Decolonizing The Great Commission - Part 2

Q&R: A few thoughts on Christian Missionaries, Christian Universalism & Mother Teresa

Welcome to Masala Chai Theology with Father Joash P. Thomas: a space to spice up our spiritual journeys with ancient, Empire-resisting, and precolonial Christian ways of understanding God and neighbour - in ways that risk upsetting our Empire-shaped religious palate. This space builds on Fr. Joash’s bestselling book, The Justice of Jesus, which you can buy here for 30% off plus free shipping (US only) or wherever you get your books / audiobooks globally.

I’m going to be honest: I am completely blown away by the overwhelmingly positive response you’ve given to my previous post, ‘Decolonizing The Great Commission’. I appreciate your grace in letting me workshop these not-yet-fully formed thoughts based on much wrestling I’ve been doing on ‘The Great Commission’. I feel so much less alone in my wrestling already!

I thought I’d put together some follow up thoughts in response to some of the most frequent questions I’ve received ever since.

In case you missed this for any reason, you can catch up on the original article below before proceeding with my follow up Q&A on this:

My Responses to FAQ’s on this article:

Q: What do you make of ‘unreached people groups’? I want them to know Jesus because I really want what’s best for them!

A: Great question to be wrestling with! I would frame it like this - there is no people group that Christ has not already made himself known to. Or in other words, contrary to what we were taught in our evangelical upbringings, there are no people groups who are ‘unreached’ by the love of God. We see this across Pauline texts like Romans 1 & 8, and Colossians 3 ! Christ is all in all. And as one of my favourite US post-evangelical pastors, Zach W. Lambert often says, “All means all!”

So the question we should be wrestling with is this: Why do we really want to go to “the nations?” Is it really for them? Or is it mostly just for our preference of seeing more people understand the divine exactly like us? Because if we really wanted people to know the love of Jesus, we would double down on generosity towards justice work already being done by the Global Church (including those that my evangelical tradition taught me to not see as Christians such as Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican Christians; the vast majority of the Global Church).

I personally land on - “We have no business going in to try to change people’s beliefs.” If we go, go in to learn humbly and connect the dots for ourselves in relational mutuality. And don’t go in with the justification that Jesus told us (21st century westerners) to go; because like I shared in my previous article, that’s a colonial-era lie that ignorantly or narcissistically centers us, while decentering the interpretations of those who have gone before us in the Global Church prior to the Protestant Reformation and era of colonialism.

And if you go, don’t go in with the goal of converting - because anything in the realm of that reeks of colonialism’s Great Commission instead of Jesus’ Greatest Commandment. After all, Jesus doesn’t invite us to conversion; he invites us to transformation through Theosis (participating in God’s divine nature - as the eastern church holds to) and through the catechism of disciples who will embody the peaceful & nonviolent way of Jesus that resists the ways of Empire - including the instinct to control how our neighbours understand God that many of us (including myself) have tragically inherited.

I know this is tough stuff to grapple with. Let’s keep wrestling in community!

Q: I appreciate what you’re saying so much, Father Joash. But it’s really blowing things up for me. I’m a church leader who is going to be teaching a class in my community on Global Missions soon using the ‘Perspectives’ model. It’s a model that centers ‘The Great Commission’ (what I now know to be a colonial-era framework) by praising its missionary fathers such as William Carey and Hudson Taylor. But I want to present a decolonized perspective now by inviting my students to wrestle with all of this history. How would you recommend I proceed?

A: Wow - I’m sure this blows things up in the best ways possible for you! Thank you for wrestling with me on the complexities of all this.

If I were you, I would probably frame this as, “We can’t ignore the larger historical context that has framed our understanding of The Great Commission; often at the cost of what Jesus actually instructs us to do - The Greatest Commandment (loving God by just as much loving neighbour as we love ourselves). So if we are going to ‘go’ to engage in missions work, what does it look like for us to ‘go’ while recognizing that Christ has already been present where we are going so that we can be transformed by him there - even through encounters with Christ in the unlikeliest peoples and places?” And what does it look like for us to partner with this Christ who is already at work on the margins?

I always tell my students, live audiences & readers - “I don’t want you to agree with me. But sit in the tension of all this with me - even if you don’t yet know where to land on all this. That could be a helpful place to start. I have no doubt that the Spirit will keep illuminating you on how to best proceed!

Q: I’m still chewing on all this but am really appreciating this information. I still however feel like people need to hear about Christ. We don’t need to have them believe what we believe but we should be holding our responsibility to engage in verbal proclamation in tension with the fact that evangelism has been highly shaped by colonialism, right?

A: Totally get your wrestling! And totally get where you’re coming from in landing there; I was there too a little while ago myself. I actually first started seminary many years ago with the full intent of serving as an overseas missionary someday - something I’ve outgrown as I’ve decolonized and realized that the mission field for me is actually western Christians who largely struggle to articulate and embody a liberative, decolonized Gospel that actually sounds like “good news to the poor and oppressed.”

But as I say in the article: “The colonial posture of “we know better than you what is best for your own good” is one that persists in western Christianity today - even in myself at times if I’m being brutally honest and holding up a mirror.”

I trust in the vastness of God’s mercy and the love of God to meet people wherever they are and not rely on my own ability to “get people saved” as I was raised to believe in the evangelical tradition. Because as Scripture teaches us in Romans & Colossians, Christ has already been revealed to all of creation and there is no one who is ‘unreached’ by the love of God because of this. Where can we go to escape God’s love?

And one day, every knee will bow and every tongue confess the Lordship of Christ when Jesus returns to make everything that Empire has broken right - regardless of my faithfulness or unfaithfulness. And that to me (and our poor & oppressed neighbours) actually sounds like good news. Blessings on your wrestling!

Q: Wait, Father Joash. Follow up question - do you believe that everyone will ultimately be saved? Are you a Universalist?

A: I will now start keeping my responses private for just my Paid Subscribers - my living room chai conversation partners who join me in deeper wrestling and so generously support my writing work by helping me create more contemplative wrestling, research & writing space to do wide-reaching work like this.

Here’s how I respond to that question on Universalism…