The religious (Christian) alternative: An apology for faith

The world is going through, what can possibly be called, the most difficult time faced by this generation. A number of people are really suffering and there is a lot of hopelessness. Any attempt to present a religious answer during such times could be condemned as opportunistic or as exploiting the situation and not being sensitive. In spite of that risk, I would still like to present the religious alternative because I believe it offers hope and real answers, something that we all need now more than ever.

The Individual and the Community

A lot of my friends believe in the Marxist ideal of a classless society. And some of them shared posts on social media which talk about how capitalism is a huge problem. That is what got me writing this post. (Interestingly, the political left's preaching would not draw as much flak from the liberals as religious preaching though I digress.)

I personally support leftist policies to an extent. This is because I do agree with Marx that true human freedom can be found positively in our relations with other people; it can be found in community not in isolation. Though this flies in the face of the Western, especially American, liberal ideas of personal property and personal rights, Americans themselves would take pride in precisely those very moments when they sacrificed personal property and personal rights 'for the greater good of the community'. The Second World War is fondly remembered as a time when the nation came together for a noble cause. The soldiers are almost venerated. Sacrifice of personal life for the sake of the community was celebrated.

And so, I think we can agree that the community often brings out the best in us. We humans are, if I may use the expression, 'designed' to live for persons or ideas outside of ourselves. That is what brings out the best in us, and leads to 'the greater good.'

The Pursuit of Happiness

That leads me to my second point. Almost all political or religious philosophies deal in some way with man's pursuit of happiness. Whether it be Bentham's utilitarianism that seeks to maximize the happiness of the maximum number of people. Or Marx who wrote, "If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people." [1835, Reflections of a young man]

Every human desires happiness. We seek happiness in many things. There are many philosophies that offer happiness. Some philosophies talk about finding happiness within oneself, while some talk about locating it outside of oneself. For instance, the quote by Marx shows that he believed happiness to be found in community and not in isolation. Here again, I tend to agree with him.

Many of us experience happiness (or some form of it) while watching a movie, playing a game, watching a game, listening to music, spending time with a loved one, and so on and so forth. I believe that at the heart of happiness is losing oneself. We experience happiness in movies when we lose ourselves in the story, or in a game, when we become so invested in the game that we forget ourselves, or in a loved one when we give up our very lives for the beloved (Bruno Mars starts singing, I'd catch a grenade for you...)

The Problem of Self

Here is a problem though. From experience I find that the losing of self is not easy. It's eventual end is sacrifice. That is one area where Marxist ideals fail to translate to everyday life. As beautifully brought out by Orwell in Animal Farm, man eventually sacrifices the needs of the community for the needs of self. It becomes a loop. Sacrificing the community for the self creates problems for the self. To deal with the problems, man further sacrifices the community to deal with self.

The root of the problem is man's nature. Rivalry and competition are hindrances to the realization of a classless society. But rivalry can be seen in man even when he is very young. The moment a younger sibling is born, the older sibling sees the sibling as a rival for the attention of the adults. If the very nature of man tries to put self over others, imposing the foreign ideal of community will be resisted by the nature. This causes the problem where the two points we spoke about are in conflict: the pursuit of happiness impeded by the need to put community over self and the need of the community taking a hit due to the pursuit of happiness. If the nature of man seeks to put self over others, it can find happiness only in doing so.

The ideal scenario

The ideal scenario would be one where the pursuit of happiness and the idea of sacrifice (or letting oneself go) for the community converge. Here is where I believe Christianity can offer a solution.

Christianity sees man as inherently flawed as a result of original sin. This sinful nature is what is responsible for the rivalry and competition. The nature causes one to see oneself as God, and thereby deserving of being above others. For the ideal scenario, education is not what is needed, but rather reformation of the very nature. And that is what, according to Christianity, God offers.

Jeremiah 31: 33 says, "But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me..." Not education, but rather reformation of character. And 1st John 4:8 says, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." Note the idea of knowing God in the two mentioned verses and the logical inference is this. Knowing God leads one to love others. And knowing God is what God himself promises to do. Reformation of the very nature, or as the Bible puts it, 'being born again.'

Christianity, much like Marxism, believes in a classless society, albeit one ruled by God. Galatians 3:28 says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." And yet, Christianity does not actively pursue a classless society but rather pursues man's ultimate joy, which is found in God. Allow me to demonstrate.

Imagine a wheel. The spokes of the wheel get closer to each other the more they get closer to the hub. Or imagine an orchestra. In an orchestra, the instruments are all in sync only when each of them is tuned to the standard tuning (external) and not merely to each other.

Christian belief sees God as that hub, or the tuning fork. When man draws closer to God, he is able to live in harmony within a society. The classless society thus becomes a by product when man pursues the ultimate joy that is found in God.

But what about sacrifice? We already saw that it is not easy. However, we have many examples through history of people dying for something or someone other than themselves. These are people who valued that something or someone a lot. One could not die for a stranger. But dying for the person who gives me the greatest joy is possible. (People do die for strangers but usually there is always an underlying strong belief in the idea of 'country' or something like that and love for that idea.) And so, if as the Bible says, God gives the greatest joy, sacrifice would not just be possible because it is worth it, but would be something to be desired because it would take one closer to God (Philippians 1: 23)

To conclude

This convergence of (i) the sacrifice of self for the community and (ii) the pursuit of happiness is found in Christianity. And this convergence is what drove the early Christians to have "all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.... they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people." [Acts 2: 44 - 47]

If the Christian message is true, and I believe it is, then I believe it to be a far better alternative.

P.S. I do not claim to be an expert on Marxism or any form of political studies. I am sorry if I have misrepresented any of the ideas.

Please.... Pray for me... Pray for us!

Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength. [Deut 6: 4,5; NET]

My dear dear friends! This is a very personal blog post. I will not name the people I am writing to, because I want it to apply to every believer in Christ Jesus.

Growing up, I did not have a lot of close friends. It had always been my prayer that I have good close friends. God, in His abundant mercy, gave me such friends. Friends, for whose company I literally cried when I had to part with them. Many such groups of friends. Friends who love the Lord just like I do. But, I wonder do we, truly love the Lord with all our being? Like truly truly love the Lord with all our whole being?

I currently live in a town in Chhattisgarh. I am part of a Church where the majority of the members are first generation believers from other faith backgrounds. They truly love the Lord. The Church is also connected to various other Churches in this State, where the work of the Lord is really growing and thriving. This is amazing, right? Like, I could claim this is in some ways, a mini revival of sorts. God is moving, and its thrilling to watch!

But here's the catch. This movement, can, in a large way be traced back to one group of friends around a couple of decades ago, who decided to take a stand for God. Trust me, the story is that simple! One generation of friends, who loved the Lord, decided to obey Him! And the way the Lord is using them is simply thrilling to watch.

What does it mean to love the Lord? What does it mean to truly love Him with all my being? Like, love Him so much that I count everything else as rubbish (Phil 3: 8)? Is it just feeding my ego by watching videos of atheists getting owned in arguments? Is it to praise God through music surrounded by people who will all say Amen? Is it to get together in cozy little Bible study groups which are really fun? Is it barbecue nights and going to inspiring camps?

I am seriously doubting whether I love my Lord! You see, I talk. And I love my comforts. If I truly believed the Word of God, I'd be seriously living for Him. Offering myself as a living sacrifice. Does anyone of us really understand the implication of that word? Like, it's not sacrificing phone or internet or something silly like that. It is sacrificing the authority over my own life, where my dreams, my interests, my attachments to this world all are considered as hatred compared to my love for God. Where my feelings towards poetry, or music, or puns, or reading, all are like hatred compared to my love for God! For all my talk, I seriously doubt my devotion to God!

And that begs the question. Do I really know the Gospel? And that is my prayer. That I truly know the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Because if I truly knew the gospel, things would be truly different. And if all of us truly believed in the words of God - nay, if even a few of us believed in the word of God, and took him at his word - I shudder to think what God would do through us. Because now I am seeing first hand what he is doing because a few people took God at his Word twenty years ago.

My brothers and sisters, please pray that I truly know God! And I will pray that you know Him. When I see 95% of believers going into high paying corporate jobs without a 'special call' for it, but ask for a special call when asked to consider missions, I doubt we take God at his Word. When I see that we are comfortable within our Churches, where everyone agrees with us, and don't go to public secular platforms, where we will be called bigots, outdated, and various other names, where we will be the minority, I doubt we truly seek to be His disciple. When we read Jesus telling the rich young man to sell everything and give the money to the poor, and I say it's easy to say that but in the real world you need money, I doubt I trust the Lord. Do I trust Him when He says seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you [Mathew 6:33]? I long for revival and I know I am severely severely lacking in my love for Christ! I hardly make time to pray, to read His Word, and to serve Him wholeheartedly. And so I request you to pray that there will be revival in my life, and in this country of ours!

I know this is not my best blog post. The writing is all over the place, and I apologize for it. But I am speaking from the bottom of my heart, and I will not apologize for that.

I wish that we - a few of us at least - might turly truly decide to love the Lord with our whole being, gladly paying the cost, even if it is our lives that is asked of us! Soli Deo Gloria!

The Light Meets the Dark: the gospel in the context of hard questions

Today I had an interesting conversation with a friend. We were talking about the hard questions of life. And I'm guessing that if we are honest, each of us faces moments when we are confronted with hard questions. Questions that makes us uncomfortable. We are confronted with answers that don't feel good. And much too often, the natural tendency is to ignore such questions. Vinoth Ramachandra in his blog post, ""Deconstructing Equality", talks about the question of intrinsic and equal worth of human beings being side stepped or shouted out of view in our contemporary polarized discourse of equality, since it is a hard question.

When I came back home after the conversation, I started listening to an album by Tenth Avenue North, "The Light Meets the Dark." And for the first time, I noticed how the band does not shy away from asking tough questions. I have not been a big fan of contemporary Christian music due to many reasons, out of which one is that CCM often does not deal with hard questions, and just writes feel good inspirational music.

The third song of the album, 'you are more,' is one of the band's highly successful songs both critically as well as on the charts. The song talks about questions of self worth, and in quite unflattering tones claims that self worth cannot be drawn from the choices one has made in life. In a concert, lead singer and frontman, Mike Donehey says about the song, "We preach something like this, 'the choices you make make you who you are.' You know, only proud people say that, only people who've made good choices say that... Well, here's the gospel, you gotta admit you are a bum, and you don't need to prove a thing to anybody because He did it for you."

The first song of the album, 'healing begins,' makes an appeal to let down one's walls. The second verse says, Afraid to let your secrets out / Everything that you hide / Can come crashing through the door now / But too scared to face all your fear / So you hide but you find / That the shame won't disappear. And then the pre-chorus kicks in, So let it fall down / There's freedom waiting in the sound / When you let your walls fall to the ground / We're here now.

The last song of the album, 'Oh my dear', closes out the questions raised by "healing begins," in a very satisfactory manner by telling the story of a person opening up and talking about some of their deepest secrets: You said, 'I just don't think that you'll understand / You'll never look at me that way again / If you knew what I did.' // And so your tears fell and melted the snow / You told me secrets nobody had known / But I never loved you more, even though / Now I knew what you did. // Oh my dear, I'll wait for you / And grace tonight will pull us through / Until the tears have left your eyes / Until the fears can sleep at night / Until the demons that you're scared of disappear inside / Until this guilt begins to crack / And the weight falls from your back / Oh, my dear, I'll keep you in my arms tonight.

Each of the song in the album deals with heavy questions. The band deals with defeat, feelings of inferiority, fear, hurt, and the various challenges one faces while living the Christian faith, in a very succinct manner. And it is only in the context of asking the real tough questions that the hope and appeal of the gospel (the word gospel literally means 'good news') really stands out.

I experienced the album to be quite inspirational. But it does not inspire by ignoring and shying away from the difficult questions, but rather talks about hope in the midst of the ugly reality that we have to live in everyday.

Disclaimer: I am not good at critically analyzing music, and hence this is not so much an album review as much as a closer look at the message of the album from a purely lyrical perspective. I must also admit that I really love Tenth Avenue North and encourage all you readers to check out their music. The Light Meets the Dark is a good place to start, and here's the third song of the album, you are more. Cheers!

Is my faith even real if I'm not moved to action?

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. 

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.