Hello, all you readers!
I know that I haven't been very active here and I apologize for that. (Please don't read the post-script of my previous post on this blog).
Anyway, on 29th I attended an event commemorating the birthday of Gauri Lankesh, a journalist who was murdered on September 5, 2017. I must admit here that I wasn't aware of her before her death. Eventually I came to know that she was an outspoken critic of right-wing ideology in the country. And in commemoration of her life, young emerging leaders of this country vowed to fight fascist forces in the country.
Here's the deal. I am a Christian, and one of the things that comes with being a Christian is the conviction that the Bible is God's Word and is authoritative for all matters of life and conduct. There are quite a few people in this country who would claim to be the same. But days like today make me skeptical of whether there are as many true followers as they say there are.
The Bible has nearly a third of its contents talking about social justice. The God of the Christians according to the Bible is clearly concerned with social concerns.
The Bible has nearly a third of its contents talking about social justice. The God of the Christians according to the Bible is clearly concerned with social concerns.
I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
The above lines are from Amos 5, where God is angry at the people of Israel. And why is he angry? The following lines are from the same chapter a little before the previous lines:
you levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a straw tax on their grain
....
there are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
Today our society may not be very different from the Israel of Amos' day. The poor are largely ignored; farmers are committing suicide due to rising debt while rich industrialists are getting foreign holidays while defaulting on loans; large segments of the population live in fear every day for what they believe and what they eat; people who stand for the truth are killed, beaten up, or are slapped with sedition charges; history is being rewritten according to the whims and fancies of those in power; and even the people in the judiciary are not clearly impartial.
And if God is angry at these things at Israel, wouldn't he be equally angry at the same things here? And if God is angry, clearly those who claim to worship him must be equally outraged at the injustice? But why are my Christian brothers and sisters largely silent on these issues? Is it the same God that we worship? Is it the same Jesus we claim as our master? Or are there no Christians at all in the Universities of our land?
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian preacher who was outraged at social inequality and injustice. He fought for civil rights for all. He said "we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like a river, and righteousness like a mighty stream." His study of the Bible moved him to fight for social justice. I wish Christian students in the universities of our country would study the Scriptures, and truly be the salt and the light to this society that seems to be decaying and falling into darkness!
I am sad that I was not aware of Gauri Lankesh before her death. And what saddens me more is that there are many of my Christian brothers and sisters especially in our Universities who may not still be aware of her. Further more, many of us Christians in comfortable places may not even be aware of the recent Bhima Koregaon violence, the murder of Junaid Khan under suspicion of carrying beef, and similar such tragedies that have rocked the country in the past two years. In the event I attended on 29th, Kavita Lankesh, sister of the deceased Gauri Lankesh said, "ignorance is bliss, but today we cannot afford to be ignorant." And that is the line I want to leave my Christian brothers and sisters with.
Thanks for sharing....I think the first few steps we need to take alongside the university students is to at least bring in these discussions and share as you did of Our God who shows his anger over corruption, lynching, marginalisation....& more so of the issues within the campuses.
ReplyDeleteThe more we do take bible studies that ignite the young minds, the rest is for how they can respond with us standing along side.
Here is a question posed by Vinoth Ramachandra on an IFES group:
Four years ago, we had a conversation ... about the pro-democracy "Umbrella movement" in Hong Kong. Many of its leaders were students and young graduates, several Christians from FES-HK among them.
The teenage student leader Joshua Wong is now imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for his defiance of their suppression of political freedoms.
The struggle continues: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/outrage-hong-kong-activist-barred-polls-180128114857887.html
Terry Halliday posed the question: "Are IFES movements producing people like Joshua Wong? And if not, why not?"
We seem to have very low expectations of our students, even (or especially?) in elite universities, where we have reduced "student leadership" to leading Bible study groups or conducting Christian meetings.
We need to come back to Terry's question, again and again, in IFES.
Does anybody have stories to tell of how the passion for social and political justice is motivating Christian students to sacrificial action in their universities or wider society?
I also believe the issue revolves around the way applications in our Bible studies tend to always be individualistic. As in, I remember three different cell groups while studying James, did not think of collective applications as a corporate body.
DeleteI'm not saying there should be no individual application. It is very important, but I think faith is also as much a practice of the community as it is a personal relationship with a relational God.