To understand Gudina’s focus on the topic of unbelief we must go into his childhood and adulthood. As a child Gudina grew up in a family of traditional believers. His family's religious practices showed him the possession, deception and oppression of people through evil spirits. When Gudina accepted the gospel of Jesus Chirst–Which He believed was the liberating power of God– it created a zeal in him that made him want to share that power to unbelievers around him. Gudina was surrounded by unbelief from birth, and once his spiritual eyes were opened, it was a daily battle to ensure darkness “Unbelief” never won over the light “Belief”. His understanding of this battle is seen when he writes,
In every situation and in every event both divine and demonic elements are at work.” (Witness and Discipleship Pg.120).
Gudina’s theological understanding and responses were based on the events, context and environment he was in. He wrote on the matter of unbelief in 1976 when the Ethiopian revolution began to take hold of soicalist ideology. Gudina’s primary fear of socialism came from his understanding that it resisted or denied the existence of God. He knew this because he had studied that socialism was influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach’s idea that “God is a creation of man”. Gudina’s understanding of this is found in his writing,
“The thought of Feuerbach profoundly influenced the thinking of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Fredrich Engles (1820-1895), the founders of what is called “Scientific Socialism.” (Witness and Discipleship Pg.30).
Gudina’s understanding or some may even say prophetic insights of how socialism threatened the faith led him to writing this article, to push the church to prepare and learn its role in a new society. Gudina saw unless the church equipped itself the upcoming storm would lead many astray.
Gudina Tumsa in this article attempts to identify, define, explain and rebuttal arguments that have been made on unbelief since what he refers to as the early days of life,
“Unbelief is not something new. It is as old as humankind.” (Witness and Discipleship Pg.25).
Gudina Tumsa goes on to define that unbelief in God is not only denying His existence, but it can also take the form of questioning the truth (God) or the form of covering up one’s misdeeds and denying the responsibility of sin. Some examples of unbelief in his writing are Aristotle’s idea that God is the “Prime Mover”, the deists idea that God is a “Watch maker and the world is a watch”, Ludwig Feuerbach’s idea that “God is a creation of man” and he also brings up different groups of people that fit into the category of unbelief such as “nominalists” and “materialists”. Gudina Tumsa presents on this topic so that the Church would know the challenges it was facing. He understood that the Church would fail as previous churches around the world have, if they did not prepare and just tried to oppress the ideas against the faith. His principle on this can be seen when he writes,
Our Christian response to expressions of unbeleif and attempts to spread unbelief cannot be one of repression. If we Christians wish that our right to believe and to see belief spread should be respected, we should equally wish that the rights of those who do not or cannot believe should be respected.” (Witness and Discipleship Pg.31).
From what he wrote we can say that Gudina was a believer in fair fights. Gudina’s attempt to prepare the church was also an attempt to encourage the Church as other believers had done in the past. He based his approach on the biblical principle of Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us”.
Gudina was following the example of believers such as John the Baptist and Paul and through this becoming a part of the cloud of witnesses himself. Gudina firmly stated in his writing that the Gospel is all powerful, according to him the Gospel is the power that creates a bridge between man and God.
The gospel is the power of God working in the human heart with a view to transforming man and thereby putting him in the right relationship with God, who is the source and goal of his life, regardless of the stage in the process of historical development at which man finds himself”. (Witness and Discipleship Pg.9).
Gudina’s belief that the gospel is all powerful led to his belief that the gospel will always be victorious. His belief of a victorious gospel can be seen in his rebuttal statement when he says that no form of unbelief can disprove the existence of God. Gudina Tumsa’s final and in our opinion most important rebuttal to unbelief is faith, which is seen in his writing.
“The truly effective testimony against unbelief is a life lived by faith.” (Witness and Discipleship Pg.32).
Faith means believing without seeing and as Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said in John 20:29 “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Both Christ and Gudina present us with a solution and that is faith. Faith is our blessing, our strongest weapon against the pandemic of unbelief.