Several things happened in the year 2024. Long entrenched dictators were dislodged, in-coming megalomaniacs were welcomed with open arms, there was no let up in the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel continued to pound Gaza with seeming impunity while opening hostile fronts anew all around. The graduating Class of 1974 from the College of Engineering, Guindy (my alma mater) celebrated its Golden Jubilee with an ever thinning annual turnout standing almost at half the original count. The once much respected Chief Justice of India revealed his feet of clay when news hounds discovered that he was one of the non-signing bench that breezily dealt with the Ayodhya case, much to the proximate benefit and lasting shame of an earlier CJI. Nearly 200 people perished in a terrible crash of a Jeju aircraft in South Korea; the discussion on the “whys and wherefore” among armchair pundits and genuine experts alike still runs closely parallel.
My mother died.
Amidst the unsettling news all around, there was only a single ray of hope. For me. The assurance, nay, the certainty that I will see my mother some day, hopefully in the not too distant future. Whence this confidence? Pray tarry with me awhile as we explore some alternative constructions.
Whilst the Hindu philosophy is awash with narratives of never-ending cycles of rebirth – please see my exertions on the topic of The Cosmic Complexity of Christ and Krishna in these jottings – the Christian creed suffices itself with one life on earth. Else, we are puzzled by the question of which of the multiple incarnations our current self embodies. Are we in n, n+1, n+2 state or what? To say the least, confusing. Quite simply, we do not know where we are.
The Bhagavad Gita, which Praramahansa Yognanda presumably under-esteemed as he embraced Jesus Christ, is again not a work that lends itself to sustained logic in an intelligible manner. If you check out my interim conclusions published in my jottings Misc. 214: Bhagavad Gita – A Critical Look from Cover-to-Cover 3c/ N, you can read the narrative that goes like this:
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Arjuna, the representative of Pandavas is arrayed for battle against his cousins Kauravas. Lord Krishna is his charioteer and so his victory is assured. Neverthess Arjuna is plagued by all kind of doubts and even considers a life of Sanyas as better than fighting against his own kinsmen. But Lord Krishna is nudging him on, saying as a ksatriya he needs a kingdom which is realizable only if he fights and wins the battle. The Lord further advances the argument that in any case the souls of his cousins will live on even if they are dead. Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, (but strangely) Arjuna had a blood relationship with Him.
This is followed by some truly fanciful assertions some of which are quite extra-ordinary. For example,
“Religious violence is sometimes a necessary factor”
“The brähmaëas also attain the heavenly planets by sacrificing animals in the sacrificial fire”.
“The animal sacrificed gets a human life immediately without undergoing the gradual
evolutionary process from one form to another.”
“A fully Kåñëa conscious person is not at all disturbed by the onslaughts of the threefold miseries, for he accepts all miseries as the mercy of the Lord, thinking himself only worthy of more trouble due to his past misdeeds; and he sees that his miseries, by the grace of the Lord, are minimized to the lowest”. This is interesting. Because “Grace” is a very Christian word. And now here we see the suggestion that only due to the grace of God we attain Krishna consciousness. Check out the Bible, St.Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 2:
“8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:”
Unquote
……and so on and so forth.
You should by now have an idea of the myth of the mythology of Mahabharata which right from the word go, inundates one in a morass of impossible contradictions. If you need more evidence of the same, isn’t it interesting that Lord Çiva could be lured into sex! Who is this Parvati anyway – human or goddess? Why do the two children so unlike each other, one of them sporting a strange-looking trunk? (not that I have anything against trunks) How exactly did Parvati “agitate” the Lord for sensual pleasure?
Then there are special spiritual positions awarded to intelligent beings who only have a chance of advancing to the glorious life beyond, leaving the “less intelligent beings “to more or less fend for themselves. And I am not going into descriptions of demigods with their lesser duties and the struggle to occupy the position of Supreme Personality of Godhead among several qualified candidates! If you want to be truly and totally unenlightened, there is much that can help in the article hypertexted !!
So it stands to reason that if we are not standing on solid ground, our belief system needs a gimbal. Running after one or the other of god-men that sprout effortlessly from a loose soil, we do not know which way to turn when calamity hits. Per force we look for a new saviour. And if we are told that the work of salvation has already been accomplished in Christ Jesus and all that is needed are faith and confession about the saving grace, we find it difficult to accept and are still looking to earn that status by a myriad acts of sacrifice, philanthropy, penance, pilgrimage and even at times, self-flagellation.
Sad
Admittedly, it is none-too-easy to peel away from long entrenched traditional belief systems that require us to DO something, and embrace grace which seems so evanescent like the will o’-the-wisp. Yet we cannot overlook the scriptures . Paul addresses this issue in Romans 1:20 – “For [God’s] invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.”
And as can be expected, David has treaded this ground before. Read Psalm 19:1-4:
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
2 Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun”
Not all of us are gifted to read the signs of the times like the Magi of yore who wended their way to Bethlehem, traveling far from the east. And even they as we know, went astray for a while, leaning on their earthly wisdom. We need bites, sound bites that speak to us. And so
“He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” Ephesians 4:11
I am sure this list is inclusive of missionaries. Somehow a section of our society takes a great deal of delight in totally disregarding the selfless service of these women and men in the fields of medicine, education, social reforms; and attacks them instead for the “sin” of proselytizing . Yet for this cause were they sent. Check out Jesus’s great commission in the gospel according to St. Mathew : “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” Matthew 28:19-20. The missionaries were but being obedient to the call.
Alarmingly, the Bible does not hold the persecutors of missionaries guiltless. It says and I quote:
51 From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation. Luke 11:51
To the above list of martyrs, we can in this country certainly add the names of Graham Staines, Philip and Timothy who were set on fire while sleeping in their station wagon in Manoharpur village of Keonjhar district late on January 22, 1999. (I am giving these details for we are prone to forget gory misdeeds against missionaries in this country). I gather Droupati Mumuru was a contemporary elected official from the same state but there is no record that she raised her voice in dismay against the dastardly murder. Seeing that she was the pick of the Bharatiya Janata Party for the post of president of the county, we can safely conclude that, that was unlikely.
Be that as it may, it is time to pan around to my mother. Writing to the church in Corinth, St. Paul plainly says: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable (1 Cor.15:19).
Speaking on the same theme in his letter to another church Paul elucidates:
“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” ( 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)
But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. (1 Thess. 4:13-14)
So, there is hope. Hello Amma!
Won’t you believe?
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