CONFESSIONS OF A PERPLEXED CHRISTIAN

ONE OF MY PERPLEXITIES

I know it is unwise to state the following. But the truth must be admitted in the hope that it might do some good to someone, somewhere.

I was deeply troubled for a long time about the key biblical idea of all of humankind sinning through Adam. Or, the consequences of what happened in the Garden of Eden continuing to burden and blight humanity. Why should I suffer for what Adam, with whom I had really nothing to do, did a long, very long time ago?

Let me state the nature of this unease....

Suppose I do a crime. I must be punished. But, is it just that my children and grandchildren, who had nothing to with what I did, continue to be punished?

In legal terms, not at all. The law recognizes and punishes only the offender. None else is culpable or answerable.

But, not so in the eye of the society. The children of a murderer are always seen through coloured glasses of what their father did. They carry the stain for the rest of their lives.

So, there is an ambivalence about this situation. Those related to the criminal are, but also aren't, under the shadow of his offence. How exactly this affects them is a matter of wide amplitude. But it does affect them, knowingly and unknowingly.

Is this fair? Not, on the face of it. But that is how it works.

Here is a personal experience-

My daughter was terribly and destructively affected by the malignant propaganda against me during my tenure as the principal of St Stephen's College.

She knew that there wasn't an iota of truth in the scores of controversies and allegations fabricated against me, almost on a daily basis. So much so she wrote to me from CMC Ludhiana, 'I am proud to call a man such as you my father.'

But, when it came to attending her MBBS graduation ceremony, she opted out of it. She felt crushed under the accumulated burden of a protracted vilification campaign against her father. She felt utterly degraded to an extent I never did.

Here suffering was deeper than mine. She was torn between the subjective awareness that I was paying the price for being upright and unobliging to the socio-economic elite, and the objective fact of my being vilified through a widely shared, nationally publicized, campaign against me.

She reached a point at which the public lie overpowered the private truth.

Most people remain indifferent to the destructive power of this process just because they have no personal experience of it. As Jesus said,'They know not...'.

Let us assume that I was guilty of everything alleged against me. But, surely, my daughter was innocent. Utterly, impeccably innocent. But she suffered on account of being my daughter, all the same. And she suffered more acutely than I did.

It is like being in the boxing ring, with your dear ones watching you. Your hands are tied behind you. You are being punched. You are bleeding from your face. Your body is contorted with pain. But, at that time, your awareness of your suffering is only a fraction of the suffering that your mother, wife, son or daughter would feel at the ring-side.

Perhaps, that's the reality the doctrine of the Original Sin tries to intuit.

Also, something more. Something psychological.

Your children are exposed to imbibing and imitating the patterns you live. They internalize your experiences. What is internalized influences how a person understands and acts. So, what you do may recur and repeat itself through the generations that follow.

This, though real, is still unfair and unjust. That is why there is a need to break this logic. It cannot be done by any human agent for the reason that all are in the same plight. Someone outside of its bracket has to intervene.

Whether or not there is anything beyond-the-human is a matter of faith, not of proof. If you believe that there is none, then the idea of Original Sin becomes repugnant.

Ironically, the idea of Original Sin is an aspect of the reality of God. The most compelling proof for the existence of God is that we are sinners. That is the painful and healing paradox of the human condition. I know this is hard to accept. But there it is.....

So, do I believe in the Original Sin? Yes, I do. But not in a simplistic way. I believe in it as constituting the logic for my right to redemption here and now. I can accept the idea of the Original Sin only in the light of the life and mission of Jesus Christ. The proof is not that I am a sinner; but that there is a Redeemer.

Who, except a sinner, needs a Redeemer?

Jesus is God's response to the logic of the human condition. This is the most important truth, in my opinion, about the person and mission of Jesus.

If what I have said above is acceptable, you will agree that nothing that does not manifest itself here in our present life will be real in the world to come. The world already come is the only basis for believing that there is a world to come. Just as, in Jesus's teaching, life in its fullness is the proof that there is immortal life. How can there be immortal life, but for life itself.

For anyone to say, therefore, that he or she is waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus, without taking his First Coming seriously, is a lie pure and simple. No one is waiting for the Second Coming.

The Second Coming is a matter of belief. Life is a matter of faith. Religion banks on belief, not faith. The more religious you are, the less you have to do with faith. Hence Jesus's question, 'Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth, when he returns?'

It is the epidemic of faithlessness, a religiosity that has no margin for faith, that is evident everywhere.

That explains the pathetic plight in which the Christian community is both in India and all over the world.

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