I cannot but wonder if Christians pay any heed to the account of the creation of the human species in the Bible. We have turned reading the Word into a customary practice: something to be done, and to have done with. As to how the Word connects to our life – especially religious life – we seek not and, consequently, find not.

Perhaps I will be forgiven for suggesting that the account of the creation of Adam and Eve is there in the Bible for a purpose.  Purposes are meant to be pursued. The specific purpose in the special creation of human beings is, I submit, to prescribe that human beings need to be related to, served and cherished in a special way. This raises the question: Shouldn’t churches mind this significance vis-a-vis their congregational life and public advocacy?

The idea of human beings being created “in the image and likeness of God” is that every individual constitutes, or should constitute, a self-consistent whole free from contradictions. A human being has a duty to cherish and preserve the holistic unity of his being; for ‘in God there is no contradiction at all.’ If we are created in the image and likeness of God, so should it be with us too. We cannot be a bundle of ill-integrated instincts, interests and dispositions and claim to be created in the image and likeness of God. If we do, we bear false witness to God. The same should apply to the being of the church; for church is the body of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the light of the world. Light is the supreme symbol of pure consistency.

Every psychologist studying human personality has averred that a human being has a need for consistency. Spiritual freedom is, fundamentally, the freedom to be consistent. At the same time, by virtue of living in a society, individuals tend to be in states and situations wherein their self-consistency is disturbed. This disruption, I believe, is the ‘pattern’ of the world to which, Paul warns, we are not to conform. The temptation of Peter and the corruption of Judas are illustrations in the Gospels of the misery that results from the disruption of one’s inner unity or wholeness. The opposite of integration is disintegration, which is the principle of death.

The ideal state is that Jesus abides in us and we, in him (Jn 15:4). Why is this necessary? What is the Jesus principle? The four Gospels leave us in no doubt that it is a state of comprehensive self-integration, resulting from a state of oneness with God. It is in this state that we are ‘the light of the world’ (Mt.5:14-16). “I and my Father,” Jesus says, “are one” (Jn.10:30).  The discipline that helps one to attain this oneness is loving God with the whole of one’s being as well as loving one’s neighbour like oneself, as the two cardinal commandments prescribe (Lk.10:27). What is often left unsaid is that this is the necessary condition for attaining and preserving dynamic self-consistency, which is the spiritual goal.

It is necessary to understand the logic of the gulf between what we believe creedally and what we do practically. What we do arises out of who we think we are, our self-image. The gulf between what we believe and what we do shows that what we believe has not become part of who we are. Spiritual insights and norms remain external to us as unacceptable in reality. In such a state, spiritual principles only serve as catalysts for subjective unease. They don’t empower us to be fully human or practically godly. We remain the children of the world, not of God; subjects of Caesar, not servants of God.

The spiritual function of a congregation is to enable its members to attain self-consistency, which is spiritual empowerment. The ‘self’ in this context is to be understood in light of our being created in the image of God. If we were not so created, self-consistency would not have been so supremely important, or its disarray a serious spiritual or psychological issue.

How does the CAA plus NRC affect Muslims? Given the communally discriminative character of the legislation, it precipitates with brutal starkness an identity crisis for them. Till the other day, they were citizens. Today they are illegal aliens. As Shakespeare’s Richard II says, “I know not what to call myself.” That is a state of unimaginable trauma. This is not even the mere disruption of self-consistency; this is civic annihilation.

If this is the biblical, Christological norm how are we to relate to the brooding anxiety to which Muslims are cast precipitously by CAA + NPR? Are we to use love-jihad and Tipu Sultan to justify our incapacity for spiritual empathy and the duties corresponding to it? In that case, what happens to our own self-consistency as the disciples of Jesus? If settling scores with those we believe were inimical to us is the sum total of Christian morality, how are we to tide over the intense disharmony this creates with the teachings of Jesus Christ? Or, is it the case that we are followers of Jesus Christ for certain occasions and, for the rest, of worldly dispensations? In that case, how is this different, in principle, to the phenomenon of demon-possession, which robs its victims of self-consistency?

I don’t discount the possibility that I am entirely wrong in the argument advanced above. If I am, it needs to be established through a biblical, open-minded examination of my premises and inferences. But, alas, the forum for such an exercise does not exist in the Christian community. What happens, instead, are unilateral and summary rejections of arguments, without hearing out the other side which falls short of natural justice. This needs to change. One cannot be Christian and indifferent to truth and justice at the same time.