“Oh, all-pervading, impersonal, unknowable, incomprehensible, universal spirit, if you do exist, show me the right way, or I will kill myself.”
Fifteen-year-old Sundar Singh had come to the end of his despair and felt he could take no more. Having grown up a Sikh (the member of a sect of monotheistic Hindus) under the careful tutelage of his mothering a wealthy household, Sundar had been exposed to various religions to try to find the truth. In his studies his mother had not only guided him to master the Veda, the ancient sacred books of Hinduism, but he had also read the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, and attended a Christian missionary school. Though his religious path seemed carefully set before him to become a Sadhu (a Hindu who takes a vow of poverty and celibacy, forsaking all the worldly pleasures by devoting himself entirely to his religion) when Sundar’s mother died when he was fourteen, all that held his world together died with her. It had been she who had made God seem real to him, and without her he could no longer find any peace in his life. He turned his anger on the Christians and began disrupting their meetings and forming mobs to throw stones at their ministers. The final straw came as he ripped up and burned a New Testament, page by page, in front of his father and friends to show his contempt for Christianity.
Following this incident, he shut himself up in his room praying to the “universal spirit” for it to reveal the truth to him. On the third day he woke up at 3:00 a.m. and decided to end his life in front of the express train that passed through the village every morning at 5:00. Thus he prayed the desperate prayer to either know the truth or die. As a Hindu, he believed that if there was no answer to this prayer, at least he might be able to find peace in his next incarnation.
But the Truth did not leave him stranded. Shortly before 5:00 a.m., such a bright light filled his room that he thought it had caught on fire. For a moment he kept his eyes shut tightly hoping to die in the flames, but when nothing happened, he opened them to see what the source was. Someone stood before him.
“How much longer are you going to persecute the Christians? Jesus wants to save you. You were praying for the right path. Why have you not followed it? Jesus is the way.”
Sundar fell to his knees before Him and realized that what all the Christians had taught him about Jesus’ resurrection was true. How could it not be? Suddenly a peace beyond anything he had ever known flooded his spirit. So this is what it is like to know the Truth! When he looked up again, the person was gone, but the peace in his spirit was not.
The next morning he declared to his family, “I am now a Christian. I will no longer serve anyone else but Jesus.” Thus began a struggle in his home to get him to return to Hinduism that ended with his expulsion from the house and one of his relatives trying to poison him.
So on September 3, 1905, his sixteenth birthday, Sundar was baptized as a Christian at a local church mission and went into the hills for a month to seek God’s direction for what to do next. During this time he realized how uncomfortable he was with the Christianity that was practiced in the missions. It was more Western culture than Christian truths in many ways. Indians who became Christians changed their dress to match that of the English missionaries, sat in pews in Anglican Church buildings, spoke mostly English, sang English hymns in English services, and relied on Western missionaries for leadership. He felt that there was no way Christianity could ever be relevant to India unless it was present in an Indian way. So Sundar made the decision that he would return to the path that he had always been on, to become a Sadhu dedicated to Jesus. At this decision he put on the saffron robe of a Sadhu, gave away what few possessions he still had, and began wandering northern India with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The traditions of India and Hinduism were that a Sahdu would never own a home or carry any food or money, but would go from village to village relying totally on the hospitality of others. For this reason as Sundar entered a village, someone would take him in, thinking he was a Hindu holy man. Often when he would proceed to proclaim Jesus to them, they would become offended and throw him out. However, when this happened, Sundar showed them no malice and simply moved on again. This was strange to the villagers, as they were used to Sadhus throwing a fit and cursing those who rejected them. When Sundar simply walked away peacefully, many would often chase him down, ask for his forgiveness, and invite him back to their home. Through this, many of them came to know Jesus as Sundar did.
As he wandered, a growing passion to penetrate the barrier of the north, Hinduism, and Buddhism began to develop in Sundar’s heart – he wanted to take the Gospel to Tibet. As he traveled in the foothills of the Himalayas, he began to realize the enormity of this task. However, roughly a year and a half after his baptism, Sundar made his first trip into Tibet after two missionaries had taught him some of the language and loaned him a young interpreter to travel with him. Though he found little success in his initial ventures, Sundar returned to Tibet every summer for the rest of his life. Some incredible miracles have been recorded about Sundar’s visits to Tibet. He was imprisoned or beaten and left for dead on more than one occasion during these trips.
On one trip through Nepal, Sundar was attacked by four bandits in the middle of a jungle. Rather than putting up a struggle, Sundar knelt and bowed his head, expecting the one thief with a sword to end his life then and there. The bandits were so surprise by this that they refused to kill him. Seeing the only thing he had of value was his blanket, they took that and told him to leave, yet his behaviour still so perplexed them that one of the robbers called him back and asked him his name. Sundar turned back to the man, introduced himself, and opened his Bible and began reading him the story of the rich man and Lazarus from the book of Luke. When the robber saw how miserable the rich man was in the end, he asked Sundar what would happen to a man such as himself. Sundar took this open door to preach the Gospel to him and tell him of the forgiveness won for him by Jesus on the cross. The thief repented and took Sundar home to stay in his house.
During another instance, he was captured by a group of monks and sentenced to die by the local Grand Lama for spreading a foreign religion. He was thrown naked into a well used to discard the remains of murderers and criminals who had been killed or left to die. The well was then locked. The Lama had the only key. Sundar spent two days without food or water among the putrefying corpses but was miraculously rescued on the third day. A stranger had come, released him, and then simply relocked the well and walked away. When Sundar was later recaptured by the same monks, the Lama was perplexed to see him, knowing no one else could have released this man without the key he kept hidden. They became fearful of Sundar’s God because of this and begged him to leave them.
As a wandering Sadhu, Sundar traveled all over India and Ceylon during 1918 and 1919, as well to China, Malaysia, and Japan. Between 1920 and 1922, he was invited to speak in Western Europe, Israel, and Australia. However, his heart was always for India and Tibet, so he always returned to continue his work there. Everywhere he went he dressed in the simple robes of a Sadhu and walked barefoot. Often he would arrive in villages with his feet blistered and bloody from the journey. For this he became known as “the apostle of the bleeding feet.”
Sundar always lived a literal Christianity, taking his actions directly from the Scriptures. One time while he was preaching in a marketplace, a man came up and struck him across the face. In response, Sundar turned to him his other cheek. The man left ashamed and later that evening sent Sundar a note asking for his forgiveness.
On another occasion, Sundar met some harvesters in a field and told them the parable of the wheat and the tares. They considered him a nuisance and told him to leave them alone, but he continued to preach to them. Finally one of them threw a rock and hit Sundar in the head. At this, the assailant was struck with a painful headache and lay down on the ground, unable to work. Sundar immediately took the man’s place and helped them finish their harvesting. This action so turned their hearts that they invited him home to share their hospitality that evening. In return, he shared the Gospel with them and won a harvest of his own for Jesus.
Despite growing risks, poor health, and warnings from friends and other missionaries, Sundar left on his annual trek to Tibet in the summer of 1929. He was never seen or heard from again, and no one has ever learned what happened to him.
Sundar Singh wanted to discover a Christianity that was not Western, but Indian. Clothing styles, language, etc., were all being transferred over with belief in Jesus so that becoming a Christian seemed to also mean becoming British. What Sundar did to cut away the culture and preach only essential Christianity was a countercultural revolution that enabled Christianity’s first firm foothold in India. People such as Watchman Nee did the same in China. When the church becomes indigenous and is preached by nationals rather than foreigners, it takes on an entirely new dimension.
“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I may be partaker of it with you.” 1 Corinthians 9:19-23