'I am the change*': Being Salt and Light

Talk delivered at Annual Youth Day, Chakhesang Baptist Church Dimapur, 8th December, 2012

Introduction

When you get just one chance to speak, the danger is that you want to say so many things at once and confuse your listeners, and so reduce your own chance to be invited again. I face that danger today added to the fact that I can’t speak well at any point of time.

However, it’s a big privilege for me to be here. I thank the youth director for inviting me and all of you for coming. Chakhesangs have made their presence felt in Dimapur. There are our three professors in OTS and not the least: the sidekicks of Wolo Lasuh in this Church who are here today. The church members here at CBCD play a very crucial role to live as a ‘salt and light’; to be witnesses for Christ in this commercial capital which is a ‘city on a hill’ of Nagaland.

When we look at our Naga society today, what do you first see? What catches your attention the most? What is the thing that concerns you the most? Some may say it is the confusing and long winding Naga political issue. Some may say it is corruption in the government offices and illegal taxation by various underground groups. Others will say it is the degradation of moral and spiritual standards which is not only pervasive in the civil society but has also crept into our churches. Some may say it is the growing unemployment problem and lack of opportunities to earn to sustain the livelihood of self and family. Still others may say it is the lack of basic amenities like basic medical care, adequate and clean water supply, regular electricity supply, quality education, good roads and internet connectivity, etc. Some may say it is plain laziness. Nagas simply don’t want to work hard. There is truth in all of these and they are all interlinked and interlocked. That is exactly the reason why piecemeal efforts don’t work. You cannot run a good school with a corrupt administrator in a factional clash-prone village where there is no road and electricity connection. From such a school, you cannot get good education and therefore you will not be able to compete with others for employment exams and interviews and out of frustration, you may think of joining the underground groups to extort money or enter through backdoor appointment and in so doing lose your soul. These are extreme examples, but you see, everything is connected. Therefore, even as we work and engage ourselves in different areas or career paths, our lives are all connected. We are all parts of one body, so to say. 

Today, I want to flag some issues that we see in our society to stimulate us to think through. Most of these issues are from the articles that I have written in my blog and Eastern Mirror when I was a columnist. The issues are:

1. The growing rich and poor divide

2. The disconnect between private spiritual faith and public social life/ between church worship and office work/between Sunday mornings and other weekdays

3. The invasion of celebrity culture and lack of thoughtful reflection

4. The spreading biblical illiteracy

1. The growing rich and poor divide

Some time not long ago, I heard an officer say in a church service that Nagas are all progressing that it is difficult to make out who is officer and who is a peon or chowkidar, because we all wear similar clothes, drive similar cars and use similar mobile phone handsets. He thinks we are all going along fine. As a counter to that view, I wrote an article called ‘The other Nagas in our midst’ (Click Here for full article). I wrote, ‘Many Nagas do not know that there is another Nagaland which exists right under our nose. The bottom half (the poor). They are simply numbers in our census. We do not know their names. We do not discuss them, and we do not hear their voices or meet them face to face… Many Nagas today, who are born, brought up, or lived long in towns (like Dimapur) and cities are so ignorant of our own fellow Nagas who live in the villages. We think we are all basically from villages and we are more or less the same. But it is not. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The rich-poor gap is widening at an alarming rate. 

There are many Nagas today who struggle to provide two decent meals a day for themselves and for their families. There are many children who have swollen abdomen not because of overeating, but because of malnutrition and worm infestation. Many of them do not go to school or if they do, they do so just in name with no hope of a bright educational career or job opportunity. Many families live at the edge of a cliff and a slight push is enough to have them fall over. I met a Chakhesang guy in Phek district hospital who sold his paddy field to pay for the medical bills of his son. You don’t have to search hard or far to meet the destitute poor in our midst. If you go to your own native village, I bet you’ll find them. But the only reason why we don’t hear of them or discuss them is because the subject is not popular or interesting. 

I talked to some commercial vegetable cultivators of Pfutsero town last year. The price of their vegetables has increased only marginally over the years, whereas the price of essential commodities in the market like sugar and milk powder has increased so much. So, when we take the current money value into consideration, many of these vegetable cultivators have become poorer despite the rise of the price of their produce. 

The poor do not only suffer from lack of material wealth, they suffer discriminations and dehumanizing treatments that rob them of their dignity and respect. Not only are funds and resources meant for them snatched, the poor villagers are considered stupid, ignorant, dirty, uncivilized or backward. So many times, they are being blamed for being poor. We think it is their fault that they are poor.

On the other hand, we have a class of Nagas for who the sky is the limit. Overnight, crorepatis have emerged in our midst. A consumerist middle class has also mushroomed who look nowhere but up and up. Money is the ultimate good and by what means wealth is gained is irrelevant. When a billionaire was asked if how much is enough, the answer was, ‘a little more’. A little more. There is no end to human want. The 500 billion dollar advertisement industry has confused our needs with our wants and we are always in need of that next product. If you’ve got the latest Nokia Lumia phone, Samsung Galaxy notebook, Microsoft Windows 8, or an innova car, you’ll be in need of the next higher end product very soon. We had Hyundai i10. We now have i20. i30 is coming soon. We have Nagas today who can keep up with whatever product the market throws up. 

If you want to see the huge rich poor divide, another place to look for is your church annual tithe report. This is the year end and the annual tithe report will be out soon. Sit with the report and study for yourself. 

2. The disconnect between private spiritual faith and public social life

Does God care about what we do from Monday to Saturday? ( Click here and here) Or is he interested only on what we do on Sunday mornings? We can be like Dr. Jekyll on Sunday mornings and Mr. Hyde on the weekdays and make no bones about it. How is this possible? How is it that our spiritual faith cannot influence our behavior outside the four walls of the church? This is a true example: A government officer makes fake bills to sponsor his trip to Jerusalem. He repeats the act to raise money to attend a mission conference abroad. How have we come to this stage where spiritual faith is divorced from obedience? Why do we cry Lord, Lord but do not do what he says? The fault I think to a large extent lies with the teachings of our churches. Our churches preach a faith that is too personal and privatized that it doesn’t have much meaning in the society and the world. The gospel we preach is too inward looking and self centered that we can’t see beyond the interest of ourselves, our own families, or our own people group. Personal salvation is personal and inward looking, but faith without work is as good as death. Such faith is dead. Where is our work to show our faith?

What does it mean to be a Christian? Is it enough that we go to Church on Sundays, and don’t smoke, drink alcohol, or indulge in immoral activities? Jacque Ellul says that ‘In a society where everyone is a Christian, no one knows what it means to be a Christian’. We call Naga society a Christian society. But we have failed to live as Christians.

What does it mean to be a Christian student? Does it only mean not cheating in exams? Many of us Bible believing Christians fail to connect our spiritual faith with our discipline of study, profession or work. So, we have many workers who draw their salaries month after month, year after year, without doing any work. If you are a student of Science, how do you relate your text books with the Bible? If you are an economics student, in what ways can you use your knowledge for the glory of God? Wherever we may be placed in whatever department or discipline or nature of work; we must try to find WWJD if he were in my place.

3. The invasion of celebrity culture and lack of thoughtful reflection

Everybody wants to be noticed. Everyone wants to be loved. In facebook language, everybody wants to be Liked (click here). We want to be poked and we click Like when people Comment on our status updates and link posts. But what if we are a little too fond of ourselves? Now, nobody wants to be normal. Everyone wants to be stars. Everyone wants to rise above the crowd and be celebrated. Popularity is idolized as an object of worship. It doesn’t matter if you have to sell your dignity, self respect, your very own soul for it. 

Online social media like facebook provides a platform for every ordinary person; a kind of podium or a world audience. The stage is all yours. We live as if our lives are reality TV shows and we are the main stars of our own shows. We manage how we present our image to the world with our facebook profile information and status updates. And from such flimsy grounds we derive our self worth, self esteem, our dignity. We are made to believe that we can be the next slumdog millionaire. Our big break is just round the corner and with a little luck; we think we have the charm and what it takes to sweep the world off its feet.

Facebook can play with our sense of worth, meaning of life, and reduce time for genuine human interaction. Is facebook also making us more stupid? How many hours have we spent in facebook since January this year? How many of us know how to balance the time between facebook and studies and work?  If we spend too much time in facebook, we are not going to get too much time to read, sit quietly and think, or go out and see what is real. 

Many of the stuffs in facebook are superficial. Fun is good. But even in serious discussions in such online forums, we get to see so many comments which are emotional outbursts rather than carefully thought-out comments. That way, are we becoming more superficial? Many students don’t read books anymore. Even for assignments, they only go to Google. Google can provide good information, but it cannot do the thinking for us. We lack people who have time for thoughtful reflections. I don’t mean that we all become philosophers with Ph.Ds. But it is only a call to examine how we live our lives. It is said, ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’.

4. The spreading biblical illiteracy

As students, we go on from school to college to university, and with each rise in academic class, our knowledge increases and our thoughts mature. But when it comes to reading the Bible, even after being Christians for several years, our understanding of the Bible still remains at Sunday School level. And it is shocking that many of our kids today do not know the Bible stories that we grew up with. A young relative of mine got confused if it was Daniel, Joseph or David who was thrown into the Lion’s den. Some church leaders seem to think that with the coming of Jesus, Old Testament is of no more use. The angry God of the Old Testament was replaced by the gracious and mild Jesus who died for our sins. It seems some people believe that it is written in the Bible, ‘God helps those who helps themselves’. They think that is in the Bible! We treat the Bible as if it is a magic book. We close our eyes, point to a random verse, and think that God has given us that verse for the moment. I’m not limiting the ways in which God should work. God can work in such a way to speak to people. But as with any other book, when we read a sentence, we need to know what came before it and what came after it. When we are reading a story, we may have to go to the beginning to understand certain things. Sometimes, things may not be clear for a long time until you keep on reading towards the end. Also we know that there are different types of writings. When reading poetry, we don’t interpret it as we would interpret a chemistry equation. But we become too simplistic and fail to use such logic when it comes to reading the Bible.

Suggestions:

I would like to present some suggestions in the light of the above four points:

1.      On wealth and greed

The best medicine for greed is giving. When Jesus told the rich young men to go, sell off whatever he has and follow him; Jesus wasn’t meaning,  ‘you can keep the money, simply have a change of heart’. Greed binds us and when we give, we are liberated. That rich young man needed to take his trust away from money but he went away. He said he has been religious but Jesus knew that religiosity cannot cure greed.

Giving is not for a time in the future when I have this, or when I get there. It is for the imperfect here and now. We must realize that when we give, something is taken away from us; or it is not truly giving. We need to give sacrificially. Even if you are a student, you can still give to support another poorer student in your village, Tizu area, or a Burmese student in Kiphire. 

For those of you who are working or will be working soon, we must realize that giving Rs. 10 for church offering is too less. At this time and age, what can we do with Rs. 10 when we go to the bazaar? And our churches also need to be more careful and accountable with the money they receive. A non-Naga church in Kohima is said to have refused to accept a tithe of Rs. 25 lakhs from one person because it isn’t clean money. Our churches have something to learn from that. 

Another way to show our solidarity with the poor is to practice moderation as a habit. God does not patronize poverty. Poverty is not his design. He wants his people to prosper. But God has a preferential love for the poor. God has compassion for them. He stands for them, by them and with them. As Christians, it is not enough that we feel pity for the poor, but we should look for ways in which we can help reduce poverty and stand in solidarity with the poor. One of the many ways to do that is by inculcating moderation as a habit: having a limit, an ‘Enough’ in life. Even if we can live lavishly, we need to be mindful of the people we live in this earth with and the limited resources we all share. Let us learn to love our neighbor. Somewhere we need to draw the line and say, as for me and my house, this will be enough.

2.      On disconnect between private spiritual faith and public social life

We need to learn to integrate our faith with our social life and our subject matters in college. Let us do away with the idea of separating the sacred and the secular, and let us make Jesus the Lord of all areas of our lives. If you are a student of history, what is it about history that can enrich your faith and help others in our society? If you are in fine arts, how does your work reflect a creative God that we worship? If you are in medicine, how do you exemplify the compassion of Jesus through your profession? Work is not a curse which resulted from the fall of man. It is a gift given by God to Adam and Eve before they sinned. The Lord’s work doesn’t only mean church ministry. Paul Stevens says, “work that is the ‘Lord’s work’ and has intrinsic value is not determined by its religious character or even the fact that God’s name is being used openly”. Whatever is done in faith, hope, and love will be redeemed and will find its place in the new heaven and new earth. Our work is our ministry.

3.      On celebrity culture and reflective thinking

When the Bible says, ‘look at the birds of the air’; the Bible scholars tell us that it doesn’t only mean, ‘turn your eyes towards the birds of the air’. It also means, ‘think deeply about it and learn from it’. We need to make time to sit quietly and think. Fast food, fast money, T20 Cricket, twitter, SMS, facebook update, etc. mean that we either have no time or have too short attention span. We have a book called ‘Quick sermon notes for busy pastors’. But everybody in this world has 24 hours a day; it is how you make use of it. We need to make time to read, sit quietly, meditate, and plan how we live our lives. Education is not simply swallowing of information to be vomited in the exam hall. We need to chew well so that what we eat nourishes our body.

To overcome the influence of celebrity culture, I’d recommend the quest for a quiet ordinary life (click here). It’s not a sin to become popular/a star. But the mass pursuit for instant stardom calls for a more sober life to enjoy and find fulfillment in the everyday ordinaries of life. For it is said that in the rat race of one-upmanship, there is no reward at the finish line. In stepping over other people to reach the top, there’s nothing when you get there. Let us learn to be content with what the Lord has given. Let us count our blessings, name them one by one. And it will surprise us what the Lord has done.

4.      On biblical illiteracy

I for one have not read the Bible completely from Genesis to Revelations. It is time that we do so. Instead of reading piecemeal, let us strive to understand the Bible as a complete whole so that we get the big picture of God’s story and his plan for man and for the world. When we study the Bible piecemeal picking a Bible verse here and there, we have the danger of misinterpreting the Word of God according to our own convenience.

We need to listen to the Word, and we also need to listen to the world in which we live. This concept of Double Listening is stated by John Stott as: 

‘We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolved to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand it too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathize with it and to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it’.

If we do this: Listen to the Word of God and also listen to the voices of our society; and see how we can apply the Word to the world; we will speak relevantly and meaningfully. That way, we become salt and light to the world.

*'I am the change' is the slogan adopted by United Chakhesangs Forum.