Out of Nazareth

“prove all things; hold fast that which is good;” — 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (ASV)

Baptism did not stop Ramabai asking questions. At Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she had the first formal schooling of her life, she sat in Bible class “with her aurophone touching her teeth,” following every word. She also argued. She questioned the Trinity and eternal punishment, kept her vegetarian diet, and asked why she should accept one church's teaching when Christians disagreed so much. The sisters, who loved her, saw much of this as pride. She answered that “the door of the Universal Church of God is not shut against me.” She was proud in a way, and she was also right not to be run by people who did not understand her country. Her answer to the confusion was simple: “I determined not to take the opinion of men as my ground of belief, and went on reading the Bible only.”

In 1886 she sailed to America for the graduation of a relative, Anandibai Joshee, the first Indian woman to graduate in medicine from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She meant to stay a few weeks. She stayed nearly three years. There she wrote The High-Caste Hindu Woman, a short, angry book about a woman's life from birth to death: child marriage, life as a servant in her husband's family, and above all the life of the widow. She did not spare the British: “under the so-called Christian British rule, the woman is in no better condition than of old.” It ended with a plan: a school where high-caste widows could train as teachers and earn their living with dignity.

Before one journey, a friend asked for a message for her readers.

“Remind them,” she replied, with animated countenance and rapid speech, as she clasped my hand, “that it was 'out of Nazareth' that the blessed Redeemer of mankind came; that great reforms have again and again been wrought by instrumentalities that the world despised. Tell them to help me educate the high-caste child-widows; for I solemnly believe that this hated and despised class of women, educated and enlightened, are, by God's grace, to redeem India!”

Supporters in Boston formed the Ramabai Association to back the school for ten years. Then, afraid of the welcome waiting at home, she knelt, “committed myself to the care of our loving heavenly Father and sailed.”

On 11 March 1889 she opened Sharada Sadan, the Home of Wisdom, in Bombay. It was not a Christian school. She had promised it would be neutral in religion, and the girls kept their caste rules. But each morning she read the Bible and prayed with Manorama in her own room, and she left the door open. Girls began to peep in, then to sit, then to stay.

“These are my own private prayers,” explained Pandita Ramabai. “No girl is compelled to come in; but one by one they have come of their own accord.”

That December, at the Indian National Congress, men crowded forward to hear her. She began: “It is not strange, my countrymen, that my voice is small, for you have never given a woman the chance to make her voice strong!”

The open door was honest. It was also the beginning of a storm, because Hindu parents had been promised a neutral school.

Paul told the Thessalonians to “prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Ramabai did. She didn't swallow everything her teachers said, and she didn't throw out her faith because Christians disagreed. She went to the Bible itself. If you are full of questions, that is a good model. Doubt that sends you to the source can lead somewhere.

One thing to do this week: pick one thing you believe about God mainly because someone told you. Find where the Bible talks about it, read the passage for yourself, and write down what it actually says.