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

Humility Today

In our contemporary culture, Humility is a value that many people must find extremely hard to understand. Humility, by its nature, is silent. Indeed, these days, the word “meek”, the word with which “humble” is associated in The Magnificat, is now almost a pejorative term. To be meek today is somehow seen a failing of character and resilience. To be humble is no longer a state of being; the word is invariably used as a verb, usually in the passive voice, something that someone has done to them in the overthrow of a public reputation. In a newspaper scandal, public figures are “humbled”, or face “humiliation”. It is a word usually uttered with glee, with sense of just deserts being served. Our culture thrills to the first part of those lines of the Magnficat, “He has put down the mighty from their seats”, but glosses over the second, “and exalted the humble and meek

Paul, explains at different points in his letters what it means to be humble and, in doing so, he picks apart a series of inherent contradictions in the way we conduct ourselves. Paul sets up the value of “association” with others as a key to humility and sets association against the very precise charge of “competitiveness”. In his letter to the Romans, he tells us to “live in harmony with one and other, not to be haughty but to associate with the lowly,” and pits that type of self-effacing encounter against, what he describes in Galatians as Conceit – “competing against one another”. In Philippians he defines the opposite to conceit or competitiveness as “regarding others as better than yourselves”. If you regard others as better than you are, it follows that you cannot be competitive with them. But, in his first Letter to the Corinthians, Paul, I think, goes further and identifies humility as the preparedness to appear foolish - a virtue that shows up the shortcomings of conventional wisdom. He argues it in this way: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Freedom to follow Christ depends not just in denying competitiveness, but upon one’s preparedness to look past the confidence of those who believe that truth can be established through winning an argument. There can appear no more foolish an argument, Paul implies, than to look for salvation to a crucified God, but if you do, and face down that judgement of your foolishness, then, in his words, you will “discern all things”, and in so doing, he says “be subject to no one else’s scrutiny.”It follows that all those rhetorical tricks of cut and thrust debate, and that articulate arrogance of competitive wisdom that we display in order to prove that we are right, are overthrown by an inarticulacy that is at the centre of true Belief.

The First Letter to the Corinthians may contain some of the most flamboyantly rhetorical of Paul’s writings but his argument is really for the virtue of inarticulacy. “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with the demonstration of the Spirit and of Power.” Power here is turned upside down by Paul and used as the consequence of diffidence and self effacing trust in God. Today’s fashionable virtue is, by contrast, is not humility but “self esteem”. At work, people who would once have been described as “meek” are encouraged to go on “assertiveness training” courses. For, in an ever more competitive world, where the idioms of corporate culture demand certain types of behaviour, so there is less room and less time and less tolerance to appreciate the quieter virtues of those who work alongside one. Today’s belief in building self esteem recognises the damage we do to each other in the day to day business of working and living and seeks to offer to the person potentially hurt by the encounter a breastplate of assertiveness with which to hold their ground. But this is not Humility.Humility, in the Christian life, is ultimately the state whereby one can approach a right relationship with God.

But, since such a relationship can only be approached through seeking some rightness in our relationship with our fellow men and women, Humility, it seems to me, inherently rests on the manner in which we make contact with others, not just how we see other people, but how we see ourselves seeing them. Invariably, when we meet someone, we deliberately set up our own sense of self to get in the way of our encounter with another person’s life. It gives us a sense of security to know where we ourselves stand in relationship to someone else. In pondering what is the right relationship to one’s fellow human beings, I have found myself asking the question in a more particular form: how do we fully engage with the narratives of other people’s lives and connect them into our own. Paul enjoys the paradox, those who think they shape the world - the wise, the scribe the debaters of our age - can only understand the narratives they wish to frame when they are forced to confront that which they cannot make fit into them. At that moment, we are challenged to stop; to stop thinking, stop talking, stop opining. You have to stop shaping the story you are making to recognise that the meaning of it lies outside what you can do with it and you cannot enclose it in your own. But the Grace of God lies in his allowing us foolishly to blunder into those confrontations with the lowly and meek, and, in those encounters, we can, in the shock of understanding, recognise the grace of Humility which is all God requires us of if we are to seek a relationship with Him.

As Paul puts it “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no-one might boast in the presence of God”.