Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: (Isaiah 1:18)

Dear Christian friends,
Greetings. I am inviting to you to be part of this online dialogue. Few of my friends have been discussing many theological, moral, social and missional issues for a while and I thought it might be better to open up this forum to many others who might be interested in similar discussion. If you are not interested in joining this forum I understand please discard my email. But if you are then lets sharing our views. In order to generate some dialogue I have posted some past discussions. By the way, I know there needs a lot to be done. I am sure you do note some grammatical and other errors on title page, I’ve just started to work this morning and I am sure in the days to come we will make it much better. Please do invite your friends also to part of this online forum. Feel free to ask questions. Lets remember that we want to keep this as real family and religious place to talk so keep it clean. Again, lets be open to share our lives, views and even prayer requests.
Thanking you in advance.
Rajiv Pathik

Plesae help me.

Recently in Orissa numbers of Christians are killed….their houses burnt….churches attacked etc….. in Manglore 14 churches were attacked…. And all these times where were the Police or the Administration???

Today when in Manglore Christians gathered to protest peacefully we hear that the Police is beating them!!!

I do not understand what my country authorities and police tries to communicate to me??? Does it says Christians give up your peaceful way and you too come up with violence replies….!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you please try to explain me what my country is trying to communicate to me????

I am in Gujarat and till now I didnt have to experience what my fellow brothers and sisters have experienced but than I dont want to seat and wait till this behavior reaches to my doorsetp.

I will be obliged to receive your view….

Thank you very much….

Wilson Jacob

Right of Conversion – A Psychological Perspective

As Sociology provides us insight on the development of society, Psychology provides us insight on the development of an individual.

The fist institute of a child is his family. Either a child goes through religious or sacred rituals or a child in atheist family doesn’t go through religious or sacred rituals but family remains as child’s first institute.

Human development psychological theories (I am deliberately not quoting the titles here) tell us that there are different developmental stages of human life. But in context to our discussion I would divide an individual in only two developmental stages.

First stage wherein an individual mostly receives and acts upon the do’s and don’t he has been told and

Second stage wherein an individual not only receives but starts responding intellectually and analytically to reach to a conclusion either to follow it or not? These process mostly confines individual’s respond to various beliefs, value system, religious traditions etc.

Looking at our individual life too we know that with due respect to our parents we too do not follow religiously what we were told or taught in our childhood.

In Sakshi group forum we have discussed ‘Child Baptism’ and I am of opinion that even if we remove ‘Child Baptism’ and still from the Biblical point of view many Christian families fall in questionable zone regarding the teaching and practice they pass on to their children. And the fact is no one on earth can stop this chain where family as the primary institute of an individual keeps on passing certain beliefs, values and religious traditions.

So when we discuss about ‘right of an individual be it be conversion or anything else’ I would say we discuss about an individual who has legal status to choose anything he likes be it be a religion or something else.

Thank you,

Wilson Jacob

Christian Witness

Many of you must have seen the movie named "The Mission'. The movie narrates a situation where Christian community is facing a threat by army. As the movie reaches to its climax the Christians get divided in two groups...one group decides to accept death peacefully while another group decides to take up weapons!

Most of us undoubtedly will disagree with Christians who took up weapons. It’s similar to our disagreement to what Adam and Eve did in Eden Garden (oh! you know if I would have been there I wouldn't have behaved like this...kind of approach). As Paul confesses in Romans 7 we all have power to wish good and we all wish for same level of ideal to exist in reality. But there is always gap between ideal and real since the time of Eden Garden and therefore we know that God had to incarnate as Christ. Furthermore we also know that even being believer of Christ our complete perfection will only come when we will be with our Lord and master.

Some years back in Nadiad the graveyard that Christians use was taken by the slum dwellers. For the church spirituals this was not an important issue since thousands of souls perishing everyday. Therefore church spirituals remained busy in praying. After a long time some Christian youth took weapons in their hands and attacked on those slum dwellers to gain back the total control of graveyard. So the full control of graveyard was gained and right away a dead body arrived too for burial which was the dead body of Christian testimony! Now could there have been any better way to solve this matter? Answer is ‘Yes, Of course…’ if we the spirituals would have marched out to get it back in Christian way along with spending time in prayer at church.

Just imagine for a minute the following and answer in your heart honestly: If your spouse or children are beaten up in front of your eyes or kidnapped than what will be your response? Will you kneel down and pray? Will you bless those who might be doing this? Well frankly speaking it’s a tough question to answer. If it is so for we the believers than what could be the response of nominal Christians?

To voice out for our brothers and sister in Orissa or in Karnataka is to keep burning the flame of non-violence. We the spirituals if keep quite at this juncture than who knows we may have to come forward to lift the dead body of Christian testimony.

In my previous e-mail “What a way to witness” I had pointed out that persecution is an opportunity for presenting gospel to millions around us. Let’s we the spirituals come forward with right defense against persecution because we doing it will help Christian witness to spread quite effectively. We had just seen it on last Saturday NDTV program. Haven’t we?

Wilson Jacob