by D O R O T H Y C . H A S K IN
HAWA II playground and mission field
D o save your money and take a trip to Hawaii! It is truly the tourist’s most delightful playground. I know. I’ve just been there. It is the paradise of the Pacific! God was lavish in His creation of the fleet of islands known as the Hawaiian Islands, with Honolulu on Oahu as the capital. You’ll enjoy the surf at Waikiki which laps mildly against the gold en sand. And for your convenience, expensive hotels cluster along the beach and shops sell a thousand curios stamped with the inevitable “Made in Japan.” There is so much to see . . . the flowered hedges blooming brightly . . . dusky-haired ladies wearing muumuus and pink plumeria leis . . . the flag raised over the Arizona in Pearl Harbor, the grave of 1,102 men . . . fishes adorned with span gles . . . huge machines crossing the pineapple fields as pickers load the fruit on their long arms . . . orchids blooming casually in the backyard. There are temples too for you to visit. The tourist is as welcome in any Buddhist or Shinto temple as a stranger is in a church on the mainland. In fact, guided tours in clude a visit to the Soto Temple which cost a half-million dollars to build. Other than the fact that it is architecturally different from the traditional church, no Christian could question the building’s fitness to be a temple of God. A wide green lawn sets back from the street the square building with its two round wings. Red steps lead up to the large entranceway. Inside, the auditorium is airy with comfortable benches. In front is the altar. There is a black lacquered table with assorted painted bowls. Behind it is a raised platform on which stands a gold table and several low stools. Gold lotus leaves bedeck both sides of the platform. Filigree gold strips hang 12
prayer pillow in front of them. Hanging above the altar were wide strips of red paper with Chinese fig ures on them. On the altar was the ugly squat idol, hits of mirror and sticks with red paper fluttering from them. There were a couple of bat tered tin pie plates with wicks burn ing in oil, old wax flowers covered with the soot from many pieces of offered incense. Beside it was an incinerator. Could God he wor shiped in that dirt and squalor? I went up the rickety stairs to a narrow porch. At the far end was another altar, a dirt-encrusted lac quered table with the usual assort ment of idols, grimy wax flowers, paper prayers fluttering in the breeze and incense burning in old pans. Inside was a narrow room with five carved, red tables serving as altars and on them an assortment of idols, sitting, standing, some with beards, all ugly. Hanging from the ceiling were paper lanterns and strips of red paper. In front of the idols were the usual dirt-encrusted wax flowers, the incense and can dles stuck into the tops of whiskey bottles. An old woman sat in a chair monotonously beating a gong to appease the spirits. How can these people, offering worship in this dirty temple, expect the God who . . dwelleth not in temples made with hands” (Acts 17:24) to hear them? They don’t! They worship evil spirits. They placate the spirits. God is a faraway deity. They know not how to draw near to Him. They know not of the Christ who is the Way. Here under the flag of the United States is heathen worship. Visit Hawaii if you can. You’ll find it not only a tourist play ground but also a crossroads of reli gions — the placid, fat, gold Buddha and the cross of Calvary meet there! Some would call it a mission field. A needy one. END. THE KING'S BUSINESS
from the ceiling as well as red tassels. And in the center of it all is the gold Buddha, weighing some 750 pounds. The priest of this temple is Rev. S. E. Hunt, a former Protestant minister who went to the Orient and was converted to Buddhism. With all the subtlety of a trained mind, he lectures each day to the tourists. He tells them that one reason he is a Buddhist is because of Karma which, he explains, is the law of reaping what one sows. Then he goes on to tell of a young man who told him that his sins had been for given by the Lord Jesus, and he replied that while he couldn’t tell if the young man’s sins were for given or not, he knew that he would still reap the consequences of his act. At the conclusion of his talk, Hunt explains that the Buddhists expect the dead to eat the food left to them exactly the way Christians expect the dead to smell the flowers at their funerals. He completely ignores the fact that Christians don’t expect the dead to smell the flowers and thus succeeds in con fusing the unthinking. Buddhism turns its best face toward the tour ist. But don’t stop there — find some one who can take you to the temple that is not dressed up for the tour ist trade. The one on River Street in the midst of the produce markets. Odd, as I walked toward the build ing, I sensed that it was a temple. Yet it didn’t look like anything I thought a house of God should. It was a narrow, two-story building badly in need of paint. The roof was of corrugated iron with paint flecking off it and the edges turned upward. That’s so the spirits will slide up and away from the temple! At the open door I saw for the first time in my life a heathen altar in its natural state. It consisted of a low pile of bricks with a soiled
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