Kaka D. Iralu
As stated in many other articles, I personally firmly believe that our Christianity should be related to every aspect of our lives on earth. I do not believe in a Christianity that is not related to my politics or business or whatever profession one may be engaged in. Tragically in today’s Christian Nagaland, most of our politicians and businessmen do not practice their Christianity in their politics and business. For example, I know many Christian who are pillars in their churches as well as in the political arena. But they do not practice their Christianity in their politics. They have amassed shameless wealth through corrupt practices and bribes. Here I am not just talking about state politicians only but also very much includes many of our so called national workers too. I don’t have to name them by name because their paraded wealth is there for everyone to behold. May be if I am a pastor, I will ban them from entering my church and desecrating the Church’s sanctuary with their defiled footprints. For that is exactly what God said in Is1:12 when he declared: “When you come to appear before me, who requires of you that your unholy feet trample my court?”
Then there are those hordes of Christian businessman too, whose Christianity does not apply to their business. They are making their millions out of exorbitant profits and illegal transactions -all at the expense of sucking the poor dry. Here again, I am not talking only about our millionaire businessman. I also very much include the vegetable vendors, butchers and shopkeepers. With escalation of prices of everything ever soaring higher and higher, it is now becoming very difficult to control one’s temper when one goes shopping. On such shopping occasions, as one is confronted with former Rs. 10 worth of vegetables now selling for Rs 20 or Rs 60 worth of meat now selling for Rs.90, one is tempted to act like Jesus and overturn all the shopkeepers tables just as Jesus did when he discovered that money changers and traders had transformed the temple into a market place and a den of thieves. (Matt21:12) There was a time in Naga society and culture, where to sell an item at exorbitant rates was considered shameful and insulting to the customer. Now it seems we have thrown away all our sense of shame to the drains whether it is in politics or business or any other spheres of our social lives.
The Christian Gospel that we have over and over again heard in our churches- besides spiritual salvation-very much also talks about social justice and social salvation. Talking about this Gospel that he had been sent to proclaim, Jesus in Lk4:18 had read out of Is 61:1&2 which says: “The Spirit of the lord God is upon me, because the Lord had anointed me to preach the gospel to the meek; he had send me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prisons to those who are bruised.”
Now who are the broken hearted, the captives and the bruised (or the oppressed as in another translation) who are denied their liberty and their rights and are instead in prisons? Are they not the politically and economically deprived? What did Jesus say to the Pharisees who were outwardly very religious but did not practice their religion in real day today life? He charged them that they had omitted the weightier matters of the Law which were justice, mercy and faith and he called them “white washed tombs” and “brood of vipers.” (Matt.23:13-36.) In another context, God through the prophet Amos, calling for Justice and righteousness in Israel said: “Take away the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thine harps. But let justice run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”(Amos5:23&24)
In Nagaland today, are we practicing our Christianity in our professions or is our Christianity just a religion that has been locked away in our Bibles to be opened only on Sundays in our Churches?
I have just finished reading a book called “God’s politician”- written by Garth Lean about Wilberforce’s life and works. Wilberforce’s greatest battle for Christ was the abolition of the slave trade in England and the many evils in English society in the later part of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century. But for him and John Wes leys, England too would have gone the way of the French revolution which resulted in the deaths of over 40000 Frenchmen and also another 30000 deaths from smallpox during the revolution. Besides his work in England, Wilberforce was also the prime mover behind many reforms in India and the West Indies. Along with others like Charles Grant, Macaulay, Lord William Bentinct and William Carey, this group of Christian missionaries and Christian politicians, abolished Sati, Child infanticide and the evil grip of the caste system from Indian society. They also set the foundation for India’s political freedom from colonialism. Another author, Dr Anstey writing about the Clapham sect (Wilberforce’s group) said:
“ From the assurance that their sins were forgiven through the grace of God in the redemptive work of Christ, they knew not only that they could conquer the evils in their own hearts but also that they could conquer the evils in the world which they felt called to combat.”
Their Christian revolutions changed not only British politics but that of India too. It was a revolution that- as the Bible in Lk 4:18 say-“set the captives free”- both Africans, British and Indians- from the clutches of evil systems in politics and economy. It was a Christian revolution that also cleaned the cotton fields and industrial factories of England including chimneys of rich people where youngsters were subjected to terrible suffering cleaning them. In short, their Christianity was a total Christianity that transformed not just their own society but that of other people’s lives and societies too.
For me, a Christianity that is blind to the evils of political and economic oppression through unjust systems is not my brand of Christianity. Also a Gospel that refuses to “set at liberty them that are oppressed” is no Gospel as far as I am concerned.
We, Naga Christians, must all strive for a Christian revolution in Nagaland that will transform our politics, our economy and our society. So help us God.
