THE PAPUA NEW GUINEA RESPONSE TO THE GOSPEL Rev. Albert Burua Moderator of the United Church of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

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1 THE PAPUA NEW GUINEA RESPONSE TO THE GOSPEL Rev. Albert Burua Moderator of the United Church of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Introduction Paper presented at the South Pacific Regional Conference of the World Methodist Historical Society, an affiliate of the World Methodist Council, held at Wesley College, Paerata, Auckland, New Zealand, 18 to 23 May, More than a hundred years ago, our islands were known as the islands of the warriors and cannibals. People lived in isolation and were normally cut off from communicating with one another. Relationships were so limited to clans or next of kin. The rest were referred to as foreigners (vaira). They had their own concept of peace, love and unity. What we know today as peace, love and unity that are biblically based were of course missing. The absence of such Biblical qualities didn't mean that our people didn't have rules and regulations that ordered their lives and relationships within each given community. Order and harmony within each clan was to some extent maintained through strict observances of religious and societal rules and regulations. Our people had a strong value system that was based on religious and humanitarian codes of life. Such value systems were those that guard the integrity and identity of each individual person and the clan within each given locality and context. Like every society in the world our people, both individual and collective, were living out values that they had inherited and owned SK their own. Such values they had organised, conditioned and communicated from generation to generation. Our people's value systems revolved around the traditional religious beliefs. Societal behaviour or conduct spontaneously responded to what people believed and to what they valued. From their value systems and beliefs they inherited a culture. They had become people through the aid and inheritance of the cultures available to them within their own geographical context and locality. Much of the basic Melanesian beliefs remain warm and stable in our people's whole being. While cultures change in response to external influences, basic beliefs remain. Culture, because it is a way of life, continues to change in its appearances in response to whatever foreign and external influences with which it comes in contact. Traditional Society of New Britain worked under rules and regulations. Their rules and regulations enabled them to fully realise their existence as full members of both the spiritual and secular world, and their relationship with nature and the universe. They developed a conviction that by following those rules they would be granted a Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 1

2 type of dynamic power that would enable them to become responsible for their whole life. Secondly by following those rules one is given a vital force and an ability to use his or her senses in choosing between the greater and lesser goods, between the good and the bad spirit. The development of his or her senses lead him or her to be exceedingly conscious of his or her right to be a human being who has dignity and integrity. In my observation I have sensed that the so-called pagan warriors and cannibals of New Britain were more devoted and committed to life. They wanted to be united in love with all living things and nature. Methodism 1875 It was on 15 August 1875 that the boat John Wesley anchored in Port Hunter Bay in Duke ofyorks Islands. This is the date that is remembered today as George Brown Day. Since it was Sunday that they arrived, they had the first worship service on the boat. They quickly impressed the people of Molot and surrounding villages with their singing and reverence during worship. Those were the two most impressive features of the Gospel that caught and drew the attention of the people to the new religion. Singing and reverence were also special features of the traditional religion of the people of New Britain. They, therefore, quickly identified the singing and its harmony as a new magic formula for rallying people together. It was like a new charm formula for peace, harmony and unity. People came from near and far to listen to the new singing charm. The success of Methodism in New Britain. In the same year 1875 missionary activities had extended both to New Ireland and New Britain. The following are some of the reasons why the Methodist Church quickly expanded in New Ireland and New Britain: a) Teaching was new Traders had been around invading the Islands of Papua New Guinea, trying their luck for the wealth that was already discovered in the country. They were cruel to people and often treated them as nothing but usable products to satisfy their greed. Our people, even though primitive, were conscious that such cruel acts were inhuman and unjust and therefore retaliated or withdrew in defeat. Missionaries came with a message of love for justice and liberation. Their teachings were reflected in their lives and approach to people. Their teaching of God as Supreme Creator, at the same time a Loving Father, brought new dimensions into their understanding of gods and spirits. b) Qualities of Life found in Missionaries Missionaries were not philosophers, anthropologists or professional evangelists, rather they were simple people who had a deep sense of Christ's calling and commission to go to feed, to tend, to make disciples and to teach. It was in obedience to Christ that God gave them divine qualities of life which quickly Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 2

3 drew people together to listen to the messages proclaimed. They were loving, patient and gentle with the people. c) Hymns One of our traditional religious experiences is to sing in harmony with nature and the other world, to receive divine power. The singing of hymns in harmony was to my people a magic formula for charms either for women or for the spirits' power. People were drawn together and felt peace with one another through those hymns that were sung. d) Changes in villages as a result of the Gospel were a strong influence and was a powerful witness to villages or islands who had not been visited by missionaries or to whom a missionary had not been sent. People were prepared to receive missionaries because they did not want to miss out on emerging goodness that was already experienced in communities that had been visited or where a pastor was stationed. Peace, freedom of fear and the possesstion of lotu was an uplifting status. e) The Work of the Holy Spirit- No doubt Christ was already there before missionaries arrived. Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit had already prepared the lives of people to be opened and to accept the message that was preached. f) The use of Samoans, Fijians and Tongans should be noted as the major contributions to the establishment of the Church in Papua New Guinea. In many ways our cultures are similar. Our value systems too have very much in common and therefore they found it easier to adjust to our way of life and accepted the living conditions of our people. They quickly learned the languages of the people and presented the Gospel at the very level of our people. Most of them committed their lives as a sacrifice to the end that the Gospel would be received by our people. The tone of sacrifice was voiced by Aminio Bale who said, 'We will go. If we die, we die; if we live, we live.' Many of them did not return, but died in New Britain a victorious death as those who have won the battle and received the crown of glory. The Methodist Church from New Britain and New Ireland extended to the Papuan Islands Region, to the Solomon Islands Region, and then to the Highlands Region. The first few groups of missionaries who came to our islands were not philosophers or anthropologists or professional evangelists, rather simple people who came with one conviction. It was in obedience to the command, 'Go, make Disciples. Baptise, Teach.' The message proclaimed was very demanding and challenging to simple minded people. All they did was like a new charm that drew people together. The message they gave was not philosophical, but simple. The message proclaimed opened the lives of our people to a more powerful, but yet loving, God. The basis of their faith was not destroyed but rather directed to God revealed to us by Christ Jesus. The world around Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 3

4 them, however, continued to exist. This is the world that had shaped their lives, knowledge and beliefs, the world that will continue to make an impact on their lives. Our Acceptance of Methodism In 1882 the Roman Catholic Church came to New Britain, followed by many other Churches. Today the whole country of Papua New Guinea is over evangelised by Christian Churches and Sects. Many of the Christian Churches are no different from world powers who try to win people into their denominational controls in the name of Jesus. Such competitive spirits among Christian Churches or denominations were of great disturbance in the past and have grown worse today. The Government in the past was able to control it by making sure that each denomination was established in a given geographical area. The coming of another denomination into the region where there was already a Church meant conflicts, tensions, confusions and even fights. The introduction of Christianity while it was preaching love, peace and unity continued to make contradictions by creating divisions, hate and confusions among families, clans and communities at large. The problem is because each Church had neatly wrapped up the Gospel into little packages and, because of the competitive spirit, forgot to present Christ. They instead presented to us packages with their beautiful decorations. We admired the decorations and even bowed down to worship decorations without any bother to unwrap or unpack those packages. The continued fights among Christians clearly indicate that we have continued to lay so much emphasis on our special decorations. Decorations are the forms, traditions and expressions that we had inherited as ours and passed on from generation to generation, from country to country, from Church to Mission Field. The forms and traditions are the ideological explanations that painted for us a picture of God in Jesus Christ. The expressions are the liturgical ways through which our beliefs and ideas were communicated. Much of what we have today was taught to us and led us to reject the old traditional Melanesian ways. Our context was viewed as uncivilised, primitive and backward, unfit and unproductive for religious experiences. Through forms, traditions and experiences we have made our identification as LMS and Methodists, now as United Church, Anglicans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, etc. Through these identities we are divided. We have discovered that in becoming Methodist we had become recipients of a divided Church. Christianity needs to be freed from denominationalism before any powerful proclamation of the Gospel can be presented so that the world will believe. In the Spirit of the Lord I have discovered that Christ is beyond place and times; He is beyond traditions and cultures; He is beyond forms and expressions. He cannot be boxed in one's cultural boundaries, one's theological concepts and one's traditions. Christ transcends all as such. He is for all and in all. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 4

5 The Gospel needs Originality We are aware that the Gospel is the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is God's power for salvation. God, to achieve this mission for the whole world in history, had to use a point of contact. It was people and their lives, from which the message of the Gospel cannot be isolated. Here, therefore, we know that the Gospel was firstly inserted into a cultural milieu in which Jesus of Nazareth lived. It is in this cultural context of the Jew God's incarnation took place and where concretely the Gospel was original. This is where the four Gospels speak boldly of Jesus as both human and divine. The Gospel had to use such a setting to transmit the eternal values of God's Kingdom to the Whole World. Jesus, God's Incarnate, although he was born and grew up in this context, lived a style of life beyond and above its cultures. He worked beyond people's codes. He asked many questions about their traditions. He related to people beyond His own family and race. He challenged traditions, especially those which were detrimental to God's principles for healing, liberation and reconciliation of the whole people of God; such traditions that perpetuated injustices, and social and religious discrimination. The Jewish culture did not enslave Jesus, rather He worked to transform it, through those whose lives had been changed by the liberating power of God. His style of life was able to free God's power to penetrate into other cultures without any difficulties. People of another cultural context like ours were able to have personal encounter with Jesus Christ. There are numerous testimonies of this personal encounter from people of different cultural ethnic backgrounds expressed through hymns, stories in books, etc. Their testimonies reveal the truth that Jesus Christ is indeed alive and cannot be limited to one particular place and space at one particular time. Through this conviction churches took seriously Jesus' commands, commission and challenges to God. "Make disciples, baptise and teach.' Yes, it is through this perception that the Church in faith became missionary minded. Evangelisation was the main means by which the Gospel spread throughout the world. Under the same conviction the Gospel reached people within our cultural context. It may be fair to say that evangelisation in many parts of the world, especially in Third World countries, was done as a way of converting people away from their cultures. In many cases our cultures were viewed as counter-productive, incapable of accommodating the Gospel. To some extent the Gospel brought to us had been overwhelmingly westernised to the extent that it had been domesticated by western cultures. Cultures unlike the western were condemned as heathen and backward, incapable of accommodating the Gospel. Besides the proclamation of the Gospel, our people were trained to accept traditions and forms and to follow the ways and expressions that were all foreign. Unpacking the packages within which the Gospel was domesticated was a task undone. If the Gospel had been given to us free of packages, our families, our clans, our communities would Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 5

6 not have been divided. Rather, they would have discovered that in Christ we belong together, we own together and we can share together. Today, to achieve these important Biblical concepts, we have to struggle through loaded traditions and doctrines, which for years have limited Christ in those denominational and cultural packages. Christ's message of healing, liberation and reconciliation has been imprisoned to the extent that Christian communities are not so effective in our proclamation of peace and unity. Christian communities found in the Acts of the Apostles are no different from our Melanesian Communal Societies which were based on inter-dependency. Today the concept and principles of inter-dependency had to be taught as if it was a newly discovered concept. Note that the concept had to be taught because the culture of individualism and competitiveness had tamed and domesticated the Gospel to the extent that the receivers were divided and self-centred. Salvation had been known as a process of alienating people away from their communities. Conclusion The time is now when we ought to know that Christianity is not a denomination; neither is it a tradition; nor doctrines; nor forms and expressions. Rather Christianity is a style of life, found in Christ, lived in and for Christ through faith. For this truth to be realised in every cultural context, we must forthrightly say that Christ cannot be boxed within one's cultural, traditional and doctrinal boundaries. He transcends all things and so it is possible for Him to be in all and for all. Discovering Christ in our own cultural context brings home the reality that Christ is not a foreigner but one whose presence we experience in our midst. Furthermore it becomes a discovered reality that Christ, through those of us who have received Him and believe in Him, has become one of us, yet above us and our respective cultural context. Through this intimate relationship our witness to Christ becomes original. We can then say to you, we believe not only because you told us, but we have seen Him and heard Him speak to us. Hearing Him speaking to us in our immediate cultural context is both a joy and directly a challenge. It is a joy because we are able to experience his living presence in our different localities. This experience is not a duplication but rather original and relevant. It is an experience that assures us that through accepting and believing in Christ we are given the right, the power, to be God's children. This is the right for all, regardless of race, class, sex and age. The experience is also a challenge to listen and become obedient to his call to participate with him in his mission, as found in Luke 4:18-19; a mission of healing, liberating, reconciliation, rehabilitating and announcing the acceptable year of the Lord. In this mission we must be prepared to listen to him through the feelings, the pain, the agony and the cry of our people everywhere for justice, peace and unity. We Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 6

7 see him through those who cry for love, such people as the powerless, the poor, the marginalized; through the faces of the loveless children, youth, men and women. We must be prepared to accept the challenge of Christ's commission to channel the values of His Kingdom through the believing community to the whole world, to bring new life, new hope and liberty that transcends all man-made barriers. It is through personal encounter with Jesus Christ, the present reality of the Gospel, that we have hope, that our culture can be transformed to become a useful media of the whole Gospel for the whole world. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication # Page 7