I hope you’ll forgive my interrupting the current series, but one thing I’d like to continually do on this site is visit topical issues – things that are in the news – and try and shine a Biblical light on them.
Over the last few days, an interview with Bollywood actress Sunny Leone, formerly a porn star, has hit the headlines. She was subjected to a rather churlish interview, one in which Bhupendra Chaubey made a strong attack on her because of her background. Now, I’m not going to defend the porn industry – it’s hardly Christian! – but one thing Chaubey said to her stuck out to me.
He said there was a perception among some Indians that just watching a Sunny Leone film could corrupt you, and then asked, “I am thinking am I being morally corrupted if I am interviewing you?”
Sunny Leone’s answer was classic:
“I can leave if you want me to.”
I think this interview forms a neat parable; this, you see, is what religion does. It creates a divide between the ‘saint’ and the ‘sinner’, with the ‘saint’ striving to keep himself pure. There’s a strong sense that, should you keep the wrong company, mix with the wrong crowd, or go to the wrong place, you’ll somehow be ‘corrupted’.
You see the same principle in the Old Testament, where there were countless laws that basically said, “Do not eat! Do not touch!”
But in the New Testament, the whole pattern of it turns upside-down. In the New Testament, Jesus – the purest, most holy person of all time – has no concern for the idea of somehow being ‘corrupted’. When he encountered victims of leprosy, he reached out his hand and touched them; when he passed by a tax collector (essentially a race traitor), he decided to eat at his house. We Christians are often concerned to keep a good reputation, but look at Jesus’:
“Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”
Matthew 11: 19
Jesus demonstrates the exact opposite attitude to that displayed by Bhupendra Chaubey. Jesus chooses to go to the place of stigma, the pure reaching out to the impure; and rather than be corrupted by it, he purifies it. Christians, I believe, should be striving for the same attitude – to go where we are most needed, with little care for the idea of somehow being ‘corrupted’. After all, as Jesus himself said:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
Luke 5: 31
Now look at Sunny Leone’s response to Chaubey’s judgmentalism. “I can leave if you want me to.” Here’s the thing with graceless religion; it drives people away, the very people Jesus said he came for. “I can leave if you want me to.” If all the Church offers is judgment, then that will be exactly what people say. Instead, we always need to remember:
“Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
James 2: 13
Source: BBC News
Faith Works 