Here's a question not many people have to face:  how should a missionary respond when the culture to where he is ministering involves nudity as righteous?

We talked about this in Dr. Glick's Historical Foundations of Missions class yesterday, and I want to see what everyone was thinking and not saying.  I know most of us were waiting for Dr. Glick's answer.  Some of us were wracking out brains for a logical answer that fit with what we've learned from other missionaries of the past so far.  So I'm curious.

Now, for those of you who were NOT in the class, let me explain what I'm talking about:

In our missions class yesterday, Dr. Glick brought up the issue that a certain missionary to the South Seas faced in the 1800s.  When this missionary arrived at the Islands, all the people were naked.  He immediately began the obvious:  ministering and trying to teach them morals such as clothing.  But he soon found that because of the loose culture, clothing proved to be even more seducing for the men.  In fact, he learned that one reason the Christian women of his church did not want to wear clothing was because only prostitutes wore clothes.

What should a missionary do in this situation?  At first thought you might think "Make them wear clothes!"  But the clothes made them feel like prostitutes (which, for those of you who may not know, is one reason why it is tradition for conservative women to wear their hair up:  because prostitutes wore their hair down back in the day, so to wear your hair down was seductive....just a little side note - sounds like another blog to me!).  Sounds similar to the situation faced in the New Testament of the eating of meat.  Some people did not want to eat meat because it was offered to sacrifices.  To them, it was wrong to eat meat.  But to those who were not in that culture of sacrifice, it was perfectly fine to eat meat.  God even showed Peter in a vision that it was perfectly acceptable for Christians to eat meat.  "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common" He said (Acts 10:15).

Another view is that we should do as missionaries such as William Carey and Hudson Taylor did:  respect the people's culture and simply add the Gospel to it.  Taylor went so far as to dress and do his hair as the Chinese.  Carey, too, did little to change the Indian culture.  However, Carey did work (and succeeded) to abolish such traditions as widow burning, or suttee.

So should a missionary allow the people of the culture to go about naked because they feel they would be sinning otherwise?  Or should he enforce clothing as a rule and simply reassure them that it is right and that God instituted clothing as a standard?

My belief is that a missionary should always call his people to holiness.  The Great Commission does not say "Go give my word and let the people live as they want to."  It says "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20).  We are to teach them to follow the commandments of God.  So if their culture involves something that goes against God's word, it is sin and it needs to be changed.