David Koza
Dimapur EGF
My attention was drawn by the articles published in Local dailies after the Annual Pacific Youth Hoho, an international event of its kind held in Nagaland for the first time at SBS Secü-Zubza, from 7th-14th Dec. 2012, participated by youths representing different countries cutting across ethnicity, religion and culture. One should appreciate and acknowledge them for addressing some common concerns and compelling issues like clean election, tribalism, groupism, extortion, factionalism, lawlessness, land encroachment, poor work ethics, an indolent public etc in the society with an objective to change them for better tomorrow by extending humane touch where youth are to play a responsible role in the society.
Here I do have burden for Christians in Nagaland or else where because the prominent feature made known to the public through the dailies is the spiritual or religious face of the meeting rather than the social strategies and action plans in this inter-faith event. I might have commented by overlooking many social issues deliberated during the annual event. However I am referring only to the two articles published in Nagaland Post namely “Big doors swing on small hinges” and “Asia Pacific Youth Hoho” dated 15th Dec. 2012 and 20th Dec.2012 respectively. The former was presented during the annual event which conveyed the preaching of one’s faith and the latter the devotion to one’s faith. To me there is nothing of social concerns or issues addressed or impressed upon here, therefore I asked myself whether the Asia Pacific Youth Hoho cutting across ethnicity, religion and culture is a social organisation or religious sect?
What is so loud and roaring in the two articles is the formal heralding of International Movement called “Moral Re-Armament (MRA)” or Initiative of change (I of C) in Nagaland. Many of the Christains in Nagaland may not be aware of this movement, which I think all of us should know what it is and discern for yourselves what does it mean to Christianity. “In 1938 Europe was rearming militarily. Frank Buchman, initiator of the work which became known as the Oxford Group, was convinced that military rearmament alone would not resolve the crisis. At a meeting of 3,000 in East Ham Town Hall, London, on 29 May 1938, he launched a campaign for Moral Re-Armament (MRA). "The crisis is fundamentally a moral one," he said. "The nations must re-arm morally. Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life” (Wikipedia). I think it is true, ideal and noble thing to do; however the questions like “what are the moral laws to follow? and who is that giver of the moral laws? would be the challenge to any reasonable organisation structured in this kind of system because so many religions with their own individual beliefs, ideas, philosophies, doctrines etc are practiced in the world. So the best thing to do will be to take the ideas, philosophies from all religions and leave the contraditing and conflicting ones for the sake of love and harmony. But to their amazement, they would realise that they created their own unique assembled or synthetic deity which opens wide door for spirit of the age (known as divine spirit). It is because the essence of morality is spirituality; trying to keep morality without spirituality is sheer hypocrisy. This is what exactly happenned; “In the 1950s and 1960s, MRA's work expanded across the globe. Buchman was a pioneer of multi-faith initiatives. As he said, "MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Confucianist and any other beliefs – all find they can change, where needed, and travel along this good road together." Doesn’t it sound like those building Tower of Babel? They said “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves...(Gen.11:4). Since it is inspired by God to unite all beliefs, therefore the members of MRA practice their daily regular deep meditations, devotion, listening to deity, carefully recording their thought in note, etc with sincere faith and commitment striving for enlightenment from ignorance creating one’s own reality. Worship became the essence and core of the organisation, in other words, spirituality determines the morality. It is clearly evident that MRA had crossed the fine line over from morality to spirituality; therefore it is no more just Moral based organisation striving for economic recovery but it has become Religion created by man worshipping the unified deity exchanging the glory of the True God. Worship is important because destiny is marked by worship. It is not just scriptural issue but issue of destiny – how a person worship is an indicative of destiny.
“To any sober-minded person, the importance of thinking rightly and seriously about God is obvious. The one theme that stands out prominently in the study of history of philosophy is ‘Philosophers have alwalys been obsessed with God whether assuming His existence, denying it, or looking for rational arguments to prove or disprove it, they have univerally understood that what a person believes about God is basic to everything else’. So your view of God automatically has more far-reaching ramifications than anything else in your belief system. What you think of God will automatically color how you think about everything else – especially how you prioritize values; how you determine right and wrong; and what you think of your own place in the universe. Then in turn will surely determine how you act. The central theme of the bible is the importance of believing truth about God; and our view of God is the most fundamental spiritual issue of all. (Paraphase – John Macarthur: Jesus you can’t ignore). John Piper commenting on Philipians 1:20,21 said “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him”. He further stated that “Being satisfied in God will not glorify God if our satisfaction in God is not based on right thinking and true knowledge”. Zeal without knowlegde is spiritually dead. (Rom.10:1,2)
However, does this ‘MRA kind of Believism’ go along with the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6) Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son (I John 2:22). And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life (I John 5:11,12). The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Heb 1:3). It is clear that MRA is not in line with the scripture because the members believe that the history is humanity fallen into ignorance and gradual ascent into enlightenment, rather then history of humanity fallen into sin and its restoration by God’s saving grace in Christ. They all find that they can change wherever needed by positive thinking or being optimistic and travel along the good road altogether. Christ is irrelevant in this kind of believism. Scripture plainly warns us to be on guard against emissaries of Satan who appear to be an angel of light (2 Corth.11:13-15).
MRA (I of C) implied by the article is also a form of New Age Movement striving to achieve universal ecumenicity and bring peace to this fallen corrupt world, which the Bible calls it as ‘false peace’. They emphasise acheivement of this temporal world over and above eternal one. The New Age Movement is a loosely array of ideas and philosophies that have much in common with both Hinduism and ancient gnosticism. New Age Religions are pantheistic (believing in the divinity of creation as well as Creator i.e., all is God), mystical (Viewing truth as something one finds within oneself therefore truth and reality are subjective, unique to individual), and syncretistic (blending and merging religious ideas from any number of sources). There are no moral absolutes only relatives because there is no distinction between good and evil. The moral effects of this relativism are abominable. The New Age Movement is revival of gnosticism. Gnosticism is the belief that some higher knowledge than found in the Scripture (the Bible) is available to enlightened souls. This knowledge can be acquired mystically through dreams and vision, angelic messengers, direct communication from God into mind, one’s own emotion, out of body experience, near-to-death experience and so on. Positive thinking is the mantra and not the positive believe/right thinking and right knowing about God from Scripture.
I, as a Christian, am not opposed to any inter/multi-faith organisations as long as they tackle the issues and concerns politically, economically, socially, etc since Christians are called to be light and salt in the world but without comprising religion. The 1st and 2nd commandments that “Thou shall not have any other god before me, and thou shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above, on the earth or water below…I, the lord your God, am Jealous God”(Exodus.20:3,4,5) is crystal clear for biblical christians to discern.An example of Daniel and his three friends living in the pagan world, serving the pagan king showed us how to draw the line in this area or live out in this pluralistic world. They would do anything for the king but when it comes to compromising worship, they were ready to die; at the backdrop is Jesus’ word echoing: if anyone wants to save his life will lose, but if anyone loses his life for me will save it (Luke 9:24)
The other New Age beliefs, MRA or Emergent church has potentially even more sinister implications to Christians than outright atheism because of its subtle deception.This kind of deception is the most heinous of all the sins as it violates the greatest commandment (Mat 22: 37), and the first three commandments – trying destroy the heart of true worship. The false religion that borrows God’s and Christ name, and creates false god and false Christ is the worst of form of blasphemy. Now I shall comment on the typical deception of MRA in the published articles especially “Big doors swing on small hinges” which is hostile to True Christianity.
Firstly, the unbiblical dualism is an important aspect of this kind of believism implied by the author’s quote “I came to learn that God is in all details of our life, so also is Satan, the devil. It is said ‘Big doors swing on small hinges’. Equating God and Satan??. “Satan is neither eternal nor equal to God. He is a created being (Eze.27:13). There is no fundamental, eternal principles besides God Himself. Evil is not an abiding challenge to His goodness. It is a condition into which creation has fallen and from which creation will be redeemed. Evil is not an eternal force on a par with God Himself. God and Satan are not equal opposites, nor are good and evil”. (John Macarthur – The glory of heaven))
Secondly for‘MRA kind of believism’ life transformation (which indeed is a process) begins right away in a natural process as and when committed by the devotees. They say there is no disturbed conscience, or in other words, they are sinless but sin is not their terminalogy. According to Jude 19, ‘these men follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit (Holy Spirit)’. On the other hand, Christianity begins with justification (one time) of the sinner by faith in Christ alone by hearing His gospel,where a christian is sealed with Holy Spirit and effectually followed by sanctification (transformation) by faith in Christ through the renewing of the mind by the Word of God (the Bible) through illumination of the Spirit, ultimately leading to glorification in consummation at Christ’s return; when no injustice will remain unsettled where He will settle all accounts either on the cross of Christ or in hell. There is no sanctification without justification for a Christian since it is concerning ‘Eternal Seed sown into man through Christ in justification’. Therefore Christianity is a supernatural life.
Thirdly, the author used the biblical languages and vocabulary but completely skewed the truth. For instance he paraphases one of the most common bible verse (Philip.3:12) by substituting the key phrase and conveys the exact opposite meaning of the verse written by Apostle Paul. “I am not claiming to have reached my goal. Nonetheless I am going to take hold of every good thing God has in store for me and my people”. The ‘every good thing’ according to him are health, wealth, education, prosperity, never to be mediocre, whole and nothing short of God’s best -successful so that you can be happy – all temporal earthly things. For him, God’s best should be achieved here on earth. On the hand, Apostle Paul looks forward for the unseen eternity, the glorious heaven in Christ. Just few verses above, Paul stated that (Philip 3:7,8) he considered those worldly success/profit a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord, and considered them rubbish that he might gain Christ. By the way few verses below (Philip 3:18,19) Paul lamented in tears about the coming of the enemies of the cross of Christ whose destiny is destruction, whose god is the stomach, whose mind is on earthly things. He reminded the believers their citizenship is heaven. So according to the article Apostle Paul can be categorised as ‘the devil robbing you of all God’s blessing meant for you at all cost and always’. It also implied what kind of words of God they meditate on or what they do with scripture (the Bible).
Fourthly the two articles clearly indicate that they believe and worship the inner light within the man driven by optimism. The optimism of the age is always trying to prove that we fit into this world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit into world (instead called to live as alien, sojourners, pilgrims etc in this world). “Mere optimism had reached its insane and termination. The theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything that was bad” (G.K Chesterton). For instance, the loving parents in bringing a child up by giving all the good things, will not build him up but rather utterly destroy him.The man who seeks pleasures ends up destroying himself. The man who pursues rationalism ends in being irrational, so also logician ends in being illogical. Natural religion always becomes unnatural. On the other hand, Christianity looks to an outer light – Jesus Christ who said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”, and follow his teachings. Citing J.K. Chesterton ‘Christianity is not amalgam or compromise of optimist and pessimist but both optimist and pessimist at the top of their energy: love and wrath both burning’. It is rooted in orthodox theology where Christ was not a being – half man and half God but both things thoroughly very Man and very God. The optimism driven belief declared virtue is in balance but Christianity declared it was conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. J.K. Chesterton said this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Christ and His death on the Cross and ressurection along can explain and work out this duplex passion in this complex world where no other beliefs can.
Chesterton pointed out how this duplex passion (say love and wrath both burning at the same time) works out in Christianity in pardoning the unpardonable or loving the unlovable. Firstly, a sensible pagan could laugh at the slave who stole the wine, on the other hand killed the slave who betrayed his benefactor and cursed even after his death. The act was pardoned so far as it was pardonable. It was rational and even refreshing but it is a dilution: It leaves no place for a pure horror in injustice (Violation of Justice) – a great beauty in the innocent. It also leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men (Violation of Grace) – the whole fascination of the charitable. But Christianity came in startlingly with a sword and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that the slave who stole wine inspiredly partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet kinder to theives than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild.
Fifthly, this MRA belief like the Prosperity Gospel bangs on preaching health, wealth, prosperity and success which is attractive to the natural man. This kind of belief gets right into satanic system of provoking – lust of the flesh, lust of the eye and pride of life and making sinful desires look religious and honourable desires. For prosperity gospel group, Jesus is the ticket to get all the carnal desires, you know ticket is useless once you are inside the theatre. This is what Satan had offered to Jesus. Prosperity preaching is not the gospel because anybody can have it without being born again. It works so well because it satisfies the craving desires of natural flesh and minds. On the other hand, things of God cannot be discerned by natural men - (Corth. 2:14) “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”. In this regard, John Piper commented that “The message in the Gospel is that Christ will give you Himself so that you don’t need health, wealth and prosperity to be happy but you can have so much invincible joy in the durable Christ that you can give up health, wealth and prosperity in the sacrifices of love if God so called”.
Lastly, Christianity does not visualise the world to be made up of only poor, unhealthy or unsuccess, fragile people or vice versa but all categories of people, conditions, situations, circumstances in which the sufficiency of God’s grace and power in supreme Christ Jesus is displayed for the glory of God, the Father and Son as the Holy Spirit exalts Christ in the lives of believers who have Christ delighting, savouring, enjoying, Christ glorifying hearts with eager desire to know Him more. The eternal beauty of the glory of Christ in them surpasses that of the world which is passing away. The Apostle Paul’s life is a good example following his Master, Jesus Christ who has overcome this world, and called all believers to overcome the world since He had already done for them. Paul, who had experienced most of human lifestyles – honor, glory, health, wealth, prosperity, success, suffering from both men and nature, sickness, poverty, hunger and thirst, persecution, false accusation and list goes on; concluded saying “…for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”(Philip.4:11-13). The indespensable role of the Christian in this world is to be salt and light or people will perish; with every believer making the best use of the time because the days are evil and even numbering the days aright in one’s life to gain more wisdom to be more fruitful in bringing glory to God. Christianity puts high premium in this earthly life more than anyone else as shown by the two world tension in the life of Paul, who was torn between his desire to depart to be with Christ (far better) and the necessity to be in body for people, which means more fruitful labour for him. No other beliefs understand this paradox or duplex passion.
Christian faith has elaboration of doctrines and details which distresses many, but it perfectly suites into the complicated modern world unlike other faiths – Christianity deduces logical truths, but when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found an illogical truth. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. Wherever we feel there is something odd in Christian Theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth (G.K. Chesterton). We are Christians so let us live Christianity out in the reign of Christ’s Grace. Let‘s not abandon the most precious and holy faith in this complicated world for sake of the simpler, easy, plain faiths raining upon us today.
