Joel Nillo Kath
What does Cali, Colombia; Hemet, California; Kiambu, Kenya and Almolongo; Guatemala all have in Common? These were places where the transforming power of the Holy Spirit was manifested for the entire world to see.
Colombia was the drug capital of the world till fifteen years back. The World’s Greatest Outlaw, of all time, Pablo Escobar was a product of this country. He is regarded as the richest and most successful criminal in world history because, in the year 1989, Forbes magazine declared Escobar as the seventh richest man in the world, with an estimated personal fortune of US$ 9 billion. In 1986 he attempted to enter Colombian politics, even offering to pay off the nation's $10 billion national debt. It is said that Pablo Escobar once burnt $2m in cash just to keep warm while on the run. His transaction of cocaine into US ran into $ 500 million, daily. The Cali (a city in Colombia) drug cartel at its height in 1990’s controlled 90% of the world’s heroin trade. However, the people of this 2.8 million city gathered together one day in the year 1995 and asked the Lord for deliverance. 60,000 people gathered in a football stadium and prayed for whole nights. After 10 days, the city started seeing results. Suddenly drug lords were getting caught, crime was coming down. Prostitution, killings, violence were on the wane. For three years the prayer vigil went on. Churches of Cali simply relied on the healing power of the Holy Spirit. By the year 2006, Kidnapping, one of the most lucrative business in Colombia, was down by 50%. According to US State Department report of 2001, three thousand (3000) people were being kidnapped every year in Colombia alone, i.e. more than half of the world’s kidnapping. The worth of the business? $ 500 million a year, according to Jane Defence Weekly.
Kiambu, Kenya was wracked by rape and violence. There were booze joints everywhere. Churches were not growing. Finally, Church and community leaders decided to fast and pray for the town. They laid their faith on the healing touch of the Holy Spirit. Kiambu is now crime free, 0% to be precise. Consequently, there has been an explosive growth of churches. The transformation was so great that where there had been bars before, there’re now churches- every single bar in town being converted into one.
Almolongo, Gautemala, a town of 19,000 souls was the centre of Mayan civilization. Witchcraft, Satanism, idol worship and alcoholism were rampant. Christians of the town formed prayer groups and set about transforming the town. It is unbelievable that, now, 85% of the townspeople are born-again Christians. So much so that all the streets are now named after Biblical places and most businesses are named after Biblical names like “Angel’s bakery” or “Vineyard of the lord” for a beverage kiosk.
However, most foolishly the Nagaland Baptist Churches Council (NBCC) decided to put their trust in the Government of Nagaland. This is the reason why prohibition has been an utter failure in our State. Instead of invoking the precious name of the Lord to heal the land, our NBCC leaders pressurised the government of the day to pass a law prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol in the State and only then did they invoke the name of the Almighty so as to get His seal of approval over the Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition Act (NLTP) 1989, passed by the State Legislature. In short, our God was relegated to second position. How ridiculous can we get. The Church was simply passing the buck, shirking from its responsibility. What it failed to do from the pulpit, it now wanted the government to accomplish through legislation! To argue from a theological perspective, this self-congratulatory stand of NBCC in getting the Prohibition Act passed was the very act of rejection of faith itself. I call this the “Baptist Syndrome”.
Baptist churches in Nagaland can be clubbed as bureaucratic setups with NBCC at the top. Any organisation with a central authority having paid members and functioning towards a goal is a bureaucracy. It is also an organisation typified by formal processes, standardisation, hierarchic procedures, and written communication. A bureaucracy grapples only with facts and figures and empiricism. In other words, there’s no place for faith in a bureaucracy. Hence, a church is just another bureaucratic setup if it is devoid of the guiding hand of the Word. This is the state to which NBCC has degenerated- a vast faceless, well-oiled and dogmatic organisation churning out untruths based on emotions (prohibition issue) and incomplete theology.
So, what is this “Baptist Syndrome/s”? This a disease peculiar to the State of Nagaland found especially in the Baptist denomination. Say, a new church is to be build for which funds need to be raised. In most churches under NBCC, the first thing its Baptists’ members would do is make a list of all its church members and their different occupations. Once the profile is made, rates would be assigned. For example, all drivers should donate Rs. 500 towards the building fund whereas 1st class Officers may have to shell out Rs. 30,000 each. Similarly, contractors and Ministers have to contribute a higher amount. After the list is made of all the donors, the church religiously pursues all its members to pay up. Then prayers are offered to the Almighty for his mighty blessings in making possible the completion of the Church, that is, after much huffing and puffing and frayed tempers over the years! This is the shallowness of our belief. We lack faith, the understanding that it’s best to let Him guide us in the first place. The possibility of these donated money being sourced through corrupt means no longer pricks our conscience as we don’t want to accept such realities. Jesus’ short ministry on earth was a ministry of grace. Let us also keep in mind that his ministry was a ministry against the hypocrisy of the teachers of the law. The clamour for prohibition in our land was raised by the very people with such dubious background in faith.
This is the malaise in the churches of Nagaland- intellectual reasoning first, then faith. Wine-making and prostitution is as old as civilization itself. To try to erase it is to erase evil from our very existence itself, an impossibility. No earthly legislation, save the power of Holy Spirit, can enforce prohibition anywhere in the world, contrary to what NBCC feels. There are more alcoholics in our society than it was in 1980s. We have had more young people dying of alcohol related complications than it was in the 80’s. Whole society has been corrupted, from the simple panwallah to police and Excise, from Ministers and bureaucrats to sons of pastors and Reverends. Whole generation of Nagas has been fed on the diet that drinking is a curse. Since NBCC has made drinking a curse, now it’s truly so because the Bible says that what you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven too. So anybody who drinks or aids the drinker can expect himself to be cursed...with disease, poverty and death, quickly and surely. There’s no way out, unless the NBCC asks for forgiveness, first from the Almighty and then from the people for bringing a curse upon them rather than blame the government for the failure to implement prohibition. Only then there’ll be true reconciliation with the church by this generation.
