Not the Sword or the Pen but the Heart of Man

A lesson I remember from my elementary school was about the battle between the Pen and the Sword.  Which is stronger?” asked the teacher.  “The sword” was the unison reply of my 3^rd grade classmates.  But the teacher said, “you all are wrong, the pen is mightier than the sword”.  Slow in learning, I could not make any sense of the question.  How can there even be a war between a pen and a sword?  And, even if people want to fight with such weaponry; who idiot will think of picking a pen to fight against a man wielding a sword?  Maybe this is what we call an elementary level of thinking.  But war between these two objects seems to know no bound; decades, centuries and even millennia have seen them fight tirelessly and the sword eventually surrenders to pen but only for a time to regain its valor.

People and civilizations under the the reign of pen seem to flourish in all their forms and fashions; art and literature appear to enjoy the most as they become the channels for human expressions of creativity and ingenuity inspiring the human imagination to go further into the discovery of the natural world of science and technology.  Ideas are freely expressed and disputes are settled by debating the merits and the demerits of both the sides; no wonder the people of Athens still bear the testimony for such a life. 

As good as it is to live under the reign of pen; the pen is also very naive and vulnerable that it begins to believe it can sleep at night without locking the door; in its ideal world are no thieves.  When the dogs bark in the neighborhood at night, it assumes that a cat must have been running after a rat only to realize in the morning that the whole town was robbed and ransacked by some barbarians wielding the sword from beyond the yonder.  Realizing the gravity of the situation, it rushes to the city square, calls on the scribes to come to Areopagus to discuss the tragedy.  Alas, no one comes!  There is no sign of life in any of the houses of the scribes.  Hurriedly it rushes to Areopagus, only to see the sword waiting for its arrival.  The loyal politicians of the city were now standing to testify against the pen; crowd was solemn and silent.  The pen could not believe its ears what the politicians were spewing out of their lying mouths.  The sword gave the verdict; pen must be executed.  Climbing to the gallows, pen tried to see if there were any scribes in the crowd down below; in the far corner with heads covered like women were a few of them secretly wiping their tears.  With sadness but no regret, the pen put its head across the beam with neck sitting on it and the axe fell.  As if something divine had happened, darkness covered the land for a long long time.

One of the surviving scribes by the name of Plato went to look for an Ideal Republic in which the pen and the sword would unite in peace and serve the people with the best of their ability.  The other by the name of Confucius went to look for an Ideal Prince who would listen to him in creating a perfect nation where justice and freedom would rule for the prosperity of the people.  But neither of them could achieve their dreams; they both failed miserably.  And there came another scribe by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, warning the rest of them that the problem was not with the pen or the sword, the problem was with the heart of man.  Unless a man be born again and become like a child, he will always be a victim either under the brutality of the sword who thinks that all those who disagree are guilty deserving death or the naivety of the pen who thinks that those who disagree also belong to universal brotherhood and should be allowed to express their disagreement in anyway they feel like doing it; even at the point of wielding the sword.    

नेपालमा बढ्दै गएको धार्मिक अतिवाद

ऐतिहाँसिक हिसाबले नेपाल पुरानो देश भए पनि विस्वकासामु यसको परिचय त्यति लामो छैन। बेलाँएती सामराज्यको राजनैतिक तवरले सामना गर्न सफल भए पनि कुटनैतिक क्षेत्रमा नेपालले खासै सफलता हाँसिल गर्न सकेन कारण एकिकरणको समयबाटै शाहावंसिय राजाहरूले धर्मलाई राजनितिसँग जोडेको कारण देशलाई विज्ञानको ज्योति तर्फ लानुको सट्टा अन्धविस्वासको गुफातिर धकेलिदियो। बाह्रौ सताब्दीतिर जसरी ईस्लामिक सभ्यताले विज्ञान र विकासलाई त्यागेर रुखो धार्मिक चरमपन्थि बाटो अपनायो त्यसरी नै नेपालका शाहावंसिय शासकहरूले पनि आफ्नो शक्ति सन्चय गर्न नेपालबाट ज्ञान विज्ञान र धार्मिक स्वतन्त्रतालाई नष्ट गर्दै हिन्दु धर्मलाई दमनको हतियार बनाई बौद्ध र किराँत धर्मावलम्विहरूलाई आफ्नो वसमा राख्न सफल भए भने ईस्लाम र ईसाई धर्मावलम्विहरूलाई देशद्रोहिको रुपमा स्थापित गर्न सफल भए। यि दुई धर्महरूको प्रभावलाई निष्क्रिय पार्न नेपालले झण्डै २५० वर्षसम्म देशमा ज्ञान र विज्ञानको ज्योति चम्कन दिएन जसको कारण नेपाल आजसम्म विस्व-मानचित्रमा सबै भन्दा पिछडिएका राष्ट्रहरूको सम्मान पाईरहेको छ र यसका शासकहरू यो पिछडापनलाई नै आफ्नो व्यक्तिगत फाइदाको माध्यम बनाईरहेका छन्। धनी र विकसित राष्ट्रहरूको सामु नेपालका शासकहरू “मेरो देश गरिब छ” भन्दै भिक मागिरहेकाछन् र पाएको अनुदानबाट भ्रष्टाचारतन्त्रलाई निरन्तरता दिइरहेकाछन्। विडम्वनाको कुरो; संसारमा जतिपनि धनी र विकसति देशहरू छन्, ति सबै देशहरूमा धार्मिक अतिवाद र अन्धविस्वास भन्दा वैज्ञानिक सोच र तकनिकिले पहिलो स्थान पाएको छ।  चीन जस्तो विशाल देशमा पनि तिब्र विकाश आउनुमा मार्कस्वादको देनलाई इन्कार गर्न मिल्दैन कारण यदि चीनमा धार्मिक अन्धविस्वासलाई विस्थापित नगरिएको भए सायद आज चीन आन्तरिक द्वन्द र भ्रष्टाचारकै भुमरिमा रूमलिरहेको देश हुने थियो होला।  खाडिक्षेत्रका केहि मुलुकहरू धनि भएपनि त्यहाँ मानवविकास आउन सदियौ लाग्नेछ कारण जुनसुकै धर्मलाई पनि जब अतिवादि तरिकाले मानिसमा लादिन्छ त्यसले मानव कल्याण गर्दैन; शासकवर्गको मात्र कल्याण गर्दछ।  

मध्यकालिन यूरोप पनि त्यतिबेला मात्रै मानव कल्याण र विकासको बाटोमा लाग्यो जब उसले आफुमाथि लादिएको धार्मिक अतिवादको जुवालाई भाँच्न सफल भयो।  धर्म जब राजनितिमा मिसिन्छ यसले कहिल्यै पनि मानवताको भलो गर्दैन चाहे त्यो जुनसुकै धर्म किन नहोस। धर्म त मानिस र ईस्वरको सम्वन्धको कुरा हो जसलाई कुनै राज्य वा समुदायले लादेर कायम हुने कुरा होईन। यो त स्वतन्त्र मानव आत्माले चिन्तन मनन् गरेर आफ्नो मनले खाएको मत मतान्तर अपनाउनु; मठ, मन्दीर, मस्जीद, गिर्जा, गुर्द्वारा जानु; भगवान, ईस्वर, परमेश्वर, अल्ला, खुदा भनि पुकार्नु; गिता, ग्रन्थ, कुरान, बाइबल, त्रिपट आदि पढ्नु हो। जब मानिसबाट यो स्वतन्त्रता खोसिन्छ तब त्यसलाई धर्म भन्न मिल्दैन कारण जसले मानिसलाई यो स्वतन्त्र मगज, इच्छा र चाहाना सहित सिर्जना गरेको छ उसले कहिल्यै पनि मानिसको ईच्छा विपरित जबरजस्ति गरिएको पुजा अवस्य चाहाँदैन होला; यदि चाहन्थ्यो भने मानिसलाई पशु भन्दा फरक प्राणीको रूपमा बनाउने आवस्यकता नै थिएन होला।  त्यसकारण धार्मिक अतिबादले मानिसको मानव हुने आधारभुत अधिकारलाई नै हरण गरेको हुन्छ।  

हिन्दु धर्मले विस्वमा आदरणिय स्थान अोगट्न सफल हुनुमा रविन्द्रनाथ ठाकुर जस्ता यसका प्रतिनिधिले आफ्ना अनुयायीहरूलाई दिएको स्वतन्त्राको कारण हो।  “सबै धर्म बराबर हुन्” भन्ने निति जब विस्वका सामु राखियो तब यसलाई संसारमा एउटा उदार धर्मको रुपमा लिईयो र आज सम्म पनि लिइन्छ।  भारत जस्तो माहान विविधताले भरिएको देशमा हिन्दु धर्मको वाहुल्य भएपनि यसले हिँजो सम्म सबै धर्मको सम्मान गर्दै आफ्नो स्थानलाई सम्मानपुर्वक पहिलो स्थानमा राख्दै आऐको थियो तर ति दिन सायद अब गैसकेका छन कारण भारतमा पनि यो माहान धर्म राजनितिको शिकार भैसकेको छ।

एसियाको सबै भन्दा उदार देशको रुपमा चिनिने नेपाल देशमा पनि धर्मलाई फेरि राजनितिमा मिसाईँदैछ; २५० बर्ष अधिको दिनलाई फेरि निम्त्याईँदैछ जसको कारण देश मानव विकास र वैज्ञानिक सोचतिर जानुको सट्टा अन्धविस्वासकै गुफामा धकेलिँदैछ। 

देश विकासका लागि मानव अधिकार र मानव स्वतन्त्रता नभइनहुने तत्व हुन तर धार्मिक अतिवाद र दमनले यिनिहरूलाई फस्टाउन दिँदैन कारण धर्मको राजनितिकरण भगवान वा ईश्वरको लागि नभएर मानिसमा भएको दुष्टतालाई लुकाउन गरिन्छ। नेपालमा पनि गुमेको शक्ति र पतनभएको नैतिकतालाई फेरि हातपार्नको लागि ईसाईकरणको वाहानामा हिन्दु धर्मलाई हतियार बनाईँदै छ।  यदि नेपालको सम्विधानले दिएको धार्मिक स्वतन्त्रतालाई संस्थागत गर्न सके मानव कल्याण र देश विकाशमा ठुलो फड्को पार गर्नसकिने थियो तर देश लुट्न पल्केका नेताहरूले जनताको आँखामा धर्मको छारो हालेर आफ्नो भ्रष्टाचारको दुनो सोझ्याइरहेका छन्; जनताहरू अन्धकारमा तालि बजाईरहेका छन्। यस्तै छ हाम्रो देशको चलन!

Your Leader Sets Your Standard

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We need spiritual leaders and their spiritual covering over our lives.  We need pastors and teachers who inspire us to love God’s word, seek God’s kingdom and righteousness.  We need spiritual leaders who will inspire to hope and have confidence in God’s goodness when we face hardships and difficulties in this world.  We need spiritual leaders whose examples are worthy to emulate in loving God and serving people.  We need spiritual leaders in whose presence you find new level of joy and faith in following the footpath of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you have such leaders in your life? Let me share with you one example.

The other day, one of the senior pastors in the city visited my wife and mother (mother-in-law, but we don’t use the language of in-laws in our family).  My father-in-law was a wonderful man whose heart was for God’s kingdom.  During his life time, he helped many pastors and evangelists with financial assistance so that they could continue to work in God’s kingdom.  In God’s time, few years ago his journey on earth ended.  He came to this city for treatment and within ten days departed from here.  For reasons we cannot discuss here, we could not take his body back to Manipur for the burial; we buried him here with the promise that we will not leave him alone.  In the place he is buried, we shall establish a church that will last till Jesus returns was our promise.

My wife is his eldest daughter but married a Nepalese man outside the sanctity of her tribe!  Now, it is a universal knowledge that every tribe in the world thinks it is the only best tribe in the world!  It takes a great deal of humanity to believe that all men are created equal. 

Thus, this man of God visits the house of a widow who lost her loving husband just a couple of years ago and a daughter who married a Nepalese man; for him, something to despise in itself!  Being the man of God he was; he started to comfort these two women, one a widow and another married to a despicable people in his worldview.  To the widow mother he said something like this; “your husband wasn’t a good looking man, physically he was black and short” (as if physical look is what makes a person and to tell the truth, I haven’t seen as good a looking man as my father in law was in the whole of that tribe!) “and morally he was very proud and violent man” (in reality, he was the kindest man that I had ever known and the whole village that he administered as the chieftain can still testify about his kindred spirit).  His ways of comforting a grieving widow was to say “good ridden, you are a free woman now” and then he turned to my wife.  He said, “if you love your people, divorce your husband and come and live with your people”!  My wife sat there without responding him; the things is, whenever my wife is shocked, she becomes tongue-tied; does not know what to say and he thought he had her convinced to divorce her husband. 

You can imagine the mood in a family where we value each other so dearly, so deeply that brothers, sisters, brother in laws and sister in laws, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousin brothers and sisters of many tribes and people feel so deeply connected as a family under the headship of a man who may be absent physically but is very much alive and present by his spirit and legacy. 

We understand the mind of this man of God and don’t hold any grudge against him for insulting us but we grieve for the people.  If you are a spiritual leader, you need to know whether you have the heart of God for the people or whether you are simply driven by the desire to make a living in this world.  Any spiritual leaders who is in the ministry to make a living in this world will not be able to feed the people spiritually; he will always be talking about the things of the world such as food, clothes, name, fame, reputation, power, prestige and so forth.  Most ministers in this part of the world talk about “sponsorships”!!!  But a spiritual leader will inspire you to seek the things from above and make your life on earth much more temporary so that even if you face hardship, you know it is temporary.  One such great spiritual guide says to his believers, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:1-2).  He knew that when the believers set their minds on earthly things, they will be discouraged and disappointed sooner or later but if they set their minds on the things from above, they will never be discouraged.  After all, our lives here on earth are for a short period of time, it is just the rehearsal for eternity.  Therefore, my brothers and sisters, follow leaders that will inspire you to live for eternity instead of this world.

Whatever I feared has come upon me!

Modern science regarding human psychology has helped us to understand the power of imagination.  A person’s sanity or insanity depends on the kind of thinking one is engaged in.  At times we are helpless to think other than what our chemicals in the brain dictate and we call that “mental illness” which is still a taboo to talk about.  So many people could have lived happily if this sickness was accepted as any other physical ailment and treated accordingly.  However, there are other times when we allow our perfect brain to take a wrong course of action in creating a thinking pattern that destroys what could otherwise have been a happy life.  A mind set on good things will see good things come its way and a mind set on bad things will also see them come the same way.  A positive and a faith filled mind almost always enjoys better quality of life than a mind filled with negativity, fear and all kind of anxious thoughts.  Job’s experience provides one such example.

The stature of Job in the Bible is no less than that of Noah or Abraham; he was a giant of a patriarch with credentials like “blameless and upright, greatest man among all the people of the East” (1:1-3).  When we read about him, we enjoy the 20/20 hindsight but he had no such luxury.  As we read him, we have to look at him with his raw feelings and emotions. 

When calamities overtook his entire existence, wiping away his entire family and fortunes; in utter despair Job confesses “what I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me” (3:25). In his relentless pursuit of remaining blameless and upright, Job had this uneasy fear about the possibility of God’s wrath coming upon his family due to some possible reckless behaviors of his children.  Every time his children would a have party, Job would rise up early in the morning and offer burnt sacrifices for each of his children thinking “perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts”(1:5).

Most likely, it was this uneasy dread that opened the door for the Devil to come through his defenses and put him through such a test.  The man however lived up to his credential in the face of unimaginable calamities; his faith in God’s goodness could not be shaken.  But the fact of the matter is that he had feared for such a day; he had in his imagination allowed the possibility of such a day and attempted to prevent it on his own by appeasing God through sacrifices.  There is no way a man can appease God’s wrath on his own, not even a righteous Job could do it.

However, in Christ, God has done away with his wrath that was sure to come upon us.  Today, after thousands of year from Job and under the foot of the Cross, we stand covered by his sacrifice and thus, we can always imagine good instead of bad.  Paul said, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things” (Phil. 4:8).  He goes on to say that “God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us” (Eph. 3:20). 

Therefore, let us think on what our minds think on and if the things that our minds are dwelling upon are not in line with what God’s word has revealed; we better arrest those thoughts and bring them to the obedience of Christ.  Let us pull down the strongholds that are contrary to the promises of God (2 Cor. 10:4-5) and allow our minds to become the minds of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).  Let us imagine about the things that “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him – but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1Cor. 2”9-10).

Sad situation of Korean Prayer Mountains

Once upon a time, many prayer centres like this in beautiful Korean countryside would be filled with noises of people either praying or singing hymns and pouring their hearts to the Lord.  With long history of persecution and suffering, Korean Christians took to the mountains and ravines to cry out to God and thus, the concept of "Prayer Mountain" came into existence.  When freedom came to Korea, when the churches began to flourish; these mountainside prayer centres also came to life.  Even in the remotest part of the country, people could be seen spending days, weeks and even months seeking God in prayer and fasting in these isolated places.  Many successful pastors and their ministries were birthed in some of these places.

Sadly, things have changed so much in so short a period of time.  Starting from the 1990s, the Church that was once no different from the church we see in the book of Acts suddenly began to enjoy the material prosperity brought forth by the industrial revolution of Korea birthed under the dictatorial leadership of strongman, President Park Chung Hee.  

Today, many of such beautiful prayer centres and once hallowed mountainsides have become so deserted.  In one place, we asked the keeper as how often their senior pastor comes to pray there; we were surprised to know that the pastor hasn't visited the place in years.  Though few people visit these places, some of the beautiful chapels are still standing but much of the real-estate has run down with no maintenance.  My wife and I often visit these places and feel the loss of Korean spirituality so deeply.  The picture you see is our last visit to such holy place before we head to India.  As we walk into these abandoned but beautiful places, we could imagine how a few decades ago, people would be crowding there for prayer; hymns would be blasting through the speakers and even people would be shouting out loud their prayers either from the inside the chapels or from the mountain tops. 

If the Korean church leadership does not wake up and begin to seek God, a very sad future awaits for the Korean church and that too very soon.  The hierarchal power structure of the society has heavily influenced the church leadership; the elders and senior pastors who control the church do not appear to be willing to lose their powerful positions by obeying God's will for the church.  They want to continue to enjoy the perks and the powers that come along with it.  Hearing God's voice is a dreadful thing for them because he might call them to relinquish their powers and positions.  Losing power and position in Korean society is a very disgraceful thing and church leadership knows no better alternative.

I wish and pray that once again, Korean Christians will be hungry for God even if their pastors and elders failed to create that hunger in them.  I wish and pray that once again these prayer mountains will be filled with people who would come there to spend the extended time with the Lord.  I wish and pray that the true Korean church we heard about in the 70s and 80s will once again be brought back and give the glory to God that duly belongs to him.

Nothing is impossible with God

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