R. Rungsung
If God is for us, who can be against us (Romans 8:31). The voice urges fellow Nagas to obey His call that makes of us our brothers’ keeper and appoints us steward under God of the civilization of the Naga domain. Betraying no doubts as to what the voice required according to Albert Beveridge in 1900. “We are this at last, a great national unit ready to carry out that universal law of civilization which requires of every people who have reached our high estate to become colonizers of new lands, administrators of orderly government over savage and senile peoples. And being thus prepared, the lands and peoples needing over administration are delivered to our keeping, not by our design, but by occurrence beyond our control. In the astronomy of Destiny, American opportunity, American duty and American preparedness are in conjunction. Who shall oppose their progress?” (Who shall oppose Nagas Reconciliation?)
The corollary doctrine of human depravity made the Puritans cautions about spheres in which human authority could be tolerated. Because all are sinners, and vestiges of corruption remain even among the regenerate, they (Puritans) thought it dangerous to great to any one person or group to much power over others. John Cotton warned the Boston Congregation (1656): “Let all the world learn to give mortal men no greater power then they are content they shall use, for use it they will… there is a strain in a man’s heart that will sometime or other run out to excess, unless the Lord restrain it, but it is not good to venture it: it is necessary therefore, that all power that is on earth be limited.
Could we but recognize it’s shaping power, we might hear that spirit at its summoning us anew to the pursuit of righteousness for the glory of God alone.
We (Nagas) in this land are like as it were, led out of Egypt by the hand of Moses. And now we are in the wilderness, i.e. in a state of trouble and difficult, Indians pursuing us, to overtake us and reduce us. The rod of God’s anger to scourge and chastise us for our sins, as the Assyrian monarch was to God’s people of old. If Nagas truly repent and turn to God then liberties and privileges would be restored.
The centrality of the images of the whole Nagas and the divine destiny in Nagas consciousness is sharply revealed in the factional fights. During the American Civil War both North and South were sure their cause was God’s, and that the true national destiny lay with them. Both armies were swept by revivals. The South hoped of God’s aid once He had thoroughly tested them. In the North, Revelation 14 was read out and in exposition they said: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”. When the fighting was over Christian leaders on both sides sought to discern what the destiny of the reunited nation was to be in the sight of God. (God guides and leads Reconciliation Forum).
With the coming of Civil War, “the current of nationalism” was divided into two streams, North and South, with each of which religion was deeply identified. What had been the bond of unity in the nation was exploited by both sides for partisan purposes. The God whose providence had welded the diverse strands of America into one people became the sanction for the resort to war. The call of Abraham Lincoln for “malice towards none and charity for all” was remained in short supply during and after the conflict. Late in 1864 Horace Bushell, a Congregationalist, proclaimed “we associate God and religion with all that we are fighting for…. The whole shaping of the fabrie is providential. God is in it, everywhere. Every drum beat is a hymn, the cannon thunder God…” Both sides in the civil war were actuated by a providential view of history. The doctrine of providence was transmuted into the doctrine of progress, growth, development and peace.
A sense of destiny and strenuous moral concern to make the new world a place par excellence (italic) for people, a theology, a typical passage of John Calvin said: “We are not our own, therefore neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not our own, therefore let us presuppose it as our end to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own, therefore as far a possible, let us forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; therefore let his wisdom and his will preside in all our actions. We are God’s; toward him, therefore, as our only legitimate end, let every part of our lives be directed”.
A vivid sense of belonging to God and submitting to “his wisdom and his will” is the end in all spheres of life. For us, the stage is set, the destiny is in turmoil. It has come by plan of our adversaries. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision set by our past leader (A Naga Moses, stracey). It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. The light streams on the path ahead, and nowhere else. Applying the principle of liberty of conscience to a varsity of situations as it filtered through our own ideals, resourcefulness and determination let each Naga make a unique contribution to the Naga nation, a united land.
According to Roger Williams (1603-1683), a Baptist firebrand, his words remind us today that said: “There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a common wealth or a human combination or society. It had fallen out sometimes, that both papist and Protestants…. This if seriously and honestly minded, may, if it so please the Father of lights, let in some light to such as willingly shut not their eyes”.
R. Rungsung
Wino Bazar, Ukhrul