From the Easy Chair

Problems Faced on the Mission Field

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 53-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161BA97

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161BA97, Problems Faced on the Mission Field from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 207, November 21, 1989.

This evening there are four of us—John Lofton, Otto Scott, myself and Tim Vaughn—and we are going to talk with Tim Vaughn about his missionary experiences in Papua, a very interesting insight into the problems that are faced on the mission field.

Let say, by way of ... for emphasis, a few years ago when I was in Australia someone from Britain handed me something the size of a smaller telephone directory, but of several hundred pages. This gentleman served something, was thoroughly disgusted. He said, “This is what was framed in London as the constitution for Papua.” And he said, “We still have head hunters back in the hills and most of the people have no capacity to understand this. But they are going to impose a constitution that most people would find intolerable reading after the first 50 pages on a people as backward as this. And they feel that they have achieved a landmark in civilization to have so enlightened a document.”

Well, remember that constitution, because although we won’t be discussing it later Tim will tell you something about Papua and the people there and then you will realize what is wrong with our various western nations, the U N, our professors as they approach countries like this with no awareness of the conditions, writing constitutions for people they have never seen.

Well, with that, Tim, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and going over there and...

[Vaughn] Yeah. First of all, I think, fifty... nobody in the entire country could make it to 50 pages even of our constitution. They probably have a hard time getting through the first sentence, because none of them can read. But the reason that I wanted to go to Papua New Guinea was because I have been interested in Bible translation for years and there is still something like four or 5000 Bible... languages that still need the Bible translated into them. And of that four or 5000, a significant number are in Papua New Guinea.

For so many centuries the people have been so scared to go out of sight of their own village that whole languages have developed in every isolated little valley. Now I am not talking about a dialect, I am talking about a language as different as French is from German within a five minute walk of anywhere in the country practically. In fact, I would venture to say that if you were to be dropped in the middle of the entire country... anywhere in the entire country, you wouldn’t have to walk more than an hour, an hour and a half at the most to get into a completely different language group.

And another thing about Papua New Guinea is that it was one of the most recent of all the nations that have been opened up to western civilization. It took so long to put, you know, the tribal wars and cannibalism that the Australian government, which control half of the nation and the German government which control the other half of the nation had to give special permission that anybody could... anybody that they allowed to go travel through and do missionary work. And it wasn’t till like the 1950s that some of the highland areas were even opened up to missionaries. And one of the things that ... one of the things that bothered me about Bible translation was that I was a Calvinist at the time and you hardly ever hear about Calvinists... Calvinistic missionary work and I was... I was somewhat distraught because I wanted to look into the mater very much and I didn’t know how in the world I was going to get a chance to go somewhere and be apprenticed under a man that was actually doing it, rather than going to a seminary for four years. I thought the best thing to do would be just to apprentice myself which I see as more biblical to an older man who is in the field.

And providentially a man came to speak at our church and he had been a successful Bible translator in Papua New Guinea and I asked if I could go out and live with him for a while to see how I would fit in and he said that he was more than happy to take me as long as the church would recommend me. And my church did and sent me out for several months to go live with him. But I think that is enough as... by way of introduction.

[Rushdoony] And why would the people not go very far from their village?

[Vaughn] Ah, yes. Well, they were... they were scared of being assassinated. Every tribe... not only every tribe, but every village had its own sorcerer which in the pidgin language was translated as the poison man because they are chief instruments of dealing death was through narcotics, through drugs of varying potencies. And, in fact, one thing that surprised me as a... as a student of languages is that all the languages in Papua New Guinea have duals instead of having like in English he walks or they walk, they have he walks, they walk and those two people walk, because it was impossible for anybody to walk by themselves for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, because poison man would set out and assassinate them.

And the reason for the assassinations was visions and it didn’t have to be so much your... your brother killed this man so this man’s relatives are going to kill your brother. Anybody in your tribe was fair game and so if I killed somebody from a neighboring tribe, somebody from that neighboring tribe wouldn’t even necessarily try to kill me. They would just attack somebody from my tribe or my immediate family. So it was impossible to go any amount of distances at all from your... from your own little village.

[Lofton] Well, as one who went to the... only to the public schools, I am afraid, may I ask you where is Papua New Guinea?

[Vaughn] Yes, it is... I think it is the second largest island in the world. It is just north of Australia.

[Lofton] Ok.

[Vaughn] Just north of Australia.

[Scott] And you say you went to stay with this older man. Was it in New Guinea?

[Vaughn] In Papua New Guinea, yeah. They... they combined the two nations, but yes, it was in Papua New Guinea in a tribe called the {?} which is a ... a sub tribe of the language group of the {?} and it breaks down from there on to bigger and bigger and bigger sections. They ... the {?} was the nearest. They actually named a town after {?} who was in the ... in the province of {?} is ... is in the eastern highlands province of Papua New Guinea.

[Scott] Well, this language was unwritten.

[Vaughn] Exactly, exactly. Yes. All of the languages were unwritten because none of them had any idea at all. None of the... whatever they are, 700 languages and 3000 dialects and none of them had a written language. And so missionaries would go in there, first learn the language and then before actually translating a Bible they would write down some of the old folk tales, for two reasons. One was to familiarize themselves with the language and number two was to get people interested in reading, because that was... that is a major obstacle.

[Rushdoony] Do you know that a U N commission about 10, 15 years ago rebuked Australia that they had not established a university for the natives?

[Vaughn] Yeah. That doesn’t... that doesn’t... {?} They have some universities now and the only place that Communism is prevalent in that whole country is in the universities. In fact, there is some fear there that the Indonesians will end up taking over Papua New Guinea because they already own half of the island that it is situated on in the excuse that the Indonesians may very well use is Communism, because we all know the story of {?} and how he... in the legacy he left for his Communists.

[Scott] Well, the mission ... or... pardon me. The missionary that you studied with, he knew the language.

[Vaughn] Yes. It took him about him about 20 years to learn the language.

[Scott] Twenty years.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Yeah, the {?} languages are not... obviously not Indo European and they are much more difficult for people of European background to understand, than, say, French or even a Slavic language.

[Scott] Could you say something in that language?

[Vaughn] Sure. {?} is something I taught me three year old son the other day. It is {?} which means blow on the fire to get it going hot. The reason I learned that... that was the first phrase I learned because everybody lived in a little grass hut that was circular in shape and the only form of heating and cooking was a pile of wood in the middle of it that was burning all the time so you could put a sweet potatoes in the ashes and it would keep you warm and so forth. And I ... I wasn’t a very good.... I never did belong to the boy scouts or anything and I had a hard time starting these fires all the time. And the word for young man was {?} and so whenever I wanted a fire started I would look out the door until I found a young kid and I would say {?}. And immediately they would come running over and start the fire for me.

[Rushdoony] Was it cold enough there that you had to have a fire?

[Vaughn] Yeah. In... in the highlands it is not... It is... I guess you would have to call it sub tropical rather than, or semi tropical rather than tropical. In the highlands every once in a while they actually get a frost that is cold enough to kill some of the sweet potato vines, but in the day time it is so hot that Europeans of fair complexion, of which I am one, had to carry an umbrella in the daytime to keep from getting blisters on their skin.

[Scott] Well then you lived in one of these huts.

[Vaughn] While I was out... while I was out doing my thing I was living in the huts, but the missionaries had achieved an incredible feat of workmanship in the middle of the jungle for the benefit of their wives. They actually were able to get two by fours from somewhere or another and put up a little cabin. And they collected water from the roof and they .... so everybody would have running ... we all had running water. And plus they had a way of putting copper tubing through the stove to where we even had hot running showers so it was really kind of nice. And one of the men he actually had a propane burning refrigerator so whenever they went into town once ever two months or three months they were able to get some meat and keep it for however long it lasted. That was our only source of meat because the people only had diseased pigs in way of meat.

[Lofton] Yummy.

[Vaughn] Yeah, we had to...

[Lofton] It sounds like you had it pretty soft, Tim.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Yeah one of the things I hated...

[Lofton] TV. Did you have any color TV there? Come on? Was there color TV?

[Vaughn] No TV.

[Lofton] A small one just for you in your hut?

[Scott] What were... how were they physically?

[Vaughn] Well, since the missionaries came they were splendid physical specimens except for the fact that they all were full of parasites from sleeping with pigs at night in the... in the hut that... nobody ... whenever a man and a woman wanted to procreate they went out and did it in a garden for... for fertility reasons so when everybody slept at night the whole clan would pile into this one house and then their... often times they would have a flea bitten type of Chihuahua type of dog. And then they had their pigs. And they loved their pigs so much that that they couldn’t bear to keep them out of the cold at night in some of the cases so you could be laying in a smoke filled hut and somebody would be licking you and you didn’t know whether it was a kid or a dog or a pig and all day long you were picking out fleas and cockroaches that were crawling all {?}

[multiple voices]

[Lofton] It sounds like your American... your average American college fraternity.

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Scott] Yeah. That sounds like Rousseau would have enjoyed that.

[Vaughn] I think that...

[Rushdoony] Well, in the old days the Papuans were famous for so prizing their pigs that they would often suckle the...

[Vaughn] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ... the young pigs.

[Vaughn] I saw it.

[Rushdoony] ... rather than the child.

[Vaughn] Yeah, I have seen them. I saw them do that one time.

[Rushdoony] They still do it.

[Vaughn] Oh, yeah. That is pretty sick. I don't think they do it rather than the child, but they do it in addition to their child usually.

One of the things that was really unfortunate is whenever they had twins, up until the time that the Christians came they would kill one of them because they didn’t feel there would be enough milk for both. And there was one case of a Christian lady having twins and she raised them and all of the ... all the other women said that she was going to come to some horrid end or something like that and she raised both of the children successfully. And it became quite a testimony to the... to the gospel.

[Lofton] How long were you there?

[Vaughn] Six months in actually up in the tribes.

[Lofton] What... what sort of success has the gospel had there?

[Vaughn] Incredible. But... incredible, incredible success. Yeah, they... they... there is still cannibalism, but it is so rare that nobody would ever see it if they were just a casual visitor. The literacy in the one tribe I was at, the {?} has about 10,000 people and the are probably 3000 of them that can read now and there is probably 350 Christians, maybe 30 different churches.

[Scott] Three thousand that can read?

[Vaughn] Three thousand, yeah.

[Scott] Well, then there is something wrong with their basic intelligence.

[Vaughn] Oh, no. No. I think that just about any race given the proper environment would achieve more or less the same. One problem that they did have and it wasn’t genetic but it was environmental was that when a woman was pregnant the Lutheran nurses would go around and from tribe to tribe and say, “When you are pregnant you must eat a yellow vegetables like a pumpkin or a squash that would get enough vitamin A and on and so forth.” But as soon as the ... the Lutheran ladies left, then the native women would come out and tell the young women that, no, if you eat a pumpkin then your head is... your kid’s head is going to turn out like a pumpkin.

And so they... there was a lot of malnutrition there. They had that {?}. I think that is how you pronounce that, protein deficiency where you could see it in the kids’ pot bellied, kind of orangey skin.

So you can’t expect a person that is ... that had that kind of nutrition in the womb, so to speak, to develop the same as a... as a European child would. But after, say, three generations I think that they would have no problem fitting in to our... our society.

[Lofton] Is... is there a hostility there toward Christians and missionaries? I mean do people... do they ever get killed there and do they still get... {?}

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Lofton] ... the Christians, I mean.

[Vaughn] Some Christians... yeah, Peyton has a famous book about this.

[Lofton] Oh, yeah, sure.

[Vaughn] That was one of the islands off shore there. The Gilberts, I believe, wasn’t it?

[Scott] I don’t know.

[Vaughn] One of those... one of those off shore...

[Rushdoony] That was about 200 years ago.

[Vaughn] Exactly, exactly. That was when they first came. But now the Christians are very, very much appreciated, very much appreciated for what they have done. Once in a while a native Christian will get heckled by some of his ... somebody from another tribe or something like that, but it is... it is really not that bad. They really respect what the Christians have done and since probably 99.9 percent of all the legislatures... legislators that the country has ever had were taught to read by missionaries and they are in some sort of residual {?} I think, if nothing else, because of things like that.

[Scott] And what... what language do they learn to read?

[Vaughn] Their own language. That is surprising because I was expected to teach people their ... to read a week after I got there. But the missionaries teach... first they learn the language. Then they write the language down in a kind of a phonetic... a phonetic spelling. And so I could go and teach people. We used primers at like... I think there were six of them in our language. I did six primers in a row. When somebody was starting to learn to read you would give him primer number one and the word for frog happened to be utu. And each one, a U, and a T and a U and then they would be able to say utu, because, you know, you had taught them the... however many there were, 24, 25 letters in their alphabet. And then it got progressively harder and harder till where you would have them reading out full sentences and then one time I was in a hut a little girl got up and started reading from the book of Luke. They actually had a copy of the book of Luke and she probably was about six or seven years old and she read it every bit as well as a European girl her age would have and it was kind of a touching moment for us because we saw the fruits of all that effort.

[Rushdoony] You are very quick with languages. Did you have trouble with their language or did you pick it up quickly?

[Vaughn] Well, fortunately all the young men know the... what they call the pidgin language. But it is not a pidgin anymore. It has become so complex that linguistically it is actually a Creole. And I learned the pidgin language. They... they... the {?} is its proper name in about two and half... two and a half months. In two and a half months I was able to teach and I didn’t even attempt to learn more than a few phrases and a few grammatical rules about the tribal language, because I knew that if it took a brilliant missionary 20 years to do it, then I might as well just concentrate on learning the theory... theories of language learning rather than learning the language itself.

[Scott] In this educational effort, where was the government? Was there a government?

[Vaughn] The missionaries do it all.

[Scott] The missionaries do it all.

[Vaughn] In fact, in the public schools that they do have in Papua New Guinea they still have the R I. Do you... the religious instruction. They have that in Australia and I am sure you saw it when you were there, but we were allowed to go to a... the Christian... well, not the Christian, but we were allowed to go to the public school any time we wanted and take an hour out of the day and preach... preach the gospel, teach them to read, teach them {?} anything we wanted to and the government... the government actually welcomed it. It was kind of nice.

[Scott] What government was involved?

[Vaughn] They are independent now.

[Scott] They are independent.

[Vaughn] Yes.

[Scott] So it is their own government.

[Vaughn] More or less.

[Scott] More ore less.

[Vaughn] There is [?]

[multiple voices]

[Vaughn] Very, very heavily... I would hate to give a figure, but it is...

[Scott] By whom?

[Vaughn] Australia.

[Scott] I see.

[Vaughn] Because Australia has something like 17 million people now and they have... from the very beginnings as a nation they have always been paranoid about their small numbers and that huge land mass. And I was surprised to learn that most of them, at least the ex pat Australians living in Papua New Guinea are deathly afraid of an Indonesian ... Indonesia. And so they pump huge amounts of money into Papua New Guinea every year to crate a buffer zone, a buffer zone between then and Indonesia.

[Scott] Well, do they have native officials?

[Vaughn] Oh, yeah, native officials. Even white officials at times. A white man is... it is perfectly legal for him to run for office and very often he ... he gets elected. In fact, one time there was a man that got elected. He became a citizen of {?} I think he was from Australia and became a citizen of Papua New Guinea. And Papua New Guinea is a free country which, according to the natives means you can have as many wives as you want. And that surprised me to learn that this Australian had actually had two wives and nobody seemed to be shocked for it. He admitted it openly. It was kind of strange.

[Scott] Well, what was the form of government?

[Vaughn] Parliamentary.

[Scott] Parliamentary.

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Scott] And they have a governor.

[Vaughn] Prime minister.

[Scott] Prime minister.

[Vaughn] Prime minister, yeah.

[Scott] And all the tribes represented?

[Vaughn] They do it by sections. They do it by every district gets to have a person elected. So obviously if there is, you know, 3000 tribes and 7000 dialects and there is sub tribes and sub groups and sub dialects among those, not all of them can be elected that... I think it is a ... across the board probably ... probably pretty fair as far as representation.

[Scott] How many people all together?

[Vaughn] Three million.

[Scott] Three million?

[Vaughn] Three million, yeah. Which is not that much. It is very under populated.

[Scott] Well, that is more than there is in Ireland.

[Rushdoony] Is it?

[Scott] I think so.

[Rushdoony] Oh.

[Scott] And Ireland, Scotland is not much more.

[Vaughn] Yeah, they have... I think... see, Wales has... doesn’t Wales have like three million and Scotland has seven million?

[Scott] Something like that, yes.

[Vaughn] Yeah, it is very under populated.

[Scott] And these are large numbers.

[Vaughn] Yeah, but still the... the area is so huge. You can be flying in a plane over the island and only every five minutes see a little clear area for... for a village or something. And that is another reason that there is a lot of pressure from the Indonesians is because they are very crowded. And they really covet the island.

[Scott] Has it got any mineral wealth?

[Vaughn] Well it has a lot of gold, a lot of gold.

[Scott] A lot of gold.

[Vaughn] Yeah. It has just been....

[Rushdoony] How about oil?

[Vaughn] I don’t think it has any oil. No. But the agricultural ... a lot of...

[multiple voices]

[Scott] What about lumber?

[Vaughn] The agricultural production is just astounding. Again, agricultural potential is astounding. They have some of the most beautiful hard woods that you could ever imagine.

[Scott] Are the Japanese involved? They scout the Pacific pretty thoroughly.

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Scott] Don’t they?

[Vaughn] I didn’t meet any. It seemed to be mostly Australians and New Zealanders that were developing the nation as much as they can. There is restrictions because an ex pat can’t have a... can’t own a business in certain areas, because, obviously the people never had an understanding of work ethic and they would be driven out of business by any Japanese or Filipino or white person that came along. And so they had to change the law and restrict a lot of the businesses.

[Lofton] What do the... what do the people there do for fun? Do they have games or sports?

[Vaughn] Poker.

[Lofton] Poker?

[Vaughn] Poker, yeah. They... the women do all the work. The women...

[Lofton] Poker.

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Lofton] Well, that sounds like fun.

[Scott] According to Hoyle?

[Vaughn] Pardon me?

[Scott] According to Hoyle or seven... seven card stud or what?

[Vaughn] I... I wouldn’t know, because all of the missionaries kept walking around saying, “You shouldn’t be doing that. You only earn seven dollars a month and you should give something to your family.” So I didn’t... I never sat down with them while they were playing.

Yeah, the women... the women look after all the kids, look after the pigs. They grow all the food. And all the men have to do is build a fence around the garden. This varies slightly from tribe to tribe. But basically the men just have to build a fence around the garden and build a hut which doesn't take very long and then during the rest of the year they call it rounding. That means they walk around aimlessly. That is called rounding. And then they play poker.

[Lofton] Well, a lot of that going on in our country, now.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Well, they have the excuse that the... that the ... the official excuse is that they were the warriors that were needed to defend the tribe at all times so they had to have their time freed up by the women. But now that the inter tribal warfare is gone, there is not much of an excuse left. But...

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Now is there any...

[Vaughn] Europeans do play for it. Whenever they can get the money they can. They... alcohol costs a lot of money and if you only make seven dollars, eight dollars...

[Scott] What about the drugs that the...

[Vaughn] Ah, yeah.

[Scott] ...witch doctor uses.

[Vaughn] Right. Well, that is... those are ... those are not used ...

[Scott] They are to used otherwise.

[Vaughn] Well, yeah, they are not used ... what... what is the word for it?

[Scott] Recreationally.

[Vaughn] Recreationally, yeah. The... {?} though. They have the {?}. You have heard of that.

[Scott] {?}

[Vaughn] Right among the... that nut that turns everybody’s lips bright red. It looks like the men have lipstick all smeared all over their face and the teeth.

[Scott] Teeth black.

[Vaughn] No the teeth are... the teeth are red if there are any teeth. And ... but fortunately {?} they had beautiful teeth because there aren’t any refined sugars there. And they mix lime in with the {?} to make it more potent and the crunching on the combination of lime and {?} files down all their teeth.

One time I was really sad because I saw a little three year old kid propped up against a hut in a really poor area, just chewing on {?}. He knew how to put the lime on his hand sort of like people drink tequila, right, with the little bit of salt and then, well, you go through a little ritual every time you take some of it. It really made me sad because he is obviously dying of malnutrition even under {?}. He didn’t want to do anything so chew the {?}.

[Scott] They farm also, don’t they?

[Vaughn] Subsistence farming, yeah. Sweet potatoes.

[Scott] Sweet potatoes.

[Vaughn] Sweet potatoes.

[Scott] Is that so?

[Vaughn] A little sugar cane. A little sugar cane, a little bit of what they call the {?} which is bitter herbs like spinach. One thing called {?} that I became attached to was like bamboo shoots. That is really tasty, a few little things like that. We tried to get them to grow more legumes so we would get more protein like beans, but...

[Scott] How did they relate to the ... to the gospel?

[Vaughn] They loved it when they first heard it. There is a verse that says the poor will hear it gladly and, boy, I have never seen anybody accepted Christ more gladly as the people of.... the... the natives there.

[Scott] What was their... what was their native religion like?

[Vaughn] Animism.

[Scott] Animism.

[Vaughn] All the ...

[Scott] Everything is sacred.

[Vaughn] No it wasn’t sacred.

[multiple voices]

[Vaughn] Everything had a spirit, but it...

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Yeah.

[Vaughn] In fact, in fact, they didn’t mind torturing... torturing things like animals and most tribal people do that sort of thing so I don't think it is sacred as much as everything was alive, a tree, a rock.

[Lofton] Why would they... why did they torture an animal?

[Vaughn] Probably the same reason that some of our friends south of the border do. It is just...

[Scott] For pleasure.

[Vaughn] I think that you will find that Protestant countries are... this may be kind of a bold statement, but I think you will find that countries with Protestant backgrounds are about the only ones that don’t habitually torture animals. I have noticed that myself. I... There may be exceptions, but the places I have been around the world I have never seen that verse that talks about the wise man regarding the life of his beast practiced by anybody outside of...

[Lofton] But I mean they don’t do it for any religious reason.

[Vaughn] Oh, no, no.

[Lofton] Yeah, ok.

[Vaughn] No, they are just having fun.

[Scott] Did they have rites of any sort?

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Scott] Ceremonies?

[Vaughn] They wouldn’t let us see most of them, of course. That is one thing that we always laughed about the anthropologists, because they go live somewhere for six months and say they came back fluent in the language and they probably didn’t know more than half a dozen phrases and they knew all their secrets and so forth that they didn’t ... they didn’t learn anything.

[Scott] They keep their secrets.

[Vaughn] They keep their secrets. Some... sometimes like I was fortunate because the man I lived with had been there 23 years and he was regarded as the father of the whole tribe. Even the non converted people would say I don’t agree with your talk. That is how they would say it. I don’t agree with your talk, but your talk fell down from heaven and it is the Word of God and you have brought light into our valley. That is the way they would... That is how the unconverted people would address themselves.

Yeah, in case like that, sure. I would think...

[Scott] The unconverted.

[Vaughn] The unconverted would say, yeah.

[Lofton] And Otto and I are looking at each other. We would like to go to a place where people speak to us that way.

[Vaughn] Well, here is a verse {?} and they are certainly for, yeah.

[Scott] How long do they live?

[Vaughn] Not {?} long.

[Scott] Were there any elderly people?

[Vaughn] Yeah, but you couldn’t tell how old they were. They were old and wrinkled and be 40 years old. Yeah. The women all had...

[multiple voices]

[Vaughn] No, they had... the women had to carry everything. I remember the first trip I took there was two or three young women and they were probably about, oh, I don’t know, 16 or 17 and they took the pack off my back. I had a ... my Bible and my sleeping bag I think was all I had, but they took it off my back to carry it and it was seven miles. And I said, “No way.” And then the man said, “No, they are just showing you kindness and hospitality.” So we never had to carry anything.

Oh, look here a woman would always do it. And I hated to see it, but, you know, we were always careful not... you know, only give her a little bag or something, but the husbands to show off would often times just load their wives down. They all had {?} they all looked like they were pregnant all the time. And they all had real light skin because they were so anemic. They didn’t get very much iron and, you know, every time she had her cycle, boy it was zappo and medically there was a lot of interesting things that you could see there.

They didn’t have ay fat in their diet and so a woman didn't {?} go ahead. I am sorry.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, I want to go into this matter of the anthropologists and their work there and how the natives regard them, because I think it is very important.

Well, Tim, before we get on to the anthropologists, tell us a little more about their attitude towards Christianity and towards the old days when they were still pagans.

[Vaughn] Yes, that is one of the things that shocked me more than anything else is they had such a respect for Christianity. Perhaps it was because they saw such a difference between their old ways and the new ways that they regarded Christianity in such a beneficial light, but often times, very often, regularly you would hear things like, well, myself, I don’t follow this word, this talk. I don’t follow the gospel, is what they were saying. But it is the truth. It is the Word of God that fell down from the heavens to come and abide among men and it is the truth.

And as far as the old days, they called it, just as I have is, the time no good, the... the time no good, the time before the gospel. And the old people can still remember the fear, that fear was the ... was the determining factor in their lives. Everything revolved around fear and the freedom of fear that... the freedom of fear that is really... that has been expressed in the lives of the Christian is so profound that people all around can look and see that they don’t have that fear anymore and they want to be that way. Or even if they don’t want to be that way, they respect it and see it as something beneficial.

[Rushdoony] Well, now the anthropologists, of course, don’t like that.

[Vaughn] No, no. They don’t.

[Scott] They don’t?

[Vaughn] No, they hate it.

[Scott] What is their objection?

[Vaughn] Christianity. They... they have a pathological hatred of Christianity among anthropologists. I... They wouldn’t even give me the time of day when I was over there.

[Scott] Were they there?

[Vaughn] Once in a while you would run into them. Whenever you would go into a little town or a little {?} there was always a female anthropologist that went around without hardly any clothes on breastfeeding in public and {?} that she was a free and natural lady.

No, they didn’t like... they didn’t like the missionaries at all. In fact on very, very often they would tell the natives that the should go back to their own... old ways.

[Lofton] Time no good.

[Vaughn] Time no good. Yeah.

[Lofton] They think the Christians are time no good.

[Vaughn] Yeah. They think Christians are time no good. Yeah. You see that everywhere in the world. This... this... this is not just in Papua New Guinea. But fortunately since New Guinea was one of the last great areas opened up to ... to Christianity, the old people still remember the old days and if you were to go down to the coastal tribes in South Africa well, boy, they... they the... there are people that after 10 generations that knew about the old times. So they don’t... they don’t have the same respect that people in New Guinea do.

[Lofton] You think the converted people there would argue with the anthropologist?

[Vaughn] They converted them sometimes. In fact, they converted... In fact, I know of two cases where some of the... some of the natives from my tribe converted two Pentecostal missionaries. I am not saying that, you know, Pentecostals are not converted any more than I am saying the Baptist or Lutherans aren’t converted. And you find converted people and not converted people of any large group and there happened to have been one Pentecostal in a tribe next to us that wasn’t converted and the ... our people went over an converted him to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Lofton] Tell us something about the sorcerers. Have... have they diminished or do they look upon you all as the devil and the enemy? Do they try to kill you?

[Vaughn] They always gave me a big grin. It is hard to say what they are really thinking. I remember passing one woman and this is another sad story. The word witch is {?}. And I am not sure that is in the {?} or in the native language of where I was staying I remember walking by a lady painted in blue psychedelic markings all over her face and I was walking with a man who just froze up when we passed her. He was literally trembling. And I said, “What is wrong?”

And he said, “Well, she was {?}. I was afraid that she was going to breathe on me.”

And at every birth there is a witch doctor in attendance, at least in the tribes I was at. And somebody comes out and he is witch, warlock or not witch, not warlock. Or this arbitrarily decision, arbitrarily to us. They probably threw some bones in it and decided that they were a witch and often times with the female they just killed the child.

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Why?

[Vaughn] Well, she is a witch.

[Scott] Oh, really.

[Vaughn] I mean... yeah and if she didn’t...

[Scott] They condemned the child, in other words.

[Vaughn] Oh, yeah. Yeah, she wasn’t a witch then the... I mean if they did leave her alive then she would be raised to a certain level and then thrown out to become a wild woman and there... a very sad situation. In fact, the year before I went to our tribe they took a woman and dug a very shallow pit and pushed her into that pit with boulders. They fit the entire body into a little teeny pit because she was a witch and some woman was having a baby and the baby died and even though the woman wasn’t there, since she was the closest witch, it was her fault.

[Lofton] I... I... Why would there be the hostility to witches? I mean, a sorcerer is a witch, isn’t he?

[Rushdoony] Well, maybe...

[Scott] Sorcerer is probably more dangerous. He could do something to you.

[Rushdoony] Among the American Indians in many, many tribes, there was a fear of witches and periodical slaughters. Very early in American history among the Iroquois there was an uprising with a tremendous bloodletting of people who were suspected of being witches.

[Vaughn] And {?} went through the same thing in the Zulus.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And among the Paiute and Shoshones the belief was that certain births indicated a possession and, therefore, the child had to be killed. For example, of course, our first three were... four, excuse me, were girls. And this elderly woman, an Indian, a very likeable person who had come over regularly and had breakfast. She lived in a tent in the back and she said, “Oh, too bad, too bad,” when Martha our youngest was born and she gave counsel which was pick it up by the heels and bash its brains out on a rock. And then your next one will be a boy. And she said that is what her husband did and the next one was a boy.

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Rushdoony] Well, the belief is that evil spirits are behind certain births.

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] And if you are denied a warrior to protect you, that means you have to break the spell.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Yeah. And that is... that is very true. They... the birth can be influenced by a number of things. Whenever a man would get his tooth pulled it was always a missionary that did the tooth pulling because we did just about all the medical work in our areas. They would take the tooth and put it in a banana plant and the reason was ... the reason I heard from the missionary was that it would ensure the birth of a boy, but they may have been lying to the missionary. But part of there reason they took the tooth and put it in the banana plant.

[Scott] That is an interesting point, that they may have been lying to the missionary. My thinking of Margaret Meade and the outrageous lies that the Polynesian girls told her.

[Vaughn] Right, yeah.

[Scott] You do have to watch the fantasizing, don’t you?

[Vaughn] Yeah, that is ... that is a very good point. They were obviously much less inclined to a missionary of the missionary was their spiritual father or, like I said, brought light into their valley. They didn’t feel any compunction about lying to the anthropologists, but the problem with talking to missionaries was they would emphasize and I remember numerous cases of people talking about their conversions and their conversions experience... their conversions experiences always revolved around magical feats. One person told me he was in this town and this truck started rolling towards him and he levitated himself above the truck and he came down again. Now he {?}.

And another one was attacked by three witch doctors or maybe they may not have been witch doctors. They could have been people just out for him, but he was attacked by three people and they ... their weapon of killing is still the bow and arrow. And these people wash out their arrows out and he waved them aside with his hands forcing them away from the body.

And so conversion experience has always gone like that. In fact, one time one of the only qualified elders to ever appear in a tribe in 25 years, a godly man, just a godly man, pointed a tree out a tree to me that bled human blood. He just couldn’t... you just can’t expect a person to divorce himself from his culture immediately, you know. That is... that is a problem and missionaries have to accept that.

[Lofton] What about... what about evidence of evil spirits or demonic possession? Did you see any of that or hear any stories about it?

[Vaughn] One time. One time. Yeah. A missionary they brought in a woman that was evidently demon possessed or I should... another explanation could be something... something is wrong with her brain that gave her superior strength or whatever. They figured that she was demon possessed. And it took several men to hold her down and they asked the missionary to come out and exercise the demon. And the missionary said, relating this story he said, “I couldn’t do anything because I was afraid of what would happen when nothing happened?” He didn’t have the faith.

[Lofton] So what did he just say he wouldn’t?

[Vaughn] Well, I... No, in this particular case, yeah, there was a native man that was much less intelligent from the ways of the world but greater in faith. I heard the story second hand. I believe it is true that the native man cast the demon out and that was the only instance I heard of demon possession while I was there.

I heard a first hand story of a healing, a first hand story of a healing, yeah. And, again, that was the only time I have ever heard of that in anywhere in the world in all my life. But it was a real... a real healing. Again, a native, a native man that was just full of the Spirit.

[Scott] You mean a holding of hands?

[Vaughn] No, no. It wasn’t that at all. The son of a missionary... in fact, I knew the... the ... both the missionary... I lived with a missionary and I knew this son very well, had a certain kind of blister that broke out on his... in the inside of his throat and it was going to... it could have killed him. And then the... the missionary was all scared and wanted to fly him out to a hospital. And then a native Christian said, “Well, why? This is ... pray the prayer of faith over him.” And the missionary honestly said, “I just can’t do it. I don’t have the faith.”

And so the mission... the native man prayed over him and it cured him instantaneously, instantaneously.

So they are... there are the two cases of things supernatural I have seen in my life. You can believe them or not.

[Scott] They made a profound impression upon you, didn't they?

[Vaughn] A very... very profound. Yeah, I... typically in Calvinistic circles we believe that all the ... I think it is an over reaction to Pentecostalism, but I think that most of us believe that these things are no longer valid, but perhaps there is something into... into the opinion that they were a sign to the unbeliever and when you go to a nation where there aren’t any believers, maybe it is possible still.

[Rushdoony] There are too many things like that happening all over the world and documented by doctors I some instances.

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] In hospitals and the like. Well, let’s get on to Bible translations.

[Vaughn] Yeah. That is a... that was my most disappointing...

[Rushdoony] Let me just throw out this, that everyone should know that beginning in January Tim will have a series of articles in the Chalcedon Report as... on a regular basis. Which deal with some things in depth that we have touched on. Ok.

[Vaughn] Yeah, that was my most dis... the most disappointing aspect of my trip. I had a high opinion of Wycliffe before and I am.... I am not ashamed to say in front of anybody that I don’t have that anymore. I ... I don’t know the percentage of real Christians in Wycliffe Bible translating organization, but I am not a... I am afraid it is not as high as most people would like to believe. Very often it is just an anthropologist out to translate a Bible and to make a name for themselves. In fact, they have an ... an official policy that, for instance, if you were a Baptist and you went into a Lutheran area you would not be allowed to preach against consubstantiation, because they don’t want you to rock the boat. In other words they bound you completely to whatever was going on in the tribe there.

And what is the use of having a Bible translation if you don’t preach? I can never understand that.

They would use dynamic equivalencies. An example I used in one of the articles is translating Christ as the pig of God. And Wycliffe doesn’t... I don’t think they do that anymore, but they have in the past. And saying that since they have never seen a lamb, but they know what a pig is, we will just translate Christ as the pig of God. And we know how awful that is. It is Christ’s is meek and mild and unoffending and a pig is just the opposite.

One of the things that Wycliffe still does which... which disturbs me to no end is things like the local ... the local indigenous spirit, whatever it is, the troll or a genie or a poltergeist or a hobgoblin or whatever, they will use that word to translate the word demon in the Scriptures. And that just reinforces their mythology.

[Rushdoony] This kind of approach has taken over missions both evangelical and modernist and it has various names, missiology, contextualization.

[Vaughn] Contextualization. That is it.

[Rushdoony] And so on. All of which have as their purpose not raising people up to the level...

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] ... of the Scripture, but lowering Scripture to the level of the people.

[Vaughn] Exactly. Yeah.

[Scott] Well, does the modern translation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Vaughn] Exactly.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Vaughn] Yeah. That ... that would even be putting a better light on it than some of those people deserve, because sometimes... I met one lady who was a higher critic there and people that brought in their translations from the field would have to pass it by this lady to get approval for the funding. She was a dualist. And, you know, you can’t help but believe that these people don’t have anything more in mind than just to make the Bible acceptable to people right away. I think some... often times they have something more... more discredible in mind with ... with their methods of translation.

[Rushdoony] Well, Wycliffe started out as one of the greatest organizations Christians had produced and it was so far ahead of university scholars in the field of linguistics.

[Vaughn] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] ... that there was o comparison.

[Vaughn] Yeah, that is still the case.

[Rushdoony] And now they have been completely taken over or have surrendered.

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] ... to the opposition.

[Vaughn] Right. They are still the best language learners.,

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Vaughn] But we can’t say too much about the quality of the translations.

[Scott] Well, they are following the pattern... the pattern, apparently, of modern academia. After all, look at the churches, the great churches that have translated the Bible downward.

[Vaughn] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Vaughn] Yes.

[Scott] Here.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Yeah, another thing I put in the article that shocked me to no end was a Swiss group. There are a lot of Swiss missionaries in New Guinea. And a lot of them are... most of them are just high quality people and what they did is to translate the Bible into different languages which was to give a good news for modern man to a man that spoke halting English and set him down and translate the Bible just right there from that. And they didn’t... they didn’t think anything was wrong with that. I don’t think they were... they went out of the way to be evil. I think they had good intentions. But that is just not an acceptable way to... an acceptable way to translate the Word of God. And the road to hell, it has been said, has been paved with good intentions and you... you can... you can... you see these people and they are so nice and they are trying to do such a good job that we still have to talk against it because it is doing untold damage.

[Rushdoony] Well it used to be a man would spend his life translating into a particular language.

[Vaughn] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And now it is speed up job by ...

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Rushdoony] ... people with false ideas.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Well, the ... the excuse, of course, is that they are all {?} in their sin and in their heathendom and before they die we have to be able to get them a Bible translation. And that is... again, that is just Pragmatism rather than scriptural.

Yeah, there are some freaked out translations out there. I will tell you.

[Scott] How many teams were involved here in Papua?

[Vaughn] In my group?

[Scott] In your group.

[Vaughn] Yeah. There were four families, two from America and two from Australia, reformed, whatever. And they... I like they way they... they did a real good job. There was only one of them that had the ability to translate a language , beaus not everybody can learn the {?} language and that restricts and then of that group, how many are qualified to translate a Bible... even very few. But the ones that could translate a Bible had a very strong work and were responsible for many conversions because they would speak in the Creole language and all the young men spoke the Creole plus the native and so whenever the missionary would get up and preach he always had a young man that would translate into the native language. And that is the way I did it. I walked around. On Sundays they had me go out to take Sunday services as much as I hated preparing for them, not that I was no competent in it. I would always take a young man around with me and I noticed that whenever I would say a sentence he would talk for about an hour, so I think he was trying to compensate for my lack of ability in that area.

[Lofton] How come you were there I say only six months?

[Vaughn] Right. Well, they figured at... Right. Three months wouldn’t have been long enough because our could get it... euphoric after the first three months and then go back and think that that is what you are cut out to do for the rest of your life. So you should definitely spend at least five or six months to see exactly how you fit in there. Any longer than that would be redundant.

[Scott] So it was really to... to... to see if you wanted to do this.

[Vaughn] Exactly. That is... that is a good way...

[Scott] On a full time basis.

[Vaughn] Right, Right.

[Scott] And you decided against it.

[Vaughn] Actually they decided against it.

[Scott] They decided against it.

[Vaughn] Yeah, they said that I had unusual abilities in language learning and would be a good translator, but I didn’t have the desire to preach that a good missionary needed. So they said that if I were to come back it would be better to couple me ... have me come back with a wife and then go out with another man and wife in the... I would be responsible for doing the translating and this other man would be responsible for the preaching and stuff like that and nothing has ever materialized.

If anybody out there likes ... likes preaching and is not interested in Bible translating, give me a call.

[Lofton] Do you... do you agree with their assessment?

[Vaughn] Yes. Yes, I do. I ... I just don’t have the desire that is necessary to go out and spend all my time preaching to those people. I had... I had a hard time frankly getting to enjoy them and I see it as a character deficiency in myself. But at the same time you don’t want to thrust yourself into a position a position you are not qualified for.

I would like to translate a Bible sometime, though. There are still about 4000 left so there is time.

[Rushdoony] What year was it that you were there ,Tim?

[Vaughn] Eighty four.

[Rushdoony] Eighty four.

[Vaughn] Yeah. Yeah.

[Rushdoony] That was after you have finished at the university.

[Vaughn] Right. Yeah. I... I waited a... I worked for a ... nine months after I finished in Papua. You know, I thought it would be nice, too, because I could get a chance... I studied tropical agriculture and, you know, I had some experience in subtropical agriculture before and I thought it would be a good chance to go out and ... and teach some young Christians things that would be beneficial and I did start a test plot. And I grew things my way and then I had hem grow things their way. And I mine did a lot better and not because I am expert agriculturalist, simply because I followed basic things that any housewife gardener here in America would know how to do that they didn’t.

But when the my crops came in better than theirs, they didn’t convert to my way of doing things for ... for various reasons. I think a lot of it has to do with envying. You two have already talked about the subject.

[Scott] Did they think that you were using magic?

[Vaughn] That was... that was the second thing, yeah. In fact, I went in to tell the lady I was staying with. I was all excited. I said, “Oh, they all came and saw my crops did better.”

An she just laughed at me. I felt like I was about eight inches tall. And they said, “No, it is just because you have white skin, that you are magic that did it.”

And, sure enough, nobody would ever do it my way. I was kind of disappointed.

[Rushdoony] It used to be that Agricultural missions were a part of missionary operation to convert people to Christ and to a Christian world and life, faith and action. In fact, one of the great missionaries of the first half of this century was Sam Higgenbottom in India, an agricultural expert, a very dedicated Christian who did a great deal in India and much of the good in agriculture there is still a part of Sam Higgenbottom’s heritage.

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] But it was up hill work.

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] Because you had to have a people who were ready to change their attitude...

[Vaughn] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ... about letting all the monkeys and wild animals, the rats and so on live because they might be their grandmother in a new incarnation. And it was hard for the Christians to do the killing because the hostility of neighbors.

So it is a very, very difficult job out there.

[Scott] Do the anthropologists try to teach the people anything new?

[Vaughn] No.

[Scott] No. They don’t want to disturb the native culture.

[Vaughn] Not even that. They don’t... they could care less about those people. They just wan their names in some stupid magazine that nobody is going to read anyway. They don’t care about that. They have a hatred for human kid.

[Rushdoony] Well, when I was among the Indians there was that same attitude of laughter about anthropologists. And the anthropologists would have set ideas in mind. They would come out with set questions and they wouldn’t vary from them.

[Vaughn] No.

[Rushdoony] And they would act as though you were withholding information if you did not answer their type of question. They were not interested in anything...

[Vaughn] Not {?}

[Rushdoony] ...that you might have to say.

[Vaughn] No.

[Rushdoony] And to me the interesting thing was when I went there I was intensely interested in hearing what they had to say.

[Vaughn] Sure.

[Rushdoony] So when they found that out...

[Vaughn] They opened up to you.

[Rushdoony] They, oh... in the winter nights they would come and stay until 12 and one to tell me about life in the old days, how they scalped, how they hunted and so on.

[Vaughn] Exactly, right.

[Rushdoony] Because nobody including their grandchildren was interested in hearing their account.

[Scott] Did you hear accounts of that sort?

[Vaughn] Oh, yeah. Had the most interesting stories told to me. It was the same reason. They saw that I... I was trying to fit into their culture, trying to learn their language. And since I was with the missionaries that they loved so well, they felt that they could open up to me without me mocking them. And I heard a lot... their ... their stories were all around food a lot of times, because that is... that is all they think about. They are so malnourished all the time.

[Rushdoony] {?}

They... the stories would be like... I will give you an example. A woman was walking out and her husband was next to her and the lightning came and struck her husband and took him up to a place of food, every kind of food that you can imagine. And then the lightning came back down and her husband was there again and that is the kind of story.

[Rushdoony] Well, the stories I heard had to do with warfare.

[Vaughn] Right.

[Rushdoony] Survival.

[Vaughn] Correct.

[Rushdoony] Hunting, attaining status as a warrior in the tribe, the qualifications.

[Vaughn] Yeah.

[Scott] Did they have any festivals that you saw and ...

[Vaughn] The Christians did. Yeah, the Christians every year, the Christians would. They would get together.

[Scott] But the natives.

[Vaughn] Oh, well, yeah, they go into... they go to dance. They go to dance competitions every once in a while and put a {?} on...

[Lofton] Put what on?

[Vaughn] Oh, whatever. Pig fat to make it...’

[Lofton] Pig fat.

[Vaughn] Yeah, it makes them gleam. And then there is certain kind of roots that will be blue here and red there.

[Lofton] Yeah.

[Vaughn] And ashes here and stuff like that. And they are really... it is quite nice actually. You see them. They are all painting themselves the same color.

[multiple voices]

[Vaughn] Which everybody from the tribe is... you can tell what tribe they are from and they all dance around and do the thing. It is kind of interesting.

[Lofton] The stories that you have told so far, one of the ones that I assume we would all agree are kind of far out. Were those typical tall tales or was there a super tall tale?

[Vaughn] Oh, some of them are worse.

[Lofton] Worse. What is the wildest tall tale?

[Vaughn] Ok, I will give you one. This is a Christian told me, a Christian told me and, again, we have to remember that he... he is still a Christian even though he hasn’t divorced himself completely from this culture. So a little kid told him this story and he believed it was true.

A little kid was by the river and a huge boa constrictor came up and tried to eat him, so he threw up a bunch of bananas at the boa constrictor. And we all know that snakes don't eat bananas. Anyway, so anyway, the snake at the bananas and kept coming and at the house and it kept coming, ate the kid. The kid cut his way out with a knife, ran home and told the folks and everybody believed the story.

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is about over.

[Lofton] Good one to end on.

[Rushdoony] As you can understand now, John. Papua, in spite of its head hunters is probably a safer place...

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] Than Washington, DC.

[Scott] Amen.

[Lofton] Amen to that.

[Vaughn] This is probably... probably true.

[Rushdoony] Well, thank you, Tim, and thank you all for listening. God bless you.

[Voice] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.