Taliakum Pongen
I look at the blue sky moist with clouds. Behind, a goods train chugs angrily along the steel tracks. Just a few moments back I saw a Kingfisher airliner thunder by. And I look down at my neighbour’s roof and a monkey sits on an elevated wall turning its red face cautiously because the owner’s dog has been released and it’s running after it. So, life rolls on and there is something, I think, very central to life – to enjoy all the good that the psalmist writes about: “…But those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing” (Psalm 34:10). More practical, we need to experience things as they come in variables. Paul still went on to preach after a shipwreck. The contemporary Christian world seems to be missing some sort of the adventurous too. Somehow we have become what we are warned against – the many anti ‘slothful’ verses that we see in the Bible. Honestly, I struggle with it and you probably are nodding too with a mixed smile.
There has to be some sense in life and I believe that being sensible to the happenings around us would emerge to be true, as everyday affairs take place in life. And that sensibility would come only if we know the Master behind all creations because, Alexander still had a problem with conquering himself – alcoholism – even though almost half the world wallowed under his fist. Therefore, things at the face value seem to fail in explaining the inner hurts and struggles of man. King Saul also had a similar problem when he offered sacrifice in Gilgal, though the right person was the prophet Samuel. That is why we need “a new heart, a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26) to beat past the ordinary or natural and feel what is actually behind all that we are missing in life.
Certainly, sensuality also cannot be the justification of how we go about with our lives. Kind David said, “against You, You only have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4) after sleeping with some else’s wife. Even Oscar Wilde admitted that what he did to himself was more grave than what he did to the world. Again, it seems the generation of today is all about themselves. Perhaps Sodom and Gomorrah had something like the state of today’s society – loaded with euphemisms (there I go, I’m using term ‘sensuality’!) but on the inside the foundation is shaken out of course (Psalm 82:5). Such a hypocritic wave has never been this commercial before, I suppose. And the blame is only about political correctness not biblical correctness. Morality has been archived. It’s time to dig it up.
Humanity, as we term ourselves, with not much of humaneness in it. Darwin is partly right when he puts us under the animal class. Animals may be, literal animals, that is, better because at least they act on instinct. When they get hungry they eat and are satisfied. And it’s difficult to understand that there might even be something instinctive about wrapping explosives around the waist and blowing up others. Or that, piling nuclear stuff with utmost care and at the same time thousands dying of hunger across the streets and elsewhere. Not so instinctive, I believe.
I also suspect that in this generation, we have become short-sighted by setting our own limits to our accountability in whatever area we may be. This is something strange because towards the end, we will find not much of contentment by being indisciplined.
Could it be that we could be missing something?
