Sentilong Ozukum
Celebrated Christian journalist and author Philip Yancey in his book ‘The Jesus I Never Knew’ mentions the story of a prostitute he had heard from a friend who work with the down-and-out in Chicago.
“A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter,” Yancey’s friend narrated to him. “Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her two year old daughter to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable. I’m required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. ‘Church!’ she cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.’
The irony is that people like the prostitute fled towards Jesus when he was alive on earth and not away from him. Perhaps the greatest paradox of our generation is that the church which stands in place of Christ here on earth no longer attracts the group of people that were attracted by Christ. The prostitutes, the needy, the poor, the sick and the downtrodden gravitated towards Jesus. Ironically this same group of people is repelled by the church today. They are no longer attracted. The down-and-out who flocked to Jesus no longer feels welcomed among Jesus followers. What is the secret of Jesus that the church has lost?
My agnostic friend in college (who was no friend of the church) used to say that the existence of the church was reason sufficient to prove the non-existence of God. According to him if God existed, he would have razed the churches a very long time ago. Another friend (a Christian) commented that if Jesus were to walk the earth today, the church would find him too shocking and crucify him again. Though blasphemous, there seems to be a hinge of truth in their outbursts.
If Christian pollster George Barna were to come to Nagaland and carry out his business, we would get a lot of very interesting results. But it would be hardly a surprise if he said that only a small fraction of the Christian population is attracted by the church. Unfortunately many churches operate like a private club minus the ‘For Members’ only sign at the door. For reasons unexplainable, the downtrodden of our society doesn’t feel welcomed.
Several months ago I challenged myself to understand the psyche those groups of people in our neighborhood who were alien to the church. I anticipated an endless string of allegations against the church and its leaders deluding myself into thinking that at the end of the journey I would be able to compile a volume containing the common man outbursts against the church. To my complete surprise only one among the several people I met said something partially against the church and ironically that person happened to be one of the several alcohol-champion of our area. He pointed out to me between bits of sarcasm that going to church meant putting his physical as well his spiritual health at great risk. He said something like: “I can’t help but start sinning the moment I step into a church. My blood pressure shots up and I end up getting medical attention. So why go to church?” He was no doubt under the influence of alcohol when he said that which further strengthened the case that he was speaking his mind. But the rest of them blamed themselves and not the church. They called themselves sinners, spiritually weary, poor, filthy and other pessimistic words and phrases. Their conclusion: Church is not for people like us. Baffled I went back to the Gospels and reminded myself once again that the group of people that were magnetized by people was the social outcasts.
The sinners of Jesus’ time were attracted towards him like iron fillings to a magnet. In fact Jesus once declared, ‘It is not the healthy who needs a doctor but the sick.’ What gift of the Jesus has the church failed to hold on to?
Puzzled by this phenomenon I once tried an out of the box experiment by reading the entire gospels, the word Jesus replaced with Church. And I couldn’t help but shake my head in disbelief as some of the passages seemed downright ludicrous. The Church has somewhat failed to be like Christ like. When Jesus was alive, the more a person felt worthless of himself the more he was attracted towards Him. Today the reverse has happened. The more a person feels worthless of himself, the more he is repelled by the church. Philip Yancey has a one word answer for this strange phenomenon-Grace. He writes, “I sometimes find a shortage of Grace within the church, an institution founded to proclaim, in Paul’s phrase, ‘the gospel of God’s grace.’”
Perhaps it would do good if we remind ourselves with what C.S Lewis said many years ago. “Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactorily that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”
(Sentilong Ozukum is the author of Campus Blues and is also the editor of Fingerprints magazine. He lives at Mokokchung.)
