Searching for the source

Before leaving the area, the Free Church missionary James Stewart melodramatically flung his copy of Missionary Travels a book which he had once valued so very highly, into the Zambesi River. First hand experience had convinced Stewart that the work was dishonest since the author’s vision of establishing trade and mission in that part of Africa seemed to be based on an unrealisable dream.

The author of Missionary Travels was the Scottish missionary, explorer and anti-slavery campaigner David Livingstone, who was born 200 years ago on 19th March 1813. Livingstone is still renowned for his courage, gritty determination and faith. We remember his sense of brotherhood with African people, and his insights into indigenous culture, but also his conviction that colonisation and trade would pave the way for Christian mission.

I grew up not far from Blantyre in Lanarkshire where Livingstone was born in the tenement beside the cotton mill where he worked as a child. The explorer was still, as I recall, revered as a Protestant saint, a great Christian hero. The tenement room was a kind of shrine.

Livingstone’s celebrity status was assured towards the end of his life when, deep in Africa searching for the source of the Nile he was located by the journalist Henry Morton Stanley (‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’) who thereafter published newspaper articles and a book describing the missionary in glowing, saintly terms which fired the public imagination.

Livingstone died on 1st May 1873, the source of the Nile still unidentified. His body was carried to the coast in a 9-month-long trek by faithful African friends, and was brought to London where a funeral service was held in Westminster Abbey. The tragic romance of his life’s ending captivated the public still more. The press had created its first great celebrity.

The reality of David Livingstone’s faith is without question. ‘I cast myself on the mercy of God through Christ,’ he wrote. ‘A peace and joy entered my heart, to which till then I had been an entire stranger,’ This faith motivated his work: ‘In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery.’

Throughout his life he believed he was on a God-given mission. On his 59th birthday, he once again dedicated ‘my whole self’ to ‘my Jesus, my king, my life, my all.’

Yet Livingtone’s character had serious flaws. He had no patience for the slow nurturing of missionary work in one location which was his initial calling.  In everything, he had to be the pioneer, and to be recognised as the pioneer even if this meant air-brushing out the achievements of others. He must always be working ‘beyond every other man’s line of things.’

He struggled with relationships, particularly when leading a team of Europeans on the Zambesi expedition (1858-64). Because of his passion for exploration, his commitment as husband and father was found wanting.  And, as James Stewart noted, he was prone to misrepresent the truth – sometimes with tragic consequences – in the interests of fulfilling his vision.

This raises serious questions. Livingstone was not blind to his failings. He admitted to ‘much impurity in my motives’; he reflected in a moment of dejection ‘I have been unprofitable enough.’ So why, as a Christian, was he not more consistently able to imbue the person he was  - restless, endlessly inquisitive, depressive, driven – with the Christian virtues of integrity, humility and grace?

We wonder how his life and achievement would have differed if he had allowed the spirit of Christ to be more perfectly incarnated in him. But who are we to talk, we whose lives display the same mixture of faith and failing?

Interestingly many of Livingstone’s dreams were fulfilled – although in the case of colonialism and empire not quite as he would have wished. But the same James Stewart who flung Missionary Travels in the river later founded the mission station at Livingstonia in the very part of Africa he had earlier turned his back on. It seems that despite our flaws, and the imperfection of our visions, God works out God’s dreams in history.

Livingstone died at the age of 60 after months of ill-health through which he courageously trekked in what we now know was the wrong direction seeking the source of the River Nile. There are times in our lives when this journey seems to symbolise our own quest to fulfil dreams and longings.

But though David Livingstone is not the best Christian role model, his life encourages us to seek and find for ourselves the great source which he did discover, the source of the river of life which flows through history, its current in the end thwarted by nothing, not even by the worst in our flawed humanity.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 21st March 2013)