TRUTH HURTS THE GUILTY

I've heard of a saying that if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one who yelps is the one who it hit. This is true of people. Stating truth hurts the ones guilty of misdeeds, as I found out last month.

The Hindu newspaper featured an article about America's bad report card regarding India's human rights abuses. The comments after the article published on the web site spoke mainly to the issue of Americans butting into the internal affairs of India.

I wrote that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should deal justly with the Hindu fundamentalists who were bullying Christians and other minority faiths. Then the fecal matter hit the fan.

One correspondent accused me of not knowing or understanding what's happening in India. Thanks to Google Alerts, I receive many reports of Indian Christians being persecuted, even from The Hindu and The Times of India. Those are hardly Christian papers.

Another writer accused western Christians of paying Hindus and people of other faiths to convert, thus bribing them to become followers of Christ. This is manifestly untrue. Missionaries give humanitarian aid to anybody, regardless of their response to the gospel. Furthermore, real Christians DON'T bribe people to believe. Repentance and acceptance of Christ as Lord is the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore anybody who can be bribed to become a Christian isn't really converted.

One reply concerned the "illegal" changing of India's religious make-up, endangering Hindu Culture. Oh yeah? Less than two percent of Indians are Christians, in spite of all the churches seemingly being built. And maybe Hindu culture needs to be changed. Doing works to improve one's chances for a better reincarnation is basically a selfish act. Doing good works because of the compulsion of the Holy Spirit is selfless and comes from a Christians love of Christ, not to rack up holiness points.

While I can understand the anger of Hindu fundamentalists for being called out regarding the persecution of Christians and other minority faiths , it still doesn't justify the majority taking vigilante justice against perceived wrongs done to their culture. I'm sure that if the same things happening in India to Christians were happening to Hindus in America, those nationalists would be justly angry at vigilantes. Of course that doesn't happen here in the west en mass as it does in India.

Injustice is injustice, no matter who does it to whom. The rule of law should protect everybody equally, not turn a blind eye to injustice committed by radicals. If people would agree to disagree agreeably, this world would be a much better place in which to live.