By chhotebhai

Kanpur, March 22, 2022: The mandate given to me was to write about “How great is the faithfulness of God,” in the context of FOCUS (For Christian Understanding and Solidarity), an online magazine completing nine years.

This sounded like a categorical statement that brooked no argument. The best answer would be “Please read the Bible. You will discover how faithful God is.”

Unfortunately, this seemingly innocuous question from FOCUS landed at the wrong desk. I am not a doubting Thomas, but a seeking Thomas – one looking for proof. “Unless I can see …” (Jn 20:25). I shall try to see. My supplementary question is, “What do we understand by faithfulness? To what do we compare it – a faithful dog, a faithful servant or a faithful spouse?” Notice that faithfulness seems to be a relative term, as in a master-servant relationship.

So let us explore the Bible to understand God’s faithfulness. The greatest testimony to this would be the exodus from Egypt, followed by the release from Babylonian captivity. Some exegesis would shed more light on this.

Joseph, the abandoned son of Jacob, had found favor with the Pharaoh. When famine struck the land of his father, Jacob, they migrated to Egypt under the Pharaoh’s and Joseph’s patronage. They were just 70 in number (cf Gen 46:27). They were accommodated in the region of Goshen where they multiplied prolifically (cf Gen 47:5) to the extent that they became very powerful and overran the country (cf Ex 1:7). Subsequently, a new Pharaoh, who was ignorant of Joseph’s contribution to the nation, felt threatened, hence enslaved the Israelites (cf Ex 1:8-14).

This prompted the faithful God to say “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt” (Ex 3:7). Most of us would be familiar with the rest of the story – the ten plagues, crossing the Reed (not Red) Sea. Can we juxtapose this story on today’s scenario, especially in India?

The majority Hindu community (80 percent) feels threatened by the growing numbers of Muslims (14 percent) and Christians (2.3 percent) as per the last Census in 2011. (The 2021 Census could not be held because of the pandemic). A caveat: it is the political leaders (Pharaohs) of the majority community that are raising the bogey of a danger from the Muslims and Christians, thereby justifying attacks on them – bans on animal slaughter, the leather industry, wearing of the hijab (head scarf), anti-conversion laws, demolition of religious structures.

Now what should our faithful God do? Should he send ten plagues to avenge the attacks on his “chosen people?” Remember that the entire Egyptian people, not just the Pharaoh, suffered for the perceived insecurity of their leader. What was “faithfulness” for the Israelites would have been “collateral damage” for the Egyptian people. I have often wondered how the Coptic Christians of Egypt view the events of the Exodus that occurred 1290-1224 BC, during the reign of Rameses II, the 19th Pharaoh?

Nevertheless, the faithfulness of the God of the Israelites was not unconditional. He was angered at their lack of faith in his providence, saying “Your children will be nomads in the desert for forty years, bearing the consequences of your faithlessness, until the last one of you lies dead in the desert” (Num 14:33-34).

So faithfulness and faithlessness is a two-way street that no “chosen people” can take for granted. I have a favorite expression: “Love without truth is an indulgence. Truth without love is an imposition.” We need a balance of both love and truth to understand the faithfulness of God.

After several years of slavery in Egypt and forty years of nomadic wandering in the desert, the chosen people later experienced 48 years of the Babylonian Captivity (587-539 BC), till the edict of the Persian (Parsee to us in India) King Cyrus in the first year of his reign (cf Ezra 1:1-4).

Many chosen ones would have been born and even died in captivity. “By the Rivers of Babylon” is a hep dance number. It is actually a lamentation, the Song of the exiles, Psalm 137. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept … How could we sing a song of Yahweh on alien soil?” (Ps 137:1, 4). Far from being a romantic dance number it ends on a vengeful note, “A blessing on any one who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock” (Ps 137:9)!

In the post exile period (5th century BC) we have the lamentation of Job (known to Muslims as Ayub, the epitome of forbearance). His famous utterance was “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return again. Yahweh gave, Yahweh has taken back, blessed be the name of Yahweh” (Job 1:21).

How many chosen people today (Christians) would have the faith to go through Job’s ordeals and still say “Blessed be the Lord”? How many of us, in an era of breaking news and 2 minute noodles, can wait for 40/48 years to see the Lord’s deliverance?

Can we see the Lord’s faithfulness in the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem (cf Mat 2:16)? Why should those innocents and their families have suffered? Would they proclaim “Hosanna, salvation has come”?

What about the persecution of nascent Christians for 300 years of the Roman Empire, till Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 CE? Did they experience the faithfulness of God in the catacombs and the Coliseum? How many of us in a similar situation would be able to say “Our God is great, alleluia”?

Cut to today – sub-Saharan Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, some Gulf States, Pakistan, China, Myanmar and some parts of the Far East. Are Christians safe? Several reports state that today Christianity is the most persecuted of all religions. The cold war over pseudo-secularism has hit erstwhile Christendom (Europe) with a sledge hammer. It is no longer politically correct to say “Merry Christmas.” Ultimately Pope Francis had to raise his voice against this excessive secularism that was earlier confined to France; a consequence of the French Revolution centuries earlier.

Have I painted a gloomy picture? Let us look at the other side of the coin. While the Israelites were grumbling in the desert God said to them “The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet were not swollen, all those forty years” (Deut 8:4).

How many of us can say what Paul said to the Romans? “Can anything cut us off from the love of Christ – can hardships or distress, or persecution, or lack of food and clothing, or threats or violence; as scripture says ‘For your sake we are being massacred all day long, treated as sheep to be slaughtered?’ No; we come through all these things triumphantly victorious, by the power of him who loved us” (Rom 8:35-37).

Paul makes this exhortation after first explaining that “It was not for its own purposes that creation has frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it – with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:20-21).

The coup-de-grace comes from the Letter to the Hebrews. “God is treating us like his sons. Has there ever been any son whose father did not train him? If you were not getting the training, as all of us are, then you would not be sons, but bastards” (Heb 12: 7-8). This echoes what was said earlier, “Learn from this that Yahweh your God was training you as a man trains his child” (Deut 8:5). Other, more poetic translations use the word “chastise” for “train”. Do we feel chastised by such a train of thought?

There is a thread running through the Bible that faith in Jesus is not meant for the faint hearted. To experience the faithfulness of God one should have a deep faith of one’s own. It is a challenge to Christians in a secularized, polarized, consumeristic society, where the pursuit of individual happiness scores over what Pope John XXIII described as the “common good.”

Will Jesus say to us what he said to the Roman Centurion, “In truth I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found faith as great as this” (Mat 8:10). At the Last Judgement will we hear the Lord say “Well done good and faithful servant, you have shown that you are faithful in small things, I will trust you with greater things; come and join in your master’s happiness” (Mat 25:21).

Here again there is a message for all of us who profess to be Christian. Faith isn’t linked to heroic acts like martyrdom or being thrown into a lion’s den / raging fire as Daniel was. Our faithful God expects us to begin with small things, even the limited talents that he has given us. Only then can we expect to rise to greater heights.

Let us not commit the fatal error of the man with one talent who blamed his misfortune on his master saying, “I had heard you were a hard man, reaping where you had not sown, and gathering where you had not scattered, so I was afraid, and I went off and hid your talent in the ground” (Mat 25:24-25). The master’s retort was swift and lethal. “As for this good-for-nothing servant, throw him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth” (Mat 25:30).

Do I sound cynical or agnostic? Far from it. I do not presume God’s faithfulness. The sin of presumption is exactly how Jesus was tempted in the desert with these provocative words: “If you are Son of God throw yourself down from here for Scripture says: He has given his angels orders about you, to guard you; and again, They will carry you in their arms in case you trip over a stone” (Lk 4:9-10, cf Ps 91:11-12). Jesus, the epitome of wisdom, didn’t fall into the trap and retorted “Scripture says: Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (Lk 4:12, cf Deut 6:16). From the above interaction (one of my favourites) we find that the Evil One is adept at quoting scripture out of context. It is for this reason that I am wary of over zealous Bible thumpers, or miraculous claims.

(The writer is the convener of the Indian Catholic Forum, former national president of the All India Catholic Union (1990-1994) former director of the International Council of Catholic Men (1994-1996), a regular columnist and author of 5 books.)