Essay Example - The Universalist Theology of Sadhu Sundar Singh

Born on 3rd September 1889, Sadhu Sundar Singh was a strong and faithful Sikh for most of his early life (Satyavrata, 2001). He had a passion for his ancestral Sikhist religion and usually questioned the ways of Christian priests. To test his own faith, he decided to commit suicide by jumping onto a railroad track and expect “the true God” to come to his rescue before he could die. On the night of this resolution, he dreamt about Jesus, leading to his resolve to join Christianity and earning him rejection from his father. This paper describes the story and works of Sadhu Sundar.

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Early Life

India is famous for its deep-rooted non-Christian beliefs. Sikhism is a religion in India that began in 1500 A.D and believed in the existence of only one God while rejecting the teachings of other religions and idolatry (Satyavrata, 2001). Sadhu Sundar was born into this atmosphere and it formed a major part of his upbringing. His life began in Rampur village, Punjab state, India. He went to Ewing Christian High School, where daily Christian lessons were part of the syllabus. Most of the time, he refused to read the bible because he did not believe in Christian teachings (Mukherjee, 2016). His mother also took him to sit at a Sadhu’s foot every week.

His mother passed on when he was fourteen, which made him angry at God, thus he ended up burning the Bible in public. As he would later narrate, burning the Bible made him feel like he did the right thing, but it made him unhappy and exacerbated his confusion in faith. He prayed that one day God will reveal Himself to him if he truly existed. One day in December 1903, he intensified his prayers for God’s revelation and undertook to kill himself by jumping onto the train that passed beside their home and was due at five o’clock in the morning (Mukherjee, 2016). For hours, Sundar supplicated, "O God, if there is a God, reveal thyself to me tonight." Hours passed and he continued to pray.

Conversion

Within his Indian upbringing, Sundar’s soul had been filled with emptiness and despair. He always longed to have a better understanding of himself, his faith, and religion (Dobe, 2005). It is amid this confusion that he set to kill himself. Nearly half an hour before his planned suicide, he had a dream that revealed Jesus Christ to him, turning from a vicious enemy of Christianity to an enthusiastic Christian apostle. In the dream, a glow suddenly filled Sundar’s room, rendering a man before him. The man’s hands were penetrated by nails (Mukherjee, 2016). From this milieu, Sundar heard a voice proclaim, “How long will you deny me? I died for you; I have given my life for you."

The revelation was socking as it was not the “God” that he had expected, but it was relieving for Sundar. He had been praying for Hindu gods. Jesus was a figure of the rival Christian faith who his teachers had tried to force him to work with. It amazed Sundar that Jesus showed up for him and had no anger but love on his face, and thus he accepted Jesus as the true savior, thus converting to Christianity (Satyavrata, 2001). He knelt before Jesus and felt a fulfilling a new wave of peacefulness. The vision disappeared, but left Sundar with reinvented joy and peace. He devoted himself to a simple, holy, and compassionate life and set out determined to get Christian baptism.

Consequences of Conversion

Sundar woke up his father at dawn to narrate his night vision of Jesus, announce his reformation, and declare his newly accepted faith. He was only fifteen at this time, but seemed committed with unwavering devotion. His father begged him to forego the new conviction, but Sadhu refused. His father thus disowned him and organized a farewell bash for him as his last meal with the family. The father however poisoned the food, and when the poison got better of Sundar hours later, a nearby Christian mission came to his recue (Appasamy, 2002). He stayed at the Sabathu Christian Leprosy Home, taking care of the leprosy patients at the center.

Sikhs who came before Sundar suffered dreadful maltreatments whenever they got suspected of compromising their beliefs. It was treason to convert to Christianity. Because of this, nearly all Sikhs were ardently loyal to the religion (Singh & Comer, 2014). As expected, Sundar’s conversion brought him trouble. Most of his kinsmen tried all means to get him back to Sikhism. They pleaded with him, bribed, and threatened him, but Sundar maintained his new belief. His father thus officially disowned him, his brothers tried to poison him severally and his clansmen consistently threw reptiles into his house. Indian authorities arrested him and locals stoned him (Mukherjee, 2016). But Christian missionaries were always there for him.

Sundar also cut his Sikh long hair, but chose to retain his turban. Even amidst the sharp opposition, he proceeded to get baptized in 1906 on his 16th birthday in a Christian church in Simla. He began his missionary job, but found it hard to acquire venues to preach or get an audience. Some Christian churches could agree to give him a pulpit, but the rules were strange to Sundar. From this feeling, he instantly understood that Indians found the gospel hard to understand and accept because of the rigid ways in which it was taught (Appasamy, 2002). He sought a language that was in line with Indian beliefs and life patterns, thus choosing to become a Sadhu.

Sadhu Sundar Singh’s Adventism and Beliefs

Sundar resolved to fully dedicate himself to Jesus Christ as a Sadhu, but from a universalist front. While at it, he could wear a yellow robe and his turban, live to serve others, give up all his earthly possessions, and adopt celibacy. He communicated the gospel by magnifying the importance of peace and love through the blood of Jesus. With him was only a new testament Bible; no money or any possessions (Satyavrata, 2001). He kept emphasizing that he was not worthy to emulate the exact steps of Jesus, but like Jesus, wanted no home or wealth, but to live on the road, sharing his people’s suffering and dining with whoever shared with him while glorifying the love of God.

As a Sadhu, Sundar always remained ideologically independent throughout his missioning. He approached religion with an open-minded and liberal mindset, which allowed him to win many souls worldwide. He also believed that public worship was not important because souls pray better singly than in groups (Singh & Comer, 2014). Sundar could unashamedly show and defend his universalist beliefs. He continually expressed his confidence that both faithful Christians and non-Christians would go to Heaven. He articulated that the divine spark in people’s souls could not be irreversibly tattered, and however much a sinner could wander away from God, they would eventually return and see heaven (Mukherjee, 2016). Thus, he campaigned that people should never despair of sinners.

British Culture in Christianity

Sundar mostly stayed in missions and got increasingly worried about the incorporation of British culture into Christianity. At the Anglican college in Lahore, Anglican priests, such as Bishop Lefroy, insisted that Sadhu sings English hymns, wears “respectable" formal Christian attire, and abandons his turban. He saw himself to be only interested in spreading God’s message and not the aesthetics of Christianity. By 1910 (Satyavrata, 2001), he had had enough, and handed back his preaching license to return to his universalist Sikh life. He reinforced the course of his ministry of delivering the message of Christianity while wearing Sikh attire and speaking the language of Indian Sikhism.

Sundar’s exit from the parish was primarily fueled by the bishop’s comments that implied that Eastern attire were not respectable (Singh & Comer, 2014). His frustration was worsened when the bishop barred him from preaching before the parish without proper permission. And when the priest stated that Sundar should never visit Tibet again, Sundar felt that his mission, God, and his personality had been insulted. He believed that by avoiding his Tibet pilgrimages, he would be running away from his religious call. He saw the move as a backslide from his spiritual progress. According to Mukherjee (2016), he left the center and proceeded with his annual treks to Tibet from 1912.

Strange Tales

From most of his trips, Sundar usually returned with captivating tales. On one instance, he stated that he had found a 300-year old person on religious solitude at the Maharishi mountain caves of Kailas, with whom he stayed for many weeks and warmly fellowshipped together (Dobe, 2005). On another occasion, he reported to have visited Rasar town, where he got captured and thrown into a pit full of rotting flesh and bones to die, but someone, Jesus, dropped him a rope after three days and he climbed up to safety (Appasamy, 2002). Another season, he claimed to have gotten help from Sunnyasi Mission members (Appasamy, 2002), who were believed to disciples of Jesus.

Sundar’s World Travel

During his life in Christianity, Sadhu travelled the world and became widely known and accepted by many Christians in India, Japan, China, etc (Satyavrata, 2001). From these missions, he came back with wild stories of how he had overpowered strange beings, objects, and forces. His overlying belief was that Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists had equal chances of going to heaven as any faithful Christian. He also visited Malaysia, Western Europe, Israel, Australia and gave sermons in big cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Lima, Jerusalem, and others. In western nations, Sundar experienced a pattern that struck him. The Westerners viewed Eastern holy men as “heathens” and “pagans”.

Sundar consistently publicly denounced Western Christians because of their discriminative belief system. To rebuke the unchristian segregation of Eastern men of God by the western Christians, he gave an example of his mother. He explained that his mother was not a Christian, but proved to be clearly Godlier than some Christians. His mother served God with dedication, always worshipped more affectionately and peacefully than many Christians of the day. He even promised to request God to send him to hell to be with his mother should he miss her in heaven (Mukherjee, 2016). He stated his realization that many people in India lead holier lives than most Christians, but they did not know how to openly proclaim the Lord.

Even with his rising fame and acceptance, Sundar maintained humility and modesty, and would jocularly express how much he fought Satan to he (Sundar) could remain humble. He committed to follow the steps of Jesus toe by toe, always returning evil with kindness and striving to use love to win over his enemies. This solemnly polite mood shamed his enemies and won many of them over. One major soul that Sundar won into Christianity was his father, who later resolved to fully support him in his Christian ministry. His humility is what made him notice how English people worshipped themselves, but loudly proclaimed Jesus (Satyavrata, 2001). To him, that kind of self-interest was more ungodly that the idolatry that he had witnessed in India.

Sundar argued that in as much as some Indians worshiped Idols, Western Christians sought worldly comfort, possessions, and pleasure with all their souls, and both scenarios are not in line with the ways of Jesus. He also saw that Westerners were blessed with development and had planes and electricity, but the Easterners had the gift of seeking the truth and sharing love. He backed up this claim by saying that all the three wisemen who went to see Jesus were from the East (Appasamy, 2002).