God's Justice: An Article

An article by Tim Stafford explaining the nature and the basis of Justice as found in the Bible: 

Forty years after the historic Lausanne Covenant, American evangelicals remain muddled and divided on the question of evangelism and good works. The word “justice” acts as a catalyst, either attracting or repelling. It divides us.

For the past three years I have been involved in a writing project bringing together 55 scholars and activists from the global church, the majority from non-Western countries. The aim was a study Bible with notes on the theme of justice—introductions and verse-by-verse notes for every book in the Bible, aiming to show how each part of the Bible contributes to the historical story of God’s justice...( the rest of the text can be read here) 

India's Hindutva vs. Pakistan's Sharia Law?

Yesterday's bomb blast at Lahore, Pakistan, killed around 70 people. The culprits belong to the Pakistani Taliban. The bomb blast targeted the Christians in Pakistan. This is one of the many incidents where religious minorities have been killed in Pakistan. Few days back there was a huge rally in support of the assassin Qadri, who murdered a politician after the politician spoke out against killing of religious minorities. Christians, Hindus and Sikhs have all been murdered by religious fanatics in Pakistan. Even in India, some elements within the Hindutva brigades are attempting to make India a Hindu version of Pakistan. The killing of Muslims here and there are signs of such attempts. 

In India, Hindutva brigades' attempt to make India a Hindu state is a dangerous effort. This will spell trouble for the religious minorities. Christians and Muslims will be at the receiving end. 

From time to time we hear of Christians and Muslims being thrashed in Sri Lanka and India. We hear of similar thrashing and even killing of Christians and Muslims in India and Pakistan. We hear of thrashing and killing of Muslims in Myanmar. Nepal and Bhutan appear more peaceful. The question is: must the Indian subcontinent continue to witness such religious butchering? What is the solution?

Many political thinkers today advance the concept of a liberal state. It's a kind of political arrangement that provides space to different cultures, ethnicity, religion etc. to live side by side. The state does not impose one version of the good life, but leaves it open to the citizens to choose. Only on those matters where there is overlapping consensus, the state enforces. So on matters like taxation, private property, racial abuse etc. the state will enforce regulation. Certain other things, the state will inculcate, but not enforce. And on certain things, the state will remain silent. So John Locke, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, Amartya Sen et al are all political liberals of different stripes. Locke/Rawls are contractarians, Mill a Utilitarian and Sen is more an Aristotelian; and yet all of them are political liberals. How much should the state enforce and how much should the state leave it open  is a matter of debate. But giving much value to liberty and equality is part of a liberal state. So as much as possible, the state leaves it open for an individual to choose this or that rather than being restrictive as much as possible. This is a feature of a liberal state. 

A nation-state that has a historical baggage of diversity will falter over and over again if political liberalism is ignored. Communal riot of different scale will be frequent experience if we refuse to entertain room for the other. After all people do not want to be bullied; people want freedom. And if certain belief or practice are being shoved down the throat of a another person/community just because the other party is more powerful and bigger, specially when it is about religious matter, it will most frequently be a fight to the end. In a liberal state, citizens are allowed to debate and dialogue but not use coercion. 

If Pakistani Muslims succeed in containing religious minorities, as opposed to providing room to the religious minorities to flourish, they have no moral right to speak up when in India Muslims are harmed. But if Muslims are harmed in India by the bigger religious community, Hindus have no moral right when in Bangladesh religious minorities are harmed. The solution lies in political liberalism; not in creating a religious state where religious minorities will be rendered as second class citizens. 

!00 years later, things may change. But for now, I believe political liberalism is the way forward to forge communal harmony. Politicians may engineer riot to come to power, and get away with it because they have connection. But citizens should be careful -- and so must our political leaders be -- not to give in to baser instinct and trump the liberty of the religious minorities to pursue their version of the good life. 

For a Christian, the fact is that God respects our choices. Whether one will worship the one true God or the Devil, the choice is given to every individual. Until Jesus returns, this choice to be wrong or to be right is given. So in this mid-term, when the kingdom is already inaugurated and yet it is not fully realised yet, there has to be given the choice to each individual to choose to be right or wrong. So the idea of a Christian state is not what Christians must seek. 

Was Jesus a Tamil Hindu?

From time to time, there has been this idea being marketed that Jesus lived and died in India. The Bible explicitly mentions Jesus before 12 and after 30. There is no explicit mention of what happened in between. This has led some people to claim that during the 'silent years of Jesus', he came and lived in India. There has even been claims that say Jesus was buried in India. The latest theory that is making the news, apparently first written seventy years before, is that Jesus was born a Tamil Hindu, and Christianity is a Hindu sect and Jesus spent his later years in the Himalayas and died there. Could it be true? Does the Bible give evidences that point to the contrary? Well, I think there are evidences that suggest that Jesus never lived in India.

First point. In his 30s, as recorded by Luke, when Jesus began to do his ministry, he had his own critics. On one occasion, in his hometown i.e Nazareth, the village he grew up, when he began to teach, he faced his critics. The critics said, 'Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son...' This suggests that the people of Nazareth knew him as a carpenter. Had Jesus done such work just once or twice, he would not be known as a carpenter. It is plausible to say that because of his consistent engagement with this work, he was known that way. He was not known as a fisherman or a tax collector because he did not do that kind of job. Carpentry would have been his 'profession' just as fishing was Peter's. But someone at 15 would not be a 'carpenter', at 15 one would be just an amateur. It is reasonable to suppose that one could become a fisherman or a carpenter only when one has attained at least 18 and then continued engaging with the work for years. From 18-20 to 28-30 did Jesus engage himself as a carpenter for which he then came to be known as a carpenter? Possibly! The biblical text suggests that Jesus grew up in the Middle East, and not in India.

Second point. In his teaching ministry that he started around 30, he used lot of parables. The parables he told suggest that Jesus knew the 'ways of life' of the people there. If Jesus had lived in Siberia, he would have used parables from such region. One could make that out from reading the parables. Parables of the lost sheep, vineyard, fishing net, mustard seed etc. suggest that he grew up in Israel, not just in his early years when he would be too young to learn much but also in his adult years. Moreover, his conversation with the religious leaders and his teaching suggest that he was very much well-versed in the Old Testament. Only a person who continuously received teaching even well onto adult years would have knowledge of such sort. For example, when one reads Buddha's discourse it is not very difficult to know that such thought would have come about only after years of learning and meditation. Just a year or two of learning would not produce such insight. Similarly, to have such insight and understanding, Jesus would have immersed in so many years of studying the Old Testament. And that is possible only if he lived and grew up there in Israel.

Third point. In ancient India, there emerged two figures, Gautama Buddha and Mahavira, who came out of Vedic Hinduism. These two moved away from Vedic theology, but their teaching has traces of Vedic theology. Even if they tried to move away, they were successful only up to certain extent. Had Jesus received heavy dose of Vedic teaching in the Himalayas, it is quite possible that we find traces of Vedic theology in Jesus' teaching. But this is not so. Instead it is the Old Testament background that we find all over in Jesus teaching, and complete absence of Vedic theology. Had Jesus been heavily influenced by Vedic theology, even if he wanted to get away, like that of Gotama and Mahavira, it would still be visible in his teaching. The absence of Vedic theology suggests that Jesus never came to the Himalayas/India. 

NB: This article is a slightly modified version of what has been posted here. 

To Be a An Authentic Veg, Eat Non-Veg!

Ethical vegans make a concerted lifestyle choice based on ethical – rather than, say, dietary – concerns. But what are the ethical concerns that lead them to practise veganism? In this essay, I focus exclusively on that significant portion of vegans who believe consuming foods that contain animal products to be wrong because they care about harm to animals, perhaps insofar as they have rights, perhaps just because they are sentient beings who can suffer, or perhaps for some other reason. 

Throughout the essay, I take this conviction as a given, that is, I do not evaluate it, but instead investigate what lifestyle is in fact consistent with caring about harm to animals, which I will begin by calling consistent veganism. I argue that the lifestyle that consistently follows from this underlying conviction behind many people’s veganism is in fact distinct from a vegan lifestyle.

Let us also begin by interpreting veganism in the way that many vegans – and most who are aware of veganism – would. A vegan consumes a diet containing no animal products. In conceiving of veganism in terms of what a diet contains, there seems to be an intuition about the moral relevance of directness, according to which it matters how direct the harm caused by the consumption of the food is with regards to the consumption of the food.

On this intuition, eating a piece of meat is worse than eating a certain amount of apples grown with pesticides that causes the same amount of harm, because the harm in the first case seems to be more directly related to the consumption of the food than in the second case. Harm from the pesticides seems to be a side-effect of eating the food, whereas the death of the animal for meat seems to be a means to the eating food... To continue go here. 

(This is an article by Xavier Cohen, an undergraduate student from Oxford University. This paper was originally published by the Journal of Practial Ethics, where it was awarded the Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics for an undergraduate essay. ) 

Was Rohith Vemula Being Anti-National?

Rohith Vemula committed suicide after disciplinary action was taken by the University authority. His death has  triggered a fresh row of debate about the status of Dalits in India; Rohith being from Dalit background. The controversy has its genesis because of a quarrel the students group he was affiliated to had with another students group. Rohith was part of a students group of the Dalits and the other group these students quarreled with was the right wing Hindu group, ABVP, the students wing of BJP. It has been reported that Rohith was labelled 'anti-national' by people in ABVP after he and his friends protested against the hanging of Yakub Memon, the person responsible for the bombing of Mumbai.

Whether the quarrel has anything to do with Dalit vs. Anti-Dalit or whether the extreme step was taken due to external pressure and blame must be shouldered by those putting the pressure, I am not going to touch on those matters. Much has been already said. I want to examine whether the protest against Yakub's hanging was an anti-national activity or not.

I think it is beyond reasonable doubt that Yakub was indeed involved in Bombay bombing. When he was hanged last year, there was protest from different quarter, including Rohith and friends apparently. There was no denial that there was a protest. But why were they protesting against the hanging of a criminal, whose criminal activity led to the death of 257 people besides wounding many?

Was the protest trying to say (1) that Yakub is innocent and he is not responsible for the bombing and so he should not be hanged. (2) that Yakub should not be hanged though other people who would have done similar bombing should be hanged -- because Yakub is Yakub, and no one else, he should be spared. (3) that Yakub should not be hanged because hanging in general is to be done away with; he should just be kept in prison as it has been done till then.

No. 1 is not on the table... because he was guilty. I don't think Rohith and others were saying that Yakub was innocent. No. 2 is unreasonable... because Yakub alone being spared when others would face the rope is unfair. Why should Yakub be given special treatment? Was Rohith and his friends saying that Yakub and Yakub alone should be spared and other similar criminal activities deserve hanging? May be; may not be. How about no. 3? There were people who argued this way. It is possible that Rohith and friend were also saying this thing. The chance of this message being communicated through their protest was higher than other messages being community.

But if this no 3 was what they meant through their protest, was it an anti-national activity? I do not see how this would amount to an anti-national activity. Suppose they were saying for no. 2, would it mean that their protest was an anti-national activity? I would still say their protest was not an anti-national activity though I would say their protest was unreasonable and unfair. I would thus conclude that it was unfair for those in the ABVP camp to label Rohith as anti-national.

Same Sex Marriage, Bible and N T Wright

Paul writes "... God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion" ( Rom 1: 26-27, NIV) 

Did Paul mean the kind of same sex relations where there was no commitment for life long relationship or was Paul making a sweeping generalisation about same sex sexual relations as such? Was Paul leaving a room for same sex life long marriage while saying that same sex relations without life long commitment was unnatural and therefore wrong? 

Well, I think Paul was making a sweeping generalisation about all kinds of same sex sexual relations as such as Wright rightly explains the general narrative running through the Scripture.