K Enatoli Sema
Growing up in a Naga Christian community, I was accustomed to calling a fellow Naga a ‘good Christian’ that not once was it seen as contradictory to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The term only appeared paradoxical when a fellow believer, who is not born into a Christian family but became a follower of Jesus in his later life, pointed it out. For a people group that is both a religious and cultural minority, living fairly insulated lives, the first reaction is to get on the defensive and then to get offended when an outsider comes along and points out certain obvious peculiarities and irregularities on our way of life and living.
Such a labelling lie on the foundational faulty understanding of being a Christian by birth feeding an intangible superiority complex having no basis In the Word1. The truth is every human being, a Naga or a non-Naga, is born outside the kingdom of God, more particularly for a person born into a family of believers. Instead of cushioning the new member of the family into the fluffy comfort of being ‘born a Christian’, the household has the added responsibility of addressing the need to exercise free will to either become a follower2 or not. Becoming a believer is not automatic with birth, more so for those who believe that free will is a God intended gift and liberty. The liberty which was first given to Eve and Adam, however, brought out undesirable consequences leading to disobedience, sin and separation from God. The good news is that our story does not conclude with expulsion from the garden of Eden, it begins with sin but ends with redemption. The irony today, however, is that the concept of sin makes churchgoers uncomfortable when it is because of sinners, the need for a Saviour arose. And all churchgoers are ex-sinners who continue to be redeemed sinners3.
I was born into a family of ‘Christians’ and for the first many years of my existence, I religiously went to Church, attended Sunday school, memorized Bible verses and prayed before every meal and almost every night with very little clue of who God was and what Jesus Christ had done for me. During that period, I was told I am a Christian and believed myself into being one because I attended Church and filled up forms ticking Christianity in the box which required me to vocalize my religion-based identity. In my mid-teens, I received water baptism because everyone else in my age group was doing it and it was the proper thing to do. It was only in my late-teens that I was born again when I had a personally encounter with my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The danger of assimilating Christianity into a culture is that it reduces what is sacred and holy to a socially tailored acceptable norm of life. Turning prayer and church group meetings and even praise and worship practice into simply a habit and a criterion to fall into the category of a ‘good Christian’. The essence of any faith system hinges on belief and conviction4. If there is no experience or conviction involved, there is no faith, faith is dead and dead faith is no faith at all. An experience therefore involves emotions. For the Christian faith which is predicated on love, the mother of all emotions, the need to ‘feel’ cannot be over emphasized5. Until and unless one feels the agape love of God, how does one believe, be convinced or even be convicted of a faith system. Especially when it propagates exactly opposite of what all other world religions preach. When we are told that nirvana and moksha must be earned by your good works, how can one be moved to believe that salvation is a free gift from God simply because He loves6. There must be unction at work to take that leap of faith with emotions playing a big role when the prodigious choice, to surrender one’s life to the One who Created you, is made.
However, the understanding that once you accept Jesus, as your Lord and personal Saviour, your life must be on some kind of an ‘emotional high’ at all times is one of the worst half-truths and the most dangerous lie that can be fed to a new believer and a tragedy if seasoned ones continue to feed on them. Timothy Keller, a world-renown speaker and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, once preached on Psalm 91, possibly one of the most quoted Psalm right after Psalm 23, titled ‘satanic exposition’7. He was addressing a crowd of Pastors urging them not to read the promises in that particular Psalm in the way satan would expound it by throwing open the idea that life on earth for believers was meant to be without any disaster, harm or suffering. Taking anything out of context is unwise but when the Word of God is taken out of context, it is devastating not only to mind but also to the soul because it gives a fertile ground for the enemy of the Word and of God to twist the promises making them obstacles for spiritual growth. To use struggle, disease and hardship as parameters to judge Christian faith is not only hostile to the Gospel but reflects a warped, lopsided and a complete lack of understanding of who Christ is and the very reason of why He came to earth. It not only questions Christmas but also our celebration of Easter. The Truth is meant to be wholesome, it is meant to set us free8. To know the Truth is to liberate ourselves from the father of all lies9. But when truth fed is not whole and the half-Truth predates Christ it has the potential to put believers in chains of generational curses, guilt, darkness, superstition, ignorance and fear. If we are bound by chains of generational curses proclaimed in the Torah, it means we have not been able to grasp the wholesome Truth that Jesus became that curse and crucified them to the Cross and therefore we are no longer cursed but redeemed10. If we jump to the conclusion of judgment every time a believer is attacked with a deadly disease it means that we are yet to come across the Gospel where Jesus made it clear that sometimes sickness happen to people without fault and for His Glory11. If we start acting like God on judgment seat, it means we have not been able to accept that God’s ways are higher than ours, just as the heaven is above the earth12. If the amount of contribution that churchgoers give is printed and put on public display, maybe we are missing the point when Jesus said that your left hand should not know what your right hand is giving and our reward has been short-circuited by receiving temporary accolades here on earth as opposed to a grand eternal prize and crown in heaven13.
The Bible does not propound blind faith. Though faith involves feelings, emotions and convictions, but it is also based on the solid God of Word, evidence correlated with historical facts which has withstood centuries of scrutiny by both scholars and cynics. Neil Postman in his seminal work14, while examining the influence of media in 20th century American political discourse, recognizes the significance of the Word. For our God to be in the Word according to Postman was an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Postman, an unbeliever, recognized the profoundness of the importance given to the Word because he was bringing forth the argument that the shift from word-center to media-centric public discourse in 20th century America has made the content dangerous nonsense as opposed to when print, in the 18th and 19th century, put forward a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective rational use of the mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with serious, logically ordered content. Postman foresaw the danger of television and media as a carrier of important cultural conversations as it trivialized something serious into pure entertainment.
The Naga spiritual experience existed before Christianity arrived in the land. Long before the Holy Spirit, the Nagas were familiar with the world of spirits appeasing them in various ways for our benefit. The spirit world and the early Naga life were closely intertwined and formed our ancestor’s way of life. In the end of one of her celebrated books15 Easterine Kire re-produces oral narratives from Merhu Clan, where an entire village died off because they had angered the Creator. This was before the village of Khwunoria (native name of Khonoma) came to being. The narrator claims that the village of Khwunoria is 700 years old, which shows that such references to the Creator existed much before the American Baptist made inroads in the land. The same narrative also contains an incident when a clan guilty of murder was exiled for seven years which reminded me of a similar law in the Torah. With the advent of colonizers in the 19th century and the American Baptist Mission reaching out to the Nagas in the mid to late 19th century, the power and the Word of God moved mightily to touch the hearts of our forefathers. Many of them willing to face grave consequences for exercising their free will to accept the Gospel and the good news.
Today the current ferocity of media and image-based content is raging against a faith that is Word-based with its’ foundation cemented In the Word. The Naga Christian faith and identity is still in the process of maturing, in the process of moving from milk to solid food16 and therefore the focus to an image-centric and media-fed propagation of a faith which is based on the Word poses a danger where the thin line between deep spiritual and meaningful experiences and seeking ‘emotional highs’ blurs. The argument of Neil Postman that media and image focused content trivializes something serious into pure entertainment appears to hold water in this context. Emotional experiences are part and parcel of the Christian faith but it is only a minuscule part and cannot be allowed to take the center stage by shoving the Word17 aside. Perhaps there is a need to re-asses and look around where the collective focus of a 100-year-old Naga Christian faith lies today. Whether the trajectory of our Christian faith can be seen in transformed lives and societies, shining as light and seasoning as salt in a Nation where the majority is yet to be introduced to the Word.
As Nagas, who bow down to the One and only, Creator of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in it, the beginning and the end, the One who holds all things together18, who knows everything and is infallible for He is the great ‘I AM’, we have a privilege and a responsibility. Martin Luther King Junior, wrote “what appears at the moment to be evil may have a purpose that our finite minds are incapable of comprehending. So, in spite of the presence of evil and the doubts that lurk in our minds, we shall not surrender to the conviction that our God is able.”19 As we walk our walk and run our race may we hold on to the faith, may we bloom where we are planted, may the aroma of Christ spread from Nagaland to the rest of the country and to the rest of the world.
1John 3:3
2John 3:18
3Ephesians 2:4
4Hebrews 11:6
5Romans 8:14-17
6John 3:16
7https://www.ordinarylifeextraordinarygod.org/post/satanic-exposition-timothy-keller
8John 8:32
9John 8:44
10Galatians 3:13-14
11John 9:3
12Isaiah 55:9
13Mathew 6:3-4
14Postman Neil- Amusing ourselves to death.
15Kire Easterine, Sky is my Father, LoC 2012
161 Corinthians 3:2
17John 1:1
18Colossians 1:16-17
19Strength to Love
A lawyer by profession, the author has been staying in Delhi-NCR for more than two decades and currently the Standing Counsel for the State of Nagaland in Supreme Court of India and an Advocate-on-Record. She is an alumna of College of St Stephens College, Delhi University who obtain her LLB degree from Campus Law Centre, Delhi University.
This article was previously published in a Magazine (Vesulho) commemorating 25 years Jubilee of the Sumi Christian Fellowship Delhi in 2021.
