Wholesale dealers of ‘Good News’ and ‘Holy Spirits’

Christians issue rule book for spreading faith.

Just a couple of days  ago there was a news item that major Christian churches including the Vatican had launched a rule book for spreading their faith. Being a rule book it naturally gives rules and directions to govern the ‘missionaries’ and those who must spread their faith. Christians should “conduct themselves with integrity, charity, compassion and humility, and overcome all arrogance, condescension and disparagement” with regard to other religions.
The new code says that conversion ‘is the work of the Holy Spirit’. The rule book calls upon all governments “to ensure that freedom of religion is properly and comprehensively respected, recognizing that in many countries religious institutions and persons are inhibited from exercising their mission”.
 
The rule book was released at Geneva -the headquarters of the World Council of Churches (WCC) a representative of Vatican and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA)

The crux of the issue is mainly three-fold:

One the right to proselytize because conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. The second that governments of the world must make it possible by seeing that all persons involved in such proselytization is not hindered, inhibited and prohibited.Towards that all barriers must be removed. The third is directed to the proselytizers-that they are the channels of the Holy Spirit and must observe that decorum!which means they must not conduct themselves with integrity, charity, compassion, and humility, and overcome all arrogance, condescension and disparagement with regard to other religions.
 
The contradictions in this rule book are obvious.

The churches interpret the gospel(s) in their own vested interest perspective. What suits them they take and the rest they discard. A general view is the churches be it the Vatican ,WCC and the WEA are all ridden with money-loaded so to say. Even in a country like India the Catholic Church is the second largest land /asset owner after the Government of India. It seems that God(s) and god men cannot function in the Holy Spirit work without loads of money. There seem to be a close nexus between wealth and god. Yet this is against the spirit and the dictates of the Bibles.The whole thrust of the Bible is Justice and the essence is caught in the quintessence of the Sermon on the Mount
 
The Christians I think suffer from split personality.

For what they say is not what they live and do. We have an example of ‘renunciation’ of Mrs Sonia Gandhi.One would think that renunciation would mean discarding of all power.On the other hand it meant that she accrued all power and became the dual power centre.
Similarly the Gospels-stress on poverty but we find all the churches amassing wealth and assets pronouncing the work of the Holy Spirit making all to believe that they alone have the Good News-If this is not condescension and arrogance then what is it? So one should read the rule book with some understandings of the vocabulary of the Christian churches and their import
 
To come back to the three-fold:-

The command to convert is based on the command ‘Go and preach ye to all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the H.Spirit‘. This is literarily taken while the other commands are conveniently overlooked. Or some other interpretation is given. It simply means the sharing of the Good News-the spread of the ‘Good News’ Does not mean conversion but bread to the hungry ,shelter to the homeless, comfort to those who mourn and weep etc. That’s the Good News. It means sharing what one has. This has been envisaged in the Sermon on the Mount. By no stretch of one’s imagination does the Good News mean conversion. Does this mean that other religions have bad news! This also preconditions that ‘we’-meaning the Christians alone have the Good News. This is nothing but sheer arrogance. This is condescension and disparagement-Precisely what the rule book requests the Christians to avoid.
 
So it nullifies the conduct given to Christians to conduct themselves with integrity, charity, compassion and humility and to overcome all arrogance. Because conversion is based on dehumanizing the convert, on arrogance because the proselytizer thinks that he alone has the Good News. The missionary has what others do not have that is the best for the ‘other hence convert. The Christians must then think that the Good News is bundled up and kept in Geneva at the WCC and at Vatican and a small part of it in the World Evangelical Alliance. From these three directions the Good News will flow down to the missions and the missionaries-here the proselytizers would dole it out to the converts and this is called ‘sharing’ the Good News.In simple terms this is conversion.

Of course in the mechanism incidentally, there will be a plate rice, a loaf of bread, shelter for the homeless –employment but with a price- convert. This we are told is the work of the H.Spirit, hence there is a premium- a price. Respect for the other, belief that the H.Spirit was and is always at work-He blows where He wills to. That Christianity is only 2000 years old and the H.Spirit was in this ancient land from time immemorial. That in all religions the beginning and the end –the alpha and the omega-the endless-the seamless the omnipresence-that’s the H.Spirit. This calls for humility, the acknowledgement that you do not have the whole truth-that Truth and the Good News need to be a continuous search-that conversion is not a change from one religion to the other-from one name to another but is a constant struggle to encompass the Truth. We need to acknowledge that others have enlightenment and the H.Spirit is not the monopoly of the WCC, Vatican and the WEA to be dispatched through the missionaries. That in each human person the Spirit is present. It cannot be imported from any headquarters. This calls for compassion, humility respect and charity. To have these will automatically, theologically and naturally demolish the very concept of conversion. I would appeal to the churches not to make the Holy Spirit a paid foot soldier of theirs.
 
Why minimize the strength of the H.Spirit and request the governments-most of them corrupt to the core to abet the H.Spirit in His work. This is blasphemy. To try and invoke the corrupt governments and seek their co-operation in the working of the Holy Spirit shows to what low level the churches have fallen. Nothing short of mercenaries. The nexus with the corrupt governments and the H.Spirit cannot be even visualized. The Good News sharing or in other words conversion is the work of the H.Spirit the new code book stresses. Is the H.Spirit held on a leash? He needs the missionaries to do His work. But then where was this Holy Sprit before Jesus came before the WCC and Vatican and the WEA sprung forth?
 
Does the Holy Spirit have no freedom and no power hence the governments of the world must be called upon to ensure that freedom of religion is properly and comprehensively respected and recognized? This is a deliberate mix of secular and religion making the cauldron of communalism and a new form of terrorism unleashed in the name of conversion-proseltyization from the headquarters of Geneva , Vatican and the World Evangelical Alliance.