A religious reformer is not unlike a sectarian without a sect. Or, as Wordsworth might put it, like a solitary reaper on arid land gathering, best of times, only thorns and thistles. He belongs nowhere. Or, as Jesus says, ‘has nowhere to lay His head.’ He stakes all on His faith, but His faith community sees Him – especially while He is alive – as an enemy of the faith. He bestirs himself, in Quixotic profitlessness, for the sake of His people; but He ends up being unwelcome, again as Jesus said with reference to the plight of prophets, among them.

But the reformer himself, if he is indeed one, remains unfazed. He knows that his being misunderstood and disowned is a measure of his relevance. A faith community that rolls out a red carpet to a reformer is one that, in point of fact, does not need reform. A reformer cannot serve as a courtier of religious orthodoxy that sees religion as a closed system born full-grown in the dim, distant past in relation to which the only task is that of meticulous preservation. By seeing religion as a closed system of mummified assumptions and practices, the proprietors of orthodoxy do a disservice to religion. They bear false witness to religion as a monument inherited from the past that exists, as it were, isolated from the ever-unfolding saga of the historical existence of our species. The living God is in communion with humankind. God is different from an idol, which has eyes but sees not; mouth, but speaks not; ears, but hears not. God, as the Bible as a whole, and the book of Exodus in particular, testify sees, hears and responds to human existence in history in its specificity. Only such a God can be giver and the guardian of freedom and the Liberator of human beings (Lk.4:18).

Worse, perhaps, is the danger that religious reform is misconstrued as a license to undermine the faith itself. This possibility arises when the scope of reform is equated with the need to be in tune with the spirit of the times. Strategies and advocacies of compromise, as Paul rightly emphasizes, are incompatible with spiritual authenticity (Rom.12:2). They are not unlike the disposition of ‘the grain of wheat that refuses to fall down and die into a new order of life’ (Jn.12:24-25). The shallow-rationalist religious reformer goes about his task in cavalier indifference to the worth of centuries of birth-pangs that underlie the spiritual heritage of a living faith, driven by expediency than a sense of accountability to God. His reform agenda comprises a series of random stances, lacking any coherent sense of spiritual purpose or commitment to the wholeness and vitality of the faith community.

I do not wish to under-play the difficulties that the custodians of a spiritual tradition face. It is difficult to distinguish between reforms advocated as an agenda of temporal compromise –aimed at bringing the practice of a faith in tune with the spirit of the times in order to minimize offence- and reform aimed at preserving the spiritual vitality and the life-nourishing potencies of a spiritual tradition. The difficulties here arise not so much from the inherent inscrutability of this distinction, but from the practical blindness that the orthodox stand and the shallow-reformist stand imply. This is aggravated further by the keenness on both sides to discredit each other. So, the sphere of religious reform degenerates, over a period of time, into ‘a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight’ where, as Matthew Arnold says in Dover Beach, ‘ignorant armies clash by night.’ This aggravates the cynicism of the already confused and over-burdened laity. This, I believe, is the reason why religious reform, a vitally relevant agenda, remains the most difficult enterprise to undertake.

There is, perhaps, yet another reason to be reckoned. Religion, in its spiritual essence, does not apply to the warp and woof of our routine life. Most of us drift in mere existence. At this level, one can, for the most part, manage with physical and material resources. These resources can meet, as Jesus said, the needs of a life lived on ‘bread alone’ (Mt.4:4). We can exist by bread alone; but not ‘live’ by it. Our need to live, in contrast to merely existing, is felt only sporadically.. Even on the occasions we do, we rarely go beyond the minimum requirements for crisis-management. This makes us reduce religion to an ad hoc anesthetic for the pain of existence. Living involves far more than avoidance of pain. It is a celebration of life; life in all its fullness (Jn.10:10). This is the core concern of a responsible religious reformer. He might timidly acknowledge himself as an imperfect discipline, but never as a reformer.

The chasm between mere existence and life in all its fullness is never a constant. It fluctuates with changing times and contexts of existence. Not even the most die-hard sentinel of orthodoxy would insist that conditions of life have not changed in the last two thousand years, or that the existential needs of human beings remain unchanged. No man in his senses would argue that faithfulness in religion entails that we regress by two millennia. It was because the Jews embraced a folly of this kind that, despite their waiting agonizingly for centuries for the Messiah, they missed the bus when the Messiah finally came! Such an aberration is far less excusable now that it was then. There is a real possibility that knee-jerk reactions of indiscriminate hostility to religious reform – reform as spiritual regeneration – is a continuing rejection of the Christ principle. When Jesus said He is ‘the way’ it is very likely that He included in His self-description the spiritual discipline of ever-renewing regeneration, purified in the fire of self-emptying obedience to God the Father, sustained in the dynamism of Spirit-directed seeking (Mt. 7:7; Jn. 16:13).

The laity, on their part, have a duty to ensure that they do not mistake genuine criticism of religious aberrations as ‘attack on religion.’ One’s religion could be in danger as much from the orthodox as from the reformer. As a rule, the lethal enemy is always within. Else, Judas would have been superfluous to the story of salvation. Did Judas sell his Master to replenish the coffers of the movement of which he was the Treasurer? We do not know; but it seems likely. It is foolish to limit our understanding of how Judas’ mind worked prior to the betrayal of Jesus solely from the fact that he committed suicide. They also commit suicide whose calculations, based on clever premises, go awry.

Every believer has to decide for oneself where one stands vis-à-vis religious reform and religious orthodoxy. Ideally, no reform should be needed; for religious reform should never be embarked upon as a passing fashion or an armchair hobby. I’d prefer, if I can help it, the die-hard orthodox to a shallow, cantankerous reformer. But if there are evident grounds and compelling reasons for reform, what a believer accepts or rejects from the menu of reform, or of orthodoxy, should depend on what is basic to one’s need to attain ‘life in all its fullness.’ It is far-fetched that a person wholly indifferent to the Christological goal of life in all its fullness heeds exhortations to reform. It is like going on an afternoon picnic on the nearby hill, laden with the heavy gear, complete with oxygen cylinders, of high-altitude mountaineering! It is eminently avoidable.