Where have all the Good Men Gone?

A few decades ago it was clearly understood that to vandalize a pagan temple or to potty-mouth other religious figures such as Mohammed or the Buddha would be an unChristian act. Among believers I know and count as my brothers and sisters in the faith this would still be a valid assumption.

This recent news about a US sniper shooting up a copy of the Qur'an made headlines even as President Bush apologized for it. I'm not suggesting that the sniper did this out of misplaced Christian piety; indeed, we do not know if he is Christian at all. However this behaviour has become so commonplace and it is business as usual to verbally abuse another religion or religious personality in our world that noone thinks much about it. Christianity itself has become a victim of this abuse and continues to be, by varied elements as adherents of other faiths, dishonest pseudo-historians, arrogant skeptics and even well-meaning apologists for other worldviews. Christian leaders themselves have been less than charitable when talking about Hindu beliefs, often borne out of ignorance than a desire to offend.

At the very least in the house of God shouldn't there be a greater example of charity and righteousness? It is also incredible to see people calling themselves Christian but holding themselves to pitiable moral standards- umpteen numbers of pop singers who make suggestive dance videos, get pregnant out of wedlock and are so potty-mouthed it would make a sailor blush! Point these out and they will take refuge in that most quoted of all verses: "Judge not that ye be not judged."

Incredible that they would resort to a verse meant for reflection on one's own sinful nature to criticize others of God's family who wish for better standards among His children!

We keep moralizing about why Christianity is attacked by its detractors so viciously, why our political activism fails and worse yet, fails to convince those who we seek to convince; why our society is declining in intellect, reasoning, morality and the shared meanings of the past. Perhaps God is asking us by means of so many scandals in the church and so many attacks by the self-appointed crusaders of secularism that a major house-cleaning is in order in the house of God. Perhaps before we choose to engage others in political dialogue we may as well look inside ourselves and work with God for a greater morality. Hopefully the others will then see our light and be attracted to it.

Political Half-Truths and Patronizing Comments

News item from ABC's website on that Clinton finance committee member, Geraldine Ferraro's patronizing comments on Barack Obama. She says:

"the black community came out with ... pride in [Obama's] candidacy. You would think he would say 'thank you' for doing that, instead, I'm charged with being a racist."

In short her argument should sound like this (I'm paraphrasing for her): "Of course Obama got where he is because he is black and he has the support of the African American community. Hillary is being discrimnated against because she is a woman. But of course we being high-minded and playfully indulgent of the African Americans' little pipedream to get one among them into a presidential race can tolerate it to an extend- and they should just accept it with gratitude instead of going about as if they actually believed they are a community on the ascend."

What did Obama say about her? That Ferraro's comments are divisive. That he would leave it to the Clinton campaign to decide whether to fire her or not (in response to a question on this topic).

America can pat itself on its back till the cows come home about having a woman and a black presidential candidate competing for Democratic nomination, but the test will remain this: Are the American people deadly serious about this? If so it is not very convincing to hear Ms Ferraro's pompous comments about Obama's skin colour and Hillary's sexist problem. After all it really looks like she is the one who is playing the victim card for Hillary being a woman and trying to garner votes on that basis. Not Obama. When has Obama capitalized on his ethnicity overtly? If he actually did that would he have got close to getting the kind of support he is getting from so many Americans?

It's so sad to hear these comments.

On another note the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Republicans are slowly strengthening in their support for John McCain, upto 77 percent of them being united in their support, while Democrats are divided over their support for either Obama or Clinton, many saying they would rather stay home on the election day than vote for the "other" Democratic candidate if he/she were chosen.

Washington Post reported yesterday just the opposite. Their 'nationwide' poll stated that McCain didn't have any support from the Republicans while 80 percent of the Democrats would vote for either Clinton or Obama and either nomination would not affect their decision.

Who is telling the truth? Perhaps their polls were targeted at their readers. In the case of WSJ they were likely Republican loyalists; and of course the Washington Post attracts primarily the Democratic loyalists. But this is as clear an indication s you would want to see that the media isn't and could never be the measure of truth in our society as they often purport themselves to be.

An Innocent Man Pays for a 26-Year Silence

"You've been telling half truths.One who tells lies hides the truth but when telling half truths,you've forgotten where you've put it."- Mr. Dryden, in Lawrence of Arabia

Evey now and then a stoy like this tugs at our notions of human justice. Here are the questions that come to mind at first shot:

1. Lawyers need to keep their clients' information confidential. Are there any exceptions to this? What if it threatens the survival or sovereignty of the nation? What about an outright confession of crime, such as in this case, when silence would mean that an innocent man will be punished in the perpetrator's stead?

2. Isn't it an obstruction of justice to keep knowledge of a crime secret? Doesn't that conflict with the lawyers' bond?

3. If these lawyers had come forward with this information, what would have happened? They may have lost their jobs and their licenses to practice law. But wouldn't it have been admitted in court as evidence?

4. If such a disclosure on the lawyers' part would have been admitted in court as evidence, shouldn't we question ourselves as to what we need law schools for? Are we (the same question could be asked medical schools) fostering simply careers by establishing law schools? Or aren't we attempting to uphold the law? Isn't the law at least partly sacred? From the Christian vantage point, isn't the law a poor version (but a version nevertheless) of God's law?

From a purely humanistic point of view, that last question doesn't hold any meaning. An innocent man was punished, the criminal went free, nothing more was said or done. The criminal completed a full life and handed in his dinner pail. The unfairly accused gets a re-trial after 26 years of his life have been wasted behind bars. The rest of the world went about their normal lives. Not a blip in the course of history. By and large the humanistic paradise didn't move much, did it? From a Christian's point of view this is injustice which will be surely answered with the perfect justice and the perfect mercy of God's judgment. This is an affront to God's original plan for humanity just as every sin has been before this.

If anything at all it points out to us the frailty of human justice and the still small voice inside of us seeking true justice. The Cross tells us that such justice is to be established first in ourselves. The judgment must indeed be meted out to each of us and the Cross cleanse us in fulfilment of that judgment and God's mercy.

Alton Logan paid for not just Andrew Wilson, the perpetrator, but also the lawyers whose silence sealed his fate, not to mention the loved ones of the accused whose desire for justice consumed him. Except in human terms he was unable to save any of their souls. That is possible only by the vicarious death and resurection of the One who being in the form of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped to himself, btu made himself of no reputation, was found in fashion as a man and took our sins on his ravaged body on the Cross. Death could not keep him down and his life is our only hope.

Audacity of Being Vulnerable

Telling the truth, having a conviction and revealing onself to the point of being vulnerable. Are these the qualities of a politician? If they are not qualities of a politician we may know currently, are these traits a politician should have? If he/she should have them, what purpose do they serve? Do they serve to keep themselves in power (which as Machiavelli says is what every politician should make his/her number one goal), or do they serve to help the politician administer well?

Today political pundits will do lipservice to these traits and tout them at elections. Actions being more than words the measure of our intentions, their work behind the scenes would contradict their platitudes. In the US, we are at a point where people are looking for authenticity and are still confused as to whether what they are getting is the real thing. They look at Obama and want to propel him forward to the Democratic nomination for the presidency; their perceptions about the Clintons as being duplicitous and power-driven contributing as much to this as their liking for Obama's 'audacity of hope'. They want to look inside and discover an American ideal, the ideal that sometimes shows up in reality but more often remains something to be grasped at by straws. As Obama described it in his keynote at the 2004 Democratic Convention:

"I'm not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance
that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the
health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about
something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire
singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores;
the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the
hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid
with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of
hope."

The Clintons' strategy to counter this has been to point out that experience matters and the idealism of youth can only take us thus far. I believe though that people want convictions before experience. As Jesus said, "if the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Whether true or not, the perception is that Hillary lacks conviction. Peggy Noonan keeps writing that her primary purpose is Machiavelli's classical line about the number one goal in politics- to stay in power. Much as that hope for gaining power, for toppling the Republican administration in the last election was the momentum for the Kerry-Edwards nomination (they seemed sure that the public dislike of the Bush administration would be enough to get them there), this time around the Democrats are searching their souls for genuine desire.

John McCain- the allegations of being a maverick, the most liberal among the Republicans and now a story of marital infidelity gnaw at his heels. While most Republicans want a change to the failures of the Bush administration, it seems surprising on the surface that they came up with someone whose objectives are to continue some of the policies that made the current presidency rate low in public approval in the first place. Mitt Romney sought to take a different stance, and so did Giuliani. McCain also has been a mixed bag for the social conservatives- prolife but pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control and distanced from the evangelical base of the party (so much so that James Dobson, long a king-maker, has refused to endorse him). Still they put him ahead of the others, and he has as much support among the evangelicals as does Mike Huckabee. It strikes me that his history and his sticking by his stated positions over the years has made him a preferable alternative to the others more than anything else. At heart the Republicans want conviction over everything else- even if it means making mistakes.

There is still more time to find out if Obama would actually win his party's nomination. If anything can be said for Hillary, it is that she is not a quitter. Be that as it may, this election is sure to bring genuine debate into public awareness. We are seeing convictions battle each other, not propaganda- I hope.

Testimony

The College

It was the spring of 1993. I had finished high school and recently received my scores from the final examination that would be the primary basis of my admission into college. The top colleges in Cochin were admitting students with scores far higher than mine and I was concerned that I may not really get into a good college after all. Education in Cochin at a good college comes at a price- either that of influence or of sheer academic merit. The fierce competition meant that there were few parameters for admitting a student than test scores- that made the job easier and less subjective, while of course, deficient and short sighted of other qualities. While I had decent scores the intensely competitive environment meant that my first choice of institutions may not be realistic- and I did not relish the prospect of attending one of the lesser known schools.

While I was contemplating this my dad suggested I try applying to colleges in Madras or Bangalore (of which I was even less hopeful as these were bigger cities and I wanted to attend the best schools). I applied to Loyola (a Catholic college) and Madras Christian College (an evangelical/Protestant one). Loyola rejected my application despite the fact that I was from a Catholic family with some influence in the church. MCC called me for an interview which didn't really go as well as I had hoped it would. To my surprise I was accepted, and MCC became my college where I did undergraduate studies in Commerce for the next three years. Looking back I see a transcendent purpose to this- I cannot otherwise comprehend how I could have been admitted into MCC after an interview in which I actually tripped on the carpet and almost fell prior to taking my seat (in my mind I can still hear Prof Charles Suresh David's suppressed giggle). While that may not have been the lowest point, the fact still remained that this was a college in which the forces of influence and competitive merit played a huge part. My competition had better scores and those who didn't had solid Indian Protestant (notwithstanding denominations) or the right Tamil caste credentials. I had none of these; so as I said this was part of a larger plan which I did not see then.

But Before This Happened..

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the book 'Angela's Ashes', talking of a Catholic upbringing in Depression-era Brooklyn where Irish immigrants moved from the slums of Limerick, Ireland. This somber note is of course a harkener to the dark days of the narrator's Depression days, marked by poverty, cruelty of one's neighbours and moral ambivalence. While my background is neither Irish nor poor and this passage is way overstated to actually resemble my life, it was staunchly Catholic. Catholics who read this will know pretty readily what I mean by 'staunchly'. I stuck to the 'faith of my fathers' even when I had questions that seemed to be unanswered by the only brand of Catholicism that I knew then- the incredibly institutionalized, syncretistic-with-Hindu-thought, socially significant, theologically anemic religion that is practised in Cochin, Trichur and other areas of Kerala. From my earliest childhood I had learned not to ask difficult questions or challenge the church's teachings. I remember once I remarked that the communion host couldn't possibly be the physical body of Christ, I incurred my parents' sharp censure- which left me confused as to the nature of Holy Communion- and of course, I got no real anwers. I do not mean to criticize my parents or even the Catholic church in Kerala. I do not know if the theological depth of the clergy or the laity was enough to give an answer to these- the constant refrain to my questions was that I should first read up on the Bible, the church's teaching, church history and so on before I asked them.


As a fallout of this and other factors in my family (which I will make clear enough shortly) I experienced a crisis of identity during my years at MCC. These were marked by loneliness, an estrangement in relationships, confusion in life as to what made it coherent and meaningful, a need to belong to social groups that I esteemed and yet, a reluctance to conform to anything at all. I was confused, and through it all, with some encouragement from my aunt I took to praying with the Rosary beads, imagining that Jesus and Mary were actually standing in front of me, listening to the endless words playing in my mind over and over.


A pastor at our church recently remarked that the biggest distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism is not Salvation by faith or the influence of the institutionalized church or concepts like intercession from the saints or Mary's coronation, ascension or anything like that- he said it is idolatry. Despite the answers a Catholic could give (as I did then) this is true in many ways. Idolatry is taking what belongs to God and placing it elsewhere- be it the communion host, the church, the pope, the sacraments, the rituals, the 'obligations', our works apart from our faith, our baptism/confirmation/funeral rites- anything at all. I agree with this whole-heartedly. But I did not see it that way then.


My family life was a mixed bag with its highs and lows. My elder brother's autism led to strains that made life tough for my parents. It affected their marriage, their jobs, their attitudes toward God's sovereignty and their kids. My sister and I learned to respect our brother and make allowances for his often violent behaviour. We were also constantly challenged to perform very well academically. The Catholic upbringing also meant strong moral values, which were further upheld by guilt and the constant specter of eternal damnation for lapses. Such morality was not enjoyable for me, but there was some good that came out of it. I could see that many of my friends were morally wrong and there was nothing in their lives to convict them of sin. I do consider this to have done me some good, in terms of learning to understand that sin leads to meaninglessness and despair. My Dad worked with in the public sector and was mostly working and living away from Kerala. He and Mom made the decision to let us kids and Mom remain in Cochin as the strain of travel would prove too much for us, especially my brother. In addition to this fragmented family atmosphere, the moral pressures, the academic pressures and the process of growing up in my siblings' shadows- I wasn't very well up to the mark in any of these imperatives, and met noone's expectations, even mine.

The Follies of Youth

Almost all teenagers go through some existential angst as to the search for meaninful relationships, anxiety about a secure future and the inherent need in all of us to make sense of life. I went through all of that, and then some. To bring order to all of this, I first dabbled in pop psychology that my Dad's books told me about: positive thinking, behaviour modification (according to Dr. Wayne Dyer), Og Mandino's religion-influenced philosophy of compassion in business and several others. Dad also initiated me into philosophical schools represented by Eastern thought- I spent some time training at the Vivekananda Kendra near Bangalore learning yoga, Hindu hymns and philosophy. In college I tried to incorporate Silva mind control techniques into my life- unsuccessfully, thanks be to God. After reading humanist Erich Fromm I thought I had finally found the bridge between Christianity and Eastern thought, in that Fromm used the Bible to support his own ideas of God. To a kid who was searching for a means to steady his life, all these quite appealing. As GK Chesterton remarked in his poem 'The Convert', they were-

Being not unlovable but strange and light

Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite

But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The Final Step

There are among us those who would argue that some of us are philosophically disposed, others are content to live happy, normal lives or simply more pragmatic and wisely pre-occupied with their time to bother about abstractions. This assumes that the philosophically disposed simply theorize and not live out any of their platitudes and indeed, that it is not possible to live like that. My own dabbling in the above activities was not due to any interest on my part in them , rather they were introduced to me as ways to put my time to good use and to get rid of negativity from life. The motivations were purely personal and not to indulge in abstract thinking. Even those who claim to be pragmatic actually hold a distinct philosophy of life although they would scoff at the idea. Pragmatism is a philosophical school that considers that effects of our actions to be the factors of truth and meaning. Those who are content to be happy and normal do have a bedrock of myriad convictions that keep their spirits high. Besides, happiness (in contrast to joy) could very well be an emotional state rather than a constant outlook in life. Some of us are more melancholy than others and some not- this doesn't make a good argument for everyone to emulate the shiny, happy people. I love to see smiles and laughter in others; and after 12 years of being a Christian, laughter is much more natural to me than it ever was, so do not misread me here- I just mean to say that people have different reasons for being happy; it cannot be considered as a standard therapy for problem. Many modern churches should think about this- if a person is suffering from a cancer of the soul, the only remedy many churches now offer is simplistic statements like 'Smile, Jesus loves you', 'Put away your glum face and dance', and so on. Laughter does good as a medicine, but it is not the cornerstone of salvation. Besides happiness is not the determinant of physical, mental, emotional or spiritual health. There are innocent, happy babies; clappy-happy churches; rowdy, happy binge drinkers; trigger-happy thugs. Happiness is not their appeal to a hurting world.


My final resort (as I suspect, of many others as well) was easing up on my moral strictures and high claims. I began to suspect that maybe the shiny, happy people were right and I shouldn't bother so much about do's and dont's. I was sliding towards other distinct philosophies without knowing it- Nihilism, the idea that objective moral values do not exist, and Hedonism, the idea that pleasure is the most important pursuit. I had previously always felt guilty when I got drunk, but now I felt it was what I should have done from the beginning. Mercifully, I was very short of money, and could not longer afford living outside of the MCC residence halls (which I had quit after my first year in order to pursue additional courses in downtown Madras), so I applied for a room at my previous hall. In the meantime I roomed with my friend in Selaiyur Hall.

His Steady Unrelenting Approach

Wasn't it always this way? Didn't we feel his voice in all our past? When Christ finds us we think back on all that has been and realize that in all our follies He was there, even we are actively trying to run from Him! CS Lewis writes of his own experience:

"You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night,
feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady,
unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.

Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. I
gave in, and admitted that God was God ... perhaps, that night, the most
dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

A couple of months before this time one of my closest buddies on campus had experienced an encounter with the Lord and talkedto me about excitedly. I concluded he was crazy and once and for all lost to the world of normal, sane people. He took me to a church to pray with the elders there, but that experience, although it shook me up (because one of them let me know that my high-sounding philosophical speculations were worth nothing), left a bad taste in the mouth as to what Christians are like. On October 6th 1995 at a time when I was down and out trying, sitting in my friend's room at Selaiyur Hall, another student talked to me from 8 PM at night until 2 AM next morning about Christ's love for us and what his vicarious death and resurrection means for me. He led me to the Lord and over the next few months many others were similarly led as well.

Those who know the story of how this happened would marvel at it, but I don't want to focus on that one incident. The next few days I read the Bible (a study Bible with page notes detailing the story of redemption that a relative had given me years ago- see how the past connects with the present) and understood that my problem was not my upbringing, my estranged relationships, my academic or other shortcomings, moral strictures or anything. It was in short an astounding reality that I had overlooked- the fact that I myself was a creature of impulse, driven by something I was rebelling against and hurting due to it- a propensity to sin despite my best intentions not to sin. Sin was central to my living; indeed the more I tried to blame others for it the more the evidence proved that even in my most trouble-free moments, if I had enough money, and life seemed to be the best of all possible worlds, this seemingly other worldly propensity to sin was the one reality that was central. All my struggles- the need to be known and loved, less lonely, finding coherence in my life, finding fulfilment and signficance in what I did and who I was- led to the fact that I needed an answer to sin. Not just an abstract answer, but a decisive blow to sin. What did this mean?


It meant first that sin needed to be paid for. This is a simple concept and one people find it easy to write off. But we pay for sin all the time. We bribe a public servant, the nation pays for it or perhaps we got ahead of someone else who was in line first. We are unkind in our conversations with loved ones- they pay for it with the heartache and feeling of being unloved. We lie and chaeat to succeed, leaving in the dust someone who deserved the victory. Our actions have consequences and when someone else has to pay for our sins, we owe a debt to them. Our courts are clearly based on this principle.


Do we owe a debt to God when we sin? If after all sin is just flouting his moral law, why can't he, being the Almighty, just forgive and forget? When we say this we forget that sin is not simply something you take away from someone, but it is the violation of a person- much like rape is the violation of another human being. To violate God's person is to estrange ourselves from Him. Sin brings its consequences. The Bible calls the consequences 'death'- not just physical but spiritual death, entailing the lack of God's presence in our lives, the guilt of sin and the aching need for forgiveness. Unlike what most religions teach us, Christ's redemption does not require us to achieve a standard of goodness- rather it requires a heart that acknowledges its sinful condition and His loving provision for the sin- his payment once and for all on the cross. More than acknowledging this reality in our minds we also need to pray to Him to come in to our hearts and change us fundamentally, inside out. This is not a one-sided prayer. This invokes a supernatural action from God who answers the prayer. Anyone on the face of the earth who makes this prayer of repentance and receiving the redemption of the cross will be answered decisively and clearly by God. We who are unable transcend our sin and ourselves need to reach out for help from God much as a helpless infant would to its mother. God who is transcendant is also immanent in the person of Jesus and in a believer through the Holy Spirit. He is Immanuel, God with us, who has bridged our world and called us back to His presence. His continuing work after this moment of conviction and redemption is the moral transformation of our very will. We are set free from our sinful nature and over the rest of our lives we are constantly being changed in our wills, our attitudes and emotions to conform to the perfect image of Christ.

This is a mysterious process and the fruits of this can take time to see clearly, especially for those who have long seen the worldly person prior to redemption. But as we commit our will more and more to Him the more we are changed and our deepest longings are fulfilled.

It's been 12 years- and most people would ask me as to how it all looks now. After college several people have told me that this experience must simply have been a youthful fad and that by the time I hit 25 it would seem silly. I'm 32 now- and it's the greatest gift I've ever received. Others have told me that this belief isn't compatible with our modern work-a-day world, especially as I had chosen Business as my field. Indeed I went on to specialize in this, receiving an MBA and later doing a course in International Business. Work has been challenging and numerous occasions have come up to challenge my beliefs. I'm embarrassed to say that I have not passed all the tests, but I have passed some of them. As I mentioned it is a lifelong process of being conformed to His image. God forgives us and urges us to commit our wills to Him once again.

Joy has been my experience of God- it has put in perspective and healed my relationships and given me fulfilment. I have found occasions of success and failure in my endeavours, but the greatest pleasure is in doing things well and doing them righteously- as I'm convinced God delights in them.

I'm writing this in anticipation of a conversation I'm about to have with someone who is very ill- with Stage 4 cancer- whose relatives are urging him to believe that God will heal him, no matter what. I don't have the answer to that question- God is sovereign over sickness and health and we all have to die physically some day. But God doesn't behave as we want him to, much less as we demand him to. How does a person see beyond his sickness to his sin-sickness? That is the work of the Holy Spirit, something I must never forget- the God who raised the dead back to life is the one who inclines our minds to His truth.

Beyond Opinion- A Masterful Review of Reasonable Faith

I've been reading 'Beyond Opinion' which is the latest book from RZIM, containing articles from authors that I have heard about from their website or from their daily devotional, 'A Slice of Infinity'. This book is very substantive on apologetic postulates than the other RZIM books I have read, and is perhaps one of the most comprehensive volumes on the subject I have ever read. There is theology, science, logic, practical application in life and witnessing as well as a wealth of personal experiences which are openly shared. Newer RZIM associates like Alison Thomas and I'Ching Thomas write about their life experiences and it becomes possible to understand their thinking so much more as one gets to know of them through their writings. It's as if a glimpse of their inner life has been shared with us, and we feel comfort in finding kindred souls and conduits of the Holy Spirit.

I have three more chapters to go, but what I have read so far has taken my breath away. The book tackles the toughest questions in detail, such as the problem of reconciling faith and works (fruit) in Christians, the paradigm of the Trinity in explaining our understanding of life, holiness, personality, knowledge, the universe and Christian witness (LT Jeyachandran is to be thanked for this magnificent article), the incredible hostility to Christianity on university campuses and the need to reach out to our youth even before college with solid reasons as to why we believe what we believe (Alison Thomas writes this amazing article), conversational apologetics (Michael Ramsden) and contributions from John Lennox and Alistair McGrath on the challenges posed by contemporary scientific circles and how Christianity squares with science in rebutting these claims. In addition there are three articles by Ravi, two of them introducing and concluding the book. All in all, this is a superb effort and I'm the richer for reading it, not simply in terms of acquiring knowledge but in knowing and delighting in the mind of God!

Aradhna and Indigenous Worship

This conversation about contextualizing worship got my attention, especially as our church is booking the group Aradhna for a missions festival in March, aimed at reaching the Indian community.

Aradhna sings Christian bhajans which, if you did not know the Hindi language (and that too very intimately and often scholarly), would strike you as being no different than any other bhajan sung at a Hindu temple. I'm excited about the group, having listened to fusion music composed by friends as well as famous bands like Mahavishnu, and discontent that much Christian music seems to be content just following well-trodden musical paths. Beyond this fact, I'm truly unable to actually worship God using bhajans for personal devotions. The best way a person like me, used to Western hymns, choruses and instruments (with some Indian instrumentation thrown in, as Caedmon's Call does), could engage Aradhna's music is to listen and enjoy for the music itself.

I can certainly envision a group of people raised in the Hindu tradition, say in Varanasi, who should be able to enjoy and worship Christ with Christian bhajan-singing. Similarly, Christian Carnatic music should appeal to those raised to appreciate its beauty and who are intimately familiar with the language the hymn is sung in. For reasons historical and contemporary (such as the conducive nature of Western hymns for congregational involvement), urban Indian Christians like me cannot be easily reached by sich indegenization, especially in a rapidly changing culture.

How well will Aradhna be received in Chicago? They will surely praise Aradhna as a talented and musically sensitive group. I also hope that people will be drawn to the lyrics by the Spirit of God. In an urban community raised on Bollywood and pop music, I'm not sure if they will be able to worship in that style. It's time we re-thought the meaning of 'culture', and adapted ourselves more naturally to the zeitgeist.

In any case I think music has dominated worship so much we have begun to forget that it is only one of the aspects of worship. At Wheaton College Church the service sheet urges the congregation not to applaud the musicians as all the glory needs to go to God. Besides the music is structured so that it doesn't take up the time required for other aspects of the service. I have been part of churches in India though, in which the vast majority of the services was singing choruses, repeated for maximum effect, that the term 'worship' itself actually meant the music! Surely an unfortunate development. But that is fodder for another, later post!

Pleasure and Power

Doug O'Donnell who is on the pastoral staff at our church (College Church at Wheaton, IL) gave us a sermon a few months ago entitled 'Thankful to God, Living in the Light of Christ's Return'. A thought he shared with us then came from the movie 'Prince of Egypt' which depicts the Biblical Exodus from Egypt, the climactic scene of which features the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and breaking into a superficial song about "freedom at last". Doug proceeded to say that his Irish grandmother would have called it 'Musha' or Rubbish! For, he said, the Exodus was hardly about freedom in that sense. It was about servitude. You either serve the world/flesh/devil troika or you serve God. Servitude to God is indeed freedom in the truest sense, which is why the Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 1 applauds the Thessalonicans for turning away idols to serve the living and true God.

The Bible uses terms like 'serve', 'work of faith' and labour to show a change of heart in believers towards receiving Jesus.

In my own life there are times when I sin and do not want to face God although it has been made very clear all through that my best response is to turn back to him. I see a similar tendency in our daughter Emma when she disobeys- the hardest thing is to say sorry and keep her accounts short, though we have done our best to help her do it. Why does this happen? I suspect it's because we want to call our soul our own. The rebellion at Eden took place not because Adam and Eve wanted to switch their loyalties from God to the Troika of Evil mentioned earlier, but because they wanted to strike out on their own. And alas, as every human being knows, there is no such thing as striking out on one's own. Sin brings guilt, shame, rebellion, a hardened heart and enslavement. Argue as we might that it is all a conditioning of the mind, the most determined among us cannot break free from the compelling thought that objective morals exist and that something in us demands that we acknowledge and comply.

Ravi Zacharias once said when man becomes the measure of all things, we either slip into megalomania or erotomania- the love of power or the love of pleasure. He also mentioned that when man becomes the measure of all things, it will not be a generic Mankind, but a certain man- Hugh Hefner or Adolf Hitler. Our nature is to thirst for freedom but to work towards autonomy and then discover that autonomy is not really freedom at all. Truly, a certain Man is indeed the measure of all things- Jesus Christ, to whom we must all some day bow our knees and confess His name as Lord.

Morning Devotion

Some time in 1995 I read this poem in my friend's 'Streams in the Desert' devotional. As I came to know the Lord in that year and I was graduating from college in a few months, I scribbled this and other such poems and hymns into whatever pieces of paper I could find- to serve as sustenance in Delhi and the great unknown future into which I was headed.

Yesterday I was rummaging through a box and came across this poem. I remember well the first time I read it- in early 1996, probably January or February, during my devotions. It seemed to sum up the day's devotions and carry with it my thoughts of how it is for us to know that God abides with us. Here it is in my now favourite font. The poem is 'Still, Still With Thee' by Harriet Beecher Stowe :

Grace Abounding

Who can deny something so familiar to human experience as evil when one hears like this one, in which an Alabama dad threw 4 kids into a river after an argument with his wife? We dissect and diagnose sickness in these cases, and not sin. In extreme cases we pardon a killer on the grounds of mental instability- the infamous insanity plea. And in some cases, pardon is the only realistic response to a condition as terrible as that. Shouldn't it make one wonder, that with the evidence of so much evil in human beings and as those more honest will say, in themselves, the claims of Jesus Christ make sense?

How much does it take to shock us into believing that evil exists, and that good education, upbringing, normal childhood, prosperity and health have never proven to be antidotes to it? If evil is only sickness and not sin, then shouldn't our legal system be redefined to pardon one and all? Insanity is not the only sickness in such a case- jealousies, arrogance, sexual perversion and other sinful behaviour could all be attributed to sickness that could be (we hope) cured with education and counseling.

Atheists point to the evil abounding in this world in the form of natural disasters, wars (motivated by religion or irreligion not withstanding) and social evils such as hunger, poverty, the caste system and bigotry as if they were evidence of God's inexistence or absence from the course of our lives. On the contrary, when one hears incidents like this one, don't they stir our hearts to know that we too have been prompted to less maleficent, but sinful enough, behaviours in the heat of the argument? Don't we perceive the stirrings of evil within us? Is there any more clear evidence to point us to the one who gives us forgiveness and a new life? Is there any other cure for this sin? No exile to a mountaintop or escapist meditation technique will help.

As the Scripture says, where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (from Romans 5:20). Who can wash away my sin? Nothing indeed, but the blood of Jesus.

Resolution for 2008

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives

Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks hell be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he's astray
Keeps on going anyway.

Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
May we all have our hopes, our will to try.
If we dont we might as well lay down and die,
You and I.

So sang the Swedish group Abba at the end of 1980, looking with resignation to whatever may turn up, even to a possible Genghis Khan at the end of '89.

To the Lord of all time, what is a decade, anyway? To those of us in the physical world and are believers, this is a pilgrimage, often a desert, a wilderness, at other times a battlefield and sometimes a place where glimpses of what is to be transports us into unspeakable joy. But as creatures of eternity stranded in time we groan with the weight of passing time and our own failures, resolving to do better, falling, bruising ourselves and being healed and restored. In times of tragedy, wrestling with what we believe, and indeed, who we really are.

Having broken so many resolutions along the way, may I record here of another resolution to submit to God's grace: an active and resurgent prayerlife under every circumstance. If hope in Christ is not wishful thinking but a deposit of what is yet to be, then may I hope with all of me to commune with the Lord actively and long, every day of my life in every situation.

Dad and 3 Kids Alive After 3 Days Out in the Snow

What a story for Christmas! And how awesome to know that their faith kept them alive, together and strong!

Praise God for all this!

The Hijacking of Our Kids' Minds

It started again with a Peggy Noonan article from the past that I re-read today, titled 'We're Scaring Our Children to Death'. Reading some reviews of this article on other websites I realized that the opinions on this, as usual, is as polarized as they could get. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the argument. Noonan says that we are scaring our kids by publicly displaying scenes of racial violence and cruelty on murals near schools; she goes on to unfold other ways in which we unleash fear on kids: by exposing them to menacing rappers, potty-mouths (she mentions Don Imus and Rosie O'Donnell), deranged murderers on TV (Virginia Tech murderer's rants aired publicly), graphic ads, scary news reports, warnings of global warming showing glaciers melting, international terrorism.

She says that in her youth, living in Cold War-era duck-and-cover drills were pretty scary, but in general a kid could be a kid.

Nothing wrong with that article, is there? Or isn't there? When you went through that laundry list, it surely must have struck you like a shock of cold water- that cynicism that prompts you to investigate further what others have to say about this, what other issues Peggy Noonan herself has written about, what spin may lie between those words. It's good to be a media-skeptic.

Just to make it clear, I do admire and agree with some of Noonan's writings. This isn't meant to single her or other political conservatives out; and this extends, as we shall see, just as much to political liberals. This is something deeper than the clash of these two strata of society.

Yes, on the one hand it makes sense. About six years ago, I read an article in a British newspaper (which I cannot find anymore on the internet) about how parents have changed for the worse. It bemoaned the fact that the carefree kids of yore no longer exist. In the past, a happy schoolboy could walk home from school with mud all over him, roam about the streets, talk to a tramp by his fire, listen to his tall tales (and learn something of life in the process), buy lozenges from a chemist and be completely carefree (so the article said). This recalls to mind my own childhood in India, the India of pre-mobile phone, pre-conspicuous consumption, pre-congested road days; and it inexorably brings to mind characters like Richmal Crompton's William, Enid Blyton's Famous Five or the Secret Seven, and the Pevensie children from Lewis' Narnia. Some common elements in these works of fiction include responsible older kids who are honest, loyal, brave and responsible for the weaker and younger ones- Julian Kirrin, Peter Pevensie, Peter of the Secret Seven... the kind of boys and girls who were at one time England's backbone (if only idealized in fiction). William is a notable exception, but even he is the leader of his gang and his leadership pulls them through every danger. This article lamented that today's parents keep a tight leash on kids by giving them mobile phones, ask them to call often and assure them of their safety, warn them not to talk to any stranger, accept candy from noone except parents, and so on. We can sympathize with all of this, but the point is not lost on those of us who have known a normal childhood.

On the other hand- we need to ask ourselves. If something is truly dangerous, should we not warn our kids? Crompton's William roams his village streets at dusk when there are air raid sirens during World War II, which strikes me as being unrealistic or simply that his parents were irresponsible. The Pevensie kids make their journey away to the safe countryside from war-ravaged London around this same time. The Famous Five and Secret Seven move around the wilderness unsupervised, accept refreshments from wayside inns or strangers, all the while showing exemplary presence of mind and courage.

So isn't it important to warn kids of these things? When there is a war, shouldn't kids know about it? Iraqi kids, for instance- shouldn't they be asked to be careful when roaming the streets? Danger needs to be conveyed and kids need to deal with it sensibly- upto a point. Kids cannot solve all the problems facing our world, and exposing them to only this grim nature of our fallen world, with no detectable ray of hope is not a good thing. As Noonan says, the counter-argument to this in the past was 'if you don't like it, change the channel.' But, as she says, it is now everywhere. True, entertainment in inescapable. Video games, TV, songs, movies, all portray a coarse culture with a taste for the profane and the violent.

But I digress. If you notice, both the Left and the Right are pretty adept are politicizing almost every thing on the planet- religion, morality, the environment and now the issue of what is suitable for kids. Noonan's writing laments the decay of politics and smear campaigns, the Right talks about the "culture of death" when referring to issue such as abortion and euthanasia. The Left talks about global warming, the war in Iraq and the impending financial crisis in the form of the looming national debt, housing market worries and so on. It's part and parcel of politics to talk about the ills of the opposition, but to invite kids to share in this fear is dangerous. There is a right way to talk to kids; and whatever we are doing now through our media, schools and public life- is not it.

A year ago, local politicians in Cochin, India organized a march by schoolkids to save Mangalavanam, a neglected, wild mangrove forest right in the middle of bustling, bursting at the seams downtown area. The threat was from a group of people who wanted to turn this into apartment blocks. The aim of the march was to ensure that the forest remains as it is. While this is laudable, the claims of this groups were as follows: Mangalavanam, being a green spot, in this rapidly rising urban area, serves as the city's lungs and the otherwise harried residents would not be able to breathe easy at all without such a spot. Some politicans also claimed that bat droppings in this forest purified the air around this place, whatever that means. This pseudo-scientific theory belies what is most obvious: for such an important green spot in the middle of a city, what has been done to make this place welcome to the residents of the city, to help them sit there and breathe its air, to admire nature around them? Absolutely nothing! The place is crawling with snakes and noone can actually enjoy it at all, with all those bat droppings around. There is no stewardship to any of this, just emotional blackmail. One must inevitably ask- for what purpose? The answer is the same: for political mileage.

Peggy Noonan, Dan Rather, Lou Dobbs, and the rest of the journalistic community are all guitly of it. Besides the scare factor, if kids need a break from anything, it is precisely this. All this agenda-driven overdrive to get their allegience.

The Lost Art of Courteous Conversation

I was at dinner with relatives the day after Thanksgiving, and the topic of the 2008 Presidential elections came up. We discussed the pros and cons of the potential candidates on both sides, when out of the blue someone remarked, 'Even a chimp could do a better job than George Bush.' This statement was followed up by some similarly flippant remarks on his ability to articulate, his education and so on. Regardless of the fact that doing a better than George Bush cannot be a factor in the next elections (since Bush is not a possible candidate ayway), I didn't continue the discussion although a good critical look at many flawed Bush policies would have made good conversation at the dinner.

This brought me back to a column by Peggy Noonan about the courtesy to be observed in the give and take of political discourse, the gist being that we have lost the ability to dissect, disagree or criticize without being coarse. In it Noonan highlights Ann Coulter and Bill Maher in two separate incidents which made her wince- Coulter suggesting John Edwards was gay, and Maher mentioning a lot of lives could have been saved if Dick Cheney were dead.

Funny enough, when someone makes such a strong negative statement about a candidate, it makes me sympathize with the candidate a little. When Noonan herself sometimes goes overboard in her criticism of Mrs. Clinton it makes me want to understand her better, to believe that all this mud cannot be completely true of her.

Besides all this Ms. Noonan's column makes another interesting point. I quote it here:

Conservatives said they were chilled by Mr. Maher's comments, but I don't
think they were. They were delighted he revealed what they believe is at the
heart of modern liberalism, which is hate.

Liberals amused themselves making believe they were chilled by Ms.
Coulter's remarks, but they were not. They were delighted she has revealed what
they believe is at the heart of modern conservatism, which is hate.

The truth is many liberals were dismayed by Mr. Maher because he made
them look bad, and many conservatives were mad at Ms. Coulter for the same
reason.

I realized as I watched it all play out that there's a kind of simple
way to know whether something you just heard is something that should not have
been said. It is: Did it make you wince? When the Winceometer is triggered, it's
an excellent indication that what you just heard is unfortunate and ought not to
be repeated.

In both cases, Mr. Maher and Ms. Coulter, when I heard them, I winced.
Did you? I thought so. In modern life we wince a lot. It's not the worst thing,
but it's better when something makes you smile.

Good point, I think. We always feel chagrined when someone who claims to share our point of view misrepreents it by making a remark that you would always distance yourself from. It's good to remember that if you want people to listen you had better have something to give them than verbal abuse.

Twist of Karma- the Hindu American Foundation's Two Faces

Amazing enough that the Hindu American Foundation which has often complained about Protestant missions in India now lobbying hard against the Bush Administration restricting some religious visas.

The link is here. Some of HAF's members in the past have complained about missionaries coming in to India on visitors' visas and preaching in a church. India, of course, doesn't grant religious visas to missionaries.

It's pretty typical that the HAF would like to enjoy the liberties for adherents of the Hindu faith in the US that they would not grant those of other faiths in India. Thus they would fight against having Christian artifacts, paintings, the Ten Commandements and so on placed in American public buildings, ignoring the fact that it is commnplace in India to have Hindu artifacts in Indian public buildings. The same goes for other minority faiths in the US. The Islamic community would lobby hard for privileges that would never be allowed other faiths in countries that have accepted Islam as state religion.

It certainly speaks highly of the US as being a truly open, clear-thinking community; and the HAF should do well to think hard about the value of these liberties which they would deny their non-Hindu brethren in India.

The Art of Penmanship, October and Robert Frost

The other day a visiting aquaintance was bemoaning the loss of penmanship and the art of letter-writing in our email, send/receive, mouse-click-send, trigger-happy, copy/paste culture. As much as I share his lament I'm sorry to say I've been guilty of this as well. But after over a decade I sat down to actually write a letter I plan to mail out to India. The secret to this new-found enthusiasm is a font I newly discovered that is almost like my own handwriting (but much better than mine). And I have displayed it here. I think you will agree that it is worth writing a letter with.

The font is here for interested parties:

Angelina handwritten font

On another note, time was when I would, every October, print Robert Frost's memorable ode to October (beginning 'O Hushed October morning mild') only for myself to read and indulge in its familiar warmth in the crisp autumnal air as I watch the falling leaves outside.

Here it is, typed out in Angelina font.

For the impatient or the uncaring, here it is in Georgia:

Robert Frost (1874–1963). A Boy’s Will. 1915.
October

O HUSHED October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

Educating Ourselves to Imbecility- Contraceptives in Middle School

The availability of the pill to 11 year old kids in Maine without parental knowledge is creating furore across the US. The Baltimore Sun in this article represents, I think, the point of view of those who support the program.

Here's a quote from the article"

Dr. Laurie S. Zabin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she hates to hear complaints that contraception equals a free pass when it comes to becoming sexually active."I don't really think that the primary objection that the public has holds any water - that it encourages sex," she said. "It's sort of like [saying] the availability of seat belts causes more traffic accidents. The availability of contraception does not cause risky sex."

Nitpicking being my favourite pastime, let's deconstruct this for a moment: we wear seatbelts to prevent injury resulting from a collision, tipover or other such accidents. If the accident does not happen there is no injury. One doesn't need to wear a seatbelt after or during the accident in order to prevent injuries. Nor does one need to wear a seatbelt with the distinct objective of getting into an accident. A contraceptive user makes use of a contraceptive specifically in order to have "safe" sex. Contraceptive use is conditional- it is used on condition that the user takes part in sexual activity. The comparison between it and seatbelt-wearing is illogical and perhaps a little disingenuous in this context.

Let's stretch this argument a bit. The opposing camp could claim that the contraceptives are not being necessarily used, but simply distributed. It may or may not be used- and it is distributed with general parental knowledge of its availability if it is requested by a student. This is again a disingenuous argument. The knowledge that potential pregnancies could be avoided is a pretty powerful motivator to indulge in sexual activity. Besides, the message the school is sending out is that pregnancies that are underage and "unwanted"pregnancies are the greatest evil, not immorality or underage sex. So in conclusion- yes, it will encourage underage sexual activity, sexual experimentation, sexual promiscuity. Yes, it will (as it clearly has done) reduce teen pregnancies- no question about that. Yes, it is a postmodern line of thought that morality doesn't matter. That, more than anything else, leads to the destruction of a society.

Attempts to reduce the significance of this are ridiculous. We are indeed, as Neil Postman said, amusing ourselves to death; and as Muggeridge put it, educating ourselves to imbecility. Erotomania or megalomania- that's the choice for the world outside of Christ. I'm thinking of our 3-year old daughter: the more I hear about this the more I wonder where we could get her educated in a safe environment, away from these predators. People with no means to get kids educated outside of public schools are worse off for all this. I do hope we get Christians to take up better-priced, quality education on a larger scale.

Homeschooling is the other option, but I'm also a firm believer in the maxim that it takes a village to raise a kid. This is true in two ways- one, that the society's morals invariably get transferred to the individual, regardless of the particular morals that his/her immediate circle (such as parents) imparts to the person. Secondly, this influence of the society is not just inevitable, but desirable; and therefore, it must be encouraged. Therefore, homeschooling must be coupled with a lot of social activity in order to be truly well-rounded. Kids listen to authority in a peer environment more than in a one-to-one situation- if the peers are inclined to listen. Good company begets good behaviour. At the same time we have a responsibility to ensure that the society in which we and our kids grow is influenced positively.

India is no more the land I saw when we were growing up, but back then, teen pregnancies were almost unheard of. Sexual morality was stronger, abstinence or temperance never seemed to anyone to be foolish options to prevent sexual diseases. Why was this society so conservative, and more importantly, why is this community not so conservative today? Back then the kids were just as precocious as they are today. But the society at the time clearly considered sexual promiscuity as shameful and sinful. The society influences us and a precocious kid may rebel at school in many ways, but still maintain a relatively high standard of sexual behaviour. Like it or not, the village does raise us and we had better understand it. Parents' influence over kids is not the only factor in the equation.

If that is the case, then why should we as Christians not try to pro-actively influence and change the society according to what we believe to be true? When a Christian public servant does this, is he/she in danger of going against the grain of Church-State separation? Well, all actions are motivated by a worldview- and each worldview has institutions that support and spearhead it. Our convictions must motivate our actions- a politician who claims otherwise is clearly in denial.

The incredibly unthinking response of some people to the developments in Maine- that it's allright to reduce teen pregnancies by distributing contraceptives because kids who would choose abstinence would not be affected anyway- is flawed in its understanding of human nature and the significance of the village in raising a kid.

I hope this doesn't turn into a polarizing votebank in the elections although it would be interesting to see how the candidates respond to it. My concern is that they will end up politicizing morality- and the issue is sacrificed at the altar of political mileage.

The Age of Cacophony

PG Wodehouse once wrote in his 1952 novella 'Pigs have Wings', "silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound." Each time I read that sentence I think of how true and incisive that is in my own life. I rarely watch television. Unlike the old days I don't like heated political debates any more either on TV or in person. It's not because I dislike being challenged in my views. There's actually nothing I like better than thinking through differing opinions and arriving at the truth, or often the 'why' of the 'what' that I do. It's sheer pleasure to put it in a few crisp words and realize the world of truth behind them. No, the reason I dislike debates, TV news and contentious discussions is because ours is not an age of reason, but one of soundbytes masquerading as reason.

Let's put this to test. What would you like to prove? Let's assume you would like to prove Jesus did not exist. There are a number of books out there that reject outright the historicity of Jesus, all of them considered less than scholarly by true experts in the field. See Wikipedia for details. But these books are not meant for people seeking the truth- they are meant for those who already want to believe Jesus did not exist. Some who oppose Christianity, some others who have a political agenda in trumping Jesus' historicity, others who are caught in behaviours considered sinful by Christians... the list could include many persuasions, but these all find fodder for their cannon in such books. Among these are people who are only casually looking and are prepared to be dismayed or shocked or set right- but they aren't hungry enough for the truth. These are the ones to whom soundbytes appeal more and more- and I think these are what most of us are, or are about to become. Instant news, instant knowledge, instant decisions on matters that have taken lifetimes for wise people to dwell on.

Let's assume that you want to prove that the crusades were misunderstood as acts of hatred, that in reality they were labours of love. Or, that the crusaders did not include at least some real Christians. Or, you want to justify the terror the British government and the East India Company unleashed on Indians by citing some scientific progress that came along in the wake of the industrial revolution that they passed along to India. Or, more far-fetched, you want to prove that the Nazi holocaust may have had a positive effect because it eventually produced the nation of Israel.. Or, assume you are someone who interprets all evil acts to have been 'worth it' because great people have been produced by them- Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Solzhenitsyn. The more I see things on TV or in print, the more I'm convinced that all of it is possible. Anything you want to prove can be written or said- and people will believe it if it makes enough noise.

Thus an atheist calling his community of God-denyers 'the brights' appeals to people to trust them because they are intelligent and anyone who disagrees with them isn't. A homosexual rights activist equates his/her struggle to the civil rights movement and gains sympathy for the cause. A Hindu fundamentalist in India decries any silence on the part of a Muslim when a Hindu is murdered, and in the same breath justifies the murder of a Muslim by a Hindu as something that happens when minorities are appeased. An American nationalist is certain that anyone who does not fight the war on terror alongside the US is against the US, while their own sympathies are far away from terrorist attacks in faroff countries, especially those of the Third World.

I like Google News because I get to read one point of view and deliberately look for something that is opposed to that view. It's possible to get the truth somewhere in between- if you look hard enough. I like Wikipedia because, though it may be biased, its discussion pages contain real debate on arriving at the truth. I truly hate TV because it commands us what to think. Take the recent Ann Couter controversy on Jews vs. Christians.

Coulter claimed that Christians were perfected Jews, and that its not a hateful comment because Christians think of themselves that way and do not force Jews to become as they are. Her host on CNBC, Donnie Deutsch, was outraged and offended as he is Jewish. He felt this was anti-Semitic. Coulter clarified that she meant Christians consider the New Testament and the Old Testament to be true, while the Jews do not believe the New Testament. Deutsche, instead of responding to that, said, "You said - your exact words were, "Jews need to be perfected." Those are the words out of your mouth."

Now there is a public outcry for Coulter to be banned from TV. I really do not have a stake in this one way or another. But consider this for a moment. We all know that Ann Coulter has courted controversy all through her current career. Deutsche behaves like a typical talk show host- all soundbytes and no reason. Regardsless of how thoughtless Ann may have sounded, Christians consider Christianity as the logical extension of Judaism; they also believe that simply stopping at Judaism is not enough. To say that Christians are perfect is going overboard and certainly arrogant-sounding; but in our age of political correctness saying anything at all about one faith comparing favourably against another is unacceptable and persumably leads to violence.

We must remember that in the minds of TV's spin doctors all of this selective- for instance it doesn't (they presume) lead to violence if an atheist mocks theism, or the Hindu American Foundation mocks Christianity but fights textbook material in the US on Hinduism because they perceive the material to be offensive, or a Muslim in Saudi Arabia discrimnates against Hindus or Jews. It all depends on the context. The loudest soundbyte wins. There is no reasoning through the existential questions we face; we just want to see a good fight and set the winner up as we see fit.

What happens in this age of cacophony when truth is hard to find and the truth-speaker has to make himself heard above the din of voices? It's tougher, of course, especially for a Christian. You see attacks on the message and the messengers of the Gospel everywhere- some of it caused due to fallen pastors, others due to specious claims made by the contentious. Now more than ever it's time to let God be God, and realize that the mission to proclaim the Truth is first and foremost God's mission. If it can't be heard, it will always touch people the way it's always touched them- not through soundbytes but by experience. Perhaps this is what Simone Weil meant when she said truth needs to be experienced and not heard; only then does it become truth to the hearer. Remember Chesterton's words:

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;

Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Thirst No More

In Jesus' interactions with the woman at the well in the Gospel of John chapter 4, we find that the one who drinks the living water Jesus gives him shall never thirst; rather, the living water will become in him a wellspring of water springing up to everlasting life.

About a decade ago, in a church in New Delhi, a preacher talked about the fact that we continue to thirst after having tasted Jesus. He clarified that this is a thirst to have more and more of Him. The church being a charismatic one, he insisted that this meant being filled with the Holy Spirit with the mystical, almost tangibly cognitive experience it brings. The assurance that we will never thirst again, he clarified, meant that we will never lack the source for the water (my paraphrasing here- I've forgotten the exact words he used).

If a non-charismatic congregation were to be asked to clarify this, they may concur that the thirst to have more of Him in their lives is persistent- they may not agree on the precise way in which they are filled with the Holy Spirit, but they would agree that the thirst is present in their struggle with sin on a daily basis, in the leading of God on important decisions, in His word that refreshes their minds and hearts.

In a magnificent passage, Jill Carattini, senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, writes about the three stages of our experience with God (Second Naïveté). She writes that we initially experience the stories of creation, God's presence, provision and love as children and see God as the great adventurer who leads us through a great story, we see God at the centre of the universe, with everything else including ourselves surrounding Him. In the second stage we are clouded by the disturbing and disharmonious skepticism of the world around us which pressures us to live for ourselves, quesion God and puts us at the centre with God and others around us. The dissonance between these two stages is great as these are two different worldviews. The third stage that some of us experience is bigger than we know how to tell as God once again occupies the centre as we come to know the Person of Christ behind the Word that we came to hear as children. She writes:

Like God's response from the whirlwind to a questioning, anguished Job--"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"--we rediscover the one at the center, and it isn't ourselves. In this stage of second naiveté, the Bible can be engaged with awareness and imagination, and a greater sense of devotion, because we have come once again to see the God to whom it points.

I think this passage captures nicely the difference between the existential angst keenly felt by the skeptic (the Thirst) and the desire to know Jesus more and more (the Longing). One is a cry for help, the other is an experience of a relationship, the difference between them being profound. The renewal of our minds by God's Word and His Spirit are ongoing processes and form the wellspring of water welling up to everlasting life, in turn flowing out and quenching others' thirst as well.

Winds of Change in Burma

Burma's military dictatorship has so far reacted with less ferocity than expected at the massive pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks and nuns. While the world has pretty unanimously voiced its indignation at whatever violence the government has inflicted on the protesters, and puppet master China has called for restraint, one gets the feeling that the worst is yet to come. Daw Ang San Suu Kyi who has been a prisoner of conscience for a long time, said many years ago that it is fear, not power, that corrupts. When you fear losing power, you become corrupt. As of now the Burmese government is repressive because it fears its people.

What is interesting in the question of Burma is the attitudes of other countries. China has long supported the military rulers in Burma. Having unleashed violence on its own people in 1989, China knows well that civil uprisings are tough and has always encouraged Burma with military and economic aid. Besides China has always counted Burma as a hedge against India. A democratic Burma has no value as a hedge.

India has always been supportive of the pro-democracy movement in Burma. Recently though the thinking in New Delhi has shifted considerably. It is as though India has grown tired of playing the pacifist and renounced its moral high horse position. Today Indian policy toward Burme is one of realpolitik, of curbing the influx of narcotics and arms from Burma into India's volatile North East, rife as it is with Chinese propaganda. India, though supportive of democracy, has been developing economic relationships with Burma, and engaging them in dialogue, thereby winning the government over to crackdown on the narcotics and arms trade. And to make it clear from the outset, to me this is the best bet from both a practical and humane angle. I will explain why shortly.

The ASEAN has also been engaging Burma in trade, admitting the country into its association in 1997. The Philippines recently decried the violence in Burma, surprisingly and unprecedently upping the ante against the military rule. But in general these nations have not imposed sanctions on Burma like the West has.

The West has imposed sanctions on Burma and has reached out to Burma's neighbours to do the same. The sanctions have had no effect as China has supported Burma mightily through thick and thin. Besides, India, realizing late that its interests in the region are compromised by the sanctions, and knowing that a foothold in the energy-rich nation is essential to meet its exploding demand for energy, is involved in a race with China to secure its place in Burma. The South East nations have siezed the opportunity to trade with Burma in the face of Western sanctions. At the same time, the West has not done anything in Burma other than the ineffective sanctions. Their focus has been on the Middle East and Latin America.

Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' theory posits that the Western world acts in its own interests- a fact borne out by numerous incidents. Individuals within the Western world are independent agents and hold their own opinions, but their governments always act in their own interests. Thus they may turn a deaf ear to massacres in Srebrenica, but act quickly in Cuba or Nicaragua. They may support military rulership in Pakistan and decry the same thing in Burma.

The West also tried to influence other nations and cultures with its line of thinking. Take Russia, for instance. Pressured to alienate Iran, Russia does not want to create an unfriendly neighbour. There is no toeing the Western line there. Unlike the West, these Asian/Eurasian nations do not usually cry themselves hoarse about repressive nations that the West supports, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, because they are not united in their opinions and/or they do not want to compromise their own relationship with these nations. Thus the US states freely that India and Pakistan are both allies, but the fact remains that Pakistan is ruled by a dictator who initiaited a war with India and whose nation is clearly in the wrong as far as exporting terrorism to India is concerned. The recent revelations of nuclear technology transfer from Pakistan to North Korea have rattled the West enough to censure Pakistan, but this bears out the fact that democracy outside of the West interests the West only when it is beneficial to the West. If a dictatorship is similarly beneficial then the West usually supports it. In China's case there has been recently a turn of events- some call it political maturity, others call it the result of affluence or economic integration with the world. China could and did ignore world opinion on a lot of matters in the past. The massacre at Tianenmen square was an example. Its actions today are markedly more benign. Could this be India's nuclear capability? Could it be that world opinions matter now for attracting investment in China, especially now that India and other nations have become as hungry and ready for it? Could it be that Beijing is accomplishing a facelift, of which its newly gleaming cities and the Olympics next year are examples? For whatever reason, one finds that China reacts considerably differently to events such as the Maoist threat in Nepal and North Korean nuclear ambitions. So it is with the protests in Burma. This represents an opportunity for the West to push their agenda (at least a little) in some of these nations.

What about Burma? Or specifically what can India and the US do (separately) about Burma? India cannot march in and crush the junta as the consequences of a sustained war and a proxy-war with China are unthinkable. Already the lessons from Sri Lanka are fresh in Indian minds. India cannot impose sanctions as they are not only ineffective but counter-productive to the confidence building measures and economic relationship fostered painstakingly over the last decade. India cannot as its policy arm militants as it has been itself a victim of such export of terror. India can incentivize a return to democracy and freedom by establishing economic cooperation. Besides the shabby treatment of Daw Ang San Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement by the junta has always worsened when it felt threatened. Democracy imposed from the outside is never a true democracy, as Solzhenitsyn recently remarked about the US remaking of the Iraqi government.

The US is the most serious player in this equation. In its war against terror the US has a moral responsibility to oppose regimes such as Pakistan and Burma, but experience with other Asian countries must have taught the US that democracy imposed from without is of no use. The US too must begin constructive dialogue with Burma. It must help Burma move on from being an international pariah to economic powerhouse that it is entitled to be, given its rich resources and people. A nation like Singapore is a US ally without being a true democracy- why not Burma? What prevents this is (1) US fear over Chinese influence on Burma; and (2) the prevailing mistrust in Burma towards the US. These are tough to overcome, but absolutely necessary to create a peaceful Burma. The US must take the lead in bringing both the junta and the pro-democracy leaders to the negotiating table. As all dictatorships do, Burma's will fall one day. To prevent the spillage of blood in the meantime, there needs to be a give and take as Burma becomes stronger and integrated with the world.

One can hope for the pro-democracy movement to succeed in Burma, and if it does, it is good news indeed. Hopefully it will result in a good plan and action towards democracy and join India as the only true grassroots democracies in Asia. If it doesn't, the best other nations can do is to help integrate that nation with the rest of the world.

Security Breaches in IT

Interesting new item here-

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/09/ct_accenture.html

The state of Connecticut is suing technology consulting company Accenture over the loss of a data tape containing personal information on 58 taxpayers and nearly 460 state bank accounts.

"Accenture deserves censure -- to be held accountable for allowing valuable secret data to be stolen and putting at risk state taxpayers, bank accounts and purchasing cards," Blumenthal said.

"Transferring this data to Ohio is inexplicable and inexcusable," Blumenthal said. "Confidential information can have the value of cash -- especially in the wrong hands -- but Accenture treated it like scrap paper. Its breach of contract and negligence exposed state taxpayers to identity theft and other harm."

A $98 million contract to develop this payroll, inventory and accounting system ought to have been better monitored for security. Even with security measures that are robust and mature in place such as at most Indian or global IT giants' offshore delivery centers,occasional slip-ups such as the breach at MPhasis are a major concern for clients. Incidents such as the Accenture-Connecticut case point to such breaches even when the information is kept onshore; and call into question giving away contracts upwards of $5 million without ensuring necessary conditions against breach, such as the inadmissibility of storage devices in associates' laptops, policies against accessing client resources except under monitoring or in a 'time and material' billing without attached SLAs and so on.

Christian Charity in Jane Austen's Works

Christian morals have come from so many writers in such varied forms, that each reader has his or her opinion about what an acceptable form should be. CS Lewis writes his Narnia novels in an unmistakably allegorical form; JRR Tolkien's Rings are much more subtle and relies so much on the myths of his culture's Germanic and Norse roots to make points that square with the Christian ethos. Johanna Spyri portrays the effect of Christianity and a child's innocence on hardened hearts in Heidi, notably through that life-transforming, astonishing little parable of the prodigal son. Patricia St. John's very similar work, Treasures of the Snow sees itself as a children's novella that ties together concepts like God's sovereignty, beneficence, power to transform lives, heal relationships and sickness.

Among these great writers also stands tall Jane Austen, as this article by Dr. Jerram Barrs titled 'Jane Austen- Great Christian Novelist' explains. His explanation covers these five points:

1. Austen was no romantic- I find this very true. Unlike the Bronte sisters who have criticized Austen for her gentle treatment of her characters' personalities (compared to the molten passions of their own novels' characters), Austen treated relationships with wisdom and a lightness that settles nicely on them so the reader participates with the author in giving them a circumference that he or she can relate to. Austen never gives us a climactic fairytale ending or a Hardy-esque bitter end (which I believe is another form of romanticism- for such ends are ironical only because expectations are set wrongly). Her endings satisfy because they are right, not because they are what the protagonists have desired all along. Indeed in Sense and Sensibility, as Dr. Barrs explains, the effects of unbridled passion are demonstrated to be unsatisfying.

2. Austen literary ability was outstanding- Dr. Barr doesn't elaborate on this, but of course this is borne out by her time-tested works. Who would have expected them to remain at number 5 on a modern best-seller list of novels in the mid-1990s?

3. Austen sketches characters intimately- Once again, absolutely right. The humour, the wisdom, the unanswered questions, the courtesy- all of these give such depth to them, one is struck by the fact that the author doesn't get carried away by any one of these characteristics.

4. Austen's vision of moral and spiritual uprightness was profound- Countless instances prove this. In Emma, Mr. Knightley admonishes Emma Woodhouse with righteous indignation when she has thoughtlessly criticized Miss Bates. Miss Bates deserved Emma's compassion because she was poor. Emma's remorse that follows and the course of events after this set a moral tone to the novel that reaches out to us without seeming pontificatory. Mr. Knightley's ability to tolerate Frank Churchill's apparent courting of Emma is also lauded, as being typical of the parfait knight (as the play on name correctly indicates). Similarly in Sense and Sensibility, Elinor Dashwood similarly goes through a courteous and gracious if confused time of playing the understanding friend to Edward Ferrars who she hears is set to marry someone else. This is considered the 'sensibility' part of the title, and similarly lauded.

5. Austen wrote with a humour that also typifies many of her characters' personalities. This sets her apart from so many female authors of her time and subsequent ages. A modern novel like the God of Small Things for instance has the kind of humour about it that is ironical, vaguely forboding or sarcastic. In contrast, Austen's works have genuine humour that is beneficent and hearty without being annoying or foolish.

Among the other Christian writers, I believe Austen holds a special place in her treatment of everyday relationships, social equations, courtesy and self-control that flow from the considered Christian life.

To be Known and Loved

It's a truism that history repeats itself. Often this adage is used in the context of people repeating mistakes that have been made often. The sins that easily ensnare us have been around from the beginning of human existence and written about in every creed, story, self-help book and court of law. We have been warned and taught at a young age to eschew lust, pride, greed and so on- but we are prone to fall victim to this troika as easily as we ever have been.

The latest celebrity life to be torn to shambles doesn't make us sit and reflect much nowadays, does it? One would be hard pressed to actually take a celebrity life, at least here in the US, and think about a life that has been relatively stable. Infidelity, divorce, suicidal tendencies, drugs-rehab-drug-drinks routine, parent-child clashes, property disputes, disputes over prenuptial agreements... the list goes on. The so-called sexual revolution and the enlightenment that followed it in the sixties were supposed to have freed us, but at long last we realize (even if we would not admit it) that there is no such thing as free love. Love demands a price of commitment and self-control. But this is nothing new. It has been repeated ad-nauseam through the ages. We are too busy to listen or too uncaring to slow down. What CS Lewis called chronological snobbery- the feeling that our time and age has the answers that previous ages did not- has blinded us to reality. We have never been a more confused mass of people about any topic under the sun- sexuality, civil rights, terrorism, crim and punishment, the status of the human embryo and the sanctity of life- the list goes on.

Coming back to the celebrity theme- going by the recent experiences of Owen Wilson (suicide) and Britney Spears (several traumatic incidents), is it wrong to aspire to be famous? Does fame necessarily bring a cup of woes? That would be a pretty categorical statement. A long time ago, when I was still an unbeliever, I read one of Dr. Wayne Dwyer's self-help books in which he decried approval-seeking behaviour. He exhorted the reader to not be bound by others' opinions about ourselves, be they our parents or siblings or coworkers. In reality, this is not entirely put to practice- just as history repeats itself, noone listens to advice like this. Indeed, I doubt if even Dr. Dwyer could do this on a 100 percent effective scale. Advice has been given as copiously and variedly, as Paul Johnson writes about Bertrand Russell's output of advice in his book Intellectuals, on topics ranging from naturalistic evolution to toothpaste. Very few listen. Fewer advisers are even worth listening to. That's why Jesus cannot be categorized as simply a moral teacher. He clearly stated what the human condition is all about. He teaches: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander" (Matthew 15:19). And as Jeremiah says: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9). Christ aims to have our natural man die and his character take over our lives in its purity and reconciled status with the Father. Until then all the laws of this world or the world to come will not change us.

The Bible talks about being known by God and rewarded by Him as our goal. All over Scripture is the exhortation to keep your prayer and your good deeds from other people but let them be between youself and your Father in heaven. He is the one who calls you "good and faithful servant". In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul talks about the glorious time when "we shall know just as we are known", not "as in a mirror but face to face". Could it be that our desire to be valued and known is a genuine desire? That it has been misdirected, and needs to be shifted in its focus to the One who put it there?

Summer of Discontent

Apple is now busy apologizing to iPhone owners over a price cut from $599 to $399 in 2 months. People who had rushed to buy the phone are chagrined about forking out $200 because of their eagerness to try the product out. Apple is trying to ease the situation by offering $100 store credit to early adopters. Yesterday an associate mentioned he'd bought a TomTom GPS navigation system last year for $700. Today its price is $399 and he is shaken by the price drop of almost 50 percent. A few months ago a sales trainer at our company gave us a lecture about early adopters of technology in the case of consumer electronics. He gave us his personal example. Being an enthusiast for all things electronic he is the kind of guy who would rush to buy a product when it hits the stands. Very possibly he has the iPhone but I will check and confirm with him. At the extreme end of this spectrum are the guys who wait and wait and wait until it has become so mature that it would be ludicrous to be without it. In this category falls this sales trainer's dad. Both these categories of extremes represent a small portion of the market for vendors. There are different categorizations in between them, but the overwhelming majority come in right after the early adopters who are willing to take some risks. Immediately after this, another large category that leans more to the later adopters' side but still more eager to buy than that miniscule category of sales-dampeners. I fall in that catgory, I think. The middle two broad categories are the product's mainstay. In the earlier adopters of the two the product is gaining acceptance and is growing in market share. In the later adopters the product is mature and stable and slowly begins to decline towards the end.

Of course all of this seems to imply that there is a long life cycle for a product. Today the last category of very late adopters and possibly even my category of later than average adopters would seem to be irrelevant, given the pace of innovation and competition. By the time the prices decline it has been 1 year and the market is competitive, fractious and another 'car that flies' begins to peep ominously from the horizon.

This article on the Apple set me thinking: It's Official: Apple is the New Microsoft

The author, Mike Elgan of Computerworld, whose family of 4 owns 12 iPods laments about Apple's unfair business practices such as bundling iTunes with iPod and iPod software, and the consequences it brings when you uninstall the clunky iTunes. In addition he laments that with the iPhone new monopolistics tendencies from Apple have manifested themselves- charging double the price for ringtones, non-portability of tunes from iPods to other players, needing the user-unfriendly iTunes for all downloads- for songs, videos and ringtones. He compares Apple to Microsoft's early reputation as a bully, and claims that Microsoft was better still as you could reformat your computer and install Linux in it, but you can't do that with an iPod. He further laments that where Apple's Mac O/S was the innovator and Microsoft Windows the copycat, today Microsoft's Zune came up with innovations like Wi-Fi 1 year before the iPod did.

It hurts me to say this, but Mike, you should have known this from the very beginning. Contrary to my nature I downloaded iTunes in early 2004 although I did not have an iPod (and still do not have one, much less do I intend to buy one). I paid up the money required to burn 3 CDs full of songs and uninstalled the application right away because it does not let the songs play on Windows Media Player. Besides the iTunes application was clumsy, clunky, unfriendly and automatically assigned default player privileges to Quicktime. I do not miss those songs- I rarely listen to them anyway except in my car.

It's true that competition makes an economy run and enthusiastic customers are needed, but to be contended is a great thing. Apple is a pampered company because people first lapped up its simple concept of putting music into a hard drive that you can walk around with. Is that such a great concept? An MP3 player did this a long time ago, albeit with fewer songs. Today there are so many features associated with portal digital music players that these are truly products that stand out, compared to iPod version 1.0. Especially with the iPhone hitting the market it is a product that one cannot ignore. My gripe though is this: other equally innovative products hardly get a second glance, such as Zune and Sansa, thus further perpetutating the myth of Apple superiority. Today NBC crawls and begs at Apple's door to have flexibility on pricing its shows in iPod because of Apple's dominant status in music players. To date any success that can achieved by media companies in the portable media market is on iPods. This is sad and will continue unless the market gets back to its senses and teach Apple a thing about the other fish in the sea.

If not, simply be contended being trend-agnostic as I try to be. Eventually Apple will get to be less haughty and price its products more reasonably. Am I the only one who is silly enough to resist the great Steve Jobs juggernaut? Apparently not. Here is Jonathan Weinberg writing from the UK in this excellent article: Are We Not Clever Enough to Withstand Apple's Spin ? In this he asks a question that has always hounded me; in capital letters, no less- DO YOU REALLY NEED IT? Good question.