Can you reach someone you do not like?

Thanks to J.R Briggs for this pic and his article God in the Docks




Three things I read last week came together for this post. Our Sunday bulletin had a history insert about Adoniram Judson's letter to the father of his bride describing the heathens they were going to reach and how a few might be snatched from Hell, but most will not. He waxed eloquent about how rotten these natives were.

Kubili Kondit, a young single missionary with New Tribes Mission is now living her dream of reaching unreached tribes in Indonesia, She shared some stories about a man who was feared killed by the family of a bride he was seeking to purchase in another village, and the joy in finding them both home and alive, and some sad picture of a starving child they were able to save, and she ended with these words, I thank God I am among these precious people. Its more than seeing Christ in them, she sees the best in their culture.

J.R. Briggs posted a powerful illustration of a Florida lake home surrounded by docks that no longer have any connection with the falling water level, and that almost no one did anything to make them useful again, and no one thought of making a dock that floats on the water and would thus always be useful. He likened the water to our present culture and the dock to the church erected to reach the culture, and our failure to reach and connect with the culture. Thus my question, can we reach a culture we do not like, or one we despise and call rotten heathens? This from a guy who came of age in a culture that was despised by our own sets of parents and elders.

I doubt it!