Indian leader cites ‘Christian extremism fights hate

India, May 2, 2017: A Christian leader from India called on Christians here in the Albemarle Monday to embrace a “Christian extremism” that loves those who persecute Christians and forgives those who wage violent campaigns against Christianity.

Against a backdrop of violent extremism that he called the arrival of “a different world,” Ajai Lall, a graduate of Mid-Atlantic Christian University who leads a large Christian mission in India urged an audience at MACU Monday to practice “extreme love,” “extreme compassion,” “extreme forgiveness” and “extreme concern for the lost.”

Ajai Lall, who is the author of the book “Christian Extremism,” subtitled “A Life Worth Dying For,” spoke in the chapel on the MACU campus.

Lall leads the Central India Christian Mission, which works in India, Nepal, the border of Bangladesh and recently also in Afghanistan.

Lall told the audience in the chapel at MACU that he has a strong heart to heart relationship with people at the college and churches in America that support the work of CICM.

John Maurice, interim president of MACU, introduced Lall.

“What a blessing they have been not only to us but to the Kingdom of God around the world, particularly in India,” Maurice said.

Lall began his presentation by clarifying the way Jesus stands at the center of the Christian faith and of the work of CCIM.

“Without him there is nothing,” Lall said, referring to Jesus. “Without him people are lost for eternity.”

Lall said extremism is growing not only in India and other parts of Asia but also in America and Europe. He pointed to recent terrorist attacks in Europe and numerous mass shootings and other incidents in America during the past 17 years.

“We are living in a different world,” Lall said.

He mentioned videos distributed by ISIS that portray beheadings and other gruesome scenes.

“We never thought that that day would arrive,” he said, describing the steady release of violent imagery by ISIS.

In regard to India, Lall spoke about not only the relatively well publicized incidents of Islamic extremism but also the prevalence of Hindu and Maoist extremism. He recounted the burning of churches, the rape of Christian women and the killing of Christian pastors.

Facing such persecution, he said, Christians in India recall that Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.

Lall told of a Christian pastor in India who baptized four of the people involved in the gang-rape of the pastor’s wife and spoke about a children’s minister who was raped after seeing her parents cut into pieces by Hindu extremists.

“They have a love for those who hate them,” Lall said. “Showing love for those who have killed your family, who have raped your daughters, and trying to reach them for Christ — that’s the love that we have.”

He told the story of a group of young Christians who were annoyed by Hindus broadcasting loud chanting and loud Hindu Scripture reading during a time when they were having their Bible study. They went to the Hindus in a show of force and told them if the loud broadcasts didn’t stop they would be sorry.

The young Christians were satisfied when the noisy broadcasts stopped, but then they were rebuked by a Christian elder who told them: “The time you leave the Cross and pick up the stick you lose your witness.”

He said that after a Christian woman publicly forgave the Hindu extremists who had burned her husband and children alive, “some of the Hindu extremists came and said, ‘if this is what Christianity is then I want to follow Jesus.’”

Lall said extreme compassion is seeing the world as Jesus sees it and having your heart broken by the things that break God’s heart.

“Compassion is a sense of shared suffering combined with an action to relieve such suffering,” Lall said. “Compassion is not a feeling that comes and goes.”

The cleft palate surgeries performed by the medical arm of CICM — most of which are for children from Hindu and Muslim families — are an important expression of compassion, he said. The surgery is life-changing for the children, he said, and there are 33 villages where he can preach the Gospel and plant churches because of the surgeries, he said.

One of the opportunities for Christians in India right now is that many young Hindus are questioning aspects of Hinduism — especially the caste system, Lall said.

People from the untouchable caste are now coming up to Christian and asking, “Why are Christians so different?” he said.

Answering a question from a student about how to share the Gospel with someone from another religion, Lall said the best way is to demonstrate love and compassion. “You can never win people by arguing,” he said.

– daily advance