On May 30, 2014 Reuters reported
the arrest of the owner and the manager of an underprivileged children’s
boarding school in India because “five
minors said they were raped, forced to watch pornographic films and act them
out with one another…The children were made to eat faeces as a punishment if
they did not comply.”1 Who in the right mind can construct a
deed so evil to destroy lives rather irreparably?
To force porn
on children, to act them out with each other, and to rape them is horrendous
evil. But to force the children to eat faeces (excreta) when they failed to
comply with the evil demands is ridiculously horrendous. What kind of a mind is
so evil?
Ravi
Zacharias speaks about “Snake Alley,”2 where men consume a
combination of snake’s blood and alcohol and then molest children for their
sexual pleasure. The youngest child rescued from this abuse was merely 11
months old.
What kind
of a mind practices and allows this horrendous evil to be practiced? The “snake
alley” exists in reality. Had the authorities cracked down on this practice, it
would not have continued. Who in their right mind allows such a practice to
continue?
The life of
GG Allin, an American punk-rock singer and best known for his evil and appallingly
nauseating practices may offer us a clue to the answers we are seeking. A peep
into his thoughts uttered on the shows of Jerry Springer and Jane Whitney
revealed his inherent anger that generated a non-conformist attitude.3
Wikipedia reports that he had a very troubled childhood under an abusive
father.4 Therefore the nurture of an individual does seem to play a
vital role in his making.
Fundamentally,
can those who directly and indirectly force children into horrendously evil
practices, and those such as GG Allin, be godly or can they call themselves as
god fearing? I do not think so. (GG Allin was a self-proclaimed messiah!)
Those who
identify themselves as godly or god fearing cannot persist in doing
horrendously evil deeds.
From
Christianity’s vantage point, man is not saved because of good works, but by the
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who the man unconditionally believes, loves,
obeys and glorifies in and through his life. Therefore, those who believe in
the Lord Jesus will not and cannot be a part of horrendously evil deeds.
Those who
identify themselves as genuine Christians would not rape, torture children with
porn or force them to eat faeces. Genuine Christians would not appreciate GG
Allin or follow him, let alone do what he did.
I am not
saying that genuine Christians would be sinless. The Bible says that all are
sinners. But the Bible also says that genuine Christians would not continue
sinning – especially the horrendous sins.
Genuine
Christians will sincerely detest sins and will earnestly pray to be delivered
from their sinful ways. By the grace of God, genuine Christians would gradually
overcome their sins.
For the
sake of convenience and clarity but certainly not to import any theological nuance
let me organize sins into two broad categories. The two categories would be
based on the premise that human life is sacred (Cf. Genesis 1: 26, 9: 6). Thus
the two categories of sins could be:
(1) Sins
that directly desacralize (destroy life’s sacredness) another human life (e.g. rape,
murder, and other tortures etc.).
(2) Sins
that do not directly desacralize another human life (selfish ambition,
dissensions, factions and envy etc).5
Although a
Christian may continue blindly in the sin of selfish ambition (a sin that does
not directly desacralize another life), he cannot and would not continue
blindly in the sin of rape or child molestation because these sins directly destroy
another human life.
Desacralization
of a life is only possible when love is violated. Love of God and fellow
neighbor is the core mandate of Christianity. Therefore, those who repeatedly murder,
rape and force others into nauseatingly dreadful acts cannot be godly. They
cannot identify themselves as god-fearing. They are a godless breed.
It’s the
absence of God in the person’s life that motivates him into desacralizing, sinful
and appalling deeds. The persistent serial killers and serial rapists may
possess a name that identifies them with a religion, but it’s only the name
that is religious, not the person.
Nevertheless,
it’s the intent of a few to label those committing horrendous crimes as
Christians. The malicious intent is to tarnish and ridicule Christianity.
For
instance, some label Adolf Hitler as a Christian. The evil deed of Hitler to murder
six million Jews that included one million Jewish children and two million
Jewish women is so horrendous that he simply could not have been a Christian.
Even if he had been a Christian, he would have been a namesake Christian and
not a practicing or a Christ-loving Christian.
The Jews
were not aggressive with Hitler. Given this fact, Hitler had no genuine reason
whatsoever to murder the infants, the aged, the women, and even the men.
But Hitler
committed that methodical genocide since he considered the Jews to be an
economic burden to Germany. Wikipedia quotes German historian Eberhard Jäckel who
recorded that “in 1986 that one
distinctive feature of the Holocaust was that: never before had a state with
the authority of its responsible leader decided and announced that a specific
human group, including its aged, its women and its children and infants, would
be killed as quickly as possible, and then carried through this resolution
using every possible means of state power.”6
Because
Hitler showed no love towards the Jews and because he massacred them, it would
be very reasonable to state that Hitler was not a Christian. If he had been
one, he would not have killed them.
Therefore,
the logical progression of this argument would be as follows:
(A) To love
a person is not to kill him.
(B) Christianity
mandates its believers to love God and fellow neighbor, and teaches not to murder.
(C) Hitler
did not love the Jewish race. He murdered millions of Jews.
(D) Hence,
Hitler was not a Christian.
From
another perspective, even if a person claims to be a Christian and continues to
kill and rape, a proper understanding of the Bible does not permit a deliberation
that God would allow this person into an eternal cohabitation with HIM. This
person would not have been a Christian to begin with.
At the cost
of repetition, the most basic attribute of a Christian is to love his neighbor
as he loves himself. Therefore, murder, rape and other desacralizing tortures
are surely out of question in a Christian life. When a Christian grossly
violates this mandate, there simply is no reason to believe his
Christianity.
Such a
person cannot even believe in any god for that matter. He most surely ought to
be godless.
But that
lands us in another difficult predicament. Are all godless people ruthless
tyrants? There are very good people even among the godless. These are those who
are very kind, loving, and charitable. So, not all godless people are ruthless
tyrants.
I will conclude
by saying that those who desacralize fellow human beings ought to be godless
and downright depraved in their mind – to the extent of being demonic. The demonic
depravity of a human mind generates an absolute blindness upon life’s
sacredness of a fellow human being.
When one
does not recognize the life’s sacredness of another, he would most surely inflict
any harm upon that life for self-gratifying carnal pleasures. Therefore, only a
godless, depraved and a demonic human can perform horrendously evil deeds.
P.S: When we argue that a Christian cannot perform dastardly
deeds such as murder and rape, one can retort through an argument that the God
of the Bible is a moral monster who killed many. That the God of the Bible is
not a moral monster has been reasonably and most adequately established. My thoughts on this subject will be shared at
a later time.
Endnotes:
1 http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/30/us-india-abuse-idINKBN0EA0DZ20140530
2http://books.google.co.in/books?id=JrbtwyFBTe0C&pg=PT46&lpg=PT46&dq=snake+alley+ravi+zacharias&source=bl&ots=LBKuO8BgYf&sig=MXvLOfAIjrnZgQi28m_Of0GdDRI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TrSJU5_PIYujugTCk4DABQ&sqi=2&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=snake%20alley%20ravi%20zacharias&f=false
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OzPfYcpe8c & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2LvZd_9aMU
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GG_Allin
5 Sins such as selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions and
envy need not necessarily desacralize another human life directly. For
instance, selfish ambition yields inordinate and greedy accumulation of
property or power but not a destruction of another life.
6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
No comments:
Post a Comment