Salt of the earth, preserve stall brake

Ultimately, without God nothing matters and nothing has meaning. As a race, we are on a trajectory of moving away from God.

In the West, so-called modern rational thinking has caused us to delete God and the Bible from our moral equations. Whether in science or archeology, or any other field, we have clung to whatever theory subscribes less to the facts contained in the Bible. In the East, we have clung to our three million gods, pet theories and mysticisms without the pain of having to explain a thing. Scientific temper is relegated to a mention or two by some rationalists in speeches once in a blue moon. Yet another of our great religions moves ahead in great strength driven by misguided zealots on a road cleared by misplaced political correctness and sheer fear. The sum and total of all our collective actions has placed us, as mentioned earlier, on a path moving away from the God of the Bible.

In a world of ever increasing chaos and moral entropy, God calls His chosen ones to hold aloft His standard in the world. In the old times, Jews were given the law and were expected to hold to that moral standard as lights in the world. As long as they adhered to the law and feared God, they were supreme among the nations. Whenever they lost that focus, which was repeatedly, they suffered under the hand of their enemies. But when they returned as a people to the Lord, their cries were heard and they were given the opportunity of upholding God’s moral standard again. Israel proved unfaithful again and again and again until God sent the Lord Jesus into the world.

The old order changed and the Lord Jesus now called for Christians to be a preservative, like salt slows down decay in a piece of meat. In an ever-darkening world, the Lord called for His disciples to be lights. Even in the first century that process of moral decay had begun; it was a time when the New Testament declared that the spirit of the antichrist had already come. In the centuries that followed, Christendom has, however imperfectly, done much to brake earth’s headlong plunge towards moral destruction. Every land that welcomed Christianity moved instead towards reason, health, culture, and truth.

I can think of the dear country of my birth. Christianity came to India in its fullest sense between the 18^th and 19^th centuries by the prayers and gifts of many and spearheaded by the efforts of men like Ziegenbalg, Carey, Schwarz and many many others. Their coming was not because of the British and other foreign powers in the subcontinent, but rather in spite of them.

With sickly Ziegenbalg also came the first printing press to India. With him too came the first moves against caste divides. With Carey, the poor shoemaker with a wife who was broken by the stress of the mission, came the abolition of Sati in India and the ban on babies being thrown into the Ganges. These missionaries came in love and at great personal cost for the sake of the gospel. And with the advent of Christianity in India, we dared to think beyond caste lines, became monogamous, let our young widows live, educated our girls, and grew in moral stature as a nation. Of course, we soon forgot how we got to this stage.

My new country of New Zealand has moved away from its Christian heritage that is still evidenced in the gentleness of the people here. But today this beautiful country has moved away from Christian principles. If the face of the family is changing in the US, it has already changed in New Zealand. I fear that when the Bible is not given its due place, the country degenerates. Prostitution is legal in New Zealand, marriage is a quaint old custom, and it is an offense to smack one’s child to correct or punish.

In this world where the word has been preached even to the farthest reaches, and only a few tiny patches may remain where the light of the gospel has not penetrated, the light of the gospel is slowly growing alarmingly dim everywhere. Like meat in the heat of summer, moral values are fast decaying. Perhaps it is the beginning of the end. Of course, it is possible that we will see yet another great reformation. But it could be the beginning of the end.

Believers everywhere must be the salt and light that they have been called to be. You in your small corner and I in mine. We must each act as little brakes in this time of moral decline.

A special role is played by American Christians. They can slow down the speed of decline in that nation. If the US becomes morally barren, the rest of the world will follow in double-quick time. I have often wondered how even conservative churches in the US have fairly large congregations, when all over the world, the numbers of believers have dwindled. Yet, like with Queen Esther, who knows whether this privilege has been given them for such a time as this, to slow down the speed of moral decline in the US and therefore in the rest of the world.

America’s influence in the world is vitally important. American debates on abortion, stem-cell research, homosexuality, and evolution have been observed by the world. If not for America’s conservative Christians, the world would have gone far ahead in its self-destructive path without braking. But for now, a sizeable number in the world’s super power stand responsibly and resolutely true. They must hold the beacon while we littler ones do our bit in our small corners as well.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
The trumpet call obey;
Forth to the mighty conflict
In this His glorious day.
Ye that are brave now serve Him
Against unnumbered foes;
Let courage rise with danger,
And strength to strength oppose.
                      George Duffield, Jr.

O Lord, how long?

Christians look forward to the return of the Lord Jesus. We long to be able to see our Lord face to face---
He who gave His life as a ransom for our sins,
He whose righteousness covers us and makes it possible for us to be at peace with a holy God who cannot tolerate sin,
He who will bear the marks of that sacrifice into eternity,
He who stooped down down down to raise us up
---we long to see Him.

Yet another reason for this yearning is the fact that until He comes or until we ourselves die, whichever is sooner, we have to persevere and live holy lives. We hold on thus, despite having a sinful nature that is ever ready to compromise holiness in thought, word, and action.

What is our motivation? Is it the fear of losing the benefits of the grace of God? Are we afraid that God, like an angry warden, will throw us out if we sin? Nay, the Bible promises us that as long as we have truly repented and believe, He will never let us go. The Bible also tells us that once we have come into His fold, every time we sin, we can go to Him in penitence, confess our sin, and be forgiven.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 Jn 1:9)

Why do we not then use this as a license for sinning? Why do we strive to be holy? We do so because God has changed us and given us a new heart and, having become new creatures spiritually, we are now programmed differently, to hate sin.

Yet, we are still in the body of sin with its sinful tendencies. So although holiness is what we want, it still is an effort to keep sin in check.

. . . we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope . . . if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. (Romans 8:23-25)

We need to endure and hold on. We yearn to endure and hold on. We will endure and hold on. We cannot but endure and hold on. And what a relief it will be when He comes, when the redeeming work in our lives is completed and we get new sinless bodies to match the change that has begun in our hearts.

Here is a poem I wrote in 1996 that reflects this yearning.

I wish I had no free will now;
For am I not Your slave?
Me chaining of my body,
Me making me behave,
O Lord, how long?

In Yours to lose my thinking,
Enslaved and totally free.
How much more of struggle
Before Your face I see?
O Lord, how long?

I almost hear the trumpet;
I almost feel me fly.
Redemption of my body
In the twinkling of an eye
O Lord, how long?

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (I Cor 15: 51-54)

Agnosticism, a call to intellectual honesty

Agnosticism is a call to intellectual honesty. I was of the impression that agnostics were atheists. I now appreciate the difference between these two words. An agnostic believes that it is wrong to claim something as truth if you cannot prove it by providing evidence that logically justifies it. While an atheist does not believe in God, an agnostic believes that it is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. I like agnostics. I believe that to be an agnostic is more honest than being what the majority of people who call themselves Christians are.

I am a Christian because I believe that a strong case exists for the fact that the Bible is the word of God as also for the fact that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. I have looked into that matter enough to be satisfied. Having done that, I would stake everything, even my life and my family and everything that I own, if need be, for this fact. When the stakes are that high for a person, it would be foolish to be dishonest; it would be foolish to be careless; it would be foolish to be foolish.

Most so-called Christians are what they are because of their upbringing, for the same reason that Muslims are Muslims or Hindus are Hindus. Usually they are what they are because they have not bothered to look at religion objectively.

Moreover, religion, whichever one it is, by its collections of wise sayings, demands, practices, rules, and traditions, offers some structure and comfort in an unpredictable and chaotic world. Tradition gives you a path to walk by in the labyrinth of life, and having no one returned to us from the grave, people have no inkling about the soundness of the path that has been marked out and handed down to them.

In India, people generally like to justify their beliefs by the fact that they have followed after their elders. Elders are in some inexplicable way supposed to be infallible. When people become elders themselves, their children look up to them, while they themselves may either be too senile to realise that they are not that wise after all, or having no better path to offer, keep silent. Thus it is that this package of religion and tradition becomes a crutch for weak people, unthinking people, and dishonest people.

Zeroing in on Christendom, it is like logs in a fireplace that has been largely untended for hours. There is a semblance of warmth but the fire does not rage. Perhaps, it can if it is stoked and the millions using it as a crutch are dislodged from their positions of comfort. This stoking has happened in the past by way of wide-spread movements of reformation, restoration, and revival where people have applied their mind and heart to what they believed and have bravely corrected their positions. But these movements have been rare and far between. We have a promise that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the true church of God, and so we know that the fire is alive although its warmth can hardly be felt.

What is happening is something more subtle and largely invisible, the revival in the hearts of individuals and little groups and churches across the world. Little groups are stoked into life when honesty and right thinking play a role. I believe that this is man’s role in the matter and that God provides the impetus.

But most of Christendom is dead and cold. The appearance of warmth is more likely orange, yellow, and red streamers of fanciful ideas and theories introduced by people in greed for gain, wolves, who are promoted and aided by gullible people, sheep, who have not been grounded in the scriptures enough to recognise spiritual hogwash. Undiscerning men and women who are, in the words of Lord Tennyson, no better than sheep or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain.

The soul that comes close to this ‘fire’ in search of warmth is either disappointed and disgusted by hard cold hopelessness or deluded into comfortable and stupid blindness.

To become an agnostic may be the first step out of this hopelessness. A friend of mine and an agnostic described his path to agnosticism as exhilarating. Mind you, the agnostic has no concrete hope, and they know of nothing beyond the grave. But this is their honest position, and there is always joy and freedom in honesty and knowledge. As far as their knowledge is concerned, as the very word 'agnostic' suggests, they know that they do not know. This is rock-bottom honesty. However, if agnostics could genuinely be convinced about God and the Bible and eternal hope in Jesus, they would jump to it. This hope would then no more be the illusionary crutch that Christianity is for millions in Christendom.

2 Tim 1:12 . . . nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."

The Fiddler on The Roof

I haven't seen many movies in my life but among those that I have seen, my favourite is The Fiddler on The Roof. I was 11 when I first saw this movie in 1976. The circumstances under which I saw it are etched in my brain and will make for another story to post in this blog. I know all the songs by heart and can rattle off most of the dialogues as well. Philip and the kids also love it.

But The Fiddler on The Roof is primarily a play, a famous Broadway production that has won 11 Tony and Olivier Awards. Mrs Snowball from church informed me that it is performing in theaters in New Zealand this month.

And I chanced to see Topol the main actor interviewed on TV. He was explaining how it was so much easier to be Tevia now than it was when he first did the play as a young man. Then, he had to remember to walk like an old man. He had to imagine how it might be to give one's daughters away in marriage. Now he was an old man and had a wealth of life's experiences behind him and found it easy to be Tevia. What an actor! I wished I could see the play. I also wondered how several of the scenes in the movie would be presented on a stage.

When I went on line to see when this play was being staged in Auckland, I noticed that the tickets were very expensive. The cheapest ticket was priced at 59 dollars and my manager at work assured me that if I bought that ticket, I would be seated firmly behind a pillar.

Some of the reviews read as follows:
‘The standing ovation from the large audience was fully justified and you would be mad not to see this production’
Capital Times, April 07

‘The milkman still delivers – a star performance that lives up to its reputation’
Dominion Post, April 07

“Topol is that rare creature: an actor with palpable charisma. His eyes glitter, his gaze touches all, his timing and delivery are impeccable and he delicately balances pathos with humour”
Herald Sun, June 06

On Friday, I went to pick the kids up from their youth meeting at Justin and Ingrid's place. Justin came over to the car on the street and said that he and Ingrid wanted to get tickets for our whole family to go and see The Fiddler on The Roof. He wanted to know which day we would be free to go. I said I would call him and let him know. The weekend is over and I have not called him yet.

I have a very good feeling about the fact that someone understood how much we liked The Fiddler on The Roof. I do not think the good feeling I might get at seeing the production itself will match this. I feel satiated and thankful. Incidently, we are not free on any evening this week and will not be able to go. But somehow it does not matter anymore.

New Age systems Vs Jesus Christ

A friend of mine and a professing Christian wrote that she had done several short term courses in fields of New Age belief systems and alternate healing techniques. To name a few, she had done courses on Pranic healing, Reiki, magneto therapy, Electro homeopathy, Siddha, Yoga therapy and Sutkriyas.

"I understand from holy scripture," I replied to her, "that Jesus is the only Way to true life not just for this world but for eternity. There is no other method that can give us true and lasting meaning and happiness in life. If Jesus shows Himself to you from the pages of the Bible, suddenly the Bible will become living and dynamic and will really be the voice of God to you. On that day, all other popular therapies, including Reiki and Pranic healing and various "ways" to happiness will fade in the clear light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray for that day to come for you."

I am not an expert on these "sciences," but at least some, if not all of these, involve spiritual powers. This makes them dangerous for Christians to dabble in. Yoga, for instance, up to a point seems innocuous enough, but after a while it becomes dangerous. The yoga that people are taught in schools and organisations is usually limited to physical exercises, relaxing, and concentrating. I am not sure if it is dangerous at this stage, but certainly becomes so when the concentrating is taken to the next level of transcendental meditation.

Sometimes, these 'sciences' are taught along with ancient systems of medicine like Siddha and Ayurveda. I do not know anything about Siddha, but about Ayurveda, I know that the system includes extremely valuable information. However, like much of ancient Indian scholarship, religion and superstitions were not divorced from science, the ancient sages having had a holistic approach to learning. Ayurveda includes information that is valuable as well as information that is erroneous and even dangerous. The task of filtering out the erroneous has begun with scientific organisations and pharmaceutical companies subjecting the material to modern medical research methodology and stringent laboratory testing. Some companies like Himalaya Health Care have brought out some excellent products.

Over 15 years ago, my brother, a psychiatrist in Texas, had a colleague with some terminal form of liver disease. She had been told that nothing more could be done for her. At that stage, my brother offered to have Liv52, a popular Ayurvedic drug shipped to her from India. My mother would buy several containers of this drug and ship them over to her regularly. The diseased liver healed completely.

Organisations such as American Association for Integrative Medicine and several others across the world are useful for our purposes only upto a point. They may rule out an ancient medicine as dangerous in the light of modern scientific knowledge. However, they are attempting a "multi-disciplinary approach" to medicine to provide "maximum therapeutic benefit" and will not therefore balk at most of the "sciences" I feel are dangerous from a spiritual stand point. In the future, we are in for even more medical confusion. As we move away from the principles that God has laid out for us, we move towards confusion and chaos in every sphere of our lives.

If lay people do short term courses on subjects like the Ayurvedic system, they could endanger those to whom they minister. As a rule of thumb, I accept medication or therapy only from medical doctors of Western medicine. All other systems must conform to the high standards of testing and research of modern science to be usable in our day. I use this rule of thumb in all cases except two, relaxing it for one and making it stricter for the other.

I relax the rule for some simple home remedies. I feel a bowl of chicken soup is good for a cold because my aunt made me some when I was sick and I felt better. This is a very unscientific subjective approach and should be avoided for anything more than chicken soup.

I would be careful about some forms of treatment, even if a medical doctor approved it, if it has something to do with the mind. For instance, some doctors recommend Yoga as a form of exercise to help concentration and breathing. The spiritual baggage that comes with Yoga is not an issue for many doctors, but it is for me. Even worse, psychologists in India often recommend Reiki and Pranic healing. Both of these involve spiritual forces. I have heard of some who tried these therapies, felt better initially but ended up even more deeply depressed than when they went in for treatment.

Most people learn about these belief systems in their quest for happiness and answers. The New Age movement focuses on powers that supposedly lie within our minds in a latent state. People believe that they can draw on these powers to be healthier and happier. Most of them take up this route for a while and give up. Many of those who go on end up with depression and other problems.

To those who have surrendered their life to the Lord Jesus, He offers far more than any New Age system can even promise to offer.

Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”(Jn 8:12)

as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, . . (2 Pet 1:3,4)

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (Col 2:8-10)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, (Eph 1:3)

Surely we have no need to look elsewhere for direction, truth, and life.
Jesus said . . ., “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

As a child

I sit on His knee
'Fore the Book open wide,
At the place
Where the Lord
Calmed the storm,
Stilled the tide.

Turn the pages
And a young man
With a stone
Felled a giant;

Turn again
To see angels
Close the mouth
Of hungry lions;

Split the sea
The enemy's routed;
Fall the walls
When triumph shouted;

A queen saved her people
In a faraway land;
Against God's will
Whoever could stand!

What a Book!
What a Lord!

As we travel the sod,
Do we need to every worry
Flustered in a frenzied hurry?

What a show!
What a sight!
What a Savior
And what might!

And to think
As a child
On His knee,
I sit still
'Fore the Book open wide,
As my heart drinks its fill.

Here I'll stay,
Here abide,
All my life,
As a child.

-n-

Miss Emma Norton Horton

On 23 June 2007, Miss Horton will celebrate her 90^th birthday with family and friends in Victoria, BC, Canada.

She must have been nearly 65 when I got to know her. When I asked her why she had not married, she said that she had still not met her Prince Charming, and that she was still waiting. To the best of my knowledge, she has not married in the intervening years.

When I grumbled at home that I found reading the Bible boring, my father thought for a moment and said, “Tell God that you want to read His word and will do so, but that you find it boring. He has made the reading of His word so delightful to me, and He can for you too, if you ask Him.” I did pray. Today the word of God is delightful to me too, but between then and now, God used many circumstances and people to acquaint me with His word. One early person that He used was Miss Horton.

She was a headmistress in Clarence High School, Bangalore. To be more precise, she was the headmistress of the Primary Section, which had until recently been calling its classes Teddybears, Bunnies, Bambies, and Bees, the Bees being the senior most in the Primary section. My best friends Annamma Abraham and Gladys Mathai had been Teddybears and Bees and all.

But I joined Clarence only in Standard VIII, which was a part of the high school. One normally would not expect a newcomer in high school to be known by the Headmistress of the Primary section. But Miss Horton lead the Scripture Union (SU) classes.

Once a year, the SU people came to our school and presented the gospel by way of interesting stories and new songs. But the rest of the year, they were still active in a hidden way. They had a school teacher conduct weekly SU classes, and they also published Daily Bible Reading workbooks called God and Me for various age groups.

Miss Horton, as our SU teacher held classes on Friday evenings after school. I do not remember much about what we learnt there. Strangely, I remember that the closing hymn was always ‘Blest be the tie that binds;’ we held hands and stood in a circle to sing it. I am sure we must have learnt useful things during those meetings but it was so long ago, and so many things were happening in our lives at that time. Even our school song, in the third stanza, acknowledges that we were neck deep in ‘work and high endeavour.’

For our teachers we would thank Thee,
O fill them daily Lord,
With deep and true devotion,
To them Thy grace afford.
Bless all the hours of childhood,
The sunshine and the care,
The work and high endeavour
In which we now have share.

One SU meeting stands out because we did not have someone to play the piano, and Miss Horton felt she had to. (One would have thought that for someone from the Brethren assembly, singing acappella would be a natural thing.) To put it mildly, Miss Horton was not very good at playing the piano, and we had to hold the notes till she was ready to play the next ones.

One thing Miss Horton did as our SU teacher was to motivate us to follow the God and Me workbooks. The workbook recommended that every morning, before we left for school, we spend time with God. Before we read the portion of scripture assigned for the day, we prayed, as advised in the workbook, in the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 119:18, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” Then we read the passage for the day. Next, we read a short devotional paragraph that made the reading meaningful to us. After this, we solved a little puzzle or answered a set of questions based on the reading. Finally, we prayed for God to bless the reading and help us live through the day as His children. One could do all this in 15 minutes, and if we were good and did it, we did not have to watch out for Miss Horton.

Every morning, Miss Horton would come in briskly from the side gate near an enclosed long rectangular area called “The Nursery Lane” and walk toward her office. She leaned forward as she walked, as if she were perpetually walking uphill. She would ask every child along the way, “Have you done your God and Me today,” and go on to make a more detailed comment about the passage for that day. It was amazing to me that she would do this with children of all age groups, which meant that every morning, she did four different God and Me readings, puzzle and all. As Headmistress, she must have been a very busy woman. But she found time for this. One day we will know what the Lord was able to do in the hearts of Clarencians over the years, because of her faithfulness.

I remember how she coached my friend and I to participate in an inter-school SU Quiz. That was the first time, I had to read such a large portion of scripture in such great detail. We went to Miss Horton’s office every evening after school. She taught us for about half an hour. I remember some of the details she pointed out during those classes.

• That the Bible records that 153 fish were caught, when it could have been rounded off to 150. Perhaps this underlined the fact that every person saved for eternity is precious, Miss Horton suggested.
• That John outran Peter as they ran towards the tomb of Jesus, but when he did reach the tomb, he was reluctant to go in and was nervous. But Peter joined John at the entrance of the tomb, huffing and puffing, and went straight in without any hesitation. I fell in love with simple, impetuous, unaffected Peter after those evenings with Miss Horton.
• That Jesus made to proceed on His way on the road to Emmaus when the disciples reached their destination. He went in only when they invited Him; eventually they recognised Him when He broke bread. Jesus does not force His presence or His teachings on anyone. We too must be gracious and dignified when we present the gospel.
  

When she was through with her lesson for the evening, she would set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes and tell us that we could chat with her till it rang. That was when we heard her say that she was still waiting for her Prince Charming. We also came to know with a keen sense of loss and wonder that she did not live her birthday one year because she was flying back to India from Canada, having boarded late on 22^nd June to reach early on the 24^th. We also asked her about Canada, her home and her family.

Another memory is of the jolly time we had in the SU camp in Quiet Corner at the foot of the Nilgiris mountains, where we learnt about the fruit of the Spirit. I remember how she pretended that she did not know about our midnight feast.

Miss Horton had taken us up the mountains by bus to Ooty and had shown us Hebron School where she had worked at some stage. On our way back, the girls bought whatever they could from the shops for a midnight feast. I am not sure whose idea it was to buy stickjaws. We woke up at midnight as planned and moved to the designated room, some making it across wet grass to get there. We could hear the hyenas in a distance, which added to the terror and excitement of the night. What did not go as planned was the fact that we popped the stickjaws into our mouths and wrestled with them for the next hour or so, got tired, and went back to bed. I digress.

One day, she invited a bunch of us to her home; she stayed in one portion of the Flack residence. Again, I do not remember what she taught us, except that I was comfortable and happy. For a treat she offered us some of Mrs. Flack’s guava cheese. I remember biting off tiny bits at a time to make it last for as long as it possibly could.

Have an enjoyable 90^th birthday Miss Horton, and may God bless you.