The news of Lalruotmawi, the gospel singer, entangled in a sex scandal has been screaming for quite sometime in different states of the North East. It shocked some constituency. Some compartments were taken by surprise. Some find it difficult to believe. As the misery of disgrace tails the miraculous singer there seem to be more speculation on what would happen to the singer than the gospel. No doubt about the singer, but the gospel would, if there were no man, still speak through the pebbles. He planted and He uprooted. The Bible said that. If there was sex and the city, it is sex and the gospel this time. The gospel singer who stormed Mizoram with her unimitated simplicity and who could sell whopping 40,000 copies of her album in a single day delivers her darker side. Not deliberately though. The dirty linen hangs out. The lapse of momentary bliss continues to cast its long shadows. Like the bite of the forbidden fruit and eternal vain toil by man. The newspaper and local TV channel in Manipur and Mizoram lick every dirt of the sex scandal just as expected. It has to when the act was not done by some fame hungry mortals like Paris Hilton or Pamela Anderson, but the gospel singer.

When nothing is stronger and bigger than the truth, it cannot leave like a stranger. It must have gnawed every stem of her life. It has its grip firmer because she was seen as gospel daughter, moulded by none other than the Church where sanctity supposedly underlines everything about her songs, if not her. When I heard the news, I said to myself that this stuff should be drowning somewhere in Hollywood. Not here. But everywhere, man we are with flesh, blood and bones. Sex is not only made for Hollywood. Or by Hollywood. Similarly, rape and landmines does not happen somewhere in Africa alone. But there are still many inescapable questions. What if Peter and Mary have those fleshy interactions under dirty linens and it leaks? What if this is just a tip of the reality of people who took the shade of the sanctified institution? But that shade should be challengeable. Questionable too. The already painful public scandal is not palatable to the pulpit. Some asked if man should decide who is man to decide? However man has to decide in the interest of the sanctity of the institution. Every man is a panderer. Some with flesh and blood. Some with the eyes. The rest with the rest.

These are not new though it happens to us now. Sex in a temple. The White House affairs and what not. That thing is one universal celebration. But Clinton was impeached accordingly as he was too small before the constitution of the country. If America believes that Columbus discovered America, I would believe that Hilary Clinton discovers the Biblical teaching of forgiveness for America. When the pale of White House needed a whitewash, it was done with Hilary’s forgiving. Imagine if the impeachment was followed by a divorce. Every time something like this happens everyone raised a finger. Some raised their bloody finger. Some raised their sordid finger. Some their corrupted finger. Some with the smell and colour of their dirty linen too, pretending like virgin who have been sleeping in the whitest linen in lame numb all his life.

When popular public figures attached to the pulpit, authority and power are found pandering out of their married or unmarried life; it becomes a plank in everyone’s eyes. It cannot be merely a straw, though we tend to oversee the same reality within us. However, there are certain things that ought to be exhumed to talk the talk or walk the talk so as to fine tune things for all future purpose. If that moment escaped or is let off, we fail as human beings. Therefore the Church cannot be silent in this matter although it must forgive the actors in the union act. I said this because any man should not be higher or stronger than the credibility and sanctity of any institution, which is collectively accepted. If then, it will run hollow of its hallowed character. No man, with reason, should try to overshadow that sanctity. If today that sanctity is sacrifice or is bought to naught to save fame, fortune, individual, or any vested interest, that institution will die a slow death. A fast death is also valid though not desirable.

Here we are not talking about any architected structure, but the Church, which is the belly of Christian faith, moral, ethics, values and what not. This is the moment for every individual to have an insight into the seemingly concealed intricacies that surround the sanctity of the Church. We cannot toast our tendency of casualness to make up the deficiency with an excuse of the straw before the sinners eyes. The Church or for that matter any institution should not be made to bow from being what it ought to be. But let anyone, who is not a sinner, throw the first stone.