Contextualization in Pentecostalism: A Multicultural Perspective

Indigenization and Contextualization

Contextualization is not the same as indigenization, which is making something that is constant (like the Christian church) into something that is “indigenous.” This result is usually understood to mean a “three-self” church—one that is self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. This idea has been an important feature of many Pentecostal missions and especially of the largest and most international Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God (AG). Protestant mission administrators and scholars have promoted “indigenization” since the mid-nineteenth century; in the case of Jesuit missionaries in the Roman Catholic Church, “inculturation” (the adaptation of the Christian message to a given culture) was advocated for almost three centuries before that. But the theory has usually not become the practice, as Darrell Whiteman points out, “There still remains an enormous gulf between the models of contextualization . . . and the practice of contextualized mission by North American and European missionaries.” ¹

Roland Allen (1868–1947), an Anglo-Catholic missionary in China, was a radical, provocative mission strategist far ahead of his time. He tirelessly advocated a post-Western Christianity and mission methods that focused on local rather than foreign talent. He was undoubtedly influenced by his predecessors the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) administrator Henry Venn, the American Board (Congregationalist) mission leader Rufus Anderson, American Methodist Episcopal Bishop William Taylor, and Presbyterian missionary to China John Nevius. ² These men had all advocated that missions must create three-self churches, but Allen went further than they did in advocating a truly indigenous church completely independent of foreign influences. What resonated so much with those Pentecostals who, directly or indirectly, came in contact with Allen’s principles was his focus on mission as being primarily the work of the Spirit. Allen constantly emphasized that the Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost both empowered and motivated ordinary believers to propagate the Christian message. Allen opposed the mission-station model because it perpetuated the missionaries’ foreign culture and their permanence. He believed in the spontaneous expansion of “indigenous” local churches as a result of a proper understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit and that of the missionary. His best-known work, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, was first published in 1912, and a second edition appeared in 1927. But as he predicted, it was years after his death before his critique came to be appreciated. ³ Allen’s strategies would undoubtedly have resonated with Pentecostal convictions:

[Paul] was always glad when his converts could progress without his aid. He welcomed their liberty. He withheld no gift from them which might enable them to dispense with his presence. . . . He gave as a right to the Spirit-bearing body the powers which duly belong to a Spirit-bearing body. He gave freely, and then he retired from them that they might learn to exercise the powers which they possessed in Christ. . . .

To do this required great faith; and this faith is the spiritual power in which St Paul won his victory. He believed in the Holy Ghost . . . as a Person indwelling his converts. He believed therefore in his converts. He could trust them. ⁴

Allen’s books were probably already circulating in Pentecostal circles as early as 1921, when the Englishwoman Alice Luce (1873–1955), an AG missionary to Hispanic Americans from 1916, wrote a series of three articles that were remarkably reminiscent of Allen’s teachings, entitled “Paul’s Missionary Methods.” Luce was a CMS missionary in India when she was attracted to Pentecostalism through the ministry of the Indian woman Shorat Chuckerbutty, who laid hands on her for Spirit baptism in 1910. Although Luce acknowledged the important contribution to her thinking of a book called Missionary Methods, she could not remember the name of its author. She thought she had read it in India, but since she left there in 1912, when Allen’s book was first published, this is unlikely—she might have read instead Taylor’s Pauline Methods of Missionary Work, first published in 1879. As Bundy points out, “Taylor argued that the goal of Pauline mission is independent churches that are self-supporting, entrusted with their own governance, and committed to an evangelistic style that enables them to grow according to their own cultural patterns. Missionaries are to model and encourage that development.” ⁵ Luce may have come across these principles in preparation for her CMS work.

Luce had remarkable insights for Pentecostals in 1921. She wrote that her initial Pentecostal experience had taught her that “there is such a thing as doing an apostolic work along apostolic lines.” She was surprised at how quickly the “heathen” were able to recognize “the difference between those who went to them with a hidden sense of their own superiority and those who really had the spirit of a servant.” How important it was to declare the equality of all nations before God and to train “native workers,” the only ones who would ever accomplish the evangelization of their own nations and, as she wrote, had “many advantages over the foreigner.” Paul’s aim was to found everywhere a “self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating church,” with trained leaders independent of foreign missionaries who became missionaries in their own right. Unlike Allen, though, she thought it might be necessary for new churches to have “foreign supervision” for a long time, but this exception was only because of maturity and experience and had nothing to do with nationality or race. Once there were “spiritually qualified leaders” in the national church, the foreign missionary must “be subject to them, and . . . let them take the lead as the Spirit Himself shall guide them.” ⁶

In the early 1950s the AG mission strategist Melvin Hodges (1909–88), through his widely influential book The Indigenous Church (1953), not only emphasized creating indigenous churches but also stressed church-planting—a fundamental principle of Pentecostal mission strategy. Hodges was undoubtedly indebted to both Allen’s and Luce’s ideas in framing his own missiology. But the influence of Hodges on AG missions contributed further toward their commitment to national leadership and establishing theological training institutes (“Bible schools”) and in-service training structures throughout the world. These steps in turn resulted in the much more rapid growth of national Pentecostal churches. Hodges, a missionary in Central America, articulated what had always been at the heart of Pentecostal growth in various cultural contexts. He said that the aim of all mission activity was to build an “indigenous New Testament church” that followed “New Testament methods.” He emphasized that the church itself (and not the evangelist) is “God’s agent for evangelism.” The role of the cross-cultural missionary was to ensure that a church became self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating—he enthusiastically embraced and enlarged a three-self policy of church planting, the main theme of his book. ⁷

The emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in indigenization, by Hodges and by Allen, was lacking in the earlier works on the subject by nineteenth-century mission strategists. He wrote: “There is no place on earth where, if the gospel seed be properly planted, it will not produce an indigenous church. The Holy Spirit can work in one country as well as in another. To proceed on the assumption that the infant church in any land must always be cared for and provided for by the mother mission is an unconscious insult to the people that we endeavor to serve, and is evidence of a lack of faith in God and in the power of the gospel.” ⁸ Despite using “us” and “them” language, Hodges had remarkable insights: “We have done everything for them except acknowledge any equality. We have done everything for them, but very little with them. We have done everything for them except give place to them. We have treated them as ‘dear children’ but not as ‘brethren.’” ⁹

William Burton, a British Pentecostal missionary in the Belgian Congo for forty-five years, discussed the principle of indigenization, stating that the idea first found prominence among Pentecostal missionaries at about the time of the First World War. He wrote that “white missionaries” were “a mere passing phase in the introduction of Christianity to a heathen people” and that native Christians were given, “from the very commencement, the responsibility for the support and propagation of the young church” (significantly, Burton also mentions self-government, thus supporting the three-self principle). ¹⁰ Burton’s own Congo Evangelistic Mission, however, was governed by white missionaries until they were forced to leave the Congo in the 1960 civil war, opening up the way for national leaders to take the denomination much further than the missionaries had been able to.

Pentecostal missiological writing is sometimes limited by an ideology that sees the mission enterprise in terms of successful procedures and strategies. It appears that the ideal of a three-self independent church was slow in being realized in many of the expatriate mission efforts, with only occasional exceptions. By the middle of the century, among denominations planted by Western Pentecostals, the great majority of converts in the Majority World remained objects of mission and marginalized. Fortunately, these same converts are now beginning to produce scholars who challenge the presuppositions of the past and are not content to blindly follow foreign mission ideologies and strategies. These missionaries placed their emphasis on aggressive evangelism and church-planting, and the training of indigenous leaders was to further this emphasis. Social uplift was of secondary importance, and only a few engaged in this sort of activity in the early years. But the stage was set for a profound change in the nature of world Christianity itself in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The early Pentecostal missionary thinkers assumed that the Gospel message and Christian theology was the same for all cultures and contexts, and so they tried to relate this “constant” Christian message to indigenous cultures. Hodges termed it the “universal” Gospel, which was “adaptable to every climate and race, and to every social and economic level.” ¹¹ On the one hand, it is easy to confuse the Gospel message with the particular form it reached in Europe and North America; on the other hand, indigenization often assumes that cultures do not change. Whenever there are “indigenous” leaders and the use of local languages, perhaps also local music in worship, and adherence to the three-self principles, then its goal is achieved. “Contextualization” is more comprehensive and assumes that every theology and form of Christianity is shaped by its particular context, and that they must be so to be relevant and meaningful. It relates the Christian message to all social contexts and cultures, especially including those undergoing rapid change. In other words, contextualization is dynamic and not static, because it allows for constant change.

The verb “contextualize” is used more generally to mean “to consider an idea, event, activity etc. together with everything relating to it in order to understand it better.” ¹² So in theology, we need to think carefully about “everything relating to it” (its context) before we can “understand it better.” The concept of “contextual theologies” as formulated in the World Council of Churches was regarded with a great deal of suspicion by evangelicals outside the ecumenical movement. ¹³ In the West, particularly in North America, where the evangelical/ ecumenical divide was most obvious, these ideas were difficult for evangelicals to accept—although some of their mission scholars had used different words to describe the same ideas, like a “deeper indigenization.” Then came particular contextual theologies such as “liberation theology” in Latin America, “black theology” in the United States and South Africa, and “minjung theology” in Korea. These ideas increased evangelical concerns that this new trend in theology would lead to “syncretism” (in a very negative sense) and a placing of the social and political context above God’s revelation.

But gradually, some evangelical scholars began to give prominence to the importance of culture, and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena took the lead. ¹⁴ Charles Kraft wrote of “the constant message in alternative forms” and of “dynamic-equivalence theologizing,” and he commented that “all theologizing is culture-bound interpretation and communication of God’s revelation.” ¹⁵ Dean Gilliland was one of the first evangelicals to actively promote the term “contextualization.” He defined its goal as “to enable, insofar as it is humanly possible, an understanding of what it means that Jesus Christ, the Word, is authentically experienced in each and every human situation.” ¹⁶ He wrote that the Christian message must be proclaimed in the framework of the worldview of the particular people to whom it is addressed, it must emphasize those parts of the message that answer their particular questions and needs, and it must be expressed through the medium of their own cultural gifts. Culture and worldview, of necessity, include religious beliefs; in a discussion of a “contextual” theology, we cannot avoid questions of religious pluralism. Paul Hiebert discusses “critical contextualization” as the ongoing process of “embodying the gospel in an ever-changing world,” ¹⁷ and Darrell Whiteman writes that “contextualization is concerned with how the Gospel and culture relate to one another across geographic space and down through time.” ¹⁸

Luce, Hodges, and Burton were Western Pentecostal mission strategists ahead of their time, and their ideas about an indigenous church have been promoted in mission training. Hodges’s views had a profound impact on the subsequent growth of the AG, which prescribed the reading of The Indigenous Church to future missionaries. But of course attaining “three-selfhood” does not guarantee real contextualization unless the three selfs are no longer patterned on foreign forms but are grounded in the thought patterns and symbolism of the local culture. Yet, Pentecostalism’s religious creativity and spontaneously contextual character were characteristics held as ideals by missionaries and mission strategists for over a century. “Indigenization” was automatically and, so it seemed, effortlessly achieved by Pentecostal churches long before this goal was realized by older missions. For Hodges (again, with echoes of Allen), the foundation for mission and the reason for the continued expansion of Pentecostalism is the “personal filling of the Holy Spirit,” who gives gifts of ministry to common people, creating active, vibrantly expanding, and “indigenous churches” all over the world. ¹⁹

Pentecostalism and contextualization

Contextualization goes a huge step further, because it is much more than presenting the gospel in a culturally relevant way or creating a three-self church. Contextualization is important to questions of culture, because missionaries sometimes think that their culture’s way of practicing Christianity is the only way to do it. The result can be disastrous, for once they arrive in a different culture, these missionaries may share not only the Gospel but also their own cultural traditions as being the “right” way to practice Christianity or model the church. Pentecostalism has contextualized Christianity, mostly unconscious of the various theories behind the process, and mostly unnoticed by outsiders. The experience of the fullness of the Spirit is the central plank of Pentecostal and Charismatic theology, and it is in this focus on experience that contextualization occurs. In the holistic worldview of most societies, all existing things are seen as a present material-spiritual or holistic unity in a pervading spiritual world. In Pentecostalism worldwide, the all-encompassing Spirit is involved in every aspect of both individual and community life—that is, in the context. Prophetic or charismatic leaders are seen as men or women of the Spirit. Rather than being theorized about, a contextual theology is acted out in the rituals, liturgies, and daily experiences of these Pentecostals. Gary Badcock says that the role of the Spirit in African Christianity is closely related to the “theme of wholeness, in terms of the perception and realization of the vitalist principle that ultimately binds the whole of society and world together, in the normal expectation of healing and visions, in the simple celebration of life.” ²⁰ In the worldview of most people, action and expression are as important as reflection, and religion is especially something that you do. The tendency to minimize the emotional in Christian worship made some forms of Christianity unattractive, but the emphasis on the Spirit in Pentecostalism gave Christianity new vitality and contextual relevance. God through the Spirit was intervening in human affairs, which believers could see happening in tangible ways. The Holy Spirit causes people to worship, sing, prophesy, speak in tongues, heal, exorcize demons, have visions and dreams, live holy lives—and generally the Spirit directs the life and worship of these churches.

Pentecostalism has made a vital contribution to a dynamic contextualization. The so-called contextual theologies were often articulated within the parameters of Western theology, whereas much of the enacted theology in Pentecostalism is a theology from the people. This kind of theology makes a dialogue between popular religions and Christianity possible at an existential level. Both the Bible and human experience in most of the world often transcend and defy explanations and rationalizations. The late American Vineyard leader John Wimber described the modern Western worldview as dominated by secularism, which assumes that life goes on “in a universe closed off from divine intervention, in which truth is arrived at through empirical means and rational thought.” Materialism “warps our thinking, softening convictions about the supernatural world,” and people in the Global North live as if “material cause-and-effect explains all of what happens to us.” Rationalism becomes the “chief guide in all matters of life,” and anything that cannot be explained scientifically is denied. ²¹ As a result, direct experience of the spirit world and the supernatural is often missing in secular societies, except for the realm of science fiction. As God is concerned only with “spiritual” and “sacred” matters, people can look after all their “secular” needs by their increasing knowledge. If Christianity is not disentangled from this overemphasis on rationalistic thought, it becomes irrelevant for most of the world. As Badcock observes, “The tendency of the Western institutional churches toward a more rationally definable ecclesial life ordered through ministerial office, the Word, and the sacraments tends to be regarded as culturally alien and religiously undesirable” in many other contexts. ²²

Africa illustrates this tension, where many people regarded Western missionaries with their logical, doctrinal, and theoretical presentations as out of touch with the real, holistic world that Africans experienced. Their deepest felt needs were not addressed, and their questions remained unanswered. Because the full implications of the questions arising from the African worldview were not fully grasped by many missionaries in Africa, the full significance of the Christian answer was also overlooked. In contrast, Pentecostal and Spirit churches were motivated by a desire to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of Africa, offering solutions to life’s problems and ways to cope in a threatening and hostile world. Their pastors, prophets, bishops, and evangelists proclaimed that the same God who saves the soul also heals the body and is “a good God” interested in providing answers to human fears and insecurities, accepting people as having genuine problems, and trying conscientiously to find solutions to them. The God who forgives sin is also concerned about poverty, sickness, barrenness, oppression by evil spirits, and liberation from all forms of human affliction and bondage. This contextualized message makes Pentecostalism attractive. Its great contribution, consistent with the insights of African and other societies, is that life is a totality, that there can be no ultimate separation between sacred and secular, and that religion must be relevant to all human problems. It is a faith that may yet rescue the Global North from an entrenched secularization. ²³

The Korean example

Christianity in general and Pentecostalism in particular has taken on a distinctive form in Korea, quite different from that found in the West. ²⁴ Those who posit the American nature of Pentecostalism throughout the world or the Americanization of Christianity often miss this point. However much Korean Christianity may be influenced by its association with the United States, creative innovations and the selective transformation of foreign symbols are constantly occurring. Quite naturally, a synthesizing process takes place as Christianity interacts with older Korean religions like shamanism and Buddhism. For example, the prayer-mountain movement is well known, and there are hundreds of Christian prayer mountains all over South Korea. Mountains and hills as places of spiritual retreat and pilgrimage have been a characteristic of Korean religions for centuries, not just of Christianity. Buddhist temples are usually built on mountainsides, and Korean cemeteries are found on hills outside residential areas. The many mountains of Korea were believed to be places where good spirits lived, and both shamans and ordinary pilgrims would receive power from the particular spirit on each mountain. Beliefs in the mountain as the place to which God descends are not only part of Korean tradition but are also ideas fully at home in the Old Testament. ²⁵ The prayer-mountain movement may be a culturally relevant form of Christian practice that reflects the ancient spirituality of Korean people. Similarly, the dominant conservative Protestant Christianity, with its strict moral law, finds fertile ground in peoples whose cultures are heavily influenced by Confucianism—as is clearly the case in both Korean and Chinese societies. These are examples of how Christianity is contextualized by taking the good practices of ancient religions and transforming them with biblical Christian meanings.

The impressive growth of Pentecostalism in the Majority World was partly attributable to its enterprising, entrepreneurial local preachers and leaders. The most remarkable growth of a single congregation in Seoul took place under the ministry of David Yonggi Cho (b. 1936) and his future mother-in-law, Jashil Choi (1915–89). The growth of Pentecostalism in Korea became virtually synonymous with the ministry of Cho. By 2000 the Korean Full Gospel (AG) churches had overtaken the Methodists as the second largest Protestant denomination, with over a million members. The majority of these were in the Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC) congregation and its satellites, which planted churches all over Korea, Japan, and internationally. In 1993 it reported 700,000 members under 700 pastors, becoming the largest Christian congregation in the world. For Pentecostals in various parts of the world, the “freedom in the Spirit” allows them to formulate, often unconsciously, ideologies that have meaning for people in different life situations, and Yonggi Cho’s ministry is a leading example of this inherent contextualization. The vibrancy, enthusiasm, spontaneity, and spirituality for which Pentecostals are so well known, as well as their willingness to address problems of sickness, poverty, unemployment, loneliness, evil spirits, and sorcery, have directly contributed to this growth. Cho’s theology must be assessed from the perspective of the post–Korean War context in which it was shaped. Korean people suffering from their accumulated grief, or han, seek healing and “blessings” from traditional shamans to alleviate their deep pain, such as in these years following the Korean War or, more recently, during the IMF crisis in 1997–98. The fact that a prominent part of Cho’s message is to proclaim that God brings “blessings” and healings is a readily accepted contextual message for Korean people.

Some scholars have suggested that Korean Pentecostalism has succeeded because it has combined Christianity with shamanism. ²⁶ However, Korean Pentecostalism should be interpreted with the categories of a shamanistic culture rather than with historical and theological categories imposed from outside. This idea of a link between Korean Pentecostalism and shamanism has been assumed and perpetuated by Westerners. Harvey Cox, for example, contends that “primal spirituality now surfacing in Korea . . . underlies the original biblical faith as well,” which he sees as the main reason for the growth of Pentecostalism in Korea and in other countries of the world. The supposed link with shamanism should actually be assessed quite differently, however. It is more appropriate to consider Cho’s Pentecostalism as a contextual form of Korean Christianity interacting with shamanism. Korean Pentecostals themselves justify their practices of healing and doctrine of blessings by referring to the Bible as their prime source. Cho’s reaction to shamanism and his teachings on healing and “threefold blessings” are better viewed within the context of his contact with international Pentecostalism and must be assessed, not only within the internal cultural and religious context of Korea, but also in light of the external influence of globalization and international Pentecostalism. Western scholars may not have reflected enough on the enormous difference between interacting with shamanism (as Korean Pentecostals obviously do) and being shamanistic. The latter is an untenable position for Pentecostals; Cho himself clearly rejects traditional shamanism, saying that shamans “serve demons.” ²⁷

Consideration must be given to whether Cho’s message has adapted to and transformed its cultural and religious environment. Clearly, Cho himself has wanted to be seen in these terms, although he does not use the word “contextual”:

Being a Korean and having been saved out of the Buddhist religion, I have been able to appreciate the distinctive position of Christians who come from the Third World. . . . We evangelical Korean Christians have developed our own traditions. This is very important because it makes it possible for us to be Christian without being less Korean. In the past, missionaries not only brought their religion but also their culture to the countries they evangelized. So it became apparent that the new converts lost much of their natural heritage. I believe that this produced an unnecessary hindrance to the acceptance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. ²⁸

The success of Cho’s Pentecostalism should be seen as a response to the influence of the worldview of shamanism that permeates and underlies Korean society. Both Korean Pentecostalism and older Korean religions acknowledge and respond to the world of spirits, as Korean Pentecostal scholars have pointed out. Shamanism provides a fertile ground into which the “full gospel” is more easily planted. If pastors like Cho sometimes appear to be functioning as shamans, it is because they respond to needs arising from a shamanistic world; but like Pentecostals worldwide, they emphatically deny any admixture with shamanistic religions. So too, Cho often refers to the Confucian background in a favorable light, pointing out that Confucianism is not a religion but an ethical system observed by Koreans. ²⁹

Those who write of Korean Pentecostal shamanism often fail to see that the practices thought to parallel ancient religions are also found in the biblical record. These Pentecostals define their healing and deliverance practices by reference to the Bible rather than to shamanism and see their activities as creative adaptations to the local context. At the same time, Pentecostals themselves might need a greater appreciation for the diversity of their cultural and religious past. Demonizing this past does not explain the present attraction of Pentecostalism for peoples deeply influenced by their ancient religions and cultures, even though such a demonization might help in the religious competition that is a feature of pluralist societies. Many Pentecostals have found both cultural and biblical alternatives to, as well as adaptations from, the practices of their ancient religions and seek to provide answers to the needs inherent in their own context. It is the ability to make these adaptations that has transformed world Christianity in the last century. Healing has been the major attraction of Pentecostalism in various parts of the world, and indeed miracles, exorcisms, and “power encounters” have become standard Pentecostal practices. But these practices have not occurred in a vacuum—in most of the world they have been conditioned by a context of poverty, marginalization, and despair. These were reasons for the appeal of teachings relating to healing and prosperity in the Global South, but there were obviously corresponding dangers.

Cho has been criticized as being unconcerned with social change and structures of oppression, yet his church has extensive social care programs of its own and has been involved in national relief and economic aid for North Korea. This ministry has not received sufficient attention with the controversies about Cho; as Young-gi Hong points out, “Cho’s social ministry does not draw proper recognition compared to its contribution.” Although minjung theology, a form of Korean liberation theology, espoused the concerns of the poor and oppressed, it is to Pentecostal churches like YFGC to which the poor and oppressed have flocked for relief. Ig-Jin Kim has pointed out that the social ethics of Korean Pentecostalism is characterized by its transformative nature in society. This transformation and participation in wider society takes many forms, including “relief activities, the saving of souls, the establishing of facilities for social welfare, and the shaping of public opinion through mass media.” ³⁰ The social activities of the Yoido church are extensive and obvious to any casual observer. Cho’s ministry among the poor, the opportunities he has given to women leaders, and the social activities of YFGC demonstrate the potential within Pentecostalism to be a force for social transformation. ³¹

The patterns established by the new churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have become paradigmatic of Pentecostalism in the twenty-first century. Charismatic Christianity today is full of religious entrepreneurs who, like their predecessors in early Pentecostalism, are on a mission to take their message to as many people as possible. They declare a call from God and have an uncanny ability to communicate with crowds of people. Their message of hope and faith attracts the crowds, who give of their substance and enable the enterprise to succeed. A criticism justifiably leveled at Pentecostalism, however, is that sometimes a message of success, prosperity, and power is expounded at the expense of a true understanding of the theology of the cross. When the so-called anointing of the Spirit becomes a quick-fix solution to human distress and want, and when the needs of some Christian believers remain unanswered, the role of suffering is completely overlooked and even considered as unbelief. There are not always instant solutions to life’s problems, and spirituality should not be measured in terms of success. The Holy Spirit enables Christians to bear the fruit of the Spirit, real evidence that the Spirit is present. People are convinced not only by the triumphs of Christianity but also by its perseverance in trials. The Spirit is also a gentle dove, a Spirit of humility, patience, and meekness, of love, joy, and peace. Overemphasizing the power of the Spirit often leads to bitter disappointment and disillusionment when that power is not immediately manifested. The Holy Spirit not only provides power when there is a lack of it, but the Spirit is also able to sustain people through life’s tragedies and failures, and especially when there is no visible outward success. ³²