Dissecting Christianity: The “Devil’s Advocate” Experiment

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Premise:

Contextualizing in the premise of secular perspective - it is worth discussing Christianity and observing the conflicting ethos of the Holy Bible, nature of God and contemporary Naga Christian outlook – all but within a constraint of time and space. It shall also interest some of us to delve into the metaphysical, supernatural or simply philosophical subject of Christianity in a rather unconventional fashion.  This essay will try to discuss three points in brief and shall engage the readers with a pertinent viewpoint(s) wherein one might be exposed to the extent of accusing the writer’s “devil’s advocate” position, and equating it with atheism or agnosticism. Although at face value it would seem to indicate - it is not the case. 

However it must be clear to the readers that the views presented here do not necessarily entail an exhaustive exercise and research, hence it remains a process rather than absolute derivative and conclusion. Conrad Oswalt in his book, ‘Secular Steeples: Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination’ (2003), observes that “Religion is necessarily entangled with secular cultures”. In justifying this statement he further states, “..traditional religious authorities i.e. religious institutions, leaders, texts etc. seek to emulate secular practices and products in the effort to remain relevant”. Thus premising upon this observation let us briefly try to engage upon (the) three points indicated above.

Intricacies of the Holy Bible:

The vagaries of the Holy Bible remain a bone of contention among the varied Christian denominations. The first book ever printed was a Latin Bible in 1455. Johann Gutenberg inventor of the printing press is credited thus so. Theologians contended the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to have taken place in between 30 to 36 AD; which approximately entailed compilation of the Holy Bible to be 1400 years after the death of Jesus Christ. Apart, it is of interest to note that  the Protestant Bible comprises of 66 books while Catholics Bible constitutes 73 books; Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has 81 books and Hebrew Tanakh relatively 24 books. It is also known that the Bible exists then only in the form of scrolls and verses. Consequently, an ardent observer is necessarily driven into the case of the subject matter of its compilation. 

A Christian will be instinctively enticed to accept the Holy Bible as divinely inspired; subsequently, such a person comes to a junction where a question is writ large – why content(s) of the Christian Bible differs? Each denomination supersedes the other in the claims of authenticity and originality. Ill-advised but one couldn’t help abhorring the other as lesser Christian, not to mention animosity apparently taking the form of violence. Such contestation necessitates one to seek the true Bible. Is your Bible holier than mine? Is your Sabbath absolute and mine a variable? Are your foods cleaner than mine? Is my baptism less sanctified? Which Christian are you, which am I? Is my Christ different from your Christ? 

In light of such perplexity, secular propensity must exhaust faith while harnessing ‘logic and reason’. Faith indeed decries logic and reason; it is faith to believe in something one cannot see, it is faith that bolsters chasmic distance and divides the worldly and the heavenly. But it is logic and reason that enquires while blind obedience is what faith requires. Must not we be curious? Must our curiosity defunct and blind obedience we comply to? Is there no harmony between faith and reason? How does one strum the rhythm of reason and faith together? Surely the good God didn’t make a robot of us - God has not made a mistake; the fault must be in the historical process of Christianity where true intent of His revelation had been derailed by early Christians. 

Cultural context and obscure translation, claims and counterclaims, biasness and favoritism - led to the sprout of differential Biblical doctrines - opposing theology, denomination and construal imagery of God Himself. The theological explanation, doctrinal interpretation, and the refutation of books - fashioned across denominations resounds with critical finger pointing. Apocrypha is denounced by the Protestants while Cult naming of protestant sects among the militant protestant ministers is not unknown. 

It is thus apparent that the primary context of Christianity’s rule book, the Holy Bible, is deride-able; its infallibility and authenticity not unquestionable. The hypothesis is indeed opposed by evangelical Protestants, yet does the hypothesis not make sense at all, given the arguments used to generate it? Does it not appeal to a right conscience and must it gale off un-burnished? How does one contextualize ancient scriptural writings into modern culture and society? Why did Paul appropriate different means and ways between Jews and Gentiles to throw across the same Gospel message? Given all these intricacies should we Christians simply accept different teachings of the different churches we belong to? 

Problematizing God and Christian Denominations:

A logical rally of the subject brings us to another interesting observation; the paradox that is God. Our God seems to imbibe variety; He embodies a generation of personalities far beyond a lifetime could contain. Indeed He is God and we only infer from His providence, who are we to say our God is good or to say He is bad? He is God after all. Yet in spite of the many intriguing personalities attributed to Him, few paradoxes riddle many a conscience like mine. ‘God is Love’, an abundance of Biblical truth abounds and resonates throughout the Holy Book. I John 4: 8 – 19, Proverbs 8: 17, Deuteronomy 7: 9, Romans 8: 37- 39, Romans 5: 8, John 3: 16, John 13: 34-35, Psalms 136: 26, 86: 15, 136: 2-3, 36: 7 etc. 

If love is indeed so profound of our God so does His anger and jealousy. In the following texts one is but exposited to the opposite of earlier references; verses included here are not exhaustive yet indicative - Exodus 20: 5, Deuteronomy 6: 15, 4: 24, 5:9, 11: 17, Jeremiah 28: 16, Amos 3: 2, Psalms 90: 7, 11, I Corinthians 10: 22 - indeed He is an angry God holding grudges and vengeance down generation upon generation; the violent angry God commands the endless crusades, and the loving gentle God in the body of Christ died to save sinners. These examples are picked as a pretext to further the discussion otherwise attributes of God are numerous and marvelous indeed.

A critical analysis of God must not offend our conscience. God is beyond our time and space; we only fathom that which is laid bare unto us. While it is absolutely a concept to submit unconditionally to His words and commands, one must not barter away the free will and reason to question the subtle nuances of His attributes. Certainly, orthodoxy and blind faith do more harm than mend, hence in our God-inspired-thought, we must behold God and so shall His revelation be blissful in His own time. Having said that let us delve in brief on the complex dialectics of the same ‘loving and wrathful’ God. A paradoxical nature is not uniform, it is not orderly, and lacks nature of unity. Such attributes necessarily conform and encourage confusion and prelect obscured interpretation. 

Perhaps some culture prefers angry God while some others reliant towards a loving God. Christian churches and denominations do not embody uniform religious practices, Christian churches and denomination come from different cultural context, Christian of the same denomination differ according to different geography and culture. The pretext is therefore directed to say that the multifaceted attributes of God necessitate the derivatives of denominations who then concord different pictures of God for their churches. 

However disagreeable, ridiculous and blunt the statement might sound to some readers, the  fact remains that the very existence of liberal-fundamental-conservative and other principle theologies stands as a towering testament justifying the statement in contention. God is debated intensely in Christianity; Catholics-Protestants and varied form of Christians, ensemble the God of the Holy Bible to suit their interpretation while all along claiming their Bible, their doctrine, their mode of service, their way of life, their perspectives, their taste and desire, their existences itself to be the very truth efflorescent from God. 

When every other denomination and church claims to be the one true entity worshiping the one true God – whom do you believe? The problem of the question is further compounded by the fact that most Christians take to the denomination into which he or she is born. That being the case it would be obvious to assume, ‘my denomination is the one true denomination’, and for a stubborn mind the matter rests there. In this context God becomes denominational, God becomes churchly. The demand of this God is conformity to the doctrine of that denomination, the requirement of this God is fulfilling religious rituals accepted and practiced in that church, the command of this God is to adhere strictly to the custom and culture of that church. All these whimsical orthodoxies makes me wonder if God has a denomination. 

It sure will be a delightful revelation to discover God’s denomination – I can only imagine the loss of church members in multiple denominations due to membership transfer to God’s denomination as and when the discovery takes place. The more interesting phenomenon will be on the judgment day, apparently, God pronouncing ‘I am a Baptist’ or for that matter God himself declaring to be Catholic, Adventist etc. – in which case I guess I will timidly ask God to stop kidding and carry on with the judgment.

Naga Christian context:

Naga, as a Christian community, always intrigues me. We occupy a unique position in Christianity’s ‘time and space’ in our own right. ‘Naga Christianity’ is about 150 years old and therefore, interestingly, has witnessed and experienced Christianity through three centuries viz 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st century. Given such privilege by grace and having earned credentials as such, it becomes sensible to ask the present age - Are we liberal or conservative, fundamentalist or progressive? How do we perceive God? How do we interpret the Bible? Has Christianity thoroughly altered our custom-culture-tradition or have we infused our own values into Christianity thereby customized a new variant of Naga Christian experience? Truly we will never have answers to these probing but we may indeed discuss few matters and thoughts of relevancy in this context. 

In so doing one is reminded of Sunday schools and Church sermons that so profoundly affect our Christian conscience and understanding of God. As I understand and experience, in Naga context, God is taught to be compassionate, loving and caring towards the weak, the poor, the helpless and the forlorn. The ideation, in this case, is not invalid but it has a philosophical problem in the practical sense of analyzing the presentation. The problem lies in the construct of complacency, dependency and over-reliance in God; this is not to say one must not exposit thus, but it is a half-baked truth fed to the masses. Bible heroes I found are far and beyond what I understand of weakness, helplessness, and imperfection. God seems to rather pick and choose abled man and woman for His cause.

It should interest us to cite a few texts in reference to my argument. Saul the first king of Israel was not any ordinary helpless man. 1 Samuel 9: 2 (NIV) reads; “Kish had a son named Saul, as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else”. Let us look into David’s account as well; David was the second king of Israel after Saul; 1 Samuel 16:12 reads, “So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features. Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.” Further it is also indicative of God’s preference in Daniel 1: 3-4, “Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility— 4 young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians”. 

Another example is found in Genesis 39: 6-7, it reads, “So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while, his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”  Jacob wrestled with God in Genesis 32: 28, “Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome”. While all these stories reveal God’s working equation, Moses’ story is unmistakably telling. Moses was brought up as a prince, he surely must have had the highest education and privilege of the time; was not Egypt the greatest civilization then? So is it any wonder that God picked Moses to lead his people, why did God not choose some other Israelite of lowly upbringing? 

The above texts and stories are picked to expose the philosophical problem that I have identified earlier in the context of God who is said to care for the needy, the poor, the weak, the feeble and the likes. By now it should be clear to us that we have been taught and brought up to believe only one side of God’s nature. However, it is also understandable that religion is necessarily contextualized in one’s culture. Once upon a time, Nagas being primitive, poor, uneducated and far from modernity, clergies must have resorted to such methodological interpretation of Bible and of God so as to appeal Christianity to the masses. That being understood one cannot but anymore reconcile and accept the same old methodological interpretation still being used dominantly prevailing and unchanged to this day.

Theological teachings must, now, present God in His other true light as per the relevance of time. God picked the abled and the best. Did not God choose the Bible heroes for their capability, their qualities and their air of strong human spirit? But if we indeed argue that it was God who made them the way they were, then we might as well do nothing and wait for God to do everything else. It is about time that our clergies switch to rendering new light on the masses; Nagas are not altogether feeble, weak, poor and helpless anymore. 

As mentioned earlier we as a community has been privileged and gracefully founded in a special ‘time and space’ junction of Christian history and indeed we have thrived in many fronts. Hence the old ways of theological teaching will backfire, it espouses the danger of over complacency. The danger of overdependence disables our will to exercise and realize our true potential. In times like this when striving towards excellence is the maxim – conventional and redundant theology must give way if it is impeding and not encouraging self-reliance and excellence in which evidently our God delight too.

Conclusive Surmisation:

Religion had once taken the backseat in secular research; at best it occupied the periphery of an academic circle. However, in recent times, religion has once again come to occupy the core of academics. ‘Religious studies’ is fast picking up in higher education. Gavin D’ Costa in “Religion in Liberal State” (2013) said this has been made possible by the advent of the internet - a globalizing factor. Internet and social media have given voices to ‘common man and Mavericks’, which form the greater mass of the public. It has been tried to expel religion from public discourse and keep religion in the private realm, hence democratic and secular governments around the world has been acting neutrally towards religion in state and public affairs. 

However, the advent of the internet and social media has empowered the common man, everyone from the world leaders to the least country boy/girl share the same public platform in social media. He said, “Technological manifestation enables real-time awareness of movements and events across the world..it brings about strengthened awareness of diversity which in turn is reflected in politicization as different options for the public and collective expression of religions..”. In other words, the internet has helped religion receive ‘concrete expression in political contestation and even litigation’. It is thus how religion has come to occupy the core of public and private debate through the internet and in the form of politics once again.

Religion directs and dictates our lives, its imposing presence felt even onto the technological realm. No one escapes the clutches of its tentacles – not even the disillusioned or well-convinced atheist. Thus it is folly to perceive religion as outdated. The greatest debates in question are on rights, equality, liberty, justice, freedom, law, values and beliefs, which are all but sanctions of religion. Therefore the need to understand and analyze religion, with the change in time, especially for us to critically probe, dig and search Christianity in a new light; rethinking and looking at Nagas Christianity through an alternative perspective must be necessitated. In recognizing the need this essay has resorted to “devils’ advocacy” thereby readers may in a small measure catch on the fire.

About the author: 
Eknee Khongrei is pursuing a Ph.D. in United States Studies, School of International Studies/ JNU. He may be reached at fcounty@gmail.com
This article was previously published under the same title in “Seihakhon”, a TCFD magazine.

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