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PARCHEO CORNFIELD
-
Donald Shirley looks over his grandfather's nine-acre
plot near Many Farms, Arizona, on the Navajo lndian reservation. The field receives
irrigation water, when available, from a nearby storage reservoir.
and morality, it is never
too
late
to
make corrections.
Certainly the Indians needed the
singular unifying force of true
Christianity. But the hollow Chris–
tianity they were shown, muddled
with hypocrisy and líes, did little
good. Even today, modero Chris–
tianity is still largely unfruitful
among the Indians, because the sim–
plicity and purity of the teaching of
the Bible have been lost.
Vine Deloria, a noted Indian
scholar, writes: "Religion today, or
at least Christiani ty, does not pro–
vide the understanding with which
society makers sense.... Christian–
ity fights unreal crises which
it
ere-
46
ates by its fascination with its own
abstractions"
(Custer Died For Your
Sins,
MacMillan, 1969, p. 119).
Something of the irrelevance and
hypocrisy of what is falsely labeled
Christianity is seen in this dialogue
between a white commissioner and
an Indian named Joseph, who as–
serted that he did oot want scbools.
"Why do you not want schools?"
the commissioner asked.
"Th ey wi ll teach us to have
churches," Joseph answered.
"Do you not want churches?"
"No, we do not want churches."
"Why do yo u not wa n t
churches?"
"They will teach us lo quarrel
about God," Joseph said. "We do
not want to learn that. We may
quarrel with men sometimes about
things on this earth, but we never
quarrel about God. We do not want
to learn that."
This dialogue illustrates the hy–
pocrisy of modero Christiani ty,
as
i
t
was presented
to the native Ameri–
cans, and the historie failure of the
white man's crusade for Christ.
A simpler, much more di rect ap–
proach toward Christianizing the
natives should have been for the
white man to say to himself: "Let's
obey God's laws. They are good for
us. We will be blessed for keeping
them. Then the Indians will ask us,
'How can we be blessed as you
are?' "
Of course, the immense material
riches of the North American conti–
nent were received by white settlers
anyway. But instead of additional
spiritual and personal blessings
being showered on the newcomers.
much human suffering, heartache
and sometimes premature death be–
fell them. I f only the white settlers
had trusted explicitly in the God
whom they professed as their pro–
tector!
A living example by whites of
obedience
to
God's laws and con–
sequent mental freedom, personal
blessings and protection from God
would have never created the re–
sentment , futility and lack of
purpose wbich commonly besets
American Indians today.
The simple message of one God
and His universal code of ethics
holds the key to unlocking personal
physical blessings now and hope for
the future.
It
is not a message of fa–
voritism toward any race or
ethnic
group. This message contains the
purpose of all human life. Once any
individual takes the step of obeying
the laws of God, the plethora of so–
cial ills he suffers will begin to fall
away.
That
needed first step is up
to
the individual, however. God is not
forcing his laws nor his blessings
upon anyone.
o
PLAIN TRUTH February 1973