I don’t quite remember which podcast or video I was listening to, but the person mentioned John 1.47, where Jesus tells Nathanael, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” I’ve read this verse numerous times. I go through the bible one every year and I preach from John’s Gospel quite often. So this verse is quite familiar. However, it was only the other day when these words of Jesus made a different impression on me.
You see, according to the Old Testament, Israel is the name given to Jacob after he wrestles with a man at Peniel. This passage is a watershed moment in the narrative because it marks at least the beginning of a transformation of Jacob from a deceiver to one who wrestles with God. This is seen clearly in the difference between the ‘before story’ where he places himself at the rear of the company in fear of his brother Esau and the ‘after story’ where he goes ahead of everyone to meet his brother. To me this passage has always been symbolic of the people of God, trying to shed off the deceit they learnt from Adam and trying to don the mantle of responsible wrestling with God that they learn from Jesus.
So the other day, when I heard the words, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” I wondered with what tone Jesus said those words. The bible unfortunately does not give us much in the way of tonal or facial expressions of the people involved. Hence, we never know if something was said with a straight face or with a smirk or wink. We are clueless if something was uttered in a matter of fact manner or tongue in cheek.
This was hammered home to me when I watched The Gospel According to Matthew, starring Bruce Marchiano as Jesus. When we get to Matthew 7.3-5, Jesus takes a walking stick from one of the men there and places it on his left eye to make his point. It is hilarious and unforgettable. If Jesus had indeed done something like that when he spoke those words no one would have ever forgotten his words. But such a portrayal of a Jesus who is willing to use humor and the ridiculous to communicate his message is quite different from some of the earlier portrayals such as in The Greatest Story Every Told or Jesus of Nazareth, in both of which Jesus comes across as so disconnected from the human experience that one wonders who found him interesting enough to follow! Watching Marchiano portray a lively, humorous, and even at times mischievous Jesus opened my eyes to not just seeing Jesus as a three dimensional character but also to understand that there are crucial factors that are missing in the text that can seriously affect how the text is interpreted.
So how could we understand Jesus’ words to Nathanael? Do we just take it at face value that Nathanael was a man who was not deceitful? Or was Jesus saying more? During his interaction with Nathanael, Jesus will tell him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
This is an allusion to Jacob’s dream at Bethel where he saw angels ascending and descending a ladder between heaven and earth. But this event happened before Jacob’s wrestling match, when he was still a deceiver. At that time he was fleeing from his brother, Esau, after having stolen the blessing from their father, Isaac. It would be another twenty years before Jacob would have his wrestling match, another twenty years before he could be renamed Israel.
Could it be that Jesus was telling Nathanael that he was already like Jacob after the wrestling match? He was already someone who had shed the deception that characterized Jacob and had become a true Israelite, one who wrestles openly with God? And could Jesus then have been telling him the true significance of Jacob’s ladder? Jesus told Nathanael that he would see the angels ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. However, in Jacob’s dream the angels ascended and descended on the ladder. The conclusion we reach is that this non-deceptive Israelite would receive the vision (we don’t know when) that the ladder that formed the bridge between heaven and earth was none other than Jesus himself.
Could this also link with the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God”? (Matthew 5.8) Nathanael, being a person in whom there was no deceit could certainly be a person who was pure in heart. Then it could be that this is John’s version of the beatitude. Indeed, if we read the account in Genesis 28 we realize that Jacob did get a vision of God. (See v. 13) But Jesus promises Nathanael that he would see the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. In that case, the only figure apart from the angels that Nathanael is promised he will see is the Son of Man, who, from the parallel with Jacob’s dream now seems to serve a dual role as not just the bridge between heaven and earth but also the revelation or revealer of God as in v. 18.
In other words, according to John, Jesus, as the Son of Man, is the bridge that unites the previously separated realms of heaven and earth. In addition, he is also the embodiment of what Jacob saw in his dream – the very presence of God for us, no longer at the top of the ladder, but, as in the dream, standing beside us.
I had not heard of Jeffrey Salkin till Wednesday, 24 January 2024, when I came across one of his posts on the Religion News Service website. He is a Rabbi based in New York City and has a blog and podcast both named Martini Judaism. After reading a few of his posts, I realize that I disagree with him on most of the issues centered around Israel. Yet, he writes well and in a balanced manner. While he is a Zionist, he does not deny the right of the Palestinians to exist between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. So I do not mind recommending his writing to others who wish to get a different perspective than mine on these issues.
The Martini Judaism post I first came across is That SuperJew poster from the 1960s. Not being old enough to have lived through most of the 1960s and probably because I am not a US citizen, I had no knowledge of the poster or what it represented. It seems that, in the wake of the 1967 war, people in the USA and UK began to consider Jews as not being weaklings but being people who were secretly endowed with great power, much like Clark Kent was secretly Superman. In the post Salkin turns his attention to the hands of the SuperJew in the poster, realizing that they are dirty. He presents three possible interpretations of the dirty hands.
First, the anti-Semitic view. Jews are filthy, dirty people. Hence, even the SuperJew, though powerful and strong has unclean hands. Since I was unable to determine anything about the creator of the poster, Harry Hamburg, I cannot comment on whether this interpretation is valid. Hamburg could have been an anti-Semite. On the other hand, he could just have been creating a satirical poster without any intention of disparaging the Jews.
Second, the anti-Zionist view. According to this view, proposed by anti-Zionist Jews like George Steiner, the Jews were intended to be the ‘conscience’ of the world and could only do that if they did not have a nation state. The dirty hands, in this interpretation, comes with the desire to possess a nation state, a desire that is a betrayal of Jewish ideals. Hence, the poster would then be seen as a critique of the Zionist movement, which desired the Jews to have political power in the world.
Third, and this is the view Salkin supports, power itself makes Jewish hands unclean because it is the way of the world. But because we live in a broken world, it is a necessary evil. Since power is a necessary evil, Jews should not shy away from it, but should cautiously embrace it. However, as Salkin observes, if we adopt this interpretation, we need to find ways of critiquing Jewish power so that there is at least the desire to wash those hands and reduce the dirt that is on them.
I found Salkin’s interpretations of the dirty hands quite intriguing. But they also got me thinking about the Church. According to the New Testament, the Church is the fulfilment of Israel. Jesus did not come to found a new religion. He lived as a Torah observant Jew and died the same. The first apostles, like Peter, James, John and Paul, were all Torah observant Jews. And they did not think that they were starting a new religion. As far as they were concerned, the Church was the next stage in the development of Israel. And since all of them were Jews, they could not have been accused of any sort of replacement theology. If you asked them, they would have said that the Church was the true Israel. The inclusion of the Gentiles, foreseen in the pages of the Tanakh (e.g. Exodus 12.48-49, 1 Kings 8.41-43, Isaiah 56.1-8, and Isaiah 60.10-14), was the sign that the Church was the genuine form of Israel for the period following the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Since the inclusion of the Gentiles was supposed to happen after the coming of the Messiah and since, according to the multi-ethnic Church, Jesus was the Messiah, any Jewish community that now excluded the Gentiles could not be the genuine Israel.
However, the conviction of the Church from our earliest records was that if it is the continuation of Israel, then the Church should play the same role as Israel did prior to Jesus’ resurrection. Could this be the reason for which, as recorded in Acts, the repeated persecution of the Christians only served to disperse them among the nations so that they could be ‘salt and light’ as Jesus had said in the Sermon on the Mount? The presence of small groups of Christians in different places of the Roman Empire in the first couple of centuries of the common era ensured that the people in the Roman Empire were exposed to Christian ethical thought.
For example, while infanticide was an accepted practice in the Roman Empire, Christians often adopted babies who were abandoned. Similarly, while Greco-Roman cultures accepted a wide variety of sexual expressions, early Christians held to a strict monogamous sexual ethic. Slowly but surely the ethics of the Christians permeated Roman society. Hence, it is probably fair to conclude that, just as the Jews were supposed to be the conscience of the world, the same vocation was fulfilled in the Church as it got dispersed throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.
Could it also be that, whenever Christians began to wield power, the falsified the gospel and dirtied their hands? It is well known that Jews were persecuted in most places where Christians were in the majority. Antisemitism has been a disease that has infected the Church and affected its witness to Jesus in many places. In addition, we have the situation of the supposedly ‘Christian’ colonial powers sailing off to distant lands to enslave the natives or plunder the lands or both. All of the Americas and Australasia, most of Africa and much of Asia were overrun by these European ‘Christian’ colonists, resulting in the decimation and impoverishment of native peoples the world over. If this is not a case of getting one’s hands dirty, I don’t know what would qualify.
That this situation hasn’t changed much is clear when we consider that the colonial nations like the UK and France and the European settler colonial nation that it the USA occupy the majority of the permanent seats on the UN Security Council with rights to veto anything that does not align with their vested interests. Please note that I am not saying that these countries are – or ever were – Christian. However, with Christian state religions in the UK and France, this was the case of Christians wielding power in these countries. And though the USA supposedly has a charter of separation of Church and State, the first couple of centuries of US history involved European settlers all of whom were from different Christian traditions. That these three countries and predominantly Orthodox Russia use their veto votes to allow injustices to continue is a sad fact that the people of the world are subjected to almost on a continued basis. If this is not getting one’s hands dirty, I don’t know what is.
Unfortunately, Christians in these countries have gotten used to being in the majority and enjoying the ensuant privileges. Now, after centuries of enjoying political clout, many, if not most, of them cannot bear to think of a post-Christian world. We, who live in countries that were, thankfully, never ‘Christian’ wonder about what the term ‘post-Christian’ means. In fact, if these countries used the methods that Jesus decried, could they have ever been truly Christian? And if not, then the phrase ‘post-Christian’ is being used by these Christians only to rue the erosion of their power base and has nothing actually to do with being a Christian or following Jesus. It is just a scare tactic to ensure that their adherents do not actually side with the causes of justice around the world, which would ensure that, as Isaiah put it, “every valley will be exalted and every hill made low.”
The Christians of the first world nations have developed a taste for being in power and they are not going to willingly give that up. But because of this their hands remain dirty. I pray that, in these times of increasing injustice of the first world nations against the developing and underdeveloped countries, the Christians of the developed world, who are in a position to make a difference, renounce their dependence on power and wash their hands. It is time they stopped relying on the security their nations and their military and economic might affords them and start living the reality that the global Church is the one body of Christ placed on the earth to spread the values and priorities of the kingdom of God in it.
The International Court of Justice ruling on the case against Israel by South Africa was announced yesterday. The full ruling and the statements of individual judges can be found here. The video of the proceedings can be found here. The ICJ ruling on this case has been greatly anticipated. And there have been a number of responses to it.
In this video, the host argues that the ruling is one without teeth because there are no actionable aspects of the ruling. This is probably the point of view shared by many around the world. And since the ruling will not affect the ground realities of the Palestinians in Gaza immediately, or likely even in the near future, many, if not most, Palestinians are understandably disappointed.
However, in this video, Frank Barat speaks with four guests, all of whom are legal experts. In the video, Daniel Machover observes that, while any ruling in favor of South Africa’s petition would have been positive, the fact that each point was passed by an overwhelming majority is significant. In particular, the fact that Justice Donahue from the USA voted against Israel on all points puts pressure on the USA. In addition, the ruling calls on all nations that are a party to the genocide convention to do what is necessary to ensure that no genocide occurs. I think this is brilliant! The ICJ is saying, in effect, “Each nation has a conscience and should act accordingly. Do not think the ICJ is here to solve your problems.” This places the onus of solving the current problem, and of ensuring future problems do not arise, on the signatory nations. States that have close ties to Israel now have the responsibility of using diplomatic and political means to apply pressure on Israel to adhere to the rulings. Machover also looks at how the ICJ has worded the rulings. For example, it states categorically, “[T]he military operation conducted by Israel after 7 October 2023 has resulted inter alia, in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries,” thereby allowing future arguments to be based on an ICJ ruling rather than on statements from any lower entity.
William Schabas observes that the court has asked for a report from Israel within a month and a response from South Africa to that report. He argues that this is, therefore, an active and dynamic order. In my view, the court is giving Israel a way out of having this escalate further. If they take definitive action that satisfies South Africa, South Africa can withdraw its case against Israel. In other words, if Israel’s report after a month satisfies South Africa that sufficient measures have been taken to stop genocide, then there would be no need to take the case further. I think this too is brilliant since it places the onus of action on the two nations that are named in the case.
Schabas says this order is significant, especially given the voting. He also said that the carefully worded order tells us how seriously the court has taken the matter. He observes that the ruling of the court, “The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” is something that South Africa had not requested. This ruling passed with even Israeli justice Aharon Barak voting in favor of it. Schabas points out that the word ‘immediately’ indicates that the court believes such actions are not currently being taken, which is a way of saying that genocide is taking place without using the word ‘genocide’. Schabas argues that since this is a provisional ruling, the court has to be careful in how it words the ruling so as not to prejudice the actual case proceedings. This had not occurred to me. Given how precedence works in legal settings, the court was perhaps severely limited in the language it could use. However, by prefacing the ruling with a clear description of the ground realities in Gaza and quotes from senior Israeli officials, the ICJ has framed the ruling within the context of genocide.
Noura Erakat observes that the ruling refers only to official UN documents and statements by Israeli officials. This aligns with how South Africa presented its case, which indicates that the court agreed hugely with the framework within which South Africa had brought the case to the ICJ. She said that the onus of taking this forward remains with the people of the nations of the world, who should take the overwhelming majority of the rulings to ask their nations to side with the rulings and pressure Israel to comply. She said that the order to cease genocidal acts places the onus on Israel. Since states have a right to defend themselves under International law, they could not have imposed a ceasefire on Israel given that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Hamas. However, the positive words used in the ruling makes it clear what the ICJ expects Israel to show in its report next month.
Diana Buttu argues that the ruling, a first of its kind against Israel, marks the end of Israeli impunity. She says that we have to ask ourselves what it means when the court asks Israel to take measures that would prevent genocide. The statement, while not admitting that genocide is occurring, makes Israel responsible for what it does in the wake of the ruling. If it is found later, probably through South Africa’s questioning of Israel’s report next month, that Israel did not take necessary measures, then Israel will have been found violating the ruling, which as a UN member it cannot do!
Buttu also refers to the three high ranking Israeli ministers that the ICJ ruling quotes, all of which indicate genocidal intent. Hence, even though the ruling does not pronounce definitively that genocide is occurring, the quotes make us ask ourselves, “If that is not sufficient to indicate genocidal intent then what is?” Buttu agonizes over the fact that it had to come to such a massive death toll before we could reach such a ruling. Buttu also observes that, given the high visibility of this case, the ruling can be a tool to empower the people of the world to revitalize grass roots movements that will force Israel to back off from its current policies.
When I watched the proceedings yesterday and heard the vote record, I was struck by the fact that Justice Julia Sebutinde from Uganda voted against every ruling. My initial reaction to her was one of disbelief and incredulity. I could not believe that such an experienced justice, who has championed human rights in the past, could vote against the rulings. But I read her dissenting opinion and realize how crucial her voice is to the case. She raises some points that were not directly addressed either by South Africa or Israel in their presentations. This forces both parties to plug holes in their arguments. As a ‘devil’s advocate’ here Justice Sebutinde has, in my opinion, provided a very valuable service by being the lone dissenting voice.
Four other justices provided separate statements. Justice Barak from Israel explained in his separate opinion what he believed about the proceedings. His arguments were primarily that South Africa had not shown genocidal intent on the part of Israel and that, therefore, the ICJ did not have jurisdiction over this case. He argued that, since Hamas has declared it would repeat the atrocities of 7 October 2023, it was right that the court did not call for a ceasefire. This is understandable, as expressed by others earlier.
Justice Barak also explained that he sided with two of the rulings because they were humanitarian in nature. He also expressed an issue that the court did not explicitly ask South Africa to take measures to ensure the release of the hostages. Indeed, I agree with him. The ruling declares, “The Court deems it necessary to emphasize that all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law. It is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on 7 October 2023 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups , and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.” In my view, this is a weakly worded statement and, since the ICJ has no jurisdiction over Hamas, it should have placed responsibility for these lives that are out of its control on the party that brought the case and over which the ICJ has control.
Justice Georg Nolte from Germany stated, in his declaration that, he did not think South Africa had presented a solid case to support genocidal intent that would hold up in the next state of the proceedings. However, since the ICJ only had to rule on the issue of ‘plausible genocide’ he was voting in favor. I think this is excellent because it tells South Africa that they need to bolster their case for the next stage or risk losing the votes of some of the justices. Justice Nolte also admitted the limitations that the ICJ has in light of not having any jurisdiction over Hamas and insisted that the International community needs to hold Hamas responsible in other ways for any crimes, including those amounting to genocide, committed by Hamas. This, I think, is a great declaration and is a call to the nations of the world not to think that, even if Israel is committing a genocide, this means that Israeli lives matter any less.
Justice Dalveer Bhandari from India also issued a declaration in which he gives his rationale for voting as he did. Like Justice Nolte he observes that South Africa needs to make its case stronger if it is to withstand the scrutiny required at the merits stage. He also insists that the nations of the world not limit their proceedings to the narrow definition of genocide but to expand it under the framework of humanitarian law as well. In my view, since proving genocide will be a tall order, Justice Bhandari’s advice is something that the nations need to heed.
All in all, in my view, while many people are dissatisfied that the ICJ did not rule that Israel was plausibly guilty of genocide nor ordered a ceasefire, it did something that, in the long run, is much better. The ICJ ruling places responsibility for justice squarely on the shoulders of Israel. For example, when the ICJ pronounces, “The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention,” it is asking Israel, “Are you a state that is honorable enough to live up to its obligations?” When the ICJ states, “The State of Israel shall ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above,” it is asking the government of Israel if it is indeed a democracy that has control over its military. When it rules, “The State of Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip,” the ICJ is calling on the world to decide if the government of Israel has the ability to keep its citizens and its leaders in line.
Further, when the ICJ says, “The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the ICJ is asking Israel, “Do you know what the basic human needs are?” and “If you do not provide basic human needs to the Palestinians can we not conclude that you view them as less than human?” When the ICJ states, “The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip,” it is asking Israel, “Are you an honest state that will bear to be scrutinized by the International community?”
In summary, the ICJ ruling has done better than what a short term call for stopping genocide or a ceasefire would have done. The ruling calls on the nations of the world to see how Israel responds to the ruling and then ask themselves, “Is this a nation that even understands what it means to be human or is this a nation that thinks it can continue to be included in the International community while refusing to treat other humans as humans?” We may have preferred if the ICJ ruled definitively against Israel with the words that South African wanted. But this ruling asks us to take responsibility for what happens next. If Israel does not submit a report, what do we do? If Israel submits a report that does not satisfy South Africa what do we do? If the report satisfies South Africa how do we respond? The ICJ has placed the onus on us the citizens of the world. Will we show ourselves as true humans and hold the leaders of our nations responsible? Or will we show ourselves to be sub-human, requiring external parties to force us to behave in civil ways? Yes, the ICJ ruling is asking each one of us, “Do you know what it means to be human and to live civilly with other humans?”
A few days back someone shared a quote by John MacArthur where he says, “Today sin is called sickness, so people think it requires therapy, not repentance.” I have been unable to find the primary source for this quote, but it is attributed to MacArthur in many places. So I will take it as the words of MacArthur. I do not wish, however, to address MacArthur per se in this post. I wish rather to address the point of view that is represented in the quote, though I will bring up relevant episodes from his life since these are his words that I am addressing.
Many Christians perhaps do not know, but it was Jesus himself who made the link between sin and sickness when he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Mark 2.17, NRSV) Jesus is drawing a parallel here. He is saying that, what a doctor is to someone who is sick, Jesus is to someone who is a sinner. In other words, while the verse mentions both sin and sickness, we must ask ourselves how close the parallel Jesus was making is. That is, does the parallel work in another way as well? Can we say, what Jesus is to a doctor, sin is to sickness?
Now we know that Jesus had a healing ministry in which he healed people of various physical ailments ranging from a fever to a twelve-year long menstrual dysfunction. In most of these cases we are not told that the sickness was a result of some sin. In fact, in the case of the man born blind in John 9, Jesus explicitly states that there was no sin involved. Hence, while we can certainly say that Jesus is much like a doctor in that he heals people, we cannot draw the other parallel and say that sin and sickness are similarly related. In other words, what we get from our scriptures is a clear understanding that sin and sickness cannot be equated. There are times (e.g. John 5.14, NRSV) when a sickness is said to be related to sin. However, in most cases sickness and sin are considered different phenomena.
This is not recognized in the quote, “Today sin is called sickness, so people think it requires therapy, not repentance.” This kind of hasty generalization betrays an uncompassionate approach to people and is something that Christian leaders should avoid. What the statement leads the reader to conclude is that those who go for therapy are people who are unrepentant sinners. This is, as we have seen, untrue. But it is downright irresponsible and un-Christlike for a Christian leader to make such public statements.
But what ‘sin’ does MacArthur have in mind that others might try to address through ‘therapy’? Suppose I am going through a period of depression. Depression is one of the leading causes for which people go for therapy, with an estimated 5.7% of the adult population needing intervention for depression. What sin does MacArthur think I am covering up with the therapy? Has he not read Psalm 88, in which the psalmist shows absolutely no positive sign and ends with the depressing thought of having only darkness as his friend? Was Heman the Ezrahite, this man who was inspired to write this psalm, actually a closet sinner writing a psalm and pretending to be ‘holy’ only to give voice to the suffering that resulted from his unconfessed sin? We would have to conclude this if we were to take MacArthur’s statement to be true. But I doubt a biblical inerrantist like MacArthur would want to go there. Where then is the consistency of approach?
Suppose I am actually plagued with some kind of bipolar disorder. This disorder affects about 2.8% of the adult population. Does this mean that I have some unconfessed sin that I am refusing to deal with? That would be a strange conclusion since an analysis of the German Reformer, Martin Luther’s voluminous works has led some secular scholars (see here and here) and even some Christian scholars (see here) to conclude that there is a high probability that Luther suffered from some kind of bipolar disorder. Would MacArthur, someone who reveres Luther, be willing to accept this depiction of one of his heroes as plagued with such an unconfessed besetting ‘sin’? Once again I ask, where is the consistency of approach?
The problem with the quote is that it does something that we would never do in another area of illness. If I have some heart problem, MacArthur would not be able to object if I went to a cardiologist to be treated. After all, in 2023 he himself had four stents put in his arteries after he had a bout of breathlessness. Also, his erratic approach to the COVID-19 pandemic is well known, with him first claiming that the whole thing was a conspiracy to later hiding the fact that some members of his congregation, including himself and his wife, had been infected with the virus. MacArthur has been reactionary in most of his declarations about illness and has betrayed an inconsistent approach that is self-serving at best.
But we need to wonder why matters of mental illness are singled out specially for the accusation of sin. This has been a problem within the Church. Prior to our recognizing that there can be physiological imbalances and neurological problems that give rise to mental illness, the Church ascribed most such phenomena under the rubric of demon possession. Given that their knowledge of the brain was much more limited even than ours, I would not want to fault them since they did not have the categories with which to classify such phenomena. However, with the advancement of our understanding of the human brain, admittedly still severely limited, we were introduced to new categories.
Prior to our understanding of the cardiovascular system and the engineering that developed stents any treatment of blocked arteries would have been unthinkable. However, with the advancement of our understanding and our innovation, such treatments are run of the mill today. Hence, when our understanding of the brain has yielded diagnoses of actual mental illnesses it is irresponsible for any Christian leader to issue a declaration that this is just a cover up for sin.
The treatment of mental illness should be done with care and compassion. I do not wish to claim that there can be no spiritual causes. But even experienced exorcists and psychiatrists would say that it is prudent to first determine if there are physical and physiological causes. Only once these are eliminated should a conclusion of the involvement of spiritual entities be entertained. However, even in a situation of demon possession, no instance in the bible allows us to classify it as having anything to do with sin.
We are broken people living in a broken world. We are and things around us are out of joint. The goal of the Church and especially the leaders within it should be to be agents of healing. Refusing to recognize genuine cases of illness is a failure to be empathetic, making us unable to be agents of healing. It is high time we held our leaders accountable for the careless and self-serving words they speak. It is high time we stopped applauding every unfounded sound bite from our leaders just because it is a pat on our backs. It is high time we approached mental health with as much dedication and concern with which we approach other areas of health.
On Sunday, 21 January 2024, a day before the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, four young Hindu men climbed atop some churches in Madhya Pradesh and planted saffron flags with pictures of Hanuman on them. You can find the article in The Wirehere.
I wish to pray for the safety of my Christian sisters and brothers in the parts of India where they are being made to feel insecure because of their faith in Jesus. Being in Bangalore, in a relatively safe part of the country, I cannot understand the pressure that these Christians are experiencing. But I know that I would need the powerful sustenance of the Holy Spirit to stay faithful under such opposition. And I pray that the Holy Spirit would strengthen and empower them so that they can remain faithful to Jesus despite the opposition.
I also pray that the same four men and all their accomplices would come to faith in Jesus as well. I bear no ill-will against them because they are clearly in the grip of forces beyond their ability to comprehend. As Jesus said from the cross, “They do not know what they are doing.” If they seriously thought a saffron flag would ‘convert’ the building into something else, I hope they have woken up to the truth that one cannot force a change of convictions by threatening another person. I pray that, as the Israelites could not bear to see the face of Moses after he met with God, these men would be awestruck by the glory they see in my Christian sisters and brothers. I pray that the Father of lights would shine his light through the faces of my sisters and brothers so that these men and their accomplices would be as awestruck as Paul on the road to Damascus.
While it is up to God to answer these prayers, and I hope he will, we must be realistic about the situation in India. Since the political leaders of India have failed to speak out against such atrocities, I anticipate that there will be more such incidents in the near future, as people, driven and blinded by irrational fear, are emboldened by the silence. Indeed, since we are nearing an election, our leaders will be as usual most concerned about securing their voting blocks than about the safety of the citizens of the country. It has always been so and we should not be surprised when it repeats itself every 4-5 years. As long as we do not have leaders who are interested in championing the truth and working for the welfare of all citizens, we will remain a jingoistic state. As long as our leaders are only concerned about getting re-elected, nothing will change for the better in our country. But more importantly, as long as the majority of the citizens remain silent in the face of injustice only because they are not directly affect, we can only expect the escalation of injustice.
As I think about the jingoistic state that India is surely becoming, my mind turns to something I saw recently. Some supporters of the construction of the temple have wondered why it did not receive more support. One person1 posted on Instagram an image that started with the text, “It’s interesting that the same leftist people who support Palestine, won’t do the same for Ram Mandir.” The utter failure to see why this is not a parallel reveals how little thought has gone into the production of statement. Let me explain.
The Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly consists of 403 members, 253 (62.8%) being from the BJP, with 278 (69%) belonging to the NDA. In other words, the BJP led alliance has over two-thirds of the seats in the assembly. Similarly, in the Lok Sabha, the BJP has 290 (52.4%) of the 543 seats with the NDA totalling 322 (59.3%) of the seats. So here too the BJP led alliance has a majority. So when we talk about the temple, it is a building that has been supported by those who are in power both at the Centre and in the State. Hence, whether we supported the consecration of the temple or not, the first thing we must recognize is that the temple represents something that those in power favor. In other words, supporting the temple is to side with the powers that be in India.
However, when we support the Palestinians, especially those in the West Bank and Gaza, we are supporting those who do not have any representation in the Israeli Government. That is, support for the Palestinians is support for those who have been silenced by the powers that be in Israel. To lend my voice in favor of the Palestinians is to voice my support for those who have been marginalized by those who wield power unjustly. To support the Palestinians is to go against those who wield power in Israel.
In fact, if we really want to make a link between India and Israel, the best parallel to what happened at Ayodhya would be to support Israel in demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque so that they could build a new Jewish temple on the Dome of the Rock! When Israeli politicians, like Ariel Sharon, violated even the Israeli definition of the Al-Aqsa status quo, sparking the Second Intifada, it was similar to what happened when BJP leaders like A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, were found culpable for the demolishment of the Babri Masjid. Both episodes involved leaders of the ruling party violating some space considered sacred by those who were not of the ruling party. The complete failure of the person who issued the statement I quoted above to take into consideration the power dynamics at play indicates a facile approach to the issues both in India among the various communities and in the Levant between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Now those who supported the demolishment of the Babri Masjid argue that it was the site of an earlier Ram temple. I do not wish to get into that dispute. However, while it is true that Muslim invaders desecrated and destroyed temples in India and that the Hindus were persecuted by both Muslim invaders and European ‘Christian’ colonialists, the solution is not to make the minorities of today pay for the sins of their forebears of their respective faiths. Such moves do not contribute to healing of the relationships between communities. It does not foster goodwill among different groups. And most important, if you push someone down, that does nothing to make you a better human.
But perhaps the goal of those who instigated those four men is not the production of better humans, but an environment in which they can prey on the fears of those who have not learned to love. I plead with my fellow Christian sisters and brothers to respond only with love even in the face of such inhumane opposition. Let us follow the model set for us by Jesus. Let us, by our love heap coals on the heads of those who wish to suppress us. Just as the love demonstrated by Jesus was seemingly defeated on Good Friday but vindicated on Eater, let us be confident that the love of Christ, which constrains us, cannot be defeated.
I’m keeping this person anonymous because I received the verified information from a third party. I have not been able to locate the same image outside Instagram or from a source that I am in contact with. ↩︎
The mob did its job, burning the vehicle to a crisp while trapping the man and his two sons inside. The pleas of the trapped humans were treated as inconsequential sounds of animals as the mob reveled in its accomplishment. Though the man had done much to lift people like them up, he did it on a authority they despised. And so they believed they could serve justice by serving him up as a scapegoat to appease either their blood lust or the blood lust of their deity.
Though I woke up in the aftermath of this scapegoating to the horror of what was done, to my shame, I had forgotten this ‘good’ Friday. How many like me remember the event but have forgotten the day? How could we forget such a grand testimony to the one who has called us in love? But what do you do when those who should have remembered have come up short with a collective amnesia?
Twenty centuries back some pagan scholars searched the stars for portents – a practiced frowned on by the Christian scriptures. Yet, their searching was rewarded and Christians around the world celebrate this rewarding every year on the occasion of Epiphany. It seems that God could use the genuine but misguided searching of some pagan scholars to reward them and to enable the world to remember the grand manifestation.
A few decades after that, a priest in Jerusalem, fearful of the continuation of his office, played a role in sentencing an innocent man to death. Unbeknownst to him, his words were prophetic in nature as the scapegoating contained within them was exposed in a matter of days to all to whom the manifestation of the horrible mechanism was revealed through its overturning. It seems that God could use even the fear of a priest to reveal his disapproval of scapegoating and his denunciation of any mentality that produces scapegoats.
In a matter of time the nascent church realized that it was not welcome. Its message against the scapegoating that humans rely on was too dangerous. So they went underground and devised a ‘secret handshake’ as it were to identify themselves to each other. One person would draw an arc in the ground. If the other finished it by drawing a mirror image to form a fish like symbol, they knew that they were Christian. Why a fish you ask? The Greek word for ‘fish’ is ichthus. (I prefer using ‘u’ as the lower case for the Greek letter upsilon than the ‘y’ forced upon us by Latin which did not have a letter ‘u’.) Anyway, ichthus stands for “Iēsous CHristos, THeou Uios, Sōtēr” which means, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” Pretty nifty, wouldn’t you say, for a bunch of weak and threatened outsiders? They used a common symbol and a marketplace word as their ‘secret handshake’. But many of today’s Christians around the world have forgotten this ‘secret handshake’, what it meant and how subversive it was, just as we in India had forgotten about the aforementioned scapegoating.
Now, since there has been a collective forgetting of a scapegoating in our days, God has once again used the powerful to subvert their own schemes. They may think that they are marking the start of a new period of devotion to their deity. But we know that it is a reminder to us of the scapegoating that happened inside that burnt vehicle. Now those of us who forgot will be reminded every year by the very perpetrators of the scapegoating of the faithfulness that stirred up the fears that led to the scapegoating.
As we are reminded of this scapegoating and pray for the courage to be likewise faithful I would like to sign off with a new acronym – JSR. I sense some objecting to this. Why? To me the full form is Jesus Saves Repenters – a call back to the prayer of a bereaved widow, who was able to forgive those who participated in the scapegoating, thereby inviting them to repent. What did you think it was?
On Monday, 22 January 2024, the reconstructed Ram temple in Ayodhya will be consecrated. As some Christians have observed, this marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, Philip and Timothy. Other Christians think that the occasion will herald a new phase in the life of India, something that might give rise to a valid sense of dread for the country or for the non-Hindu citizens.
As far as I am concerned, this Monday’s event is a non-event. Whatever happens on that day, whatever words are said, as a Christian I believe that Jesus is still Lord over the whole world, including the Indian subcontinent. I am not in dread for the country because my hope does not depend on the future of the country. I am not worried if the Hindu citizens do anything to protect the non-Hindu citizens in the aftermath of the event. Till now many, if not most, of them have remained silent while violent members have decided to speak for them. I don’t expect this to change. The majority has almost always been silent in most parts of the world when they were not targeted. This is only human. We respond only when we feel threatened. Only on rare occasions do we empathize with others and respond when they are threatened.
So how should Christians respond to what is planned this coming Monday? Go about your day as usual. This coming Monday has as much significance in God’s plan as any other Monday. When faced with similar uncertainty about how they would be treated by the Jewish and Roman authorities, the first disciples rummaged through the scriptures. In it they found the gem of Psalm two and prayed it. (Acts 4.25-26, compare Psalm 2.1-2) But what did they pray? Did they pray that the turmoil would vanish? No! Did they pray that they would be spared any backlash? Absolutely not! Rather, they prayed, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” If this coming Monday leads to more targeting of Christians in India, I pray that we would pray the same prayer so that we can expose this event for the non-event that it really is.
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