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Hello friends! Beware, this might be a lengthy post! Read at your discretion (and a cup of chai)!
So my trip to India has come and gone. I've been back now for a couple of weeks and I'm still trying to process everything I learnt. The purpose of the trip was to support, encourage, pray and learn about what God is doing in India. I won't give specifics on names of organizations or even the areas where I visited in order to protect those individuals. Social media is a buzzkill and the government is always looking for those dangerous Christians.
My time there was too brief, but I felt that it was a beautiful introduction to me coming back and next time helping with an organization. I am an artist by profession, so I don't know where I could be useful but I've learned in my faith journey that if I only trust in God he will always provide me with everything I need, plus more!
I want to say that I got a glimpse into Hinduism, a tiny bit on Sikhism and a brief brush with Islam. My team and I were also educated on how the caste system works, and boy did that open my eyes. Once I learned what it meant to be a low caste you could spot who was who everywhere we went. It also made me realize that, in many ways, a caste-like system exists in North America too, especially when it comes to your career choices. There is always somebody looking down on somebody else, entitled and selfish, unloving unless it involves boosting themselves in some way. It exists everywhere, the only difference between India and North America is that in India it's so overt and can't be ignored and in North America it's subtle and swept under the rugs (Native reservations anybody?).
One story that impacted me on how the caste system works was when my team came across a flooded alleyway. One man was opening a manhole and another stood beside wearing nothing but his underwear. As we walked away from the flooded street we were told that the undressed man was about to swim down the manhole to unblock the drain and that he was guaranteed that we would die, I'm assuming from either exhaustion or by unblocking the drain and being sucked under and drown.
There is a heavy oppression held over Hindu's because of the caste system. The belief that you were born low, will live low and will die low because of karma (which is often seen as a negative thing in India and a positive thing in North America) leads to generations of hopelessness. This man who is now dead probably believed that, since he was low caste, this would be the act that would break the cycle of his miserable life. With this knowledge I can see why Christianity is the religion of the low caste and the Dalits, a whopping 2% of the population in India (estimated to about 4% by now, apparently due to an outdated census. Let's not forget that 4% of 1.25 billion is 50 million Christians!) -- Because Jesus came for the lowest of the low because of love.
So my take away from my journey is this: the living God, not the gods made of stone and gold, not the ones placed in temples, is present in India and He is working in the people there. And the message that He sends His people in India is this: that the Dalit, the old man begging on the street corner, the "talking animal" in the eyes of many, is loved with a fierce love by the God of the universe.
So my trip to India has come and gone. I've been back now for a couple of weeks and I'm still trying to process everything I learnt. The purpose of the trip was to support, encourage, pray and learn about what God is doing in India. I won't give specifics on names of organizations or even the areas where I visited in order to protect those individuals. Social media is a buzzkill and the government is always looking for those dangerous Christians.
My time there was too brief, but I felt that it was a beautiful introduction to me coming back and next time helping with an organization. I am an artist by profession, so I don't know where I could be useful but I've learned in my faith journey that if I only trust in God he will always provide me with everything I need, plus more!
I want to say that I got a glimpse into Hinduism, a tiny bit on Sikhism and a brief brush with Islam. My team and I were also educated on how the caste system works, and boy did that open my eyes. Once I learned what it meant to be a low caste you could spot who was who everywhere we went. It also made me realize that, in many ways, a caste-like system exists in North America too, especially when it comes to your career choices. There is always somebody looking down on somebody else, entitled and selfish, unloving unless it involves boosting themselves in some way. It exists everywhere, the only difference between India and North America is that in India it's so overt and can't be ignored and in North America it's subtle and swept under the rugs (Native reservations anybody?).
One story that impacted me on how the caste system works was when my team came across a flooded alleyway. One man was opening a manhole and another stood beside wearing nothing but his underwear. As we walked away from the flooded street we were told that the undressed man was about to swim down the manhole to unblock the drain and that he was guaranteed that we would die, I'm assuming from either exhaustion or by unblocking the drain and being sucked under and drown.
There is a heavy oppression held over Hindu's because of the caste system. The belief that you were born low, will live low and will die low because of karma (which is often seen as a negative thing in India and a positive thing in North America) leads to generations of hopelessness. This man who is now dead probably believed that, since he was low caste, this would be the act that would break the cycle of his miserable life. With this knowledge I can see why Christianity is the religion of the low caste and the Dalits, a whopping 2% of the population in India (estimated to about 4% by now, apparently due to an outdated census. Let's not forget that 4% of 1.25 billion is 50 million Christians!) -- Because Jesus came for the lowest of the low because of love.
So my take away from my journey is this: the living God, not the gods made of stone and gold, not the ones placed in temples, is present in India and He is working in the people there. And the message that He sends His people in India is this: that the Dalit, the old man begging on the street corner, the "talking animal" in the eyes of many, is loved with a fierce love by the God of the universe.
