Religion and its impact on society - argument with reference to Christianity

 "ആധുനികത വന്നേ പിന്നെ ആണ് ഇതൊക്കെ ഉണ്ടായത്. " Weak analysis tending towards falsehood. Religion is the outcome of a search for answers by man for his deepest questions on what is life, what is a life worth living, what explains the world we see around us and what is true. Christianity is one answer based on the experiences of a tribe in modern day West Asia which later was taken to the far corners of the world where again conviction in the answers grew on account of lived experiences as well as historical and philosophical analysis. Within Christianity itself, you will see that faith does not confer sainthood on the person. Case in point, there is only one person in all of Bible whom God called as a man after his own heart, that was David, a man who was guilty of murder, adultery and disobedience to God. So, the Christian claim is not that the Church is guiltless (in fact, the weekly confessional that most Churches have would suggest that the Church is a congregation of sinners and not saints). Other religions, Hinduism for sure and perhaps Islam as well (I am not very informed about the Islamic Worldview) are equally important answers and have their own histories of how those answers play out in the world.

Coming to some of the specifics of the message above like Crusades, Galileo, Inquisitions and William Tindale.....as I said above, there is no intent to paint the Church and its actions as all clean and pure. The Church acknowledges errors of the past and it is not a modern day phenomenon. Let us not forget that Martin Luther was a priest who pointed out the error in doctrinal positions, let us not forget the numerous schisms that arose over multiple centuries leading to the formation of a number of autocephalous churches across the world. Or even better, remember how the Nicene Creed that most Christians recite every week came into being. 

However, to take the point about Galileo alone to point out the error of picturising it as a Catholic  Church's error(I am not a Catholic by the way, Mar Thomakkaaran aanu). The Church then was only taking a position that was held by the scientific community of the time, namely Ptolemy's position on geocentric cosmology. Heliocentricism was a new thing then and there was little scientific evidence to back it given the development of measurement technology. The rest was brute politicking by the Church. (For more details, refer to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). However, it is not something that only the Church is guilty of. It happens in modern secular worlds as well. A good example is that of Ignaz Semmelweis, a scientist who contributed a breakthrough to child birth in hospitals was killed in a mental asylum. If you want more current examples, check the current universities and their academic research grant process, you will find very similar politics even today in thoroughly secular institutions. Again, what is to be kept in mind is that it is a very human error and the Church does not claim to be immune from such errors. 

Coming to the point about separation of powers. That is something that we see in France and I suppose only in France is that so clearly seen. Take the protestant countries like England; Church of England does consecrate rulers of England. In the US, there was never a period of rule by the Church, however, much of what we see in the US is a result of Christian activity, including almost all of its Ivy League Universities, its Anti-Slavery Movement, its Declaration of Independence itself. So, separation of powers sounds like an idea, however, it is not like one fine day the church and state was split and suddenly you had enlightenment. It was a slow meandering process spread across centuries in many states. (Check The Third Pillar by Raghuram Rajan). 

As to Pope's liberal humanism, it is a mistake a lot of liberals made. In the initial days, one got the impression that the Pope was being liberal. That was an error in understanding the Pope, Liberalism and Christianity. The Pope was never speaking as a liberal humanist. He was speaking as a Christian. Check the recent 20 point encyclical that is available on the Vatican website. it is fairly obvious. People confusing liberal humanism with Christian message has a reason. The quote below from Jurgen Habermas will tell you why. "Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk." 

Which brings me to the last point. Christianity is one of the largest actors in the past 2000 years and even today defending ideals like love of the agape kind, forgiveness and justice. Stan Swamy is an example, the numerous schools and hospitals that dot countries like India is a testimony to that. Our own WhatsApp group is a testimony to that.

Similar arguments can be made about other religions as well. Civilisations have been enriched by religion and it will continue to be enriched by religion.

A Christian's wait for the second coming of Christ

This is my response to a post that I came across in a WhatsApp group yesterday. I am stating where I depart from the views expressed in that post and why.

First, here is the post.

"Christians have been waiting for Jesus for 2000 years. Muslims have been waiting for a messiah from the line of Muhammad for 1300 years. Hindus have been waiting for Kali for 3700 years. Buddhists have been waiting for Maitreya for 2600 years. Jews have been waiting for the Messiah for 2500 years. Sunnah has been waiting for Prophet Issa for 1400 years. Shiite Muslims have been waiting for Imam Mahdi for 1080 years. Druzers are waiting for Hamza ibn Ali for 1000 years.

Most religions adopt the idea of a “savior” and say the world will remain filled with evil until that Savior comes and fills it with goodness and righteousness."

Maybe the problem with believers on this planet is that they expect someone else to come and solve their problems instead of doing it themselves."

It is difficult for me to speak for other religions. However, I can speak with some confidence about Christians. The wait for Jesus by Christians is not for a Christ who in his second coming will solve their problems. It is a wait for a Christ who shall redeem the world. The difference is this. In the Christian version, there is a belief in eternity and life after death (attending a funeral and listening to the service by the priest will reveal it or one can read the Bible). It is with that faith that Christians approach death. They also believe that the dead will arise when Christ returns. Given that it is fairly obvious that Christ's second coming has little to do with solving problems in our life on earth.

The second part is that the Christian also believes that he cannot solve his own problem because he is born in sin (the Original Sin doctrine) and it is God's saving grace in the form of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection and its acceptance that saves him (for Catholics, there may be some minor dispute here, however, this is pretty much what Martin Luther argued and what most of Protestant Church believes. The Eastern Orthodox traditions also subscribe to something similar.) Man's sinful nature and yet God's saving grace being available to him is not a New Testament story alone. There is only one man whom God declared as a man after his own heart; David. David's life is filled with sin of almost every variety, murder, adultery, disobedience to God's standing instructions and much more. And yet God declared him as a man after his own heart because David was constant in seeking God's will and repenting when made conscious of the error of his ways. 

A Christian life is akin to  Pilgrim's Progress, a continuous battle against the challenges put forward by the ever present evil. He is expected to put on the full armour of God; stand firm against evil with the belt of truth buckled around his waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with the feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, he is to take up the shield of faith, with which he can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. He is to take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. ( with due modifications to Ephesians 6:14-18) He awaits the second coming of the Christ when he along with the rest of the world shall be reconciled with God in eternity.

Lastly, the presentation of the Christian waiting for God in the manner described in the post and the subsequent suggestion comes from an idea that God is a man made construct. But the Christian God describes Himself as I AM; it is a statement of absolute existence, uncaused and unchanging. God exists and created man for his own glory.

What does it mean to have faith?

Have faith is a common advice from a lot of people. When a Christian says it within the rubric of the Christian worldview it has a specific meaning. It does not imply believe that things will turn out alright, it does not mean have faith in your self. It means have faith in God's purpose for you, know that he actively intervenes in the affairs of mankind and subordinate yourself to God's purpose purpose. That presupposes a belief in the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife.

Taking a look at the presuppositions, are they blind beliefs or are they justified true beliefs? Take the first, existence of God. Many have argued that it is the latter using a variety of arguments pegged on a beginning for time, existence of morality, life and its properties, explainable attribute of nature and the world around us etc. Listen to any debate between an atheist and a theist, you can see that it is a reasonable belief to hold. With regard to existence of an afterlife, Christ and his resurrection are seen as a historical event and that is a powerful evidence for existence of an afterlife. Again, refer to historians debating the matter of resurrection, there are grounds to hold to the belief of historical event of resurrection.

I have dealt with the presuppositions only summarily because they are vast topics in itself and many have dealt with it extensively in the past and I see no reason to go there again. I do a broad reference to the justification for those beliefs only to make the claim that these presuppositions are more justified beliefs and therefore more in the domain of reason and less a matter of faith.

Given the above, what does it mean to have faith in the Christian sense of the term at a concrete level. Stemming from the presuppositions and at a more flesh and blood level, have faith refers to believing in God's assurance and His love. And that is a matter of faith. Existence of God is not a matter of faith, what God is is a matter of faith.

A way in which I can explain that faith is to narrate a story an uncle once told me about my father (his younger brother) and my grand father. My father was involved in campus politics when he was into his graduation at a college in Kerala. There were instances when police came searching for him and there were perhaps the threat of some kind of minor violence. My grand father gave a word to my father then. "Eda evidelum kozhappathil chennu chaadiyal, vilichekkanam, njaan vannu kondokkolam." (Hey, if you run into some trouble, call me, I will come and take you home.) Now, the son can find solace in the words of the father and live life with that assurance. However, there can always be doubts about whether the father can cross the distances, overcome the challenges, whether the father will practice tough love or soft love, whether the father might take the wrong strategy or the right strategy, will the father misread the situation, have I gone too far in my ways so on and so forth. But the word of the father gives the son a sense of assurance that seems to transcend these doubts in some manner enabling the son to live with that assurance. And that I believe is what is implied by having faith. There is a word that we have from our Living God, our Father and we have a sense of assurance in that word. In other words, we must place our faith in the word and more importantly in the God and Father who gave the word. It is that faith which helps us live life to the fullest.

Yes, there are instances when we waver in our faith. We do not experience that sense of assurance. It is not uncommon. What we must realise is that it is not lack of evidence that leads to that absence of sense of assurance. For those of you familiar with the story of exodus of Israelites from Egypt, they had all the evidence of God being with them and yet they strayed and there were moments when they did not have the same sense of assurance when faced with trouble (response of Caleb compared to others brings out this rather sharply).

So what do we do when we find that assurance to be missing. Well, what would we do if it is our biological father? We will speak to him or we will remind ourselves of instances where he has pulled us out of trouble. Same with God our Father, pray and refresh your memory of his saving grace in the Bible and in your own life. 

Cricket Oh Cricket..........

Cricket, a game that I have loved ever since I can remember. The earliest memories of my childhood are related to playing cricket. Playing the game with a plastic bat and then by age 4 quickly graduating to a wooden bat. In fact, there was an occasion when, due to a miscommunication, both my parents ended up buying me a cricket bat each on the same day. Of course that was a happy miscommunication.

There are too many memories associated to cricket. Stories of celebrating an off day at school with cricket, coming back from embarrassing bowling performances by focusing on fitness and skill development, my insecurity coming to the fore and running away from a University Tournament, observation of leadership by cricket team captains and much more. But nothing beats the sheer joy of playing the game.

But what I have noticed is that what started as a love without reason has now reached a stage where I try to explain or maybe justify my love with reasons. I am not sure if it is a good idea to do that. Let me explain a specific instance. I once came up with the following reason to love cricket. In cricket, the tradition was for the umpire to ask the fielder whether the ball had bounced in front or behind the boundary rope; which determines whether to add 4 runs or 6 runs to the total of the opponent. Or the umpire can ask the fielder whether his body touched the rope at the time of making the contact with the ball or not. Again, the implication is how many runs to be added to the opponent's total. In both cases, the umpire goes with the word of the fielder when the fielder has a clear incentive to lie. Such a practice can be expected to give fair results only in an environment where a culture of integrity is valued and practiced by everyone; at the very least, a very very large majority. I keep coming up with reasons like this to explain the love for the game, a love that I have had since I was 4 or 5 and using reasons that would not have been appreciated by me until I was 12 or 13 even if were an extremely precocious child (which I was not sadly).

Love leads to discovery. And as we discover more, our love grows stronger.

Justice and Compassion

I came across an opinion piece in the Indian Express by Pratab Bhanu Mehta, a reputed academic with a number of acclaimed publications to his credit. The piece can be found here.

I found a point made by the author where he says "The widespread cooperation with the gruelling demands of the lockdown (countering COVID-19 in India), on some interpretations, can also be seen as expressions of solidarity. But this should not blind us to the fact that solidarity, in the true meaning of the term, is failing us, just at the moment we need it most. It is failing us because at the core of the idea of solidarity is not pity, compassion, or even care. It is justice.

Compassion and pity has been given a bad name in modernity's emancipatory discourse because it apparently fails to address the issue of power relations. I think it is slanderous. I am not going in depth into the reasons of why I think so. Partly because it is something that I am basing more on intuition rather than a carefully thought out argument.

Before I go into why I think so, I must also say that my own personal evaluation has been from justice to compassion. When I was working with Social Initiatives Group, ICICI Bank which later transformed into ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, we had the opportunity to define a vision statement for the Foundation. I can claim credit for introducing the word Justice into the vision statement as I had brought in the word into the discussion by the group working on the vision statement. (The vision statement was later changed after a few years, but that is a different story.) Later, when I was heading Zyxware Technologies, where I am currently, again, an organisation with an ambitious social vision along with its business vision, I was in two  minds between what I felt where the competing pulls of the ideas of justice and compassion. This time, I included both the ideas into the statement. But the more I live, the more I feel that it is the latter that is at the heart of justice itself.

Now coming to my claim of giving compassion a bad name being slanderous. Justice usually requires a complex political, social and economic construct in ones mind and often two agents which can be individuals or formal and informal institutions who have a shared understanding of responsibilities. This understanding that is agreed upon can be called as a social contract. There are plenty of instances in human experience - of past and present - that suggest that human beings still have to act on behalf of others and for others in the absence of such a social contract. For instance, a war zone, a place under a civil war, dysfunctional state etc. Most of us ignore such experiences or treat that as temporary or as of the too distant past to be worthy of serious intellectual consideration in the context of ideas of justice (War Crimes Tribunals notwithstanding). But we are making a fundamental mistake there. We forget that the undergirding for social contract is compassion. It is compassion which gives us the idea of justice. Extreme situations reveal that to us. In normal times, we forget about compassion. Forgetting compassion is dangerous. Giving it a bad name is slanderous.



 

Religion, worldview and impact

There have been many an assault on religion from various quarters. The primary argument being that it is not rational, it is not scientific and that it leads to violence and oppressive structures and patterns. For starters, religion does not deal primarily with areas of science. And science should know better than to delve into areas where it has no competence. But that is a philosophical line of defense. I would let that pass and attempt a historical defense.

Modern world has not seen a greater violence than that brought about by Hitler's attempt at eliminating the Jewish race from Europe. It was an attempt that was markedly modern in its values and methods with one crucial difference. But first the similarities. It was materialist in its knowledge systems, scientific in outlook with it drawing on state of the art of genetics and eugenics for its ideological foundation, statist in its adoption of social engineering as one of its goals. It was modern in its method with design of a bureaucratic machinery that would rival any of the modern bureaucracies and their rational legal frameworks. Now, to the difference. The difference was the value of equality of human beings. He could not conceive of a world where all humans, including Jews, were of equal value. And on equality, I quote Jurgen Habermas. ""Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk."

The Christian influence is not just in Europe. Trace back the origins of the statistic of literacy in Kerala at over 40 percent when national average was approximately 16 as per Census of 1951, you will find additional evidence.

I cannot speak for the contribution of other religions. For I have not had as much of an active engagement with their world views and the comprehensiveness of their impact.

So the next time, someone says that religion's influence has been bad, ask him to get himself a cup of tea and read a little bit of history. Once he is done with that, he can then start on philosophy. And then once he gets his analytical tools and historical background in place, only then, start the conversation with him.

Being unfair to oneself

In this day and age of many having an opportunity to be heard by a reasonably large audience, many philosophies, prescriptions of attitudes and such float on the world of web. Being fair to oneself is one such idea that floats around on the web. It is seen as the touchstone for all decisions in one's life. Perhaps, amongst those with an undying concern for justice, the inclusion of the word 'fair' gives it a slight edge over the other popular ideal of 'pursuit of happiness'.

Being fair to oneself has given birth to a progeny – of Abrahamic proportions if I might add - of ideas with some leading ones being 'do what you love', 'walk away from exploitative relationships', 'enlightened self interest' etc. Apart from these positive ones, I believe even the cynical statement, 'cannot rise up from one's class interests' also has the same parent.

The idea is assuming a hegemonic status today in the informed circles. It would be interesting to ask the question, what is the alternative or is there an opposing idea. There must be one because ideas can emerge only in a context of multiplicity of ideas. So what is the other and what is the basis of the other. I will make an attempt to put together the other which can also be its exact opposite.

The sailor who refuses to abandon a sinking ship until everyone else is safely on the rescue boat and risks going down with the ship, the wife in an abusive relationship choosing to risk her life in all senses by staying in the relationship either by nurturing an irrational optimism of transformation in the relationship or believing that to be the demand on her on account of the commitment entered into on a happy day years before, the person who suppresses his voice out of concern about the impact his speech will have on different members of the audience and beyond. These are people, who I think, are challenging the 'being fair to oneself' idea.

To be fair to the idea itself and its proponents, the idea probably has many riders. There can be a moral boundary on what are one's legitimate interests, one can argue that one's interest is actually others' happiness and therefore, being fair to oneself would necessarily include others' happiness. While that might indeed be there, the practical usage of the idea has generally been about protecting the person's life, property, dignity, happiness and right to fair treatment.

There is a fairly dramatic counter example to this. The following is the description of the finest hour of Jesus Christ.At the age of 33, Jesus was condemned to death. At the time Crucifixion was the "worst" death. Only the worst criminals were condemned to be crucified. Each nail was 6 to 8 inches long. The nails were driven into his wrist. Not into his palms as is commonly portrayed. There's a tendon in the wrist that extends to the shoulder. The Roman guards knew that when the nails were being hammered into the wrist that tendon would tear and break, forcing Jesus to use his back muscles to support himself so that he could breath. Both of his feet were nailed together. Thus he was forced to support himself on the single nail that impaled his feet to the cross. Jesus could not support himself with his legs because of the pain so he was forced to alternate between arching his back then using his legs just to continue to breath. Jesus endured this reality for over 3 hours.

A few minutes before he died, Jesus stopped bleeding. He was simply pouring water from his wounds. From common images we see wounds to his hands and feet and even the spear wound to his side. But do we realize his wounds were actually made in his body. A hammer driving large nails through the wrist, the feet overlapped. And an even large nail hammered through the arches, then a
Roman guard piercing his side with a spear. But before the nails and the spear Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from his body. The beating so horrific that his face was torn and his beard ripped from his face. The crown of thorns cut deeply into his scalp. Most men
Would not have survived this torture."He had no more blood to bleed out, only water poured from his wounds." The human adult body contains about 3.5 liters
(just less than a gallon) of blood. Jesus poured all 3.5 litres of his blood; He had three nails hammered into his Members; a crown of thorns on his head and, beyond that, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into his  chest. All these without mentioning the humiliation he suffered after carrying his own cross for almost 2 kilometers, while the crowd spat in his face and threw stones (the cross was almost 30 kg of weight).

That is the description of the hours in which he surrendered to God's will and  sacrificed his life, dignity, happiness and right to fair treatment. Since he never had any property worth the name, there wasn't much to sacrifice on that front. Did he find happiness in undergoing crucifixion. Only in the sense of fulfilling his duty. For as C S Lewis states 'In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from him. It did not.'

The question that one should is ask is, why the sacrifice? He sacrificed for redeeming humanity from the consequences of eternal death for lives drenched in a sinful nature. He opened a path out of those consequences and invited all to enter. What if we deny the whole need for such a redemption by saying that the 'consequence' is merely a figment of our imagination. In that case, can we have an ideal that would logically demand similar sacrifices out of us? My guess is no. If we remove that condition, we cannot really think of anything more than 'being fair to oneself' and calibrated sacrifices. Not the total sacrifice of the kind written above.

To further accentuate the contrast, one can compare the finest hour of Krishna in the Hindu mythology. The revelation to Arjuna at the end of the Bhagvad Gita where Krishna is revealed as the all powerful, all encompassing and omnipresent followed by his fulfilling the purpose of his incarnation by destroying evil in the form of Kauravas in the war in Kurukshetra. In the case of Krishna, the evil had a person in the form of Kauravas which had to be destroyed. In the case of Christ, evil did not have a personality and there was nothing to be gained by destroying the Jews or Romans. The Jews and Romans went about their lives undisturbed by the crucifixion and the resurrection. There was simply no material impact for the sacrifice. At least not for a few years. It is a different matter that today our newspapers proclaim the 'event' when they use the Gregorian calendar for dates.

There are many who have taken that path towards a complete, total sacrifice. Where they were unfair to themselves. Every missionary who has ventured into the unknown and suffered the consequences, a Mother Teresa who went out into the streets of Kolkata to take care of the leper, the dying, Paul Brand who treated leprosy all his life and made astounding contribution to understanding leprosy, a Gandhi who stood spellbound by a statue of crucified Christ at the Sistine Chapel and eschewed every protection other than that offered by God, a Socrates who willingly drank the hemlock in service of his beloved democracy. Closer home, my grandfather knelt in front of a knife wielding, drunk attacker who had come to take the life of a friend of his and said, 'take my life if you must.' They were not being fair to themselves.

Now that there are examples of individuals who lived a life that was the opposite of 'being fair to oneself', let us see what the left liberal calls these people and their sacrifice. “Professor Thapar’s public intellectual is not a Socratic or Christ-like gadfly with a raging death drive, but is embodied in the figure of the Buddha.” (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-rise-of-the-liberalright-intellectual/article6926683.ece). There is no glory in sacrifice. It is merely a 'raging death drive' for some. I would think that these are also the purveyors of 'being fair to oneself' as an idea. For they have effectively destroyed the foundational premise of 'glory in sacrifice'. There is no eternity, it is only the life on earth. There are no seraphs inviting you to be in their midst and glorify God, it is only a figment of imagination. There is no metaphysics, it is only a dead branch of philosophy. There is nothing before the beginning of time, nothing has no observational consequences (http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html). I also suspect that there is the assumption of 'no natural limits' that underpins the 'being fair to oneself' idea. If life had zero sum games, then being fair to oneself might actually entail stepping on someone else's toes. But this assumption is not a necessary one.

It is important that we are extremely guarded when we proclaim the virtues of sacrifices. A simple test would suffice. Gandhi has given us that test. "Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself." If you are asking another person to sacrifice, be warned that you are not glorifying sacrifice but denigrating sacrifice. If you are asking yourself to sacrifice, you are indeed glorifying sacrifice. But then there will be moments where others seek your advice on whether to sacrifice or not. Answer cautiously, with prayer, with faith. And do keep in mind the fate of the holiest of all petitioners. 

This is something I dedicate to a friend who has stood by me through my highs and lows, who has challenged me, who has comforted me and importantly listened to me. While I do dedicate this to her, it is by no means to be seen as suggesting her concurrence with these views. But this is for her.