a priest of the Akan people in Ghana, as he climbed a hill for some special ceremony of worship, had a profound feeling of the presence and the reality of God.
Is what they know of God enough?
When we talk to these people of the simpler races about God, they understand who it is of whom we are speaking. If, after they have become Christians, they are asked about their experiences, they are likely to say, ‘We knew that God existed and that he was strong; but we did not know . . .’ and then will follow a list of the things that they came to know only through Christian preaching— that he is our Father, that he loves us, that he sent his Son to die for us, that he loves the other peoples in the world as much as he loves us.
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