Chapter 10
The Right to Feel Superior
The meeting of the Missionary Union had closed. The Bible Institute students were leaving the room in groups, and many of them were discussing the message which they had just heard.
"What did you think of his last point?" asked one.
"That about race prejudice, you mean? About not thinking that because our skin is white, we're better than anyone else? To tell the truth, it seemed a bit superfluous to me. I suppose race prejudice and race pride still do exist, but not in a group like this. Why, we're practically all missionary candidates!"
"Just what I thought myself!" rejoined the first. "You'd think he'd gotten his audience mixed. But he knew he was talking to missionary candidates, all right. That's the strange part. The rest of his talk—it was the real stuff. But that one point—I just couldn't make it out."
"Oh, he's just fifty years out of date, that's all," commented another. "That's the way it was when he went to the field—the imperialistic white man and the downtrodden native—but times have changed. People wouldn't act like that now. Each race has its own culture, and its own contribution to make to enrich the culture of the world. We realize all this now. The Christian world has come a long way since he was in training. Pride of race! We're more likely to be ashamed of our race, if he only knew it. Look at the state the world's in—all trouble stirred up by the white race!"
"Some of those old missionaries were imperialistic, all right!" A slight, blond youth joined the conversation. "You should hear some of the tales my father tells! Ordering the native people around as if they were slaves! Such cases were few and far between, of course. But, you know, I don't think that's the sort of thing he was driving at. Times may change, but not the human heart. Pride is just as easy a sin to fall into as it ever was. Thinking that we're better than someone else—it may not be because of our race, but merely because the other fellow is poor or uneducated—we can't just dismiss it and say, 'I'm in no danger of that.'"
"Well, perhaps there's something—"
"Aw, just because you grew up on a mission field—"