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 ?