Friendship with Humanity

Continuation of Dr. Mathews George Chunakara's address on Friendship with God, Humanity and Nature.

Our friendship with humanity warrants urgent attention in a world where human values and relationships are not observed or adequately respected. As we are immersed in a culture of individualism, commercialism and greed we are being totally alienated from our friends, society and family. We are not bothered to even think of friendship or fraternity. Each human being of the modern era tends to live in isolated islands or in a very limited circle of favourites for personal gains. Such a society is influenced and dominated by opportunists and hypocrites. It is in this context that we need to find the meaning and value of friendship in life in order to be humane.

Humanity's simple meaning is that of "mankind collectively" or the "human race". However, the concept of humanity has different definitions and interpretations. One of those simple definitions is that "the quality of being human; the peculiar nature of man, by which he is distinguished from other beings". The quality of being humane is interpreted again as "the fundamental quality of kind feelings, dispositions, and sympathies of man; especially, a disposition to relieve persons in distress, and to treat all creatures with kindness and tenderness". This quality is very significant in terms of human relations. When we say "friendship with humanity", it re-emphasizes the significance, reminding us of the quality to be humane. In other words, it re-emphasizes friendship with all human beings. In this sense friendship has wider meaning which requires commitment. This is what is expressed in French tradition that l'humanité oblige - humanity obliges.

The contemporary world witnesses a phenomenon that the world grows steadily closer and "smaller", but the world keeps aloofness or compartmentalization, hence it looses a humane touch and creates a distance. Arnold Toynbee once described the salient feature of the modern era as that of "annihilating distance." Today the advanced communication technologies help this process, making it possible to connect instantaneously with the entire world. The world is more tightly connected today than ever before. New opportunities emerged in the globalisation era providing new ways and means for the integration of capital, investments, technology and information across the national borders or boundaries making the world shorter, faster and more efficient. However, the distance and widening gap within humanity, pose major threats in our modern times. In this context, Daisaku Ikeda, a Japanese Buddhist philosopher and peace activist observes, "despite the achievements of the increased connectedness of communication, the twentieth century has seen the unprecedented slaughter of humanity by humanity." In other words, the spiritual distance between human beings, far from being "annihilated," has hardly been reduced at all. Humanity has not responded to the new realities. Humanity is at an impasse. In a world of astonishingly rapid change, what we lack is to develop the new ways of living, new ways of thinking and new ways of relating to one another meaningfully".

God reveals himself as a communion of life and love with humanity. The progressive relation of the Trinity in the New Testament coincides with God's self communication to humanity. The father makes a radical gift of himself through the incarnation of his eternal Son, who shares the human condition even to the point of death, in order to offer to humanity resurrection and eternal life (John 3:16). This intimate relationship deepens our friendship and takes us to a new realm where we feel the comfort, security and sanctuary of a new humanity. This new humanity is not ego-centred, but rather, it is rooted in God's ultimate concern for all His creation. This what the late Metropolitan Dr. Paulose Mar Gregarious articulated, "in the Biblical, Patristic Christian understanding, the image of God does not relate primarily to the individual person but relates to the whole of humanity". He further explains that: "the 'Pleroma', the fullness of humanity which is the image of God, is not the single Individual, not a single nation, not the church, not a few individual Christians. These Are not the image of God. The image of God is humanity in its entirety throughout space and time, throughout history. That is the 'pleroma' of God. That is the fullness of God. This is the medium through which God's glory is to be manifested, and the function of the Church is ancillary to the manifestation of the glory of God in the whole of humanity. If the church forgets this vocation in relation to the whole of humanity, the Church betrays itself. Its function is to serve so that the whole of humanity becomes the expression, the manifestation of the
fullness of God, of Jesus Christ".

The image of God in humanity is seen in terms of human self discipline, justice, freedom and above all love. The beauty of this love, according to Metropolitan Gregorios, is that "when man wears the purple of virtue and the crown of justice, he becomes a living image of the king of kings, of God himself. The beauty of God is the beauty of joy, of beatitude, of blessedness. God is love, and when love is absent in man, his image disappears".

As we believe that God dwells among the suffering people, this faith affirms the biblical witness and faith in Christ. Christ the Immanuel - God with the people (Mathew 1:23). God's mission is manifested and revealed in the Christ who identified himself with the suffering of the marginalised. Christ identified and shared his life and destiny with the suffering humanity of his time. He became a slave to be friends with this humanity – the crowd, the sick, the lepers, the sinners, the poor, oppressed, and the imprisoned. He shared their joy and sorrow. He expressed solidarity with the suffering of humanity and this is manifested when he identified with the hungry, the thirsty and the imprisoned (Mathew 25:31-46).This expression of the solidarity of Jesus was his choice according to the will of the one who sent to him to this world. Samuel Rayan, a prominent Roman Catholic Jesuit theologian describes the Christ who opted to be with those who were suffering and the humble presence of God in Jesus and in history that: "from Jordan days Jesus knew that God was present in the world not in the splendour and pomp of kings and courts but in his own simple lowly person, and would continue to be present on earth in the humble persons of his disciples, and would move among the wretched earth… In history God is small, hidden, almost wretched, contradicted, threatened, defenceless, and silent and yet present, unforgettable and active in the power of his weakness"5. South Korean Minjung theologian Kim Yong Bock describes this as the supreme Christology, in which the Christ and the suffering people are indistinguishable. "Christ is everywhere. Christ does not appear with Christological titles, special ecclesial status, or metaphysical justification. The presence of Christ is discerned where he is in solidarity with the suffering people. This is the supreme Christological mystery, abundantly transparent, but utterly unbelievable to the oppressor and the rich".6 Christ the suffering servant who is pre-eminently struggled against powers and principalities and the power of death created a new history for the entire humanity. The friendship he developed for humanity was based on the foundation of servant-hood. This servant-hood ultimately conveyed a message of transforming and redefining the concept of power and authority. In other words, he opened new frontiers of friendship and showed the way of true friendship with humanity in its entirety.

When we talk about friendship with the whole of humanity, the most pertinent aspect we need to think about is our friendship with our neighbours. A major problem Indian churches and Indian Christians face ever since the missionary era has been their relations with neighbours. Although the small Christian community has existed in the Indian sub continent since the first century A.D, the image of Christianity in this part of the world was associated with Western dominance and colonialism which portrays an image of Christianity with an alien culture. This is what Sardar K.M. Panicker, noted Indian historian and diplomat, observed: "the missionary brought with him an attitude of moral superiority and a belief in his own exclusive righteousness".7 This exclusive 'righteousness mentality' resulted in more alienation from our neighbours and communities. Panicker's comments that "Christian missionary work with aggressive imperialism introduced political complications" and "the wide variety of Christian sects, each proclaiming the errors of others, handicapped missionary work" are valid reasons still relevant for us to reflect on our lost friendship with neighbours and communities.

When V.S. Azariah made a call in 1910 to the missionaries and mission societies from the West at the Edinburgh Conference to "give us friends", he also recognised the fact that four-fifths of Indian people live in villages. He argued that for the Church to be an indigenous one it must be a rural Church, friendly with its people. As he realized the need for more friendliness in the mission fields he was critical of the missionaries' teachings, which had been mission centred, but not human need centred, and this was the reason that he pleaded with missionaries to build up a church with an Indian face instead of a Church in India with a Western face and culture. Much of the Christian outreach in his working area was among the "outcast people". Gradually as Christianity spread amongst the villages, the social situation began to change, the "Christian outcasts" gaining a new self-respect as they realised their worth in the eyes of God. While young Azraiah's call at the Edinburgh Conference was challenging the missionary culture, he also believed that division should give way to unity and he believed that the will of God, calls for a wider unity based on the principle 'that we may all be one'. Addressing the Lambeth Conference in 1930, he pleaded: "In India we wonder if you have sufficiently contemplated the grievous sin of perpetuating your divisions and denominational bitterness in these your daughter churches. We want you to take us seriously when we say that the problem of union is one of life and death. Do not, we plead with you, do not give us your aid to keep us separate, but lead us to union so that you and we may go forward together and fulfil the prayer, 'That we may all be one."

Today, a century after the Edinburgh Conference, we face similar situations of division and hatred and our countries continue to be the battle fields of missionaries from the West and the East, mostly from South Korea. The competition and missionary rivalries along with foreign aid and other attractive offers for buildings, scholarships, and other financial support destroy the spirit of genuine friendship and our long nurtured culture of harmony and respect of plurality. Some of the churches from economically affluent Asian countries engaged in mission and evangelism are responsible for creating such disharmony today in Asia. Their financial aid and material assistance create more divisions and disharmony as they follow the same missionary pattern followed in the 19th century.

It is in this context that the call of the Indian Christian youth, 'Let's be friends' needs to be interpreted in a more relevant way. You cannot treat a friend as an alien and in that case your friend should be one who understands you better and closer to you in your own community and society. The problems we faced a century ago were that we could not make friends as we could not even understand our neighbours. The problem we face today resembles that which we experienced a century ago. We tend to live in a compartmentalized society and culture. We are more eager to make friends thousands of miles away from our native lands, homes and our own cultures as we prefer to develop our friendships based on our belief, our dogmas and our denominational affiliations. We tend to think that it is easy to keep our friendships with people of same faith and same denominations who live miles and miles away from us and our country. This is happening mainly because of the fact that our mission and missiology rooted in a western missiological concept and frame-work that imposes certain limitations to understanding the need for a genuine friendship with humanity in the situation and culture where we live and deal with our day today life. More than a century ago, Keshub Chunder Sen (1838-1884) commented about this kind of mentality. His very candid statement helped many Indian Christians to reflect upon and open their eyes to understanding the realities. He commented: "It seems that the Christ that has come to us is an Englishman, with English manners and customs about him and with the temper and spirit of an Englishman in him…Is not Christ's native land nearer to India than England? Are not Jesus and his apostles and immediate followers more akin to Indian nationality than Englishmen? Why should we, then, travel to a distant country like England in order to gather truths which are to be found much nearer to our homes?"8 Keshab Chandra Sen raised these questions to the Indian Christians in the 19th century. R. S. Sugirtharajah, a Sri Lankan theologian who lives in the West for decades observes "when Jesus made his belated second visit during the Western missionary work in eastern part of Asia, he did not come as a Galilean sage showing solidarity with its seers and wisdom teachers. Rather he came as an alien in his own home territory, and more tellingly, as a clannish god of the parangis (a term used by the Indians during the days of the empire to describe the foreigners) sanctioning the subjugation of the people of Asia and their cultures. He was projected and paraded as the totem symbol of the privileged and the powerful."9 As Jesus was introduced with this kind of an image, his followers quite often forced to live in isolation and alienation rather than making friends in their own community.

This trend of self imposed alienation was articulated more explicitly by Fr. Felix Wilfred, a Roman Catholic theologian in India who says, "Christian mission today in Asia is in 'a cul-de-sac' " (a situation in which no progress is impossible). He argues that it is bound to remain in this predicament unless it opens itself up to the world of its neighbours and emphatically understands their genuine difficulties. When we come forward with our call 'let's be friends', we need to pursue the question why our neighbours have difficulty in understanding us and our mission. Fr. Wilfred analyses this problem when he says that "the problems experienced by our neighbours in understanding Christian mission should be placed in proper perspective. First of all we need to realize that people do not act simply on the basis of "unadulterated" truths. Any such presupposition is quite naïve. People act on the basis of their perceptions, which means that the Christian community needs to take note of how it comes across to its neighbours, and what impressions and repercussions its activities create.