Tangkhul Church - (Prospects and Challenges)
- Part 2 -

By: A.S. Yaruingam *

II. Combating against corruption.

Corruption is is earning money one's income throughin an illegalitimate means; corruption Corruptiongrapping poor man's bread out of greed. It Corruption is collecting money and accumulating ones wealth without hard work and sweat. Corruption is spiritual disease, originated from the corrupted heart. Corruption is a moral sickness that comes from the decaying moral values.

Thus it needs to be eradicated only through church (faith). Corruption is one of the most serious problems The most fatal disease ofin our society today. is corruption. The government of India pumped in crores of rupees through Five Year Plan and several other schemes and developmental projects to N.E. yet India economy has grown up so much since last one decade.

North Eastern part of the country continues to remain poor and undeveloped due to high rate of corruption found to be the most neglected region which results to grooming of separatist groups and insurgent groups are formed to fight against corruption. But they themselves fall into corruption. GOI realized that the region needed to be developed.

More than thousands crores of money are pumped in the region especially for tribal development every year for road construction, housing development, agriculture farming, electrification, health care system and so on.. But not even 10% of the money reaches to the poor villagers. Beacause the money that comes for the development are siphoned-off by insurgent groups and corruptor are too many loop holes on the way.

Who are the culprits? Obviously, bureaucrats, politicians and so called social workers . Let us take the case of corruption in bureaucracy and politics. Bribing lakhs of rupees to bureaucrats and politicians for appointing a clerk or school teacher has a become a normal (not abnormal) practices.(is it not terrifying?) Every one knows that in the last assembly election each candidate spent more than one crore rupees.

This fact tells that we have exchanged our God's given precious right with money or for a plate of meal. This reminds us of Esau who sold off his birth-right for a meal to his brother Jacob, resulting to disastrous consequences. Miserable life of poverty, darkness in the village without electricity, without proper road, housing, water supply, health care, toilet & latrine and so on are the consequences of selling our rights during election.

Corruption breads corruption. Casting vote by taking money bread more corruption. And it is the mosta serious spiritual crime. Exchanging your right forwith a few rupees is sinful and but at the same time, the person who bribes otherbribe others during election in order to get elected is also equally sinful.

Buying vote in order to get elected as a member of assembly is more serious crime result to paralyzesing theof minds and heart to work for the people. Then how can one/I expect to be served by me the onefrom the one whom I have bought votepick-pocketed thousand rupees during election? How can we expect such personsI man who has spent crors rupees, borrowing from others, visit your villages andto build your schools, roads and bring development in the society?building?

Such elected leader's only desire would be to recouping all the huge amount of money spent during election and pay off his debts; may be in two years out of five years term and the rest three years is to make money for the next election to buy pork and wine for you again.

Where is the time for him to think of you, - your village school, your village's road, and your leaking roof, your smelly toilet? Today our people continue to live a miserable life of poverty and villages remain without electricity, proper roads, housing, water supply, health care, and so on because of corruption.

However, the most serious consequence of corruption is idleness. Today nobody wants to dig the ground in the field but wants to live in luxury. If we look at the barber shops, the tea stalls, rickshaw drivers, shoe-makers, road construction workers etc, most of the laborers are from the mainland India.

Since we do not work, there is no income generation in our land to meet even the basic daily needs such as food and clothing, school fees for children and so on. So we run after easy money like getting government schemes and contract work or approach politicians. (A nation can never become rich and prosperous through govt. schemes and easy money)

Who can set us free from corruption? Rick Warren writes, 'Many pastors do not understand the power of the pulpit. Its like a rudder in the ship, it will determine the direction of the church (society) either intentionally or unintentionally., If you are pastor, use your pulpit on purpose. Where else you will get every one's undivided attention on a weekly basis?

Thus, I see church pulpit is the best place to fight against corruption. I believe when our preachers are convinced that corruption is a serious spiritual cancer (sin) that ruins our society and declare it on the pulpit with deep concern, the level of corruption in our society will be reduced, if not completely wipe out.

III. Restore vision to our young people.

Solomon wrote', 'Where there is no vision, people perish' . (Prov. 29:18). Lost of vision among young people leads to lose of restraint against the sinful evil desire. (see NIV) When a a young man lost vision, he indulges in all kinds of evil deeds beyond imagination such as drug abuse, sexual rapping and immorality, corruption, sexual life, collecting or of etc.

Besides, when they lost vision they become lazy and burden to the parents and society. They become consumer rather than producers; they become takers rather than contributor. They aimlessly roam around in towns and cities and become easy prey toof Satan and become looters and rappers.

Young people are energetic with great potential to do great work and bring prosperity and happiness to our society. But today many young people are doing the opposite because they have lost hope in life. Every year hundreds of young people from home come to Delhi for studies and work.

I ask myself, 'Do we not have school and colleges to study at our hometown? Do we not have place to work and live a comfortable life in this 21st century? I am not against our young boys and girls coming to Delhi. I know we live in the globalize world; we should go out and be part of the globe.

But through talking to some of them, I came to realized that they come to Delhi because they have lost hope in our society, our government, our leaders and our system; they see no future for themselves in our society (back home).

My point is our young people are running away from home because they have lost vision and hope in our society. Who can give vision to this young people of ours? Prophet Joel (Joel 2:28) declared, 'I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see vision'.

Vision does not come from school books and university degrees. Vision comes from God. When the Holy Spirit comes to our churches our young people will receive visions and hope to live. When our young people receive vision they will go out from home as a blessing to the world; not as a burden.

Therefore, Bible teachers in our churches must struggle hard to dig out the word of God and plant in our young peoples' heart. When they receive the word of God, they will repent of their sin and then God will pour Holy Spirit on them.

Then they will go out to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad or anywhere in the world as engineers, scientists, scholars, journalist, successful businessmen and women, bureaucrats and respectable politicians, artists and celebrities and be blessing to the world.

May God bless our church to take its own rightful place in our society and play its own role till God calls us back to his KINGDOM.

References:

1. 1. Warren, Rick, 'The purpose driven Church, Zondervan Publication, California, USA, 2005.
2. Weber, Max, The Protestation Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, England, 1946.