Screwtape Letters 3

The chapters are small, and the book is not thick. Here is chapter 3, after having done Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. In this third chapter, Screwtape writes to Wormhood on how his patient needs to related with his mother. The patient apparently does not have good relation with his mother. So Screwtape encourages Wormwood to work on this matter so that the relationship between mother and son remains sour. 

So Screwtape advises that Wormwood should continue keeping his patient focussed on his inner life such that the patient will talk and focus on spiritual things while keeping obvious facts of life neglected. 

Screwtape also advises that Wormwood should make his patient concentrate on soulish things while praying for his mother. So the trick should be not to let the patient pray for her health, for example, but concentrate on the state of her soul after death. 

Wormwood is also to work that his patient dislikes more and more of certain habits of his mother. 

Glubose is the imp working on the mother, while Wormwood is the one working on the son, the patient. So Screwtape advises that they work together to make the relationship sour even more between mother and son. 

The Screwtape Letters 2

So the patient has become a Christian, and the older imp, Screwtape, writes to the younger one to try a different method to snatch the patient from their enemy's camp. 

This young Christian will now go to a church. And as he does that he would meet all sorts of people. Uneducated, loud, singing out of tune, poor folks are going to be there in the church. Wormwood must use this opportunity when the patient is still new to enemy's territory to let him think that he has class; to let him get disappointed with the people he meets. 

C S Lewis introduces the idea through the writing that when a person comes to faith, it takes an effort in transitioning. A new reader who enjoys reading a book may need to learn language; couple who love each other so much may need to work hard to learn to live together. It's like that a new swimmer has to work hard to keep herself afloat; or a new cyclist has to paddle hard to maintain balance. But once this stage is over, living in that reality becomes a way of life which is an effortless affair or requires little effort. The couple has adjusted to live together; the reader enjoys reading now having learnt the skill required to enjoy reading. A Christian life is something like that. Acquire humility, for example, and it becomes easy to accept others. Those who are new to the faith must watch out before virtues can become habits!

The Screwtape Letters 1

The Screwtape Letters is a book written by C S Lewis. It is based on the imagination of C S Lewis where the senior evil spirit instructs the junior evil spirit on ways to tempt human being. The senior evil spirit's name is Screwtape and the junior's Wormwood. Both of them work for their Father Below so that their patient i.e the human, would remain in their side. 

In the first chapter, the Screwtape writes to the Wormwood to keep the patient away from argument. The reason is that argument leads a man to the side of the truth. So to prevent that Wormwood should infuse jargon and distract him from clear reasoning process. Wormwood should also prevent his patient from reading Science as if this would draw him away from Christianity. Just confuse this thinking -- must be the approach. If the patient gets into Science, for example, that would lead him into enemy's territory. 

Call for Paper on ''Christianity and Culture'', Nov 15-16, 2017

Christianity and Culture

Organised by

Theological Research And Communication Institute (TRACI)

&

Union of Evangelical Students of India (UESI)

Date: 15-16^th November, 2017

Concept Note:

If culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people that encompasses language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts, then it may be fair say that culture is about one's way of life. However, the collective way of life of a people's group does not remain static; it is dynamic. Like a river bed that shifts its position over a period of time, cultural elements shift over a period of time. As it shifts it may shed a harmful element and gain a beneficial one; or it may shed a beneficial element for a harmful one.

Christianity as a monotheistic religion believes in a God who incarnates and dwells with humans. The incarnate God – Jesus Christ – lived, taught, died and was raised in a given culture. This belief in Jesus Christ engenders Christians to say that the religion must incarnate to every culture. Therefore, rather than swallowing up the culture of a people's group, Christianity must pitch its tent where its feet is planted, and renews its culture. However, there is a web of complexity in how Christianity and culture interact.

The people who told the biblical story inhabited a culture, and the primary audience of their story shared the culture of the story teller. Christianity is thus not a religion developed in a vacuum; it is – like every other religion – born in a specific culture though the story invites global reading and appropriation. Thus transposing the story-idea from the culture of the story teller, and appropriating it in a context that is separated by time and distance is a daunting task.

The modern day messengers live within a given culture. The messengers are not free from the influence of their given culture. Thus the messenger may consider her given culture to be the biblically inspired culture as she communicates the message to a culture that is different from the culture in which the idea-story is born as well as the culture of the messenger. This poses a serious challenge to any messenger.

As the messenger transposes the message to a culture, the question whether the given culture needs renewal or subversion is the third challenge in this enterprise. The need for subversion has on various occasions being responsible for the messenger's culture erasing the given local culture that is not necessarily ugly or bad. On the other hand, there has also been occasions where the subversion has been for good.

The conference will engage on these various intersection of Christianity with Culture, and also explore how this has taken place in the past and how this may take place in our times. Writers are also urged to examine any particular cultural elements that will require subversion or renewal, and whether there are principles or guidelines on how renewal or subversion must take place.

Some possible topic/sub-themes for engagement are listed below, though it is not an exhaustive one, and related topics may be explored:

1. Old Testament and the Ancient Near East Culture.
2. Understanding the Gospels and the Writers in their Cultural Context.
3. Situating Jesus the Jew in his Hellinised Cultural Context.
4. Paul as a Cultural Critic or a Cultural Preserver.
5. Theology, Art and Imagination
6. Christianity, Christians and Moral Norms
7. Bible and the Renewal of Language/Dialects
8. Biblical Theology for Guru, Baba and Yoga.
9. Juxtaposing Theology, Rituals and Disgust with Kosher, Cows and Octopus
10. Case study of Cultural Subversion: Past or Present.
11. Theology and Women: Past, Present and Future
12. Evangelism and Culture
13. Cultural Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Cultural Relativism
14. Hollywood and Bollywood on Language, Morals and Music.

Submission Guideline:

1. Papers for the conference must conform to the word limit of 3500-5000 words along with an abstract of 150-300 words.

2. Provide 3-6 key-words at the end of the abstract.

3. Do not quote from Wikipedia.

4. Authors are requested to follow Chicago Manual Style for the purpose of referencing.
5. Authors are requested to use TIMES NEW ROMAN font throughout the text.
6. Paper should be submitted only in MS-Word format.
7. Plagiarism or articles submitted or published elsewhere will not be accepted.
8. Editors of the conference publication may edit the manuscripts for clarity and reduce the length of the paper if it exceeds the word limit.
   *Submission of the Abstract by September 25^th, 2017
   *Intimation of Selection of the Paper by September 30^th, 2017.
   *Submission of Full Paper by October 30^th, 2017.
   *Date of the Conference: November 15-16^th 2017.

Registration Procedure: For those intimated to write Full Paper, soft copies of Full Paper along with Registration Form must reach by October 5^th, 2017. Those who are presenting paper may stay in the official Guest Room.

Papers presented in the Conference will remain as the property of the organisers, and will be published in the form of a book/booklet with an ISBN No.

Limited scholarship to meet the 3^rd AC train travel cost is available specially for those who are coming from outside of Delhi NCR.

Venue: TRACI, E-537, Greater Kailash, New Delhi

Inquiries and Papers to be sent to: jeremiahduomai@gmail.com ( +91-9821949211) 

Thomas Pogge's Lecture: Foreign Drivers of Domestic Injustice

Today Thomas Pogge delivered a lecture at the Department of Political Science, Delhi University. The lecture was titled " Foreign Drivers of Domestic Injustice". The post is a summary of his lecture.

Inequality of the kind that is a result of one's inborn condition is an expression of justice. Now not all inequality is injustice particularly if it's a result of one's choice.  But condition of inequality that is perpetuated and compounded because of being born into a specific economic class, social caste etc. is a case of injustice.

In India the gap between those at the highest rung of the economic ladder and those at the bottom is extremely wide. It's the widest in the world after Russia. But those at the top would want to perpetuate this gap. Now we need to ask why there are few at the top rung and many at the lowest rung of this economic ladder, and how they are able to sustain this gap. After all addressing injustice would mean working towards moving those at the lowest rung to the higher rung. Because only by going up the economic ladder, one can have better housing, education, healthcare etc.

Now those at the top rung are able to pull resources together to lobby the political powers and get tax laws work in their favour. The poor are unable to gather resources that way, and even if they try to make such an effort, the benefit they will get out of such lobby is not worth the effort. However, those at the top rung have such resources and even if they pull together 1% of their resources to lobby, the benefit they get out of such effort would yield them a benefit of, say, 10%. This way those at the top rung influences policy and frame rules and laws in their favour.

But how do foreign players perpetuate domestic injustice?

There are countries in the world that serve as parking lot for the rich's money. As the rich folks park their money in countries like Panama, Singapore, Mauritius etc., these folks evade paying taxes at home. This is illegal and yet it is done. Many a time the politicians at home refuse to take action or refuse to call these nations to stop this practice because the rich folks lobby with the government and are able to persuade the government not to act. Moreover, many politicians park their own money. This is one way foreign hands perpetuate and compound injustice in certain other countries.

There is also another way where foreign hands compound inequality at the domestic level. Rich countries invest money in research work and when finding is made, the medical knowledge/formula gets patented. Country like India requires cheap medicine to meet the requirement of its poor citizens. In the past Indian pharmaceutical companies were able to reproduce this medicine cheaply for its citizens by learning from those who have produced it. However, now with intellectual property rights becoming more rigid abroad, rich pharmaceutical companies abroad through their political leaders bargain hard with countries like India so that India would also have a much more rigid pharmaceutical laws. This rigid pharmaceutical law would in turn criminalise reproduction of patented medicine without permission. At the same time, there are rich Indian who would also like to export their produce to other countries. So, in exchange for a more rigid intellectual property rights at home, which would then not allow Indian pharmaceutical companies to reproduce cheap medicine, India would ask foreign countries to reduce its import duty so that Indian rich businessmen and businesswomen could export their produce to this foreign countries. The result is that the poorer section of the community in India become the casualty of such arrangement that came about through negotiation.

Thus, the rich ones will continue to seat at the top, while the poor ones suffer at the bottom... because the trading laws and policies have been framed to suit the interest of the rich while compounding the problem of the poor. This is how injustice is perpetuated.

Problematic Feature of Premillennialism

Premillennialism is the eschatological view that Christ second return will precede the millennium. So this view says: Christ returns, and then 1,000 year reign follows. Within this scheme of reading the Bible, there are two major views: Historic Premillennialism (HP) and Dispensational Premillennialism (DP). There are significant differences between the two. But the two schools share the view that Christ returns will be followed by the 1,000 year reign. This is the position that they arrived at when they read a Scripture passage like Rev. 20. In this post, I am going to raise a problematic feature that is common with premillennialism.

But before that, let me lay out the scheme:

1. Christ first coming on earth.

2. Church age began with Pentecost (and we are living in this era now).

3. Church age will conclude as the tribulation breaks out.

4. Jesus will then return, and then the battle of Armageddon ensues  (Rev. 16.16)

5. Jesus will defeat Satan and the latter will be bound for 1000 years; resurrection for the believers.

6. Jesus reigns for 1000 years with the resurrected, including those who survive Armageddon battle.

7. At the end of this 1000 year reign, Satan will be released once more ( Rev. 20.7-8)

8. The battle of Gog and Magog will ensue

9. Jesus will defeat Satan once more, and the latter will be cast into the lake of burning sulphur.

10. Judgement,

11. New heaven & new earth.

Now one may ask the question: Who will Jesus defeat in point no. 9? Answer: Satan and his army (Rev. 8-9). But who all will be in the army? Those people that Satan had deceived.

Here is the problem: when Jesus literally reigns for 1000 years, he probably was a bad ruler and therefore people are unhappy with his reign, and therefore Satan was able to gather them to be part of his army.

This is a very serious theological problem for the premillennial scheme of things. For the amillennial and postmillennial scheme of things, this problem is not there because they interpret Rev. 20 differently.