Don't Look Back - Profiling David Bussau

Most donors from the West like to hold on to their turf. They make grants and preach a lot about sustainability and self reliance but most often their programming support does not reflect that. So they will carry on funding their clients for a stipulated number of years and then move on, whether the client is prepared or not. If the recipient is smart enough, they would have adequately prepared themselves for this day but more often than not, that preparation isn’t in place and so when one donor moves out or even before, the search begins for another donor to replace the departing patron.

David Bussau, who has been described by the Far Eastern Economic Review as a cross between the 18th century preacher and reformer John Wesley and the father of capitalist economics, Adam Smith is one who is conspicuously different. David grew up in a New Zealand orphanage till the age of sixteen and then left without a penny to set up a hamburger stand. In business, David, a born entrepreneur had the Midas touch in every thing he attempted to do and over the next nineteen years, he spent his life making lots of money. After an interesting transformational experience twenty years later at the age of 35 and with numerous successful businesses to his credit, he “retired”. he had reached what he refers to as the “economics of enough”. He quit his businesses, sold off his interests and over a period of five years put his money in the Maranatha Trust which today exists to support social entrepreneurs and organizations. Apart from the work of the Trust, for the last sixteen years and more, David has been along with his partners in the Opportunity Network, one of the world’s most successful bankers to the poor.

What makes David Bussau different from other providers of micro credit like say the Nobel Prize winning Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank who may have a bigger loan portfolio? David is an incubator of institutions. Opportunity has been setting up and nurturing institutions around the world for decades so that the developing world has successful micro credit institutions of their own. With that objective in mind, the philosophy of Opportunity is to set up micro credit institutions and then help them with an initial grant and start up funds with a reasonable rate of interest that need eventually to be repaid. David likes to describe the Opportunity programs as “a charity that doesn’t give any thing away.”. Experience has shown that with adequate training and hand holding, each Opportunity partner eventually learns how to manage its loan funds in order for it to pay its own way.

With this philosophy of planting partners and hatching them into independent, professionally run institutions, Opportunity has launched nearly fifty partners in Asia including India, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe and creates a job every 35 seconds in 27 countries around the world. A Manchester University study has shown that for each job created, on average six people are permanently taken out of poverty and 13 people in the community benefit, so over thirteen million people were potentially helped by OI in 2006 alone. After being awarded 2003 Ernst & Young Australian Entrepreneur of the Year, David Bussau made history as the first ever social entrepreneur to be inducted into the World Entrepreneur of the Year Academy in Monte Carlo.” The life of David Bussau, chronicled in his biography appropriately titled Don’t Look Back is the story of an abandoned orphan boy who never moped over his situation but instead learnt to celebrate it by saying that becoming an orphan provided him freedom to discover life on his own, as it really is.

Does Prayer Heal ?

The other day, I was at a function organized by the Christian Medical Association of India an umbrella of close to 300 plus non profit Christian Hospitals, many of them close to a century old and some older. They were observing World AIDS Day and the topic of discussion was the unique contribution that a community of faith can bring to the table. By now, every one sort of knows that HIV & AIDS is not a medical issue alone – there are myriad dimensions to it – social, economic, gender being some. The issue of the discrimination that those who are HIV positive flashes across our media radar all the time, be it children thrown out of schools, widows thrown out of their marital homes, or HIV positive men losing their jobs.

So the question was can religious institutions, in this case, specifically the church contribute anything? Hospitals provide treatment, activist groups lobby for access and availability of treatment and reduction of stigma, donors like Bill Gates and others can give money, so what can a faith community provide? Many people said many things, like sponsoring families which have people who living with the virus, or financial aid to those who have lost jobs, providing training to women who have lost their husbands so that they can find a niche in the job market. The final conclusion though was that a community of faith’s niche was – well faith. Defining health in integral terms meant that physical, social, economic, emotional and spiritual concerns needed to be addressed to address healing concerns fully, and who better to address spiritual dimensions of health than religious institutions?

I returned home thinking and asking a question that I have asked myself many time before. Does faith make any meaningful difference to the quantum of healing really or is it a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes you feel good when there is nothing to feel good about? I have been to many funerals and heard many eulogies where it was said that the faith of this and that person made a lot of difference to the way they handled their diseases and I am sure that is all true. But still that does not make any wiser than before. So I came back and did some reading on the subject of faith, prayer and healing.

TIME magazine which has published numerous essays exploring the relationship between faith, prayer and healing says that even a couple of decades ago, the scientific community would not have dared to propose a double-blind, controlled study of something as intangible as prayer because the scientific temper is all about trying to ridding yourself of remnants of mysticism and obscurantism which is what many people think faith and prayer is – a lot of mumbo jumbo.

But what I found in TIME is interesting. “According to Dr. Harold Koenig, a co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University, from 2000 to 2002 more than 1,000 scholarly articles on the relationship between religion and mental health were published in academic journals--as opposed to just 100 from 1980 to 1982. Such studies indicate that religion buffers its adherents from worry. Religious people are less depressed, less anxious and less suicidal than nonreligious people. And they are better able to cope with such crises as illness, divorce and bereavement. Even if you compare two people who have symptoms of depression, says Michael McCullough, an associate professor of psychology and religious studies at the University of Miami, "the more religious person will be a little less sad.” The BBC cites another study conducted at the University of Kansas that finds that patients admitted to hospital with heart trouble fare better if some one is praying for them. The study does not make sweeping claims but claims “We have not proven that God answers prayer or that God even exists. It was intercessory prayer, not the existence of God that was tested”.

But coming back to Dr. Koenig and his research, The American Journal of Psychiatry, while reviewing his book “The Healing Power of Faith: Science Explores Medicine’s Last Great Frontier” comments that the book could be summed up in the singular observation that that “although fear of death was a major stress factor in the lives of many older people, his patients who were religious seemed to have less fear of death even when seriously ill. He found that elderly people who were "very likely" to rely on religious faith and prayer when they were under stress were less likely to report a strong fear of death.” Nothing more really needs to be said. Considering that one of the singular work in working with those who are HIV positive lies in introducing them to the fullness of life that is still possible and in alleviating their fears and anxieties, it would seem that the communities of faith have their work fairly well cut out.

A Question of Identity

I met Sein Myint in a refugee camp, the only home he has ever known. He doesn’t remember much of his childhood except that he was born in a remote village in Burma. When he was still a small child, the soldiers came to his village and burnt the place down. They needed the land as the village stood in the way of a gas pipeline that was going all the way to India.

When the soldiers had finished, they had lost all their belongings. With just the clothes on their back, the family fled into neighboring Thailand since when he has been living a tenuous existence as in the eyes of the world, without any papers or documents, he does not legally exist. His Burmese birth certificate was burnt by the soldiers and though Thailand allowed him and many others like him to live in enclosed refugee camps, they did not issue him any papers or identity card.

Sein Myint’s loss of identity and lack of papers is more than symbolic. When he entered Thailand, he was a small boy and was enrolled in a minimalist school in the refugee camp that provided education until the 10^th grade. With little access to books and other tuition, Sein Myint nevertheless passed his examinations. But he does not have a pass certificate as the certificate requires a name and place of birth to be entered and the refugees do not have papers to prove that their names are what they say they are and where they born. They can not prove that they are Burmese citizens and they obviously are not Thai subjects. Without a high school certificate, there are no hopes of any further education if he could at all get out of the camps legally which he cant. Which means that after all this education, he can do stray menial jobs or clerical work at the camps.

Jesus had a clear understanding of his identity. When his mother reproached him saying, "Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." He replied, "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" He did not dispute the authority or responsibility of his earthly parents, but he clearly saw and stated his identity based on his unique relationship to his heavenly Father. He would continue to be a part of his earthly family, and he would identify himself fully with the people of God, but first and foremost he knew God to be his Father, and God's house to be his home. His earthly life and growth flowed out of this identity.

We also must come to a secure sense of identity as a child of God in order to grow up like Jesus. The Lord Jesus came to make this possible for you and for me. If we put our trust in Christ who died to take away our sins and rose again, he gives us the right to become children of God. This is where the journey to grow up in God's way begins. Knowing ourselves as God's child allows me to grow up like Jesus and become God's man.

A child of God is not merely a person who is forgiven and gets to go to heaven. A Christian, in his or her deepest identity is a saint, a child born of God, a child of light, a citizen of heaven. Being a Christian is not getting something; it is a matter of being someone. Being born into God's family, like being born into a human family is becoming someone who was not there before. Christians, hear what God says about our identity.

The question of identity is always an important one but perhaps no where more so than in the case of people who are stateless – those who are in desperate need of papers of some kind to prove who they are, what there name is and where they belong to – the most elemental of all. It is an eye opener to sit and meet with people like Sein Myint- flesh and blood humans like you and me and realize that in the systems and databases of this world they simply do not exist – they have never been born, never went to school, never worked and in short did none of the things that define the life and existence of almost all of us.

As Christians, we know that out final destination and identity lies in the ramparts of heaven. But like the people of God in the Old Testament who struggled long and hard for a Promised Land, we who follow Him today are also called to do both – invite the displaced and the stateless to find their identity in Christ and gain a citizenship in heaven and also at the same time look out for our friends like Sein Myint, stateless and marginalized people also have a place and an identity to call their own while on earth.

People outside the church doors

Recently I had the occasion to attend a Christian wedding involving a convert family, some one who had come to know the Lord from another faith. Like most people, they chose to have the celebration in a church. In a way perhaps that was unfortunate. The church was less than half full as the convert family perhaps did not have too many people who would have felt comfortable in a church setting or perhaps had not even given their consent. As for the church, it was as bland as a bald man's pate and perhaps even on a routine Sunday, the church looked more alive, there being hardly available to decorate. One of the parties in the wedding was from a Christian home but his parents lived far away and for some reason, they too could not come. A priest with a vacant look intoned the vows and another gentleman got up and gave a canned sermon. At the time of the signing of the registers, there was a scramble to see who all were there in the congregation from whom witnesses could be found. The bridesmaid, the best man and all the accessories were provided by one party to the best of their ability. At the end of the ceremony refreshments were served out of the back of an ancient van.

I was reminded of own wedding. Knowing that I had no one to handle all the elaborate paraphernalia of a “Christian wedding”, I proposed dispensing with a church wedding and having a court ceremony under the Special Marriage Act of 1956. Later we could have a pastor stand us up in the Sunday service and pray for us. The Special Marriage Act incidentally is far more progressive and gender sensitive than the archaic Christian Marriage Act under which practically all church marriages happen. Over the years , I have also seen that marriages conducted with pomp in the church can fail, as can secular marriages and again both kinds of marriages can succeed and b a blessing. God is not any more or less present in a church than in a court room.

In the case of own marriage, I lost the battle to keep life simple, inexpensive and uncluttered. But fortunately I had a huge number of friends who turned up out of the woodwork and came forward to offer every kind of and help and I will always be grateful to them for what they did and ensure that the wedding ceremony was not bereft of a soul. Since then , I have usually kept my counsel on this matter , but after attending the wedding that I did , I realized afresh as to how traumatizing and complicated it is for converts with little or no support to put on and go through the trappings of a lifeless ceremony because that is the only model on offer.

Looking at the number of ministries that exist solely to save 'lost souls' and even otherwise, I would presume that the man outside the church walls is our primary customer. And yet, like the people whom the Jews sought to convert by crossing the seas and having converted him or her made life infinitely more difficult by their petty laws, we too have not made much progress. A big chunk of our “spiritual” activities is about witnessing to others and how to go about it, but our customer service is glitzy as long as the target is a prospective customer – jazzy camps, snazzy tracts and all that but once on the inside – the customer service turns sour-- dry doctrines and preaching, pious platitudes and advice but no organized effort really to lend a helping hand, except of course the few good men ----- and women that God in His grace brings.

There are many areas in which we can move to make life easier for those to whom we witnessed and who because the Holy Spirit then worked, accepted Jesus and chose to walk with Him believing that Christian Fellowship was for real and believing that left behind their families and the shelter and fellowship they offered. We cannot make Christian life easy, because in a fallen world, there will be always pain, tears and heartache but we can make it easier certainly. The elaborate rites of passage that we have – Baptisms , weddings, funerals --- all with their jaw clenching , socially draining , expensive and cumbersome rituals – are they really necessary the way we conduct them? Can we simplify life, just a little bit for the man and woman still outside the church door, so that they feel that they can breathe and thrive in Christ without the burden of history and tradition stifling them to death?

The Church as Peacemaker

It is Christmas time, a time for which some of us wait the year round – an occasion to hum those hauntingly memorable carols, buy new clothes and presents and get ready in many other ways to rejoice in the birth of our Savior Lord Jesus, the Prince of Peace. In his first coming, he came to leave his peace with all those who acknowledged Him as their Lord and Savior through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. The seeds of a Kingdom to come were sown – A kingdom that will come to completion at His second coming.

The means that he left behind to spread His gospel on earth and to offer a sample of the kingdom to come in the end days is the church. The church on earth is an ambassador of the prince of peace in thought, word and deed and in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, we are asked individually and corporately to be channels and instruments of his peace- not just peace in our hearts and souls in the sense of having received personal salvation but also peace in our nation, society and world. The picture of the kingdom as a time when God will one day wipe away every tear from every eye and swords will be melted into ploughshares means just that – a time when weapons will be out of date in an environment of amity and harmony.

Examining the church’s past history in acting as an instrument of peace is informative because it might provide us with a road map for peace initiatives in the future. The need for the church to be involved in such initiatives is no lesser today than it was in the past. In taking part of the peace initiatives, the involvement of the church in the North East deserves some recognition and study.

The north east of India has a chequered political history. For instance, the Nags had declared their independence from British rule on the 14th of August 1947, a day before the birth of independent India. In fact in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi had told a delegation of Naga leaders, that Nagas have every right to be independent.” But after Gandhiji was assassinated, his promises die ended with him as the new Indian government decline to accept Naga hope for independence. Naga protests and resistance to the incorporation of their land into the Indian union began to steadily grow.

Then in 1955 the Indian army occupied the Naga areas and martial law was declared. Violence quickly escalated. In the 1960s and 1970s, Baptist Church leaders initiated efforts to halt the violence. Eventually the Shillong Accord was signed in 1975 as a result of these efforts, Although the peace agreement was flawed as Key Naga resistance leaders were left out of the process, the accord agreed to incorporation into the Indian union and although not every one was satisfied and happy with the happy with the arrangement and the Naga underground split after the agreement, it did bring down the level of violence and allow some manner of governance and development to occur in the state.

In many instances, the church though powerful was still a distant second in commanding loyalties compared to tribal and ethnic allegiance. Christianity after all is only 125 years old in Nagaland but tribal and linguistic identities go back centuries. It is commendable that in spite of its many limitations, the church tried to be a moderating influence in a spiral of terrorism which might have otherwise completely spun out of control.

The story has been more successful in Mizoram. In 1958, a proliferation of rats attacked the rice crop, bringing famine to the Mizo hills. That became the catalyst for an uprising against the insensitive bureaucracy in Assam. An organization, known as the Mizo Cultural Front, metamorphosed into the Mizo National Famine Front. In 1961, under the leadership of Laldenga, the Front morphed into a military outfit called the Mizo National Front (MNF). The different denominational churches in Mizoram, under the initiative of the major Churches such as the Presbyterian and the Baptist, came together by forming committees, in order to work together toward conflict resolution and peace building. Eventually, the church was actually successful in bringing Mizo National Front to the negotiating table and getting them to sign a Mizo accord which has largely lasted to this day Mizoram has now become one of the most peaceful and fast developing states in Northeast India.

Today the challenge before the church is to attempt to bring peace in settings where the threat is terrorism in its various forms and the church is not necessarily as powerful or as influential as in the examples cited above. But the church can still be a peace making voice. It can tell the world that terrorism is not spread only by the poverty of money as is often thought but that it becomes viral when there is a poverty of dignity. Humiliation is the most underestimated force in international relations and in human relations. It is when people or nations are humiliated that they really lash out and engage in extreme violence. In such settings, the church is called to bring the message of peace and the greatest peace maker of all.

Happy are the peacemakers, says Jesus. Those who know that peacemaking is hard but that the ball is always in our court and it are more important even than worship. Happy, says Jesus, are the peacemakers. Those who know that conflict is inevitable, who know we can never escape it, not that we want to create it but who are willing to take a step into it where ever necessary to bring about God’s peace. Not to run away. Not to perpetuate conflict. But to be a peacemaker.

Christians –Chasing Elitism or Excellence ?

Recently St. Stephen’s college in Delhi held a debate to argue whether the institution is a centre of excellence or a centre of elitism. The two opposing sides were represented by a faculty member, a student and distinguished alumni. After all the arguments were finished, the college debating society decided that the institution was indeed elitist, presumably on the strength of the arguments presented.

Since then I have been confused - I know that elitism and excellence are not the same but are they similar? is excellence is usually to be found in places where the elite gather and are only the elite capable of excellence and the rest of us are mediocre fluff that can stay or go away without society being unduly bothered. And then, is being elitist a proud of badge of honor. I remember the former president of the Delhi Gymkhana Club in a recent conversation with the Indian Express proudly defended his club being elitist and a watering hole for a highly selected group of people.

But for a moment, leave alone the Gymkhana Club though I suspect that women might have a bone to pick- for in its exclusive class of the elect, it excludes the married woman from applying from membership. Its web site clearly specifies that only single women and widows are eligible to apply which means that any widow choosing to apply needs to presumably keep her husband’s death certificate handy to attach with the application form.

Coming back to St. Stephen’s College and other such oasis of excellence, I think I am a stakeholder in whether this institution and others like this ought to be majoring on elitism or excellence and if excellence is only the domain of the rich and the powerful which basically constitute the elite. The reason I am a stakeholder is that colleges and institutions like these are substantially subsidized by the tax payer, a large number of whom are not going to darken the doors of any college – elite or mundane. But considering that St. Stephen’s College is a Christian institution, there is another question to ask. And that is the biblical stand on excellence and elitism. What do the scriptures have to say about excellence? The Book of Philippians Chapter 4 says this:

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

The Bible tells us, exhorts us to pursue excellence. To be fit for the 21st Century we need to pay attention to the quality of what we do. The Church of Jesus Christ is not the place for the left-overs. It's not the place to do the minimum required or what we can get by with. It is surely not the place for mediocrity. From the ancient days of Israel comes our lesson – The Old Testament taught the people of God to bring their best. From the modern lessons of business comes the word: pay attention to quality. If we want to make disciples of Jesus and reach generations that have come to expect quality in return for their commitment of time and energy, then we need to listen

Paul calls us to focus on “any excellence” and “anything worthy of praise” (4:8). We cannot afford for the church, or theological education, or any of our lives to be an example of mediocrity masquerading as faithfulness. There is too much mediocrity, too much “playing church” and “feigning academic rigor” and “being nice” among Christians, rather than holding ourselves to standards of excellence and an ambition for the Gospel. The Gospel calls for excellence in our study, in our worship, in our service. But we are not called to “competitive excellence. But while the scriptures encourage us to always pursue the spirit of excellence; what does it have to say about promoting elitism?

In Matthew 15 , we read of a story where as soon as Jesus and his followers enter the district of Tyre and Sidon a woman immediately approaches them and cries out, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” Well, Jesus does not reply at all, and the disciples seem to sense from his silence that he is blowing her off. So, ramping up their excitement and nastiness, they call out, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” It's like the disciples are saying, “Hey, Enough enthusiasm! Can’t you tell Jesus doesn’t want to have anything to do with you and for that matter neither do we?”

The disciples are demonstrating their own sort of elitism. The 12 apostles here see themselves as the chosen few, the cream of the crop, the entitled elite, the devoted dozen, the Lord’s own Dream Team. They are without a doubt passionate about Jesus. However, apparently they don’t have much interest in sharing their teacher with those, who like this woman, they consider the unenlightened masses.

When Jesus makes the comment that his ministry is directed only to “the house of Israel,” the disciples, most likely feeling justified, must be thinking, “Exactly.” They are, after all, the insiders. They are a part of God’s chosen people—and, moreover, they’re disciples of the long anticipated Messiah, Jesus, who God has anointed to be King of the Jews. Who does this woman think she is accosting them of all people? Well, despite the fact that this woman is an outsider, she is compelled to come to Jesus and in the end she receives that which she seeks—her daughter’s healing.

Very often we christens come across like the first disciples, insiders who were certainly excited about their faith, but also cranky and basically uninterested in sharing their discoveries with the outsiders around them. It's important to be willing to bend and even break our patterns, and to learn from the culture around us and try shake of our elitism.

We can’t wish away the Doon Schools and the Scindia School and their modern day equivalents and perhaps they have the right to their place in the sun. But we are in worrying times if the Bible endorsed pursuit of excellence is perceived to be the same thing as the pursuit and preservation of an elitist class. The way I see it, excellence is inclusive – it is open to embrace any body; on the other hand, elitism is like a wall- it keeps people out of the charmed inner circle of things.

Wisdom and Age

When my seventy-seven year old mother met with an accident recently and fractured her hip, during one of her "dark nights of the soul", she expressed the view that people like her had already lived out their productive lives and had nothing more to contribute to society. She recalled that in the olden days, people would live a much shorter life span and did not usually have to contend with the specter of degenerative diseases that would render them increasingly frail and dependant on others. She also mentioned that once one got to that point, it was a frightening situation because while some people were lucky to be well taken care of, many others were treated callously as burdens to feed.

Since then I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be productive. If my mother in her late seventies worries about being productive, I need to worry too. Often as I buy and read business magazines at airports and railway stations, I note that one of the main features of today's knowledge based economy is that people who are needed are often those who are young and who bring with them the latest technologies and domain knowledge that are needed today. It is of course another matter that today's young people become tomorrow's middle aged and today's emerging platform is tomorrow's obsolesce. I noted though that in the manufacturing industry, experience was valued above youth perhaps because technology does not evolve as rapidly there as else where. The trick is in reinventing ourselves in every age, every decade, so that we remain forever productive.

But how to define productivity? Is it all about moving our hands and feet and being seen to be visibly agile and mobile? I think that is how youth defines it - speed is every thing and you ought always to be visible as doing some thing. Being productive is being active; no being productive is being pro active, being there before any one else has got there. Of course these attributes are important- doing the right thing at the right time at the right pace is the sina qua non of being strategic.

There is a trait, a quality that we use every day of our lives but it is one that is forever hiding itself in the shadows. It is called wisdom. Wisdom is never a part of the curriculum of any management school or institution but can only be learnt on the job as one goes through life in its many shades. And the longer one lives, the longer one in engaged with the world, the sharper its nuances as it is expressed out and lived out in life's diverse situations.

Some times, I feel that we haven't quite learnt to value and evaluate the weight of experience, wisdom and the value addition that it provides. And so our propensity often to sniff at the gifts they bring and the insights they offer as the obsolete thinking of outdated senile minds. Because their understanding and practice is often not expressed in the vocabulary and idiom of the here and now jargon, we often look upon their opinion and insight with a dismissive air.

In the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, old age is a blessing. To die “full of years” is the fondest wish of biblical characters. Zechariah 8:4-5 shares a vision of the new kingdom of God in which those of old age sit on the streets of the New Jerusalem. They carry canes, but the youthful children play around them. The elderly are respected members of this new society. Interestingly, in such prophetic passages the benefits of old age are never “explained;” they are “assumed.” The prophets share other such concerns for the elderly. Isaiah 46:4 reads, “To your old age I am the one who will look after you; to gray hair, I will carry you, I myself have created you and will lift you up; I myself will carry you and deliver you.

The most venerated role posited to the elderly can be found in the book of Proverbs. Old age and wisdom are synonymous. Proverbs 22:17-24:22 contains a vast collection of sayings that instruct the young to obey their elders and to always deal wisely with the elderly. Negatively the same assertion is made in Proverbs 30:17, where the young are scolded for their foolishness if they do not “heed the education of the elderly.

Similarly through out the Book of Proverbs we find that being wise is not about having knowledge per se but rather about an individual's response to that knowledge. And in his opening chapter Solomon tells us what a fitting response looks like: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline" (1:7). Wisdom is thus rooted in relationship; or, to turn a contemporary aphorism on its head, "It's not about what you know; it's about who you know." To be wise is first and foremost to surrender in awe before the God of the universe, our Creator and Redeemer. Furthermore, wisdom is personified—wisdom actually speaks—in Proverbs. Wisdom declares, "I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence; I possess knowledge and discretion. To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech" (8:12, 13). Wisdom continues, "I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me" (v. 17).

Wisdom and its importance cannot be ever weighed on a scale. Its power is subtle and its influence nuanced. It cannot easily be captured on balance sheets, nor can its astuteness be easily encashed as dividends. Yet this is the one commodity that our senior citizens have in abundance and on tap and yet a resource we rarely remember to tap as we busy ourselves paying obeisance at the altar of youth. The spring fountains of youth are indeed enthralling but can they match the depth of eyes and ears that having seen off spring have witnessed, summer, autumn and now winter?

A Call to Be Inclusive

A lot of introspection has gone into the achievements of the last six decades of Indian independence. Thinking has begun about the future of India. Former President Abdul Kalaam had challenged the country to first begin envisioning as a country by sharing publicly his 2020 vision. Now we have people beginning to talk of India in the next 60 years. This is a good question to begin thinking about, although it is possible that it is not very easy to envision so far into the future and the vision of 2020 is some thing that we can more easily grasp. In the last two decades or so, the economic landscape of the country has been so transformed that we are getting used to measuring success and progress in plain vanilla economic terms.

Economic growth and empowerment is important; but is that enough? I think some how that it is more important and vital that we grow and mature as a nation, as a country and become a more inclusive society in every way, which today we are not. Without that inclusiveness, our economic growth and financial growth will carry us nowhere as the vitals of the nation will keep getting eroded with money generated being used not to bring prosperity but to hire, train and deploy more troops and police, kill and maim more people, fill our prisons more and more and construct new ones and in the process perpetuate a cycle of increasing discontent. We must learn to break that deadly cycle.

We need to learn to be an inclusive people at two levels – economic and emotional and Christians need to be leading the way because in the Kingdom to come , all the Nations , Languages and cultures and customs purged of their fallen ness will pay homage to God in all their finery. Yet in India, all we have is a political integration which Nehru, Sardar Patel had some how hastily patched up but without the emotional and the economic buffering and the result is discontent practically every where in the country. We are proud of being the largest democracy in the world in the sense that we have elections every five years or sooner, but a good question to ask is if the common man thought that this was adequate enough or representative enough, then why would insurgency flourish in so many parts of the country? We have the right symbol in the shape of a reasonably fair electoral process, but without giving people a sense of belonging and emotional integration, we don’t quite have the substance of democracy.

But political integration alone is not enough. The kingdoms of this world, we are told, will become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. Think of the way we view strangers in our midst. Are we not defensive about them and do we not work to protect ourselves from them? Our parent’s persistent counsel, never speak to strangers; to the policy of our police forces which urge us to report the presence of strangers. It may be a linguistic coincidence that stranger rhymes with danger, but our natural fear of the foreign and our social conditioning against those we don’t know, both tie them tightly together.

We all make judgments of strangers, and assess them according to their similarity to the norm. Do they match our expectations? Challenge our fears? Appear strange or startling or disquieting? What will they do to rock our comfortable world? It is hard to accept outsiders. After all, if they were one of us we would already know them. We’d see them at parties or attend the same concerts. We’d be able to fit them into the larger pattern of our society. This is how the world used to be. People lived in small towns or social circles, divided by class and ethnicity. Everyone had their place and was expected to stay there, moving within certain bounds. So you knew who was miserly, and who had failed 6th grade, and you heard the stories about your neighbor’s first wife. When push came to shove, everyone stuck together. You knew where you belonged. People are tribal creatures. We form relationships within circles of cultures that have expected behaviors and forms of communication. We learn how close to stand to each other when we talk, what kind of eye contact to make, the rules of hospitality when paying calls or celebrating a birth.

Having said all that, as Christians, we know where Jesus could usually be found: among the strangers most religious people considered unfit for their presence and deserving of exclusion from their company. He was constantly among those classes of people he taught us to care about: the tax collectors, like Matthew and Zacchaeus; the sinners, like the thieves on the cross; the women, like Martha and Mary; the children, like those he took up into his arms and blessed, over the protest of his disciples; the Gentiles, like the Syrophoenician woman who was willing to eat the crumbs that fell from Israel’s table; the poor, like the widow who gave her last mite; and the lame, the halt, the blind and the lepers, like the ten he healed and received thanks from only one.

But perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson for a broad, open theology of God’s inclusive love is none other than the man who began his journey at the opposite end of the theological spectrum, the Apostle Paul. Paul was an expert in religious exclusivism and triumphalism. He was a Jew, a Pharisee in fact, an expert in keeping and interpreting the Law of Moses. He was so zealous in his faith that he attacked and hounded and persecuted the followers of Jesus. In fact, he was on his way to Damascus to root out Christians and have them imprisoned when he was knocked off his horse and blinded and turned around by God, a remarkable conversion if there ever was one. And then, the scholars tell us, he began a theological journey from narrow exclusivism to a broad, open, grace filled theology of the cross, which finally concluded, amazingly, that God’s purpose in Jesus Christ is as big as the world itself. God sent Jesus, not just to save a few fortunate ones who happened to be lucky enough to hear the news and believe it, but to heal and restore and redeem the whole creation.Paul began as a Pharisee — proud of his exclusive ethnic and religious identity, with an enormous wall of tradition and rules and laws and rituals to protect him from others — and by the time of his death he was saying and writing things like: “In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ…. He is our peace … he has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” With every terrorist attack, walls and fences between people are rising and not breaking down in our country. And our work as a church, as a community of God’s people seems to be neatly cut out for the next six decades at least…..

Ladies Coupe by Anita Desai - Christian Reflections on Singleness

Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair

A Christian Reflection on the Single State

Ladies Coupe is a novel by an Indian author, Anita Nair which looks at the issue of whether a single woman can be happy or is she incomplete without a man. The main character is Akhila, an unmarried woman in her mid-forties. Akhila was the eldest of 4 children and after the death of her father the responsibility of running the family fell on her. All her brothers and sisters get married except her. Her younger sister Padma stays with her because according to Padma a woman cannot be left alone, lest she go astray. Then one day she gets herself a one-way ticket to Kanyakumari. She gets reservation in the ladies compartment. She shares the compartment with five women, Janaki, Sheela, Margaret, Prabha Devi and Marikolanthu. Akhila strikes up a conversation with these women. Each of the women tells Akhila of their lives. After hearing out these five women and their stories of living in a cocoon sheltered by men or rampant exploitation again by men, Akhila decides that she can live alone. She needs no one. No man and no woman either. The book ends with Akhila asking her younger sister to leave because she feels that she does not companionship of any kind to live and thrive.

This book made me think of the many people, particularly women in our fellowship who are single, perhaps for many years and what the scriptures have to say on marriage and singleness. Whereas books like Genesis seem to indicate that in a large measure, marriage is largely God’s plan for people, in the New Testament, the single state is also celebrated.
Most times, when we talk about families in the church, it's easy to forget that not everybody fits into the same situation that we're in. Because I'm married, and because I have young children, it's natural for me to think about issues that married people with young children face. It's almost possible to believe that everybody is in the same situation that I'm in.

Therefore in our churches, there is very little teaching on coping with the single state. In fact, it is quite likely that our congregations have people who are struggling with these issues with since explicit conversations about marriage; singleness and loneliness are generally frowned upon except in very intimate circles. The Bible says that God sets the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6) but these families come in many designs and one of them is the fellowship and friendship to be offered by the Lord’s people.

In the novel, though Akhila is the eldest sibling, who has run the family after her father’s death, due to societal norms is not in control of her own life, which is remote controlled by her younger sister Padma. That is sad. But what is equally sad is her resolve to eventually cut herself off from all forms of social contact. That would not be what the scriptures would teach. They would teach people to cope with singleness in dependence on God …. But equally importantly, the scriptures would demand that genuine Christian fellowship provide a kind of family even if it is different from the one established through marriage. It is a denial of all Christian concern if there are any lonely Akhilas in our fellowships who not finding any one to reach out to, retreat inwards into isolation and withdrawal.

There used to be a time that singleness was identified as a temporary period that young adults faced before they got married. Some people still define singleness that way. My older brother didn't marry into his thirties, and it was amazing to see some of the comments that were directed at him. People wouldn't leave him alone because he was still single. People were continually matching him up with girls - sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. It all depended on how well they got along.

The underlying message, though, seemed to be that he was incomplete, or that his life hadn't really begun. Sometimes, even singles feel this way. Some of the markers that take place in married people's lives weren't as visible - the mortgage, the first child, the first child going to school, and so on. Sometimes we communicate subtle messages that say to a single person, "You haven't really lived and you can't be fulfilled because you're not married." They're made to feel almost like half a person. But that's not God's view at all.

When it comes to church, I've found that there's a group that's significant and growing, and yet many times we don't see this group. The ironic part is that all of us have spent time in this group, and yet I've found personally that those days are easily forgotten. Sometimes, without even knowing it, we make this group feel ignored or second-class. The language we use - talking about family picnics and family get-togethers - and the actions that we take can sometimes make this group of people feel like we don't even see them.

Truthfully, sometimes we don't. But it's not because they're not there, and it's not because this group isn't large, and growing. Maybe its naïve, but I'd love to be a church in which we saw past our marital status, and we acknowledged the significance and the value of every person in Jesus Christ. I'd love to see us develop deep and significant relationships beyond those who are just like us. I'd love to be a church in which singles didn't feel second-class, because the greatest person who ever walked this earth was himself single. I want to be the kind of church that affirms people both in marriage and in singleness - a church that recognizes the value of sacred singleness

Our Virtual Friends

If you ask the average person, what is the purpose of people gathering together Sunday after Sunday in church, the probable answer that most people will give is that they gather together to worship. Another answer that one might expect to receive is to listen to God’s Word. Very few will perhaps say that the purpose of the church and the gathering together of God’s people is to provide fellowship. In fact, fellowship is an essential ingredient of the church’s role. One could conceivably worship in solitude, it is possible to listen to some very edifying sermons on tape or on the radio, but fellowship is some thing that can happen only when people gather and relationships develop. It is the thing that cannot happen over the radio waves or in isolation. Fellowship requires people to gather together and pray and meet together and bear one another’s burdens.

In fact, in the many sermons that I must have listened to over the years, the one sermon that I clearly remember was delivered over twenty years ago from the opening verses of Philippians chapter two on the theme of fellowship.Today, it is the age of social networking sites. Orkut, Facebook and My Space and so many others. They are all supposed to bring people together. They have their uses. They do bring people together. People who would otherwise have never met get to meet. I have joined a few and sure, have met some people. We don’t exchange post cards there. We count scraps. And it has its zip and zest, I must say. But when I look at some of the profiles and see that they have 50, 100, 200, 300 contacts, I wonder. Can you really have some thing meaningful to say to 300 “contacts”? Are Orkut notes balms that can heal the soul or merely scraps that itch? Christians are not lagging behind in this race.

There are plenty of Christian social networking sites too if one does not fancy the secular ones, though Orkut and all the others too have their share of tradition groups and “communities”. These are all good. These are all good. If technological innovations are happening and they are redefining the manner in which friendships and social equations operate, there is no reason for Christians not to take advantage of them. I myself can recollect many people who I met fro the first time on line and then these ties were then cemented by off line exchanges and friendships. There are many people who I would never have met had it not been for the online platform that is available today and I am in that sense grateful for technology and for all that it enables us to do.Having said that, I must also say that on line encounters, no matter how long and how often cannot automatically translate into friendship and fellowship.

The writer to the Hebrews cautions his readers that believers ought not to forsake the meeting together of each other because meeting together, talking together and praying together, physically and face to face serves a purpose that chats and scraps simply cannot. Christian Fellowship is about bearing one another’s burdens before as said before and also about rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. But can we share out our heart’s concerns or deepest joys on scraps and notes for the world to peep at on Orkut’s scrap books?Yes, Orkut is popular today. It generates a lot of traffic. It is a buzz to be on Orkut and collect scraps. But will Orkut last like friendships do? Do edifices built on sand and largely cemented through scraps and hits survive? Or is it that when the storms come and the waves rise, the foundation will give in and collapse? Will Orkut last a generation? will groups that are largely “virtual” really survive? Really? If not, why bother to destroy some thing that is already programmed to self destruct ?

Faith, Superstition and Credulity

Recently I read an article about the arrest of a Pentecostal Christian preacher in Coimbatore. The preacher in question had not committed any theft, murder or any of the crimes that one might imagine. Rather he was found praying. Praying with his wife and four children by his side. Nothing unusual there, one would think. Except that this man and his family were praying next to the highly decomposed body of Charles’ brother Selvakumar read of the Pentecostal Christian preacher Charles, in Coimbatore who was arrested by the police as he, his wife and four children knelt in prayer by the highly decomposed body of his brother Selvakumar, who had committed suicide more than two months ago. They were praying fervently for his “resurrection” oblivious of the fact that the body was rapidly and steadily decomposing and the neighbors, unable to bear the stink called in the police.

Now if one is a atheist, and there is no place for the supernatural in one’s life, the actions of Charles are those of some one in serious need of a psychiatric evaluation at worst and a big joke at the best. But what of those who believe? What of those who have faith in God and believe that He is active in day to day life, that prayers and intercession do make a difference and that the spiritual dimension of life is an important piece in the mosaic of life? When Charles the preacher and his family was praying for his brother who had been dead 55 days to be raised from the dead when the police broke in, was he demonstrating faith or was he being superstitious ? What is faith and what is superstition? Where do one end and the other begin?

Faith is often described as the sum of things that are unseen. Given this definition, it becomes difficult to draw lines within the realm of the unseen as to what is faith and what is blind, obscurantist faith. If prayers can heal a person who is sick and make him well and that is the sum and substance of a lot of the prayers that are offered in countless temples, mosques, churches and shrines, then who is to say that prayers offered on behalf of a dead person will not raise him from the dead ? where do we get our bearings regarding what kind of prayers have some underpinning and which ones are mere exercises in delusion and the pursuit of them will only lead to disillusionment and disappointment ? That is a tough call indeed.

Of one thing I am convinced though. That while faith rejuvenates and provides direction in life, superstitions’ only purpose is to hold you back in shackles and toss you back into the embrace of fear and uncertainty. Faith may not be seen but it can be felt and experienced and its end product is hope – of a kind that does not disappoint. Superstition leaves you clinging wide eyes with fear and a sense of dejected hesitancy that leaves you with more doubts than assurance and more problems than solutions and in the eyes of the watching world, more credulous than credible. As with preacher Charles’s case—he set out to set his dead brother “free” but finds himself in jail instead. an unfortunate object of ridicule no rather than reverence

The Power of Religious Figures

When recently a denominational Bishop as the chairman of the governing body of a prestigious college, decided practically overnight the manner in which the college should be run and who should and should not be admitted it got me thinking about the power that religious leaders wield. It made me think and reflect a lot more on how religious leaders function and govern and how they ought to be chosen. It is surprising that in such a sensitive subject as this, where in even fully state funded institutions, like the IITs and IIMs, the government has been treading cautiously, a decision was made practically overnight with out any visible effort to build consensus or consult any one. Not so much the decision, but the manner it was arrived at too led to a volley of criticism that is hardly likely to add any allure to the name of the institution.

The position of religious leaders in a secular state is ambiguous. At one level, they are no more than private citizens; at another level , as the recent controversy surrounding the head of the Dera Saccha Sauda indicates, religious leaders have a lot of clout and influence … possibly in many instances they have more authority than political leaders. In most instances, the leaders are unelected. In case of the older institutions like the various mutts, the leadership is inherited but more common these days are the god men who seem to have sprung up and acquired a following almost overnight. Many of the religious heads in the country head huge empires worth cores, many of them by virtue of their office alone and not because of any management merit they might possess. Most religious leaders in India hold office at the tip of a very narrow support base and yet their decisions and actions be it Baba Ram Rahim Singh dressing up and aping Guru Gobind Singh or A Bishop suddenly dispensing wisdom on reservation and quotas.

Mahants and Bishops and Imams and the like may preside over the fortunes of prestigious institutions set up by religious trusts only because of the religious office they hold. In case of the educational institutions, the religious clergy may preside over the fortunes of institutions into which they might themselves be unfit to gain admission had they been in the positions of students in these institutions. The clergy preside over several institutions and their valuable properties and make key policy decisions, often without any demonstrable skills or training to do so Unelected leaders, be it in religion or politics are a bane. But typically political despots are more easily overthrown than religious leaders who wield a more mystic and other worldly grip on their followers.

The Christian reformation in Europe happened for similar reasons. In most situations, there is little that can be done. It is indeed a pity that Institutions and ashrams and establishments that most professionally managed set ups would hire experienced managers to run are managed by religious figure heads that may be well versed in rites and rituals but know little else. In India often , politics and religion seem to be the last refuge of the scoundrel and the ones who fit nowhere are the ones often the most blinded like in Hans Christian Anderson’s “ The Emperor’s new Clothes” be it cloaked in dummy robes of a Guru or a Bishop carrying a miter and cassock. However the role of church leaders and other religious figures is not ambiguous in the bible, even though a secular state may feel constrained in prescribing roles for the clergy. In biblical literature, the role of a leader Vis a Vis his flock is often likened to that of a shepherd and his sheep.

In Psalm 23, David is likening God to a shepherd. Indeed, he is saying that God is his shepherd. He also leads him beside the still waters. So, here the shepherd is supplying the basic needs of the sheep. Of all the images in the Bible, the story of the Good Shepherd is one of the most popular. In this story, Jesus draws a sharp distinction between his way of being a shepherd, and the way 'the hired help' exercises his responsibility. The Good Shepherd is constantly on the alert, but more than that, in the face of danger he is ready to give his life for the sake of the sheep. The hired hand has no real care for the sheep, and in the face of danger takes the easy way out, and the leaves the sheep in peril. Those who would follow the Good Shepherd are prepared to risk all, in order to fulfill their calling.

Throughout their history the people of Israel had been shepherded by various weak or faithless kings and religious leaders, and Jesus words would have struck a heavy chord in the leaders of his own day whom he openly challenged and criticized.It is rather hard for many people today to relate to the shepherd comparison, so what does the metaphor shepherd mean to us today? We hear a lot about the word servant leadership these days. This is more than just semantics, words have power. What we call each other says a great deal about how we view each other. Recognizing the things we do as ministries - however great or small-invites us to see them in a new way. When we begin to think about our lives in devotion to ministry, then we can begin to understand this shepherd Jesus who calls us to follow him.

We claim to be followers that means to follow is to know the Jesus who welcomed children, read in the synagogue, provided wine at a wedding, washed people’s feet, presided at table, told stories, cooked breakfast, practiced first aid and took advantage of numerous opportunities to do whatever would make someone feel a little better about life. That’s is the call we answer when we hear the shepherd calling us to green pastures, by still waters, restoring our souls, this is the life we are called to follow, ministry. Let is the kind of leader we need to be leading the sheep. And that is also the kind of shepherds we need to be if we happen to be leaders.

Minority Institutions in India

Over the last months, there has been a lot of debate about the role and rights of minority institutions, particularly the Christian institutions. But in all of this debate, I have read seen or read little that has helped to unpack the concept of the minority institution and why they exist in the constitutional framework. When the constitution guaranteed the minorities the right to start and manage their own institutions, they were not handing out freebies. The liberal climate that prevailed when the constitution was being drafted had the vision of a welfare state. They wanted the constitution to lay the foundation of a secular state where all sections of society would live with their identity and culture intact. It was such a benevolent gesture that made them reserve two seats in parliament for members of the Anglo Indian community, a practice that continues to this day, though the population of Anglo Indians might number in their thousands. Probably the two Anglo Indian members of Parliament represent their constituency more effectively than the elected members if the ratios and the representation formulae are taken into consideration.

The Minority institutions that were typically envisaged to enjoy the state’s protection were those which would actually serve to preserve minority languages, customs and traditions. The feeling was that minorities could get overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the majority community surrounding them and their culture and unique identity could just get subsumed into one large anonymous melting pot. So they needed a helping hand and the benign protection of the state. In this understanding of the concept, if a minority institution is not doing its job of preserving the ethos and culture and traditions and identity of a community, it is not really doing its job. A bunch of Muslims or Christians or Sikhs could get together and run a secretarial institute or a typing college or even a degree college running conventional BA and B.com courses. Would such institutes qualify to be a minority institute? Not really in the spirit of the constitution.

The ChristianMedicalCollege, Vellore has put it well. When asked to explain why it should reserve so many seats for Christians when it was just another medical college, it replied that it wasn’t just another medical college. It put forward the very correct argument that running hospitals and clinics and providing affordable health care to the poor was an important function of the church from its earliest history in India and Vellore was training doctors to continue and preserve that tradition of the church. It was not another commercial minded, doctor generating machine but an instrument to preserve the identity of the Christian community in India which has always been associated with a spirit of service and especially so in the fields of health and education.

But not every institution is CMC Velour’s know of many several church run institutions- (and this is very likely true in the in instances of other communities as well) where there is very little of Christ or His teaching to be seen or heard. What makes it a minority institution is that the Board of Management is headed by some Bishop or Priest or church official. The Bible is seldom referred to or opened, students go to tepid moral science classes and the morning assembly is anemic. When the church is persecuted from time to time, it is common to hear that many eminent people attended such and such Christian school.

Well they might have done so but the moot question is whether they were exposed to the teachings of Jesus in their student days or it just happened that the school happened to be run by some religious order or denomination but beyond these legal niceties, it ran as any secular institution would do. The plumb line to determine if any institution is a minority institution – be it linguistic or religious or ethnic is to examine what minority values and cultures are being imparted there. If after studying in a Christian school for ten years or more, a child comes out with negligible knowledge of the church, its contribution to nation building and the Bible then in what way is the establishment representative of the Christians They are no more than secular institutes which just happen to be run by a group of people who speak a particular language or profess a particular religion. This is what the Bible has to say:

“Give ear, O my people, to my law; Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, Telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, And His strength and His wonderful works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments” Psalm 78:1-7

The role of minority institutions, particularly Christian Minority Institutions is not to not to provide a safe haven for Christian students to get into institutions through sanitized seats reserved for them where they have less competition to deal with. That if any thing is a minor role. The role that the Bible lays down is that Christian institutions fundamentally exist to transmit the word and teaching of the Lord Jesus and His example to the next generation. Some where in this debate, this aspect has been forgotten and needs to be revived

An Upside Down Power

Too many people spend all of their allotted time on this earth trying to become rich and famous or rich and powerful or maybe just rich or maybe just influential. Reality says that only a few people get to any of these slots. The lot for all the rest might be to envy them. But Jesus tells us not to envy because God will judge by different rules. One’s possessions or position do not count.

What matters is what we give of ourselves. God encourages people to give the most of themselves. God’s plan does not honor the people who wield power, but people who love their neighbors and help those in need. It is how we use that power. God won't reward the people with great talent only, but He will remember the people with great hearts. It is how we use that talent. How does God defines greatness ? His definition has nothing to do with points on a scoreboard. It is all about how we live our lives. Perhaps we think we have never lived near human greatness—but maybe we just haven’t thought of it in this light.James and John ask Jesus for permission to sit with him at the head table when he comes into his kingdom…one at Jesus right hand and the other at his left hand. In most meetings, the boss sits at the end or like the Prime Minister in a Cabinet meeting—he sits in the middle.

In any event, the most trusted or senior members of the team are closest to the head person and this allows them to prompt the boss discreetly as needed. People of lesser rank perhaps do not sit at the table but are placed around the outside wall. The boss is front and center in any arrangement and the trick for everyone else is to get as close as possible.James and John thought that Jesus would become king once they reached Jerusalem…and they wanted the two most honored seats. Jesus, you will recall, had already chosen three disciples as favorites and the three included James and John.

Peter was the third. Since James and John were brothers, it was easy for them to bond. In this case Peter was the outsider and he was being pushed to the side. "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Translated, he was asking James and John if they were able to share his fate. Imagining Jesus at the head of the table, they assured him they were able. Jesus then told them that they would share his fate, but he couldn't promise them the seats at his right and left.But when Jesus was actually lifted up it was on a cross and there was a thief at his right hand and a thief at his left hand. That was one of God's ways of warning us to expect some surprises in his kingdom. In God's kingdom, the old rules –– the world's rules –– won't apply. We will have to learn a whole new set of rules. God gives all of us a glimpse into His kingdom. Jesus explains the new rules. He begins by talking about the rulers with whom James and John are familiar.

Those rulers lord it over people. The ones whom people usually count as great are really only tyrants –– oppressors –– people who exercise power cruelly and unjustly. Jesus tells James and John –– and us –– that the kingdom of God isn't like that. So who will be the great people in God’s kingdom? There are people here on earth whom most of us might not consider as great and most importantly, they don't think of themselves as great. Not many people know their names, but God knows their names. These people show all of us the way. They give themselves in quiet service to our church or our children. They are here at church whenever there is a need at here or in the community. There will be a look of surprise on their face when Jesus says, "Come and sit with me.""Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all."

On Eagle's Wings

Two of my favorite modern Christian songs are sung by the artiste Josh Groban. One of the is titled” On Eagle's Wings” and another is titled” You lift me up”. Both these songs have lifted up my spirits on many a depressing day. The old prophet Isiah's lines promising that "they shall mount up with wings like eagles" (v. 31) are so memorable.... Sorting through my various memories I remembered first a time when I sat on top of a cliff and watched a motionless raven riding an unseen wind, occasionally folding up his wings and dropping breathlessly before extending them again to soar.

Then I thought of a time when I took a s short holiday in Goa , watching seabirds get waddling starts before a breeze would lift them gently above my head. Finally I considered a family of sparrows that once nested outside my window of my 8th floor office in Delhi's Nehru Place, occasionally breaking into the silence of my room with a salutary song. None of these light and dreamy images worked with me, however. Not this week.As a pacifist, I have struggled a great deal with my own feelings about the violent turns being taken in our country , some more graphic than others. One illustration that I recently read about and that horrified me was the thought of Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh that once returned Jawaharlal Nehru to Parliament , now being represented by a mafia don. . Sometimes I am quite guilty of reading the morning newspaper and taking it to heart, making it personal.

As I read all that I do , I also sad realize that I have very little power to counter the ominous movements around me. Some times, I feel tired and angry and sad and confused, I walk on the frightening border of hopelessness at times.So some airy notions of birds taking flight are sometimes hard to embrace as I feel more the albatross of cynicism growing heavier around my neck, worrying less about my own ability to fly and fretting more honestly that I might instead just sink like a stone. And in a rather uncommon way as I read Josh Groban's songs based on Isaiah , I felt that someone from a very long time ago was saying something to me, pleading desperately that I not lose heart. All I can say is that I want very much to hear those words and to believe in them.

The words that seem to be speaking so deeply are drawn from Isaiah 40, an entire chapter that is made of the dialog between hope and doubt before it ends on a note that asks us each to remain engaged in the struggle. It was written ages ago to a people that had been living in exile and, during that time, found themselves in the tension between their own hopes and doubts, the promises of their faith and the sad social context in which they lived. This is the audience that the author of Isaiah 40 is addressing, and it is to a tired and skeptical people that he offers his word. Some of his chapters intended to comfort a weary people by reminding them of an old vision and singing of a new empowerment. There are some hopeful words here, if not any easy words, and perhaps that is why they can still speak as strongly in the present as they did in that long ago past.

So to an exiled people the prophet begins to speak or maybe even to anybody who has ever felt like a wanderer, caught in the troubles of this world and its sorrows, feeling the bitterness between what we dream and what we have got.It seems to me that the prophet knows the feeling all too well, because his opening lines, which read very much like poetry, acknowledge under their surface that things are not yet as they should be. "A voice cries out," he writes, "In the wilderness prepare the way, make straight in the desert a highway [so] every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain." (v. 3-4) The voice crying out is really the voice of the old writer, who is beginning to offer an image of a time just around some corner when things might be transformed.

While the author understands that the current context is oftentimes a painful one, he wants to say and so he does say that the future is open. Using his words to invite us into this beautiful vision, the author paints what is uncertain in the colors of a thousand possibilities.Unafraid to voice his dreams the prophet writes, "Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together," (v. 5) which is another way of saying that the manifestation of the divine shall be everywhere and the love of God shall be shared by everyone. This is a very beautiful sentiment and, as it imagines what the world might become, it is directed rather pointedly at everyone who has, for one reason or another, stopped imagining their own hopes for the future.

The Book of Isaiah has perhaps the highest hopes of all, for its pages tell that lions and lambs could one day find rest together, swords might be refashioned into ploughshares, and hospitality shall be shown to the stranger and the outcast. And the comfort that the prophet means to offer here can be found in the universality of his statement. Not only will the people wither and fade but so will the nations and the rulers, all who act oppressively on the earth and live in violence towards it, they¹ll go too, for they are no more than "dust on the scales" (v. 15). While this may strike some as the most morbid form of encouragement, the old writer is trying to affirm that there is something more transcendent than the power structures currently in place and the systems that seem to surround us.

While surely we are participants in those systems, the prophet wants to remind us that we might also become participants in something much greater, something that he would call a divine purpose. Because what won¹t fade, the old book tells, is the very word from God. And it is that word that has always issued an invitation for us to make justice and love through our living, in the hope that we are joining in something sacred as we do it. Isaiah 40 goes on to tell of the wonder of the divine, conjuring up majestic images of God, but throughout it is still possible to hear that there is a dispirited audience listening in.

It seems to me that the writer never really loses sight of this, since he concludes his magnificent descriptions by saying rather plainly that God "does not faint or grow weary." (v. 28) At the end of it the prophet will say something like, "Every one of you is tired, I know. But maybe one day we¹ll reach the end of all our waiting, maybe one day we¹ll see that our efforts have made at least a part of this dream into reality. And maybe on a day like that we really might feel light as eagles carried by the wind's current. Who knows?" So as Isiah understands and acknowledges the reservations of his hearers, he still speaks strongly against the cynicism of inaction and asks us each to take the risks of responding in faith. Perhaps the aforementioned eagles might serve as an interesting example. In our lives we may not always be able to soar gracefully but we can take the first small steps and leave the nest to trust in what cannot always be seen but can be hoped in and worked for and maybe even lived out if we feel as risky as the young bird who paces and yearns for the sky.

Orphans of Our Time

Caring for orphans has been a time-honored work of the voluntary sector, especially religious institutions. The Christian church itself runs number of children’s homes and orphanages in the country. Orphans brought up in these institutions have been brought up to live fruitful and productive lives. But a new strain of orphans is emerging that may challenge all the established paradigms and processes of orphan care. Caring for widows and orphans is not an option; it is a duty The Old Testament often witnesses to the fact that children in need, most especially orphans, are the subjects of God's special, loving care. This is why his covenant with Israel required that families and the whole society take care of widows and orphans.Jesus himself held children dear to his heart. Think for a moment of the time he reprimanded those who were keeping children away from him, and said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." The Gospel of Mark says that, "he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them." (Mk 10:14b, 16).

So important were children to Jesus that he said, "Whoever receives one child...in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the one who sent me" (Mk 9:36-37). Jesus is very clear. We love God through our love for children. By caring for these little ones, we show our faith in the risen Lord.The ministry of health and family welfare says that 1, 67,078 cases of AIDS have been reported from 1986 to March 31st this year. However, this is considered to be an estimate on the lower side as probably only about 10 per cent of the infected are aware of their status. Many of the children born to these HIV positive people are themselves infected and at some point many of them become orphans as one or more of their parents possibly are chronically sick or die.

In what ways are India’s AIDS orphans challenging the traditional norms of orphan care? Well for one, firstly consider the sheer numbers. India today is home to the largest number of AIDS orphans in the world. The odds against AIDS-orphaned children are staggering. These children are vulnerable to a number of risks ranging from social exclusion and economic deprivation to illiteracy, malnutrition and exploitation. They are also at increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, abuse and drug use, with many young girls turning to prostitution in order to survive. AIDS orphans are often shunned by their communities; many are denied property rights and rights to inheritance. Those who cannot be taken in by their relatives end up living on the streets.With numbers such as these, typical responses will not work. An AIDS orphan apart from being an orphan has all the attendant disadvantages described above and then is at the receiving end of discrimination in society for no fault of his own. Now orphan children can be both simply affected or infected as well, in that case, they will need additional skills in coping and self care.

The knee jerk response of society to pack these children into orphanages will not work because of two reasons—a typical child care worker often will not have the skills to handle children who need this level of intense care and support. Secondly we will not have enough institutions to admit all of these children and then maintain them, as the cost of that will be huge. This will necessitate some form of prioritization regarding who goes into institutions and what happens to those who don’t get in. Now in India, while the institutionalization set-up is well established and the adoption mechanism is also well established, there is nothing in between these two options.With orphanages and institutions untenable for such large numbers of children and adoption too not viable for legal or social reasons (for instance in India, as of now only Hindus can legally adopt), foster care, which is widely used elsewhere but rarely practiced in India is worth exploring and trying.

Unlike adoption, which is irrevocable and permanent, in foster care, a child goes and stays with another family which wants him and cares for him, but stays in touch with his natural family and the stay for foster care is temporary and for a fixed number of years. With many of the AIDS orphans staying in single parent households headed possibly by grand parents or a widowed mother, the emotional bonds in such families is strong even though economic constraints often make it difficult or impossible for the child to be given the care, support and education that one needs.However, what will delay or hinder the foster parent concept idea from taking root in India apart from cultural prejudices and stigma is the absence of a legal framework. With child protection increasingly becoming an issue and child abuse now a proven fact even in a supposedly conservative society like India, some guidelines are a must. However, with all the red tape associated with law making and policy formulation in India – foster care is an idea whose time has surely come

A time to think and act …….

For much of the twentieth century, evangelical involvement in social and political issues has been stymied by the never ending debate on what was the more important task – populating heaven with the souls of those who accept Jesus as their lord and savior or make life better on earth by imbibing it with the spirit and fragrance of the coming kingdom of God- by living holier and purposeful lives singly as well as collectively.

However it was not always this way. As far back as in the Old Testament , after Jerusalem was sacked and its people carried away into exile, the Jewish people sat lamenting and singing dirges about how life was back in Jerusalem and the memories they had of worshiping their god the temple that Solomon had built and that now lay desecrated.

Into that mournful congregation of exiled people Jeremiah preached. He asked them to be mindful of the place they were exiled to; he urged them not to lead detached, indifferent, anemic lives, mourning the past or longing for a restoration to come in the future in the great messianic hope. Jeremiah exhorted the despondent, discouraged people of the time to pray and involve themselves in the welfare of the place and people among whom they were placed for in their welfare lay their welfare.

The Jewish were exiled among a people whom they despised and considered unclean, yet Jeremiah urged them to be mindful of their needs and concerns and pray for them. Many made an effort to do this. This was not just in response to Jeremiah’s call but even before that and included Joseph, Daniel and Nehemiah. They contributed to the times and societies in such a significant manner that history as well as scripture records their efforts and contribution with appreciation.

Christians have their citizenship in heaven. This the Bible declares emphatically. We are called strangers and wanderers on this earth, people who are always on the move, as they look to their eventual home in heaven in the presence of the lord. Our status here on earth is that of resident aliens- people who live here and yet do not fully belong here.

In the bible, God shares his dream with us. His dream of how life on earth should look like. Not once or twice but in innumerable books, he shares his dream, so passionate is He about this dream. In this dream, we get a picture of what life would have been like if there was no fall, no sin and its consequences- death, disease and destruction that we see every where, every day on our television screens, in our newspapers, on our internet browser.

Daniel, Isaiah, Zechariah share this dream among others. They talk longingly of the dream that God shares through their lips of the vision of a new earth. Here are some of the verses – Zechariah---, Isaiah ---, Daniel….., Amos. God’s vision for this earth that he so lovingly created is big and broad. He loves people. He loves families. He loves communities and he has big dreams and visions for all of them.. In a fallen world, God’s perfect vision will never be fulfilled. Our labor will be incomplete; the results of our sweat and labor will be less than optimal. our efforts will be often frustrated.

William Wilberforce, the man on whose efforts to abolish slavery in British Empire, the movie “Amazing Grace” has been recently made had to made innumerable efforts to make an impact. His bill to abolish slavery was defeated in the House of Commons year after but he never gave up his efforts and the bill was finally passed months before his death as he lay in his sick bed. The same exercise when attempted across the Atlantic in the United States, led to a civil war.

William Carey is known in evangelical circles as the “Father of Modern Missions” and is revered under that definition. His secular legacy which is equally impressive is also more varied. During his lifetime, Carey was a: Missionary, Social Reformer, Educationist, Linguist, Author, Publisher and Botanist. William Carey was the founder of:


• The BMS (Baptist Missionary Society) -1792
• The Baptist Mission at Serampore -1800
• The Baptist Mission Press at Serampore -1800
• The Serampore Botanical Gardens -1800
• The Serampore College -1818
• The Agricultural Society of India -1820

From 1796 - 1829, he translated the New Testament into Bengali, The old Testament 8 years later, and parts of the bible into Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Urdu and many other dialects. Carey also wrote dictionaries and grammars in Sanskrit, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu. He was also the father of vernacular journalism in India Carey’s philosophy of life was formed largely by the written works of his predecessors and contemporaries. Specifically, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, Captain James Cook, and Robert Hall, among others, clearly affected his outlook on theology, missions, Bible translation, ecumenism, and a host of related topics. Writings by Cook opened Carey's eyes to distant people, whom he evaluated in the light of his journalistically influenced theology. Consequently, Carey became concerned about the spiritual and moral state of the world abroad. His concern found expression in the Enquiry – a polemic for missionary work – and ultimately led him to Bengal, where his own attempts to influence people through journalism expanded. Can one many really do these things, of such a varied nature? Why did he do these things? Why should a missionary set up a botanical garden or an Agricultural Society? And if a man did have such gifts from God, why did he not do all he could to plant more churches and evangelize more and more people? Was it not the reason, why he left England in the first place?


William Carey combined a passionate desire to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, for which he had essentially come with an intelligent and equally passionate involvement with the social and political life of the country. Carey and his companions arrived in India in 1793 and settled in the Danish colony of Serampore because contrary to popular perception, the British East India Company in its early years , had political and commercial interests in mind and not religious.

It took Carey and his team of missionaries, which included a school teacher and a printer about 7 years to see the first fruits of their ministry. Almost immediately, they had to take cognizance of the first social reality deeply rooted in India- caste. 122. The conversion of Hindus to Christianity posed a new question for the missionaries concerning whether it was appropriate for converts to retain their caste. In 1802, the daughter of Krishna Pal, a Dalit, married a Brahmin. This wedding was a public demonstration that the church repudiated the caste. The matter Carey dealt with more than 200 years ago has still not been resolved satisfactorily in the church till today,

But Carey's ministry was not only about evangelism. He was confronted with harsh social realities of that day and along with his associates, fondly called the Serampore trio, engaged himself in the social and political milieu of the day with the motive of helping shape society in a manner that best demonstrated the character of the God they preached about.

For political as well as pragmatic reasons, Carey was on good terms with the East India Company governor general. In 1801 when the British founded Fort William, a college designed to educate civil servants of the East India Company (the 18thcentury version of the IAS and the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy in Mussoorie). Once the college was established, William Carey was invited there as faculty in the capacity of Professor of Bengali. His colleagues on the faculty included many of the Hindu, Bengali elite of the time whom he befriended to gain insights into Hindu life and society. And he also use his access to the budding civil servants and the British political elite to help put a stop to the practices of infant sacrifice and Sati, after consulting with the pundits and determining that they had no basis in the Hindu sacred writings (although the latter would not be abolished until 1829).

The Serampore missionaries were the first to use the media for propagating their view of life, which was of course, the Biblical world view. One of the Serampore trios, Marshman was a printer. In April 1818, Marshman, together with his father Joshua, launched the first monthly magazine in Bangla, Digdarshan, which focused on educative information for the youth, and very shortly thereafter the weekly news magazine Samachar Darpan which was one of the two first Bengali newspapers. Subsequently the Serampore Mission also launched the Friend of India weekly in 1821, which became so popular that Serampore was synonymous with the Friend of India in European minds for much of the 19th century. The printing operations were so successful that they acquired their own substantial buildings by the river just north of the Mission Chapel. In 1875 the Friend of India amalgamated with another paper The Englishman, becoming The Statesman which remains one of India's leading English-language dailies. Marshman was also a devoted student of Indian history and he wrote what was for many years the only history of Bengal. He was also long engaged on the writing of the history of India; his reading was very wide and he was a distinguished Oriental scholar.

Tracing William Carey's history further back, it is noteworthy that Carey's voyage to India was because of missions. In the church circles of the time, the prevalent theology was Calvinist which believed that for people to believe or not believe in the gospel was pre-ordained. Carey raised the question of whether it was the duty of all Christians to spread the Gospel throughout the world and was told by a Baptist elder "Young man, sit down; when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid and mine." it is interesting that with this sort of background as the driving force of missions in the life of Carey, he got involved in the life of Indians and its concerns in the manner that he did.

I have gone into the life and ministry of William Carey in some detail for a reason. He is the one who is recognized in many circles as the Father of Modern Missions and therefore it is worth talking about what the definition of missions was in his life and in the lives of his equally illustrious colleagues. If Carey's legacy is to be analyzed today , close to 200 years after hi death , it is not really in terms of the numbers of churches that he planted which were not many or the fruits of his evangelism in Bengal which are few. His legacy will be that even as he was in the business of evangelism, he believed that a Christian response to the world he lived in was a fitting and apt response to play for a missionary. His role in the abolition of Sati along with like minded Indians like the illustrious Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the British Governor General William Bentick are what he is remembered for. Standing in the initial decade of the twenty first century, when the occasional case of Sati is looked upon with loathing, it may be difficult to accept that it was a common place act in the late eighteenth century. 954

Going beyond Carey, the work of 18thand19th century missionaries (if not earlier) includes a contribution to the fight against small pox, malaria and leprosy; the provision of clean water; the extension of primary education; the protection of native peoples against exploitation and injustice; the defense of human rights. Opposition to foot binding and the exposure of girl babies in China; opposition to widow-burning and infanticide and temple prostitution in India; and much, much more. If in the twentieth century, Christian mission has got fragmented moving away from the holistic way in which their predecessors saw the world, there has to be a reason.

John Stott has identified five reasons for this shift:

1) A reaction against theological liberalism, which became popular at the start of the century. Faced by challenges to the long cherished basic doctrines they retreated into the defense of historic biblical Christianity and lost much of their cutting edge
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2) A reaction against what was called the social gospel. Many of the advocates of this had ministered in areas of severe poverty and deprivation and they had tried to develop a theology which seemed relevant to these experiences. This thinking was based upon the idea of human perfectibility this side of heaven. Life should be transformed here on earth before we get to the Kingdom of God. Evangelicals of the day reacted badly to this.

3) Thirdly, the effect of World War I which engendered widespread disillusionment among evangelicals. The enormity of original sin and human evilness was brought to the fore like never before and Christian appeared to be overcome by it. They retreated into a feeling of social pessimism.

4)Fourthly, Christian’s were encouraged, through a variety of sources, to take the view that whatever reform attempts were made, evil would continue to flourish and the condition of society would continue to deteriorate until Jesus second coming. Some Christian was criticized for getting involved in social action because by improving society they may delay the return of Christ!

5) Lastly, some sociologists have suggested that Evangelicals have become alienated form social concern because of the spread of Christianity among the middle classes, who tend to be more conservative and concerned to preserve the status quo. It was basically a move towards self centered Christianity, saving your own soul.

Looking at the historical precedent and looking at the Bible , particularly the writings of the Old Testament prophets and the words of Jesus, we believe that Christians have a duty to be concerned about what goes on around them. The affirmation of God’s universal lordship is the theological foundation of Christians’ duty to be involved, in appropriate ways, in political reflection and action. God has revealed Himself as Lord of all aspects of life, public as well as private.

God is present and acts in all aspects of life—in our own personal lives, in the dealings between persons, in the community, in the nation, in the church, and in the universe, in economics, in politics, and in culture—to ensure that His holy purposes would prevail. God is present and acts through various ways, including through the belief and practice of Christians, to bring about the salvation of human beings of good will and of all creation. The correct understanding of the salvation that God offers is the fullness of all life blessings, both spiritual and material, partly in this present mortal life, and completely and definitively in the unending life of the world to come. Jesus Christ, in whom God the Son took human nature, was born, ministered, suffered, died, rose to triumphant new life, to manifest to us, by example and by teaching, two fundamental realities which in a sense comprise the Gospel or Good News.

These include macroeconomic, political, and cultural structures and questions, more so because macroeconomic, political, and cultural situations have a profound effect, for better or for worse, on the access of the members of society to the life blessings necessary for the true happiness of human beings. Therefore the mission of the church is not confined to the family, the home, the churches, the church-run schools and even the community of believers. Because God is Lord of all things, authentic Christian faith has a public or societal character, and the work of evangelization has public or societal scope.

In the subsequent chapters of the book, the authors have tried to hold a mirror to the society we live in today and explore the issues that we see around us. We may come across them in the morning new paper or as we browse the net or as we sit in our living rooms, lounging around our television sets. Some stories disturb, some numb us , some touch us in our hearts but leave us puzzled about what we can do, attempt to do and possibly fail in the process. As the authors pick up issues from the morning papers and look at it from the world view of the Bible, it is their hope without making any claims to be the prophets of yore; their writings will prove to be some what disturbing and soul stirring