A Human's Struggle to stay Human

Christianity was born when a carpenter showed the nerve to challenge the then status quo by transcending the boundaries which hindered the human – human relations thereby human – God relation. He set forth with his chisel and hammer to shape the world which had been deformed by the sinfulness of the people. It was an attempt to make people encounter the truth which would eventually set them free and make their worship more profound. But then since the nature to be enslaved to someone or something was innate in us we crucified him and started venerating the cross. The beautiful Jesus movement lost its beauty and fragrance when it was relegated into a religion which brought along with it dogmas, doctrines, laws, structure, hierarchy and so on and so forth. Steve Weinberg claims, “There are only two kinds of people; good and bad. While without religion good people would do good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things.” We are all a

In a nation like India where anything could easily be relegated to taboos there even disability cannot evade the stereotypical apprehensions. We might sound accommodating when we resort to the use of euphemisms like ‘differently abled’, ‘special child’ etc. but that is not true. Nancy Eiesland, pioneer of the Theology of Disability opines; Euphemisms for persons with disabilities have abounded in recent years, including ‘differently abled’……These people maintain that Euphemisms deny the fact that disabilities do exist and reinforce the idea that disabilities must be camouflaged to make them acceptable for public.[i] Our tendency to sanitize disability through euphemisms itself is the clarion call that there is absolutely no space in this world for something which is not ‘normal’. The ‘abled’ are engaged in the imprudence of making the disabled feel accommodative reprimanding the fact that the disabled are already an integral part of the diversity of God’s creation. It is n

The world has become precariously chaotic. It is easy to be wafted by this chaos but to creatively confront it a deliberate seclusion is necessary to return with deeper conviction and greater impetus. Solitude is the refusal to succumb to the incognizance of the world. Momentum demands withdrawal; a withdrawal which is ephemeral. We withdraw not because we fear but to never fear again. Solitude is such a withdrawal with a noble motive to know ourselves deeper; to know our fragility, strength, weakness, vulnerability, fear, emotional stability etc. Solitude is a battle with the self to realize our basic being. It is in solitude that the true nature of a person springs. As a deacon I would further say that a cleric is neither known through his Liturgy nor his speeches but through his casual conversations and in his solitude. My constant prayer is “God may the vestments adorn my heart; not my body.” People naively think that solitude and loneliness are the same which is false.

Incarnation was an attempt of God to rekindle the extinguished embers of divinity in human hearts. An initiative to wake humans from their slumber and to make them realize that a full human is akin to God. Christ is the saturation of humanity. This reminds me of St. Athanasius the Great, the pillar of orthodoxy who profoundly remarked “God became man so that man might become God”. This principle is known as ‘theosis’ and is the kernel of Orthodox Theology. I now invite your attention to Genesis 33:10 where Jacob says to his brother Esau “For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God since you have received me with such great favour.” What supernaturalism did Esau do to have been bestowed by such attestation? Nothing. He just forgave. So do remember when we forgive our face resembles the face of God. Forgiveness is one such divine attribute among many which lay indolent in the abyss of human ignorance. The Lord’s Prayer puts forth before us just one condition. In