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When we go out of the church, we brush our teeth and live our socio-economic and political lives. But while we are inside the church, these things are not talked about. Suddenly we put on our religious clothes and become different persons altogether, even though for a short while. The sermons can go on and on preaching about abstract things in the spiritual realm that has little resemblance with the realities of everyday living. The religious sphere becomes a private space in a corner and worship gets reduced to sentimental feelings just a little deeper than the guts. The church is becoming like a dinosaur which is getting extinct because it cannot cope with the times.

Therefore, the call of the NBCC in the annual conference this year for the church to be more responsible in the society is a most welcome wake-up call. The NBCC asked the church to take up the cause of HIV/AIDS, Climate change, alcoholism, etc. However, instead of taking on a select few issues, the NBCC needs to come up with a theological framework which forms as a theoretical basis for the church’s social engagement. The NBCC’s call is not new and the churches have been engaged with issues like alcoholism and HIV from before. Not only that the issues selected leave out lots of more important issues, the churches’ social engagement has always been truncated and half-hearted. It is often confined to a mass social work, a seminar on HIV, etc in which some interested individuals participate. Some enthusiastic church workers even look at the churches’ social engagement negatively fearing the church will be diverted from its job of saving souls. This is because of our lack of understanding of the width, the breadth, and the depth of the gospel.

The fear of some individuals that the gospel might fall into some sort of a ‘social gospel’ is not unfounded. When the gospel becomes undifferentiated from societal values and virtues, when the gospel is made more palatable to modern minds, smoothening its rough edges, letting the church flow with the times; we get a situation which is as dangerous as the comparison to a dinosaur.

What I am calling for here is not to write a new gospel….not to use the Bible to give legitimacy/approval for things we believe. It is not to read the Bible through the lens of our times but to read our times through the lens of the Bible……not to interpret the Bible to suit our times but to discover what the Bible has always said……