Taliakum
The Evil System
The other day one of my Iranian friends raised an issue about the Arab students in the university branding them as “womanisers.” He related an incident when an Arab guy took an Indian girl from the university to his flat and had sex with her and later his flat-mates forcefully did her. The Iranian friend was aghast at this. He said, “Why are we allowing all this in the university? Why are humanities taught in the university yet allow these things to happen?” I a Christian have no qualms about the reality of evil. Therefore I proceeded to introduce the word evil several times but he wouldn’t dwell on it. He isn’t a Christian. Outside Christ, there can be no anti-dote to the evil system. This is where the call of the church is. God is concerned. He sent Jonah to Nineveh. The church is the Jonah for today’s evil system. There is no option to run away.
The Bible accounts of violence when Cain killed Abel. Since then it has been brewing and brewing. The world has just come out of the bloodiest century in history — 300 million killed in war, political repression and ethnic and sectarian violence (figures may be even more). It’s hard to process that it happened in just one hundred years. Contemporary Christian philosopher, social critic and writer Os Guinness says, “Suffering is passive and evil is active.” Because evil is active suffering is an inevitable result of it. However, the Bible clearly says that Satan has been defeated and the evil thereof. So, the church has the active role not evil. Apostle and speaker Tudor Bismark says, “The Devil is the liar and so is his mother-in-law.” Like the intellectual Romans the world is asking today: “From whence the evil?” It’s a real question. The church has the answer.
The Babylonian System
Genesis 11 accounts of the Babylonians (Iraq today) wanting to do things their way by building the tower of Babel. They said, “...let us make a name [for ourselves]...” (Genesis 11:4). Since then humanity has been reeling out this motto everywhere. We see it on TV, newspapers, company advertisements and interestingly even churches. It’s no wonder that the state of affairs is the still same in the 21st Century. The tower of Babel is a sign of a humanly insatiable longing (Hebrew words ‘bab’ meaning ‘gate’ and ‘el’ meaning ‘god’ — ‘gate of god’). Ecclesiastes terms this as a longing for eternity when it clearly says that God has already placed eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiates 3:11 NIV). This is exactly what the Babylonians were longing for. So, they accepted the reality of the existence of God. But the problem was that they sought God without involving God. That was very unrealistic of them in pursuing God outside God’s perimeter. Therefore it’s assured that contemporary trends like atheism or agnosticism or humanism or post-modernism are just offshoots of the Babylonian system. There is nothing new in them. Denial of God’s existence is actually acknowledging that God exists. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal says, “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” The bottom line is that the Babylonian system is actually an affirmation of the church’s purpose, i.e., the church to be active not passive. The Devil is the killer not the church. The roles are not changeable.
The Systemic Church
As the world searches for justice, however, we see a strange tragedy looming —the tragedy of compromising Christianity. Is the world on the right track and the church sidetracking? It’s a debatable take. However, it’s assured that the church cannot afford to be relativistic because God does not change. At the same time the church also cannot be escapistic because that is tantamount to ignorance whereas, Jesus whispers, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” So, the church is essentially not ignorant. Besides, the early church scenario clearly tells us about today’s scenario. In Haggai 1 we see a group of people advertently brushing aside God’s instruction to rebuild the temple. God was made subjective then and there. G.K. Chesterton says,”...in most important matters a man is always free to ruin himself if he chose.” God is not the loser. The church cannot be the loser and therefore God sent Haggai to remind the church of its purpose. God’s church always prevails.
The purpose of the church remains the same —to oversee the world—and will remain so. Since day one, the church has been set apart to be always present in the world yet going against the world’s flow. It’s important to maintain that standard. God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). It’s a matter of realisation for the church to take up the pre-destined rightful place. And with Christ the Head, the church has bound authority for counter strike. This authority can neither be ignored nor misused. The end is to reveal the Father’s glory through the Son with the Holy Spirit through the church.
