Joel Nillo Naga
The Nagas are high importers of Western constructs, and it does brings to forethe slide of Christian values and morality in the West vis-à-vis its secular and liberal opposing forces and the alternaterapid rise of Western centric realities in Nagaland inimical to our Christian values and morality, tantalizingly posing as the alternative truths. Never mind that some of the greatest minds to have shaped Western civilization were committed Christians with sound theological backgrounds as illustrious as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Descartes, etc., to name a few,and yes, Blaise Pascal, that great mind of ascientist, theologian and philosopher who said ‘There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ’which is without doubt the most quoted line in Christian circles.The slide started with Darwin and his ape ‘truth’, then Marx, down to Freud, and later accentuated by proliferation of liberal-secular scholars and scientists of the 20th century. Interestingly, fundamentalists Shia and Sunni Imamspour venom upon the ‘Great Satan’ America not because of itsprofessedChristianity but because it is the perceived source of all immoral cultural outpourings!Today, the American Psychological Association has around 150,000 members all engaged in one form or another of professional counselling to its ‘Christian’ population and others.
In Westernsociety, the application of the “Big Five Personality Traits” and its variants is more or less the standard when hiring employees. Out of the 5 traits- Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, people with high Openness are perceived to be high on creativity, having high preference for novelty and unusual ideas, high preference for art, etc., and people on low Openness scale traditional, dogmatic and resistant to change. In a culture which celebrates Individualism and the mass media, cinema,academiaand the political establishment controlled mostly by secular and liberal ideologues,a committed Christian is perceived dogmaticandthe word Conservative now synonymous for backward Christians- to beplaced atthe low end of Openness scale. This Openness dictum is strongly blended with secular-liberal interpretation. After 300 years of the Age of Enlightenment first begun by reformists Christian scientists and thinkers, the world has come full circle; Christians are now the new lows- retrograde, regressive, repressive, and embarrassing.
Such philosophical outlook should get its strongest foothold in the fashion, arts, cinema, and media industry is not surprising considering that these fields require strong creative input. Not unsurprisingly, the ‘creative industry’ has been at the forefront selling the hitherto sub-cultural realities as the new truths backed by the liberal intelligentsia in the media and academia. It’s not enough to be‘cool’ butthe ‘bi’, ‘MSM’ and ‘WSW’ or bisexuals, Men having Sex with Men and Women having Sex with Women community with their new found prophets, the Georgio Armanis and the Elton Johns want legal, social, and religious identificationtoo (Anglican Church Gay Bishops, for instance). Euthanasia, Atheism, and (worldwide legalization of) homosexuality- a counter culture momentum which began in the 1960’s and 70’s - are now all almost mainstream or have become the celebrated new truths.
They say it’s the Age of Reason. Christianity and its absolute God, its absolute truth, and its absolute moral laws are obsolete, they claim and the Christian is under attack as never before from secular-liberal intellectuals, evolutionists, atheists, New-Age practitioners and spiritualists who each carve their own brand of truths, their own gods and their own moral laws. Overall, the relative experience of each individual is his moral code and the idea of a benevolent benefactor nauseates.
Nowhere is the absolute primacy of relative truthsmore prevalent than in the concept of family as has emerged in the West. The Biblical concept of a traditional family is now no longer even mainstream but considered more as a puritanical construct. If prudish Christians believe Brad Pitt and Angelina co-habitating is sin, too bad, for there is no sin, only right or wrong partners!The dictum of what is the Truth has been so stretched that it’s as acceptable as one’s imagination would allow to wander.
The Naga quagmire is that having supplanted our traditional moorings with foreign constructswe simplydon’t understand the new constructs we have adopted. Coupled with not-so-sound theological understanding of our faith and bereft of that philosophical bend of mind,we are in perpetual transitory stage.Abraham Maslow’s 8 Stage Hierarchy of Needs postulates that unless our basic needs such as food and shelter are met, it’s not possible to pursue higher order needs such as Cognitive needs, or thepursuit of knowledge andmeaning in life, and Aesthetic Needs which is the admiration and pursuit of beauty or arts. Finally, Self-Actualization, which is that peak personal fulfillment in life and Transcendence, or helping others achieve Self-Actualization,canonly be met if the lowerStages are first fulfilled. Having jumped the queue fromheadhunting tomodern livingwithin a generation should exact its toll. For instance, a musician trying to reach that peak of personal fulfillment (Self-Actualization) and at the same time trying to earn a living would struggle in his career. Or a Naga, in the general sense, living the life of fine dining and combing the lines on Picasso’s canvas (Aesthetic Need) would be out of tune with society still grabbling with survival and safety issues. Struggling Naga parents in primitive 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s Nagaland trying to fend for a living (Basic Needs) during the height of the revolutionary movement (Safety needs) would be absolutely hampered to engage the family in Cognitive Need and Aesthetic Need activities, such as, trying to teach their children the nuances of Naga Folk dance, songs, art and Naga ethos. Thus, many post 70’s and 80’s generation have become completely detached from the Naga narrative and the Faith. Pascal was wrong. The void in our hearts was and has been replaced by Western liberal narratives.
The recent wide publication of the plight of the homosexual and lesbian community in Nagaland is a que pointing to further wide acceptance of Western secular-liberal ethos and erosion of Christian morals in our State. There is only a thin line separating ‘the highlighting of the plight’ and ‘celebrating the plight.’A more controversial issue would be the Church and the Naga Christian community failing to differentiate between ‘praying for the plightof the Naga gay community’and ‘allowing thegay community to lead from the church podium.’For reference, it took almost 250 years- after the founding of the US on Christian tenets- for the US Supreme Court in 2015 to finally legalize Homosexual marriage in the United States, a vivid embrace of itsnow secular and liberal ethos.For us a decade is enough.
