Newness of Life

Comes the new year and we have great expectations from it! Some are thankful the previous year is over....annus horribilis! Some wonder how time went so fast.........others wonder how to make time pass! It whizzed past for me with all its ups and downs, a year of change in many ways. I'm thankful for twenty eleven and wonder what marvellous things are in store for me...like opening a birthday present! I have this expectancy that something good is going to happen to me and I wonder what it is!

In India, we had one scam after another and there was an eroding of long standing institutions which has bred widespread cynicism like the Orissa High Court judgment statement of the killing of Graham Staines and his two sons, twelve years ago.

"In a judgment drawing curtains on court proceedings in the sensational incident of January 1999, a Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan upheld the Orissa High Court judgment imposing life sentence on Singh alias Rabindra Kumar Pal and Mahendra Hembram. The trial court had awareded death penalty to Singh. The Bench said the Orissa HC was justified in awarding life term to Singh and Hembran as the crime was committed in the passion to teach Staines a lesson for his alleged attempts to convert tribals. Though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity. All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the high court and modified the sentence of death into life imprisonment with which we concur, the Bench said."

That was awful....brutally murdering, to teach a lesson? Some days later the Supreme Court retracted that part of the statement but concurred with the Orissa High Court in general: "As there were weakness and infirmities of the prosecution case insofar as acquitted accused who were all poor tribals, in the absence of definite assertion from the prosecution side, about their specific role and involvement, the Supreme Court held that it was not safe to convict them. Supreme Court concluded with the hope that Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of religion playing a positive role in bringing India’s numerous religion and communities into an integrated prosperous nation be realised by way of equal respect for all religions. It also observed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's religious belief by any means. The Supreme Court also held that there was no material to prove conspiracy charge against any of the accused. Thus criminal appeals filed by Rabindra Kumar Pal @ Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembram and criminal appeals filed by CBI were dismissed." The 'poor tribals' can kill others or participate in a mob frenzy to kill mercilessly but because they are 'poor tribals ' they can be converted to another religion? That is odd and makes one wonder at our judicial system.

The Indian judicial system, the Indian education system, the infrastructure of road and railways, medical institutions have been based much on the British administration of India. The very parliamentary democracy which is followed in India is British! Although the British ruled in India for over a hundred years and looted much but they also gave credence to the geographical entity of India. The people of India by and large continued to follow their religions, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Buddhists, the tribals and animists continued to practice their faiths without being converted to the Christian faith. As far as Britian and other western nations were concerned, they had missionary activities all across India, which in any case had been happening even in St. Thomas' time two thousand years ago!

The fear that the government of India has of conversions is laughable. No human being can convert another and that is the last thing that Jesus Christ, the founder of the Christian faith would want to have - followers who have been coerced to follow Him - it would make His Blood sacrifice on the Cross quite meaningless! Jesus Christ conquered death when He rose from the dead and only He has the power to forgive sins. When a human being realizes the need to be forgiven and calls upon the Name of Jesus, by faith the person is forgiven and cleansed by the Blood of Jesus Christ. It is His grace - a gift - and freely given. The spirit inside the forgiven person comes alive to God and desires to follow Him through the Way, the Truth and the Life, which is Jesus Christ. There is no other way to heaven and life with God except through Jesus Christ. This is the newness of life which we human beings long for and we willingly follow Him even facing death and persecutions and imprisonments if called to do so. This is not conversion, this is transformation and the beginning of a new life in Christ.

That is why Christians work for the upliftment of the poor, tribals or otherwise, sacrificing their comfortable lifestyles, the ability to earn lots more money in their own areas/countries, to leave for some distant place where they may not find even basic amenities and they serve the poor of that place and help them to work out a better lifestyle where the government may have failed to do so. Now the political system in India has become so corrupt that they would like the poor of that area to remain depressed and poor and bound in a caste system and forced to vote for the political party which gives false promises and quick money......it is the politics of vote banks and not of service to the poor unfortunately.

The joy that Christ gives has no comparison! The peace that comes into our hearts can never be understood. The world longs for peace and it can never receive it because it is deceived by the systems of this world. The peace that Christ gives is forever and it is within. Thank God for the newness of life, thank God for the second chance that He gives. It is our free will to take it or leave it!