Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 148
148 Christianity – A Journey from Facts to Fiction It seems that the dogmatic paradoxes that the Christians have to live with have somehow been transferred into their worldly behaviour as well. Kindness, humility, tolerance, sacrifice and many other such noble words go hand in hand with cruelty, suppression, gross injustice and large scale subjugation of the defenceless peoples of the world. Rule of law, justice and fair play seem only to be valid currencies operable internally in the West- ern cultures. In the area of international relationships, however, they are treated as stupid and in obsolete terms to be taken seriously only by the naive. International politics, diplomacy and economic relationships know no justice other than that which serves the national interest Christian values, however good they may be, are not permitted to step across into the domain of Western politics and economy. This is the most tragic contradiction of modern times. When it comes to the image that it projects, Christianity is only presented in the form of an attractive Western culture and civili- zation calling the world of the Orient to a life of comfortable carefree permissiveness in comparison to the generally rigid codes of their decadent religious societies. This message of emancipation is largely misunderstood by the semi-literate masses of the Third World as something very attractive. Add to this the additional psychological advantage of acquiring a sense of belonging to the advanced world through the commonness of religion and then one begins to recognise the true role of Christianity in attracting in large numbers the downtrodden and, in many cases, outcast and oppressed people who are at the lowest rungs within their own class-ridden societies. It is beyond their power to understand