Dr. Ashwani Kumar and author Jonas Yanthan with others during the book release function in Kohima on January 3.
Kohima, January 3: Nagaland Governor Dr Ashwani Kumar today released a book entitled “A walk to Emmaus - A Journey of Attitudinal Change” written by Jonas Yanthan here at Raj Bhavan. Addressing the function, Dr. Kumar said, “In Nagaland, we also have to learn the law of the Right to work.”
Stating that Nagaland has a lot of unemployed people, he stressed on the need to provide good livelihood and employable environment.
He stated, “A man does not live by bread alone. We have to work. Even if you have all the luxuries of life, you will still need to work to have a meaningful life. Otherwise, life would not be as meaningful as it should be.” Therefore, he asserted, work is more important than giving some unemployment allowances, which many of the government these days do.
In order to bring about attitudinal change, he felt that teaching and preaching must go together.
“All our schools, colleges and universities are imparting a lot of knowledge and skills. But where are we failing?” he queried. “It is the values, it is the characters, it is honesty, truthfulness, sincerity. That is where we are lacking. I think we are responsible to what we are doing to our children.”
Advocating that teaching and preaching must go together, he said “both knowledge and values should go together.” He stated one cannot start teaching and preaching if one is not internally influenced. “It will involve a lot of sacrifice, and it also involves lot of knowledge of philosophy and also scripture. I believe good teaching and preaching can be made possible by the schools run by the Christians.”
He also stated that Christianity has brought a lot of goodness to Nagaland. “Church has been very successful in bringing about change in the system, and is very strong in controlling corruption. We need to use Christianity for fighting corruption.”
Author Jonas Yanthan said the book is an attempt to understand the Bible critically “because we draw our belief primarily from it, and for this a science called hermeneutics is employed to understand the scriptural language, reality of life and what language is as a mode of communications.”
