Persecuted Christians helping the poor
28 August 2008 - 28 אב 5768 by Huw
ITH Prayers ascending for the persecuted Christians of India, this article made me so honoured to be a Christian:
Indian archbishop says extremists persecute Christians for helping the poor. Christians are violating the taboo against helping the poor, the untouchables, the lower classes and “are persecuted above all because of [their] social efforts to help the poor.”
Sadly, not all Christians feel this way - some “upper class” Christians refuse to have anything to do with the lower classes.
The Archbishop says that extremists are “using a pseudo-religious pretext for matters of a political nature.” I’d say the Archbishop is wrong.
The Hindus are getting exactly the religious nature of the Christian revolution. The spiritual teaching of Christianity is exactly that those “untouchables” are God. This is exactly what Hindu “extremists” and upper class members of other religions don’t want to be told. Those untouchables are evil people paying off their karmic debts. You Christians are challenging some of the deepest held beliefs of another religion.
BRAVO!
That’s just why we got killed in Rome, too.
Update, however, in a proof that they just don’t get it, the Bishop’s Conference of India wants the church to “hold protest rallies” and even close down schoosl for the day.
Yup. That’s the way they did it in the old days. St Ignatius the Placard Bearer and St Polycarp the Whiner. Which part of “turn the other cheek” and “forgive 70 times seven” did we miss in Catechism?
Which part of the reports did you not read? When the children and women and a paralysed man were killed in the violence, which kind of leader of which kind of community will say “turn the other cheek”? Because it was not your cheek that was slapped. if it were, you would have the choice to say this. What would Jesus have done if he saw women violated and children and the disabled terrorised?
I too am an Indian, a woman and a committed Christian too. Please do not make insensitive comments about helpess and hopelessly overwhelmed groups of beleaguered Indians being persecuted for thier faith for years, because their so-called leaders have only been turning thier cheek and/or building thier own empires instead of working out what it takes to further the citizenship rights of the tiny christian minority in India.
Cynthia Stephen
Hi Cynthia and thank you for comments. I’m not making comments about the helpless people being overcome: and I pray they will continue to be be overcome, to live in the world as Jesus did in service to the poor even to their own deaths. As I noted in my original post (before the “update” section) I think it’s wonderful that the Church there has done so much in service and that for that service they are being persecuted as Christians have always been. That’s what is *supposed* to be happening.
I’m making the comments about the leaders - who seem in this latest action to be just more “building thier own empires”. Jesus didn’t do a thing about “citizenship rights”. That’s where we loose touch with his teaching. We’re not supposed to be asking the Gov’ts of this world for such things.