After 14 years, a Buddhist Study Center set up by the church is answering the question of how to explain Jesus to people whose culture and religion make no reference to a personal deity.
Buddhism, a 2,500-year-old religion that claims 350 million adherents worldwide, has been both a missionary challenge and a mission success for Seventh-day Adventists. After 14 years, a Buddhist Study Center set up by the church is answering the question of how to explain Jesus to people whose culture and religion make no reference to a personal deity.
Scott Griswold is the director of Global Mission’s Buddhist Study Center, located in Bangkok. With six years of church planting experience in Cambodia—a predominantly Buddhist country—and much prayer, he and his wife decided to take this opportunity more than two years ago.
“For me it is a matter of saying: God what do you want me to say?” Griswold explains about sharing the gospel with Buddhists. “He knows them, he’s watched them since they were babies, growing up. He knows all about them and what they are struggling with,” says Griswold.
The greatest challenge in sharing the gospel with a Buddhist is that when told about what is unique about Christianity, it doesn’t fit their worldview; therefore, it doesn’t make sense, according to Griswold. “It’s like sticking the wrong puzzle piece in a position,” describes the center director.
Buddhists believe in karma, which maintains that “for every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant [depending on whether] its cause was skillful or unskillful.” In other words, responsibility for bad actions is related directly to the person’s actions, either in the current life or from a past life.
Griswold tells the story of a Buddhist friend in Cambodia: “When he first saw a picture of Jesus on a cross in a church he said, ‘Why on earth do they worship somebody who had obviously such horrible karma? I mean, look at how He died? He must have done something really bad.’”
Griswold continues, “Then, when somebody explained to him, ‘No, Jesus had a perfect life,’ he said, ‘Well maybe in this life but not in his previous life. You’ve had to have done something bad.’”
As impossible as it may seem under such circumstances, Griswold has experienced the power of the gospel to reach people’s hearts. As he was visiting a Buddhist temple and staying at a man’s house there, Griswold says he wanted to say something about Jesus but found Thai a challenge.
“My Thai wasn’t very good and his English wasn’t at all, so we were going back and forth and he said something that just took me aback: ‘Whenever I’m mad, whenever I’m really upset I think about Jesus.’
“I thought, what? What do you mean you think about Jesus on the cross? And he said, ‘I think of how Jesus was so mistreated and spit on and hurt but He stayed calm, he didn’t get angry. In fact He forgave them, and then all my anger goes away.’”
Griswold says he finally realized that there was a piece of the gospel that did fit the puzzle of Buddhist beliefs. His current challenge is studying Theravada Buddhism, a more conservative and strict type of Buddhism practiced mainly in Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar—all Southern Asian countries.
Griswold is working on a Buddhist manual and other materials that will explain Christianity to Buddhists. He also works with the Global Mission team to find what it is that makes Christianity and Adventism still seem very foreign instead of being as close to the Buddhist culture.
These are daunting tasks, but one belief keeps Griswold faithful to his call. “I truly believe that in every culture there is a piece of the image of God still there. Yes, there is sin. There is stuff that is messed up. But if you look you begin to see God’s beauty shining out.”
