The basic presumption of virtually all missionaries is simply that what they have and believe should be believed by others who know nothing of it. They are blind to any perception and knowledge of the Universal Christ who "lights all who come into the world". Instead of the recognition that Christ may already be known to others, has made Himself known, in ways beyond the missionaries ken, they instead presume the ignorance of those they go to. They are blind to the spirit that blows where it will.
Thomas Merton has said this much better than I, in a letter to the zen man D.T. Suzuki:-
I want to speak for this Western world.................which has in past centuries broken in upon you and brought you our own confusion, our own alienation, our own decrepitude, our lack of culture, our lack of faith...........If I wept until the end of the world, I could not signify enough of what this tragedy means. If only we had thought of coming to you to learn something..............If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact?......
Yes. How many centuries?
