The Critique

Recently, I was playing a 4-a-side futsal game. The game began at high velocity and not before long, my team found itself four goals down. After a small pep talk, revision of strategy and change of formation, we resumed the game. We began a spirited fight back. We scored one, two and then another two quickfire goals and the game was level. There was no looking back from here on out. We went on the win the game 10-6. The incident got me thinking about failure. In the world of sport, the game is never really over until it’s really over, i.e. until the final whistle has blown. The history of football boasts of some stunning comebacks. Teams that had been written off as sure losers stunned everybody by reversing the result. A similar outcome resulted in our game too. It seemed like we were being dominated but the final score told a different tale. Perspective and attitude are key elements in sport. The manner with which you approach the game and the situations arising during the ...

Director: Morten Tyldum Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightly Duration: 1hr 54 mins The first time I heard of The Imitation Game , I thought it had something to do with magic. Despite that it had nothing to do with magic; the film had the air of the magical about it. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead role as Alan, a genius mathematician and lover of puzzles. Alan, shares quite some characteristics with Cumberbatches’ other avatar, Sherlock. If you have seen Cumberbatchs’ prowess as Sherlock, you can easily imagine his effective depiction of Alan. Alan is a brilliant mathematician looking to serve in British Intelligence. The setting of the film is the Second World War and the Brits are looking to bring down the expansive Germans. The key lies in the German secret communication codenamed ‘Enigma’. Successfully cracking Enigma will enable the Brits to foil the German plans and disturb their strategy. Alan’s penchant for puzzles and his lively intelligence make him a fr...

Philosophical Understanding of Cultures and Festivals of North East India , Edited by Dr. Dominic Meyieho and Dr. Joseph Puthenpurackal, Shillong: Don Bosco Publications, DBCIC, 2015, ISBN 81-85408-00-57, pp. 136, Rs. 300. Today’s fast changing and globalizing world with its many and multiple challenges demands from us that we go deeper into understanding the various facets of culture. With this motivation, Don Bosco Centre for Indigenous Cultures, Shillong, conducted a seminar entitled, “A Philosophical Understanding of Culture and Festivals”. This book is a collection of the papers presented at the seminar. The cultures and festivals of North East India to survive need to rediscover its spiritual and philosophical roots. The papers reflect the situation and culture of the people of the North East and seek to highlight the indigenous culture. Thomas Menamparampil discusses the passage of culture to a focal position in human life. In the past, culture was not considered very...

After my apostolate at the ashramshala at Tilloli, one of the nuns arranged for a parent to drop us (my companion and myself) to a village (Umrale) from which we would subsequently find conveyance. Owing to the remote location of the shala, transport to and fro is difficult, especially traveling from there. Transport from Umrale is more easily available and hence coming to Umrale is a necessity. The problem is, coming to Umrale! There isn’t any transport. Normally the sisters have their driver give the brothers a drop but on this eventful day, a parent volunteered to drop us on his motorcycle. It’s not that I’ve never ridden triple seat before. I’ve ridden on a couple of occasions. But the though of riding triple seat on winding country roads, which have come undone by neglect, environmental conditions and other factors made me flinch. Nonetheless, without over-thinking, I hopped on the bike. The 8 odd kilometer journey to Umrale wasn’t comfortable but it allowed me the opportuni...

I had the good fortune of exercising my Salesian apostolate in an ashramshala that houses only girls. This might sound odd considering that Salesians direct their apostolate to boys. But this is the only apostolate of its kind that we, students of Philosophy at Divyadaan engage in. Our task over there is to teach English to the 9 th standard girls and entertain the 8 th standard girls with activities and games. The shala is run by Sisters belonging to the Assumption congregation. At their request, two brothers travel every Sunday to their shala in Tilloli some 80 kilometers from Nashik. This particular Sunday, I was standing in for a brother who was not keeping well. This wasn’t my first time there as I dad gone before to help the brothers organize a Christmas party for the girls. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by a nun and served breakfast. As I partook of the simple breakfast consisting of chana and chappati topped up with a cup of coffee, I was struck by the lifestyle of ...

Recently, I was playing a 4-a-side futsal game. The game began at high velocity and not before long, my team found itself four goals down. After a small pep talk, revision of strategy and change of formation, we resumed the game. We began a spirited fight back. We scored one, two and then another two quickfire goals and the game was level. There was no looking back from here on out. We went on the win the game 10-6. The incident got me thinking about failure. In the world of sport, the game is never really over until it’s really over, i.e. until the final whistle has blown. The history of football boasts of some stunning comebacks. Teams that had been written off as sure losers stunned everybody by reversing the result. A similar outcome resulted in our game too. It seemed like we were being dominated but the final score told a different tale. Perspective and attitude are key elements in sport. The manner with which you approach the game and the situations arising during the ...

R.A. Torrey. Difficulties in the Bible . Chicago : Moody Press. ISBN 0-8024-2214-4. The book deals with those objections which the modern infidel makes the most about, and which are most puzzling to many Christians. Torrey puts it plainly, “Difficulties are to be expected.” When the finite seeks to understand the infinite, there is bound to be difficulty. But one must keep in mind that a difficulty in a doctrine, or a grave objection to a doctrine, does not in any way prove the doctrine to be untrue. Torrey takes up each difficulty and breaks it down in order to show that there is no real problem at all. Careful and prayerful study will show it to be true. The seeming defects are exceedingly insignificant when put in comparison with its many and marvelous excellencies. The book has twenty-four chapters. The first three form an introduction while the remaining twenty-one are the difficulties addressed individually. Some of the difficulties are: Where did Cain get his wife?, Jo...

Tom Gryn, Growing Closer to God, Mumbai: Servant Books, 1982, pp. 106. This is book is part of a series entitled Living as a Christian which aims at helping Christians apply the teaching of scripture to their lives. All the books in this series are rooted in scripture, relevant to daily life, brief so as to appeal to busy people, comprise an integrated curriculum and offer practical advice. Each of the books in the series focuses on a specific aspect of Christian life. Topics like Christian maturity, emotions in the Christian life, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, Christian personal relationships and Christian service are dealt with.   The central challenge of each of our lives is to grow in our relationship with God until He becomes the focus of all we do. Our relationship with God is affected by our decisions, attitudes, and approaches. The purpose of this book is to discuss all these areas in an attempt to help us grow closer to God. The book has eight chapters which ins...

Those who regard sin lightly and who have no adequate concept of God’s holiness will find insurmountable difficulty in this command of God. Mature reflection and a glimpse of the infinite holiness of God will remove all difficulty. My View It seems that Torrey has passed judgement on someone like me. Nonetheless, I beg to differ with him. I don’t discount the insidiousness of sin and I may have an inadequate concept of God’s holiness, but that doesn’t make me liable to find this difficulty insurmountable. Rationally speaking, it doesn’t add up: A good God could never allow the extermination of an entire nation. Maybe I am taking an extreme standpoint, but I don’t believe I am. Any reasonable person would find difficulty accepting this event. I confess ignorance with regard to responding to this difficulty. I will make an effort to study the matter further. For now, Torrey’s explanation does not suffice. If anything it gives rise to only further problems (so...

Could God not have achieved the destruction of the Canaanites/Midianites through natural calamities? Ø   Torrey doesn’t answer the question directly. He claims that God allowed the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites/Midianites, so that they could learn a lesson about sin and rejection of God. By carrying out the holocaust, God’s holiness and hatred for sin were imprinted on the minds and hearts of the Israelites. In other words, they saw the consequences of utterly rejecting God and embracing evil. My View Did God have to use this particular method of teaching the Israelites a lesson? “Definitely no, but He did”, would be the obvious reply. I see a problem with this type of lesson: God seems to get the desired result by instilling fear in the Israelites. And if fear forms the basis of our relationship with God then we end up in a master-slave relationship. There is little or no love there. Fear is a powerful weapon to control another person and if God was u...

God’s judgements are unsearchable. We are tiny compared to the magnitude of God. To back his point Torrey quotes Romans 11:33 which says: “His decisions cannot be explained, nor his ways understood!” My View I agree with Torrey on this point. God sometimes works in mysterious ways and we cannot always understand or see the point (Isaiah 55:8). But the question still stares us in the face, “How can a loving God commission a holocaust?” I don’t see any easy way out. The way I read it, the writer was trying to stress on the close relationship Moses and the Israelites shared with Yahweh. In order to do so convincingly, he inserted Divine sanctions on all the actions of the Israelites through history. Consequently, not everything the Israelites did was out of obedience to God’s command. Some of their acts, were perhaps their own doing, which the author later gave Divine backing. That being said, I think this is the best response to the problem. 

The second response Torrey gives is: God’s command to wipe out the Canaanites/Midianites entirely was one of mercy and love. He then responds to questions related to the incident. a)       What about the women? Could they not have been spared? Ø   Women were the prime source of contamination among the people (Numbers 31: 15-16). b)       What about the children? Ø   Vices bred in ancestry over generations appears in the children. It was an act of mercy towards the children as their lives would have been far worse had they lived. My View: Firstly, how could a good God permit this holocaust? Torrey says that God in his kindness blotted out the Canaanites/Midianites through the Israelites. Can such an act be called kindness!? I think not. Is God partial towards other nations? The Old Testament may give us this impression. Secondly, women are condemned as being the source of vice among the people. ...

R.A. Torrey, in his book Difficulties in the Bible , devotes a chapter to the slaughter of the Canaanites/Midianites by God’s command (Numbers 31). The difficulty arises with reconciling the New Testament idea of a loving God with such a harsh Divine command. Torrey puts forth seven points, which I have summarized and reduced to five. I will present each and respond to them individually in separate posts. Extermination of peoples is horrible but utter moral corruption and debasement so pervasive as was seen in the Canaanites/Midianites is far worse. They had become a moral cancer threatening the whole human race. The removal of this cancer is kindness on the part of God. He goes on to say that the Bible is not the only source of this information. My View Firstly, what is wrong is wrong. No matter the depths to which the Canaanites/Midianites had bent, they were still God’s ‘children’ (New Testament understanding) and a ‘loving Father’ would never g...