The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other.  It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.  – John Berger

The essence of the statement of Francis of Assisi is very apt to the issue of “clinical trials and poor”, although he made it in a different context. John Berger’s statement provides the reason for using poor and vulnerable as “guinea pigs” for clinical trials.

Using poor and vulnerable for clinical trials is nothing new. This has been going on for a long time.

The US covert clinical trials on the poor and vulnerable in Guatemala came to light in 2010 after Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the experiment led by the US doctor John Cutler during 1946-1948. The Guatemalan study, which was never published, was interested in whether penicillin could be used not only as a cure of venereal diseases but also as a prophylaxis (to prevent the disease from spreading). Nearly 5500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1300, including Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, commercial sex workers and mental patients, were exposed to syphilis by human contact or inoculations.

Initially the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then encouraged them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates. Neither were subjects told what the purpose of the research was nor were they warned of its potentially fatal consequences. When the researchers couldn’t create enough infection through commercial sex workers, they started to do inoculations.

Some of the experiments were shocking. For example, seven women with epilepsy, who were in Home for the Insane, were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull. Another female syphilis patient was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere, in order to see the impact of an additional infection. Six months later she died.

Within the group that was subjected to clinical trials there were 83 deaths, according to Stephen Hauser, a member of US presidential commission. “It was not an accident that this happened in Guatemala,” commission president Amy Gutmann said, “Some of the people involved (in the research) said we could not do this in our own country.” The US researchers “systematically failed to act in accordance with minimal respect for human rights and morality in conduct of research,” Gutmann said, citing “substantial evidence” of an attempted cover up.

The Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom has called these experiments conducted by the US National Institutes of Health “crimes against humanity”. The Guatemala Study nauseated ethicists on multiple levels. Beyond infecting subjects with terrible disease, it was clear that people in the study did not understand what was being done to them or were not able to give their consent. Scientists showed no interest in the rights of the subjects of research. Nuremberg Code says doing this kind of research on people who cannot give informed consent is immoral and a crime against humanity.

Many US medical researchers, however, considered people like prisoners, mental patients and poor African Americans (i.e. poor people of different ethnicity) not fully human. So they felt that it was legitimate to experiment on these sections of people who did not have full rights in society. So, for American scientists the question of violation of human rights did not arise. In a federally funded study in 1942 male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, were injected experimental flu vaccine and then exposed them to flu several months later. Some of the men were not able to describe their symptoms, raising questions about how well they understood what was being done to them. According to a report, the test subjects were “senile and debilitated”.

In another federally funded study in the 1940s, Dr. W. Paul Havens, a World Health Organisation expert on viral diseases, exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using mental patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Connecticut.

From 1963 to 1966, researchers intentionally gave hepatitis to mentally retarded children housed at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, in an attempt to track the development of the viral infection and to test gamma globulin against it. According to a report, parents were told that the only way their child could be admitted to Willowbrook was through the hepatitis unit.

For a study in 1957, when the Asian flu epidemic was spreading, US government researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Maryland, to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine.

Conducting medical experiments on prisoners increased with the huge growth in the US pharmaceutical and health care industries in the late 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical “guinea pigs”. In the congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.

As the supply of prisoners and mental patients dried up, and regulations in the industrially developed countries have been made more stringent due to public outcry, medical researchers of these countries looked to countries where clinical trials could be done more cheaply with fewer or virtually nonexistent regulations, easy availability of more number of poor and vulnerable people, and favourable epidemiological conditions. The weakness of local health care structures generates a docile patient pool, making the process easier.

As recently as 1990, according to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, US, a mere 271 trials were being conducted in foreign countries of drugs intended for American use. By 2008 the number had risen to 6485 – an increase of more than 2000%. A database being compiled by the National Institutes of Health has identified 58788 such trials in 173 countries outside the US since 2000. In 2008 alone, according to the inspector general’s report, 80% of the applications submitted to the FDA for new drugs contained data from foreign clinical trials. Increasingly, the pharmaceutical companies are doing 100% of their testing in other countries. The inspector general found that the 20 largest US based companies now conducted “one-third of their clinical trials exclusively at foreign sites.”

One of the favoured destinations for clinical trials is India, due to its appealing advantages such as its widely spoken English, skilled workforce, established medical infrastructure, favourable regulatory environment, minimum ethical oversight, shorter patient recruitment time and cost effectiveness. India has a vast pool of patients, and among them many are “treatment naïve” meaning they have never taken any medication for their illness. This is very important for clinical trials, because it lowers the risk of unforeseen drug interactions and avoids the troublesome process of weaning patients off one medication and onto another.

Enticed by a $30 billion lucrative business of clinical trials Indian government is aggressively scrambling to catch Big Pharma’s eye. By making favourable policy changes for clinical trials by foreign companies, India, the hub of outsourced labour, is positioning itself in a newly lucrative role: “guinea pig” to the world.

In 2005 the Indian government took a more controversial step, amending a long-standing law that limited the kind of trials that foreign pharmaceutical companies could conduct. That law allowed companies to test drugs on Indian patients only after the drugs had been proven safe in trials conducted in the country of origin. In January 2005 the government threw out that constraint. It started improving staff and infrastructure, and making regulatory changes to speedup processing of applications. Public hospitals are being promoted as clinical trial sites. Mostly it is the poor, who cannot afford to go to private hospitals, make use of the services of public hospitals. This makes them vulnerable to the enticement of drug trials, as the doctor-patient relationship in India is unique. They may be easily influenced by the doctor’s advice. Patients may not question their doctor’s judgment. They may also believe that refusal to follow the doctor’s advice to enter a trial would affect their access to medical care. So there is scope for a direct conflict of interest, especially if physicians are paid recruitment fees and all-expenses paid conferences abroad trips as a reward for recruiting their patients into trials. At the same time, by conducting the clinical trials, the under-resourced public hospitals gain some equipment and money.

Dr. Samiran Nundy, former editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, expressed doubt about the effect of the Indian government’s decision to relax the laws governing drug trials by foreign companies. He said the decision will increase the number of large scale drug trials conducted in India and put more patients at risk of exploitation. “Too many researchers fail to declare conflicts of interest, and it is only too easy to buy up poor illiterate patients, who are unable to give truly informed consent, and recruit them to trials which are of little or no benefit to them and which fail to safeguard their interests,” he said.

The growth of the clinical-trial industry in India needs to be seen within the social and economic context of the country. According to the United Nations, 40 percent of people in India are illiterate. Illiteracy puts many at risk not knowing whether the treatment their doctor is prescribing is a regular treatment or a part of a clinical trial. Moreover, doctors are respected to the point of being revered. So the likelihood of a poor person questioning their doctor about a specific treatment is low.

With the onset of neoliberalism the gap between rich and poor in India is widening. About 830 million people live on less than 20 rupees a day. Poverty forces some to enroll in clinical trials as a way to make a living. Faced with the fewest options, poor patients are most likely to try or be forcibly volunteered for risky new treatments due to lack of basic, affordable health care. Dr. Kalantri bemoans at what he sees as skewed clinical trial demographics. “Ninety percent of patients being recruited in India are poor,” he says, “That’s the reality. Trials enroll very few patients who are rich, literate and capable of asking awkward questions.” As a result the poor and illiterate bear the consequences of the experiments of new drugs.

In a way the policies of the Indian government are also contributing to the fate of the poor, and facilitating clinical trials in public hospitals. For more than a decade, government policy has been to reduce public support for health care services, and these services are under-resourced. Health economists have pointed out that only 15% of the 1500 billion rupees spent in the health sector in India comes from the government. 4% comes from social insurance and 1% from private insurance companies. The remaining 80% is spent by individuals using private services and without insurance. Two-thirds of health care users bear 100% of their health care expenses. 70% of these health care users are poor.

In August 2008, it was reported that 49 babies below the age of 12 months have died at India’s best known medical institute, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The babies have died since January 2006, following the administration of new drugs and therapies under clinical trials. According to the information obtained under the Right to Information Act by Rahul Verma of an NGO called the Uday Foundation for Congenital Defects and Rare Blood Groups, 4142 babies were used for clinical trials conducted by the Department of Pediatrics since 1^st January 2006, out of which 2728 babies were under one year of age. In an interview published in Delhi based newspaper MetroNow on 22^nd August 2008 Dr. Veena Kalra, former HOD-Pediatrics, AIIMS, stated that she did not rule out the possibility that the deaths of 49 babies in clinical trials and parents belonging to economically weaker sections could be true. She took voluntary retirement in 2008. That means, majority of these clinical trials happened when she was the HOD of the pediatric department.

Two of the trial drugs – olmesartan and valsartan, meant for reducing blood pressure – have never been tried on patients below the age of 18 years, according to Dr. Chandra Gulhati, editor of the Monthly Index of Medical Specialities.

In 2010 an investigation by a women’s health rights group, SAMA, exposed gross ethical violations of a study, where nearly 23500 tribal girls between ages of 10-14 years in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat were given the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. The clinical trials were carried out by an international NGO the Program for Appropriate Technology and Health (PATH), in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Most of the tribal girls, who were used as “guinea pigs”, were staying in government hostels for tribal students. In Andhra Pradesh nearly 2800 consent forms were signed by either a hostel warden or a headmaster. The fact that teachers played a “primary role” in explaining and “obtaining consent” meant that the consent was obtained under coercion. The investigation by SAMA revealed some disturbing facts. Given their background of poverty and under-nourishment, the tribal girls were given vaccine. Moreover, the information brochure provided to them was in English. So neither they nor the health worker administering the vaccine to them could read and understand. This raises the ethical question of obtaining “informed consent” from these tribal girls or their parents. Doing this kind of research on people who cannot give informed consent is immoral and a crime against humanity.

The most important question is, what criteria did the researchers apply to select tribal girls for the study? Is it their poverty, illiteracy (of their parents) and vulnerability that drove the researchers, with an active complicity of the Indian government and the health officials, to conduct risky clinical trials on these poor tribal people? Because their poverty desist them from taking any legal action against the multinational companies and their collaborators such as the central and state governments and ICMR, if the clinical trials consume their life. This is what happened to the loved ones of the seven girls who died after receiving the vaccine. Their parents, knowing full well that their children died only after receiving the vaccine, could only grieve for their children and for their helplessness to demand justice. (Watch the documentary produced by Zeina Awad, a reporter for Al Jazeera’s “Fault Lines” programme. Her report, “Outsourced: Clinical Trials Overseas,” aired on Al Jazeera English).

When the very government, which is supposed to look after the welfare of its citizens and protect the weak and vulnerable from the vultures like pharmaceutical companies, colludes with profit-driven multinational companies, one can imagine the plight of marginalised sections like tribals in India.

SAMA’s exposure of the ethical violations of the clinical trials, followed by the public outcry, forced the Indian central government to set up an inquiry committee in order to pacify the public, but not to do anything that would hurt the lucrative clinical trials business or antagonise multinational pharmaceutical companies. For the government, pharmaceutical companies and researchers, money is more important than the lives of poor people. They don’t mind profiting at the expense of the health and life of poor tribal girls. The Indian and state governments are intentionally sacrificing the people of marginalized sections for the “economic growth”. The committee did not indict either the drug company or the organisation that conducted the study. The inquiry concluded that the seven deaths were “most probably unrelated to the vaccine” and “the cause of death in all the cases cannot be established with certainty.” It observed “several minor deficiencies in the planning and conduct of the study”. But the reality is these “minor deficiencies” caused the death of seven innocent tribal students. The “minor deficiencies” include no proper monitoring of the health of these girls for adverse effects of the drug.

According to Menaka Gandhi, a member of Indian parliament, there is a growing number of clinical trial deaths – 137 deaths in 2007, 288 in 2008 and 637 in 2009. Imagine the uproar if so many clinical trial deaths happened in America or Europe. This can happen only elsewhere as a result of the drug trials conducted by the American and European pharmaceutical companies.

According to an investigation, pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials in India have not compensated for the clinical trial deaths. Of 671 deaths that were reported in 2010, there is evidence that compensation was paid in just three cases. The Indian health ministry has asked 44 pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Bayer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi-Aventis, to explain why they have not paid compensation. For example, data compiled by the ministry show there were 152 deaths reported during Sanofi trials and 138 in Bayer trials. What is interesting is the answer given by the companies or the researchers whenever clinical trial deaths happened. A Novartis spokesperson told that its clinical trial investigation found that deaths were not caused by the trial drug, but instead due to the progression of underlying diseases. So compensation was not paid in such cases. Other pharmaceutical companies also offered similar argument. For the deaths of 49 babies, AIIMS presented similar defense, saying that no death was “attributable to the study treatments used” and “the deaths were due to the natural history of the severe disease that the children suffered from.” This is the conclusion also of the inquiry committee set up by the Indian central government on the deaths of the vaccine for cervical cancer: “(The seven deaths were) most probably unrelated to the vaccine…(and) the cause of death in all the cases cannot be established with certainty.”

In this light, outsourcing drug trials to a country, where decent medical care is scarce and cost of medicine is beyond the reach of the poor, is just the globalization and continuation of the same old equation – poor and vulnerable of different ethnicity are not fully human, and so can be used as “guinea pigs” for clinical trials to extend life of the rich, and to produce more profits for the pharmaceutical companies and the facilitators like government policy-makers and medical professionals at the expense of the health and life of the poor (the same attitude may be seen even in the past and present American and European imperial wars). India is able to provide significant cost savings of 50-60% for clinical trials. No wonder the clinical trials market in India has been expanding at an astounding 36% annually from 2006-07 to 2010-11, according to a study conducted by the Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights, Mumbai. The study, however, shows that the increase in clinical trials has no correlation to the disease scenario in the country. Most trials are of relatively expensive drugs offering only marginal benefit over existing ones. 13.4% of drug trials is for cancer drugs, although cancer is not among the top ten killers in India. But it is among the top ten in industrially developed countries. According to the study, trials on perinatal conditions, a major cause for deaths in India, constitute just 2.9%. Only 16 out of 1078 drug trials were on lower respiratory tract infections, although they are among the biggest killers both in India and other developing countries, the study observes.

What the majority of Indians need is basic, affordable health care and nutrition. In India Article 21 of Fundamental Rights assures the right to live with dignity. The state is under a constitutional obligation to see that there is no violation of the fundamental right of any person, particularly when she/he belongs to weaker section of the society, either by failing to provide the basic health care and nutrition, or by facilitating (or colluding with) vultures like pharmaceutical companies to exploit marginalised people in the society.

Sources

Namita Bhandare, “Babies or Guinea Pigs?” in Society, 23^rd August 2008.

Jennifer Kahn, “A Nation of Guinea Pigs.” http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/indiadrug.html.

“A Shockingly Unethical Trial,” in The Hindu, 15^th May 2011.

“Booming Clinical Trials Market in India,” RNCOS, 1^st August 2011.

Ed Silverman, “Clinical Trial Deaths and Compensation in India.” http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/05/clinical-trial-deaths-and-compensation-in-india/

“Clinical Trials in India: Ethical Concerns,” in Bulletin of the World Health Organisation. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/8/08-010808/en/index.html.

“Exposed US Doctors Secretly Infected Hundreds of Guatemalans with Syphilis in the 1940s.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/5/exposed_us_doctors_secretly_infected_hundreds.

Aditi Tandon, “Indians Sitting Ducks as Drug Trials Turn Fatal,” in Tribune India, 7^th August 2011.

“Panel Condemns US Syphilis Study in Guatemala,” Al-Jazeera-English, 30^th August 2011.

 Kalpana Sharma, “Too Bitter a Pill to Swallow,” in The Hindu, 12^th June 2011.

Prosperity, however, is not synonymous with wealth or income. Greater prosperity is not the same as economic growth or rise in income. “To prosper” (from Latin word prosperus) means “to flourish”, “to enjoy vigorous and healthy growth”. Prosperity means to flourish physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. It does not mean to succeed in material terms or to be successful financially. Surely wealth is an element in prosperity. Material wealth does not necessarily indicate a happy and fulfilled life, and emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Most of the time the expensive material things we surround ourselves with convey a void in life and a craving for acceptance, recognition and identity − the basic human needs. One may have all the money, yet live with the nagging feeling of emptiness, restlessness and even boredom. A void that can not be filled with wealth and material things.

But in the present day highly unequal societies the importance of income and wealth in prosperity or wellbeing is played out through relative effects. Income disparities indicate status differences. So what matters is having more income and wealth than those around us. At times it gives power and authority. Income and wealth also give access to “status goods” that is very important in establishing one’s social standing. Because in unequal societies status competition is intense and we are sensitive to how we are perceived or judged by others. Robert Frank’s books Luxury Fever or Falling Behind show how consumption is about status competition. People spend thousands of rupees on accessories such as handbags and sunglasses with the right labels to make statements about themselves. It is not that they want to spend so much of money on mere “things”. Money is spent on the value attached to some of the consumer goods in society. We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes, and that is the reason for labels, designer clothes, latest model cars and branded accessories. Consumer goods are not mere stuff, but “language” in social relationships. Through things we convey with one another our identity, social status, social affiliation and feelings– through giving and receiving gifts − for one another. Consumer goods play a role in our lives that goes way beyond their material functionality. That is why they continue to captivate us even beyond the point of usefulness.

Consumerism is powerful. We continue to invent or reinvent our social identity and status through accumulation of latest “status goods” that have arrived in market. Novelty carries with it important information about status. Companies continue to stuff market with new “status goods” and promote them by hiring popular brand ambassadors to entice consumers to emulate these popular figures in order to reposition themselves in the society. Thus, there is a direct correlation between restless desire for new consumer goods and their continual production by corporate companies. The relentless pursuit for novelty creates anxiety, which in turn affects physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing.

Consumerism interferes with the workings of society by replacing the normal common sense desire for an adequate supply of life’s necessities, community life, a stable family and healthy relationships with an artificial ongoing and insatiable quest for things and the money to buy them, with little regard for the true utility of what is bought. An intended consequence of this, promoted by those who profit from consumerism, is to accelerate the discarding of the old, either because of lack of durability or a change in fashion. This makes people to work for long hours to have more income to place themselves in a conspicuous position in the social hierarchy through acquiring latest consumer appliances, accessories and fashions. This is a vicious cycle. People have less time because they work more. They work more because they want more to maintain a higher standard of living. That means, as a society we are choosing MONEY over TIME. It creates anxiety and stress, and undermines physical and mental health and family relationships. Spending time with spouse and children, and having rest and relaxation become secondary to the chasing of mirage called social status and identity in a consumer society. The moment we think we have got it, entrepreneur invents new consumer goods and with that the social identity and status will change. We will never arrive there in our life time, because it is a MIRAGE.

The wisdom of the old says, “I made great works; I built houses, and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. So I became great…” (Ecclesiastes 2.4-9). He asks, “What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” and declares that it is like “a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1.2; 2.11).

Consumerism numbs us and we live in delusion that it gives “fruits of life”, fruits that satisfy basic human needs and sustain human life. When common sense prevails we will realize what all important things we have lost in life like the joy of spending time with spouse, children and friends, and physical and mental health in rest and relaxation.

Surely material goods are essential to meet our basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. In order to buy food, clothing, housing and other basic needs money is required. However, once a person’s basic needs are met, money takes on a different meaning. Money brings happiness only insofar as it lifts people out of poverty. Once that level is crossed, the link between material wealth and wellbeing and happiness is very thin. Psychological studies show that more income and more consumer goods do not lead to lasting gains in our sense of wellbeing or satisfaction in our life. Psychologist Tim Kasser highlights what he calls the high price of materialism. According to him, materialistic values such as popularity, image and financial success are psychologically opposed to intrinsic values like – self-acceptance, affiliation and a sense of belonging to a community. He further says that people with higher intrinsic values are happier than those with materialistic values.

Take, for example, the people of the Scandinavian countries − Sweden and Denmark. The people of these countries have consistently been found to be among the happiest in the world. According to the same studies the people of Costa Rica are happier that the Scandinavians, although the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of Costa Rica is only one-fourth that of Sweden and Denmark.

Similarly, Guatemalans are happier than those of the United States, despite its low income level than that of the latter. So there is hardly any correlation between levels of wealth and levels of happiness and wellbeing, once poverty level is crossed. Economic growth and higher incomes in the US are supposed to deliver prosperity − that atleast is the conventional wisdom. But the ground reality does not support the conventional view. In the US, the economic super power, the rates of depression, obesity, heart attacks, divorces, and suicides have skyrocketed. Antidepressants are now the most commonly prescribed drugs. The nation consumes two-thirds of the global market for drugs prescribed to combat chronic sadness and hopelessness. One study found that today the average American child experiences higher levels of anxiety than did the average child under psychiatric care in the 1950s.

After analyzing more than 150 studies on wealth and happiness, Diener and Martin Seligman, two of the world’s top experts on the science of happiness, wrote: 
“Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction… and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust.” Inequality affects our ability to trust and our sense that we are part of a community. Thus, it affects social relations, and promotes individualism and self-centeredness. People become insensitive to the needs of others. “Inequality takes the form of dominance hierarchies, based on power and coercion and privileged access to resources…That’s why power, status and wealth all go together at the top and why powerlessness, hunger and poverty go together at the bottom.”

In egalitarian societies, where there is a strong community life, there is more trust, sharing and people give higher priority to common good. They experience greater joy and satisfaction when they share and work together for common good. In such societies there is less importance to social status, and so less positional competition. That means, less importance for “status goods”. This reduces anxiety. The quality of life is better. This is what prosperity means. Tim Jackson, Economics Commissioner, Sustainable Development Commission, says, “Prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society. Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet.”

Sources

“Equality and the Good Life.” Brook Jarvis Interviews Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, Yes Magazine, 4^th March 2010.

Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth: The Transition to a Sustainable Economy. The Sustainable Development Commission, March 2009.

John Robbins, “What is Real Wealth?” Yes Magazine, 31^st August 2010.

“The Concept of ‘Living Well’ – A Bolivian Viewpoint.” A Paper distributed by the Bolivia Delegation at the UN, April 2010. Countercurrents.org, 11^th October 2010.

In continuation of my previous post on postal politics:

Although I complained to the authorities, the problem is not solved. Probably, it has increased. This time the number of copies of the magazine  returned are more. For some copies inside pages are missing. Only the cover pages are returned. The postman who delivers these copies works at Srinagar Colony Post Office, Hyderabad, India. Whereas we post the copies at Yusufguda Post office, Hyderabad.

]]> http://kamalakarduvvuru.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/129/feed/ 1 kamalakarduvvuru http://kamalakarduvvuru.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/postal-politics/ http://kamalakarduvvuru.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/postal-politics/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 16:40:10 +0000 kamalakarduvvuru http://kamalakarduvvuru.wordpress.com/?p=124 ]]> I am facing a new challenge from a post office in Hyderabad, India. I posted the April Issue of the magazine NEIGHBOUR to all, both subscribers and non-subscribers, in the first week of April at Yousufguda post office, Hyderabad. I came to know that some of our friends did not receive their copies. I again posted to them. Even then some did not receive.

For the past few days I am receiving the “returned” copies. Most of the copies, that returned to us, did not have the wrapper (on which we paste the stamp), the small rope (with which the magazine is tied) and the “To” address (Receiver’s address). On one copy it is clearly evident that the “To” address was forcefully removed.

Since the “To” address is missing on the returned copies, I do not know who did not receive the magazine.

Today morning I confronted the postman. Our residence falls under Srinagar Colony Post Office, Hyderabad. The postman expressed his ignorance. What is incomprehensible is how did the copies, whose “To” address is missing, end up in Srinagar Colony Post Office, when they were posted in Yousufguda post office.

The other intriguing thing is, on copies, which have wrapper intact, there is only a single post office seal on the postal stamp. As I understand there should be atleast two post offices’ seals – seal of the sending post office and that of the receiving post office. That means, some of the copies of the magazine were, probably, never sent to their destination by the Yousufguda post office, but sent to the Srinagar Colony post office to be returned to the sender.

I would be greatful if someone throws some light on this issue and show us the way we need to take.

Why does Post office, which is supposed to serve people, indulge in such wrongful activities?

It is true that wealthy people throughout the world are in some way involved in philanthropic activities. Gates foundation, the richest charity in the world with an annual income equal to that of a small country, has undoubtedly been helping a lot of people around the world. However, philanthropy on the scale we see now can only exist in a fundamentally unequal society where a small minority of businessmen owns or controls large parts of the productive forces entitling them to staggering profits. According to the 2011 annual report of the business magazine Forbes there are 1210 individuals with a net value of $1 billion dollars (or more). Their total net worth is $4.5 trillion dollars, greater than the combined worth of 4 billion people in the world. The three richest people in the world control more wealth than the combined wealth of the poorest 48 countries. The wealthiest 1% of the global population own 43% of global assets. The richest 10% of the world own 83% of global assets. The current concentration of wealth in a few hands exceeds any previous period in history.

The US has the most billionaires in the world (413). The net worth of Bill Gates is $56 billion and that of Warren Buffet $50 billion. In 1976 the top 1% of Americans held 20% of the total wealth of the US, whereas in 2011 they control 40% of total wealth. 80% of Americans own only 15% of the wealth. That means, 20% of Americans control 85% of total wealth.  

India’s high economic growth over the past decade and the upsurge in billionaires upward to 55 by 2011 are linked to the neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and globalisation, which have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, undermined small scale producers and dispossessed tens of millions of tribals, poor and small scale farmers. According to the Arjun Sengupta Committee, about 77% of Indians live on less than Rs. 20 a day.

The huge inequality reflects the stark differences in wealth between a handful of rich and the vast struggling masses. Does it mean that the accumulation of unimaginable amounts of wealth is intertwined with the appalling poverty of billions of people? Atleast this is what the annual budgets of many countries convey. Take, for example, the US budget proposal for 2012 that cuts more than $5.8 trillion in government spending over the next decade, meaning cuts on social spending which affects the poor and the old. The budget also calls for REDUCING the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25%. In his article of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning American economist, deplores, “…one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws…has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself…The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favourable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflict of interests.”

What is striking about the fortune of billionaires in the US (and elsewhere) is how dependent their accumulation of wealth is based on pillage of state resources, on neo-liberal policies which led to the take over at bargain prices of privatised public enterprises, deregulation that allows for plunder of the environment to extract natural resources at the highest rate of return, tax-cuts, and elimination of social programmes and labour rights.

It is absolutely clear that the state plays an essential role in facilitating the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, whether in facilitating the plundering of the state treasury (i.e. public money) and the environment or in heightening the direct or indirect exploitation of labour. It also promotes the interests of the wealthy in other countries. It facilitates the entry of the big corporations into their markets, at times through arm-twisting or wars. WikiLeaks cable revealed that the US sought to retaliate against Europe on Genetically Modified Crops (GM Crops). In the 2007 leaked cable, then US ambassador to France Craig Stapleton wrote, “Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy and even the (European) Commission…Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voice.” Stapleton recommended retaliations that would cause “some pain” across EU. It is evident that the US policy on genetically modified organisms is being influenced by the multinational corporations that profit from genetic engineering and the export-oriented agribusiness. The government has virtually become an agency for promoting the private interests of the Monsanto Corporation.

Monsanto and other biotech corporations have been pushing to find new market footholds in collaboration with USAID, the US State Department and the Gates Foundation Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). According to Netline: “The collusion of the Gates Foundation with Monsanto Corporation is no accident, as high level officials leading AGRA are former Monsanto executives. The recent purchase by AGRA of $500,000 worth in Monsanto stocks was vivid proof of that close relationship. Despite many words by Gates officials since the inception of the AGRA agenda denying that GMO seeds would be used as part of AGRA, their close relationship with Monsanto has now been revealed to be a key element in their agronomic ‘new green revolution’ strategy.”

Speaking at the Commission in World Farming annual lecture, Samuel Jutzi, director of the animal production and health division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) bemoaned that powerful, large agri-business and food producing companies are blocking reforms which would improve human health and environment.

US has been waging wars, covertly or overtly, to open countries to US corporate and banking interests. The US economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction and chaos can be seen around the world. For example, the capacity to control natural resources in Africa is enhanced by spreading terror, uprooting people, destroying families, and sowing distrust and hatred. Armed conflicts are sustained, and at times instigated, through supply of weapons. The armed conflicts in countries cause political chaos, destroy infrastructure and make a huge dent on their economies, which make them vulnerable. This provides an easy access for the transnational companies to their markets and natural resources.

The neighbouring countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and transnational companies with the active support of their respective governments, have been deeply involved in the plundering of coltan, a critical raw material in high-tech manufacturing, in the Congo. As a consequence of the pillaging of the natural resources in this country, more than 60 lakh Congolese died since 1996. The United Nations characterised the “resource war” in the Congo as the worst humanitarian crisis since the World War II.

The interconnectedness between wars and control of natural resources and markets is expressed by the former US Marine Smedley Butler, who participated in many wars in the Central and the South America. He said, “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, rightly said, “Capitalism has twins, the market and war. The market converts life into commodities, it converts land into a commodity. And when capitalists cannot sustain this economic model based on looting, on exploitation, on marginalisation, on exclusion and, above all, on the accumulation of capital, they rely on war, the arms race.” Wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the country goes to war. Common citizen bears the cost by paying higher taxes. So the state, as a representative of the wealthy, can undertake any number of military adventures to further the reach of corporations. Corporations and contractors stand only to gain.

The collusion between political and business classes in furthering their self interests at the cost of majority of people has been exposed by the recent scandals in India. The leaked telephone conversations of Niira Radia, a prominent business lobbyist, reveal some of the country’s most powerful tycoons scheming to manipulate government appointments and influence regulatory decisions. On 5 April 2010 writing in the Indian newspaper DNA, activist-artist Mallika Sarabhai lambasted the government for failing to crack down on corruption and collusion, asking the pointed question: “Who will fight the robber barons pillaging India?”

One of the main reasons for the poverty, disease, death and destruction in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the “resource war”. The Congo is a storehouse of important minerals for the functioning of modern society, particularly as it relates to the mining and technology sectors. The key natural resources are: diamonds, gold, coltan, copper, uranium, tin, silver, cobalt, timber, manganese and petroleum. The Congo has a history of being pillaged and the people being used as fodder in a rush for natural resources. During the rule of the Belgian king, Leopold II, from 1885-1908, more than one crore Congolese died as a result of plundering of natural resources. The resources at the root of suffering of the Congolese were ivory and rubber. Today it is coltan, diamonds, gold, copper and tin, to name a few. Bill Gates’ Microsoft Office needs some of these “conflict minerals” such as coltan.

On 7 January 2007 LA Times (Los Angeles Times) published an investigation report on the activities of Gates Foundation in Niger Delta in Africa. Its staff Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon wrote: “The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that it is paying for inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total France—the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. A sampling of the Gates Foundation’s largest investments between $100 million and $1 billion: Abbott Laboratories, Archer Daniels Midland, British Petroleum, Canadian national Railway, Exxon Mobil, Freddie Mac, French Government, Japanese Government, Merck, Schering Plough, Tyco International, Waste Management…Indeed, local leaders blame oil developments for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.”

The report in the LA Times points out, “Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting. Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, heath commissioner for Rivers State…cite an oil spill cogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The bright, sooty gas flares—which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium—lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children more susceptible to polio and measles—the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate against.”

The Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:

• Companies ranked among the worst US and Canadian polluters, including ConocoPhilips, Dow Chemicals Co., and Tyco International;
• Many of the other major polluters, including companies that own oil refinery that cause sickness in children while the foundation tries to save their parents from AIDS;
• Pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients the foundation is trying to treat;
•   This is “the dirty secret” of many large philanthropists, said Paul Hawken, an expert on socially beneficial investing who directs the Natural Capital Institute, an investment research group. “Foundations donate to groups trying to heal the future,” Hawken said in an interview, “but with their investments, they steal from the future.”

This report on Gates Foundation reminds me of Janus, a two-face Roman god. Janus was characterised by the blending of maleficent and beneficent. His one face represents war and the other peace.

It is time to see the OTHER FACE of the headline grabbing initiatives of billionaire philanthropists.

If the wealthy really want to create a better world through philanthropic activities, first they should meet other commitments such as paying more taxes, not pressing on laws and regulations, giving better benefits, job protection and work conditions to their employees, and manufacturing goods using environmentally friendly products and processes.

The billionaire philanthropists should also acknowledge the ineffectiveness of charity. We know that majority of charities, while well-intentioned, have not radically impacted world’s greatest challenges. The problems of the deprived masses can not be solved by charity and patronage.  Their misery can not be dealt with an economic system that is responsible for the unequal world which makes a small percentage of the people staggeringly rich and throws an overwhelming majority into poverty and despair. Ironically, the wealthy modern day philanthropists are precisely the ones who define the laws of the present system pushing majority into poverty, disease and death.

The India-US nuclear Agreement not only links India more closely to US and its global interests, and creates market for US conventional weapons, but also boosts US trade in a profitable sector, nuclear industry. During her visit to India Hillary Clinton said that India had approved two sites for the construction of two US nuclear reactors. She said, “I am also pleased that Prime Minister Singh told me that sites for two nuclear parks for US companies have been approved by the government.” However, what was not clear at that time was whether India had agreed to the US’ demand for legal immunity to its companies in case of a nuclear accident.

The clearance by the Union Cabinet of the text of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill (For full text of the Bill, click http://ow.ly/1jRas) in November 2009 for introduction in the Parliament, and the attempt by the government to introduce the Bill in the Parliament in March 15, 2010, though hastily withdrew in the last minute on account of strong opposition from majority of parliamentarians, unfolded its compliance to the US demand. Although the Congress-led government maintains that the Bill is crucial for all foreign companies, including Russian and French, the clearance of the Bill is important to the American companies. Because they are at a competitive disadvantage, as they are privately-owned, while Russian and French companies are fully or partly state-owned, and their accident liability is underwritten by their governments. The importance of the Bill for the American companies is very much evident in the report given by the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake to a US House committee: “We are hoping to see action on nuclear liability legislation that would reduce liability for American companies and allow them to invest in India.”

What stands out in the controversial Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill is the extent to which Indian government goes to address American rather than Indian interests. The Bill aids the business interests of the American reactor builders, and provides them legal immunity from any victim-initiated civil suit or criminal proceedings in an Indian court or in a court in their home country. In the process, it seeks to financially burden Indian taxpayers (including the victims of nuclear disaster) and impede the rights of victims of any nuclear accident.

The proposed Bill puts the responsibility, in case of a nuclear accident, on the “operator” of the facility and not on the supplier of the equipment or the builder of the facility. Clause 4 of the Bill says, “The operator of the nuclear installation shall be liable for nuclear damage caused by a nuclear incident.” The government of India, as owner of the nuclear reactors, will operate through its “operator”, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL). According to the Clause 6 of the Bill, the maximum financial liability, in the event of a nuclear accident, is set at the rupees equivalent of 300 million special drawing rights (SDRs), which is equal to $458 million (Rs. 2,087 crore). The NPCIL is liable for up to Rs. 500 crores ($109 million). Clause 17 allows only the operator (NPCIL), not the victims, to sue manufacturers and suppliers. The recourse taken by the operator will yield only Rs. 500 crore at maximum. This meager compensation will embolden the nuclear reactor manufacturers to choose the option of maximizing profits by reducing building and safety standards without fear of prosecution.

The Indian government is liable for damages, where the liability exceeds Rs. 500 crores, between Rs. 500 crores and Rs. 2,087 ($458 million) only. It is a move of the congress-led UPA government to get the Bill on capping civil nuclear liability in order to pave the way for the American transnational companies to export their nuclear reactors to India without having to bear the full liability on account of an accident.

In the US the financial liability for a nuclear accident is set at $10.5 billion. This gives a glimpse of how Congress-led UPA government values the life of Indian citizens.

Throughout the text of the Bill a mythical distinction has been made between the “operator” and the Indian government, since the “operator” (NPCIL) is the state-run and public funded Indian facility. That means, ultimately it is the Indian tax-payers (including the victims of a nuclear accident) who will pay when a nuclear accident occurs due to faulty design of nuclear installation or substandard equipment. The profiteering transnational companies will go scot free. Thus the legislation legalizes the principle: “Profits are private, accident-related liabilities are all public.”

The Bill also limits the time to make claim within 10 years. Clause 18 states: “The right to claim compensation for any nuclear damage caused by a nuclear incident shall extinguish if such claim is not made within a period of 10 years from the date of incident.” That provision was retained despite the Environment and Forest Ministry’s note of caution that the 10-year time limit was untenable. Because the nuclear damage to human and animal life and the environment are long-term, and damage to human health from a serious radioactive release “involves changes in DNAs, resulting in mutagenic and teratogenic changes, which take a long time to manifest.”

The Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986 caused extensive damage. The Three Mile Island nuclear plant led to 14 years of clean-up, costing $1 billion. The Chernobyl accident not only resulted in several lives being lost, but also led to radioactive exposure of at least 6 lakh people living not only in Ukraine, but also in far off areas such as Belarus and Russia.

The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill denies the victims of a nuclear accident their right to take a legal action in judicial courts in India or the home country of the manufacturer or supplier. Because all nuclear damage claims will be dealt with by a “Nuclear Damage Claims Commissioner” whose verdict will be “final” and cannot be appealed in any court. According to the Clause 35 “No civil court shall have jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceedings in respect of any matter which the Claims Commissioner or the Commission, as the case may be, is empowered to adjudicate under this Act and no injunction shall be granted by any court or other authority in respect of any action taken or to be taken in pursuance of any power conferred by or under this Act.” This is contrary to the provisions of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution: “Protection Of Life And Personal Liberty: No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”

Dr. E.A.S. Sarma, former Energy Secretary, says that finding a readily obliging partner in India, the US government seems to have no hesitation whatsoever in coaxing the Indians to sign the deal and open the floodgates to US multinationals to do business in India in such a hazardous activity. The pressure from the US government and transnational companies on the Congress-led government is immense. The US is hopeful and optimistic that India would “soon step up to its responsibilities” to get the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill cleared by Parliament, US ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer said recently. “We are hopeful and optimistic that this will happen sooner rather than later and India will step up to its responsibilities and obligation to complete this deal.” He said the civil nuclear deal was important for both India and the US and “part of this completion is for Parliament to press this Bill.”

Thus, the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill is designed specifically keeping the interests of the US multinational corporations in mind, not the welfare of potential victims (who elected the representatives of the government) of the disaster. Like the India-US agriculture trade treaty, Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), which is designed to satisfy the greed of US Agribusiness companies such as Monsanto, the proposed Nuclear Damage Bill attempts to lay a red carpet for the US companies to make huge profits in India without any accountability in case of any disaster. The Congress-led government is doing this by promoting myths: “food security” in the case of the former, and “energy security” in the case of the latter.

 1. Kamalakar Duvvuru, “Hillary Clinton’s Business Trip to India,” in DissidentVoice (August 11, 2009).

2. One of the world’s worst industrial disasters in 1984, when a gas leak in a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, killed an estimated 8000 people. The Indian government was severely criticized for accepting what was called a “paltry compensation” of about $470 million for the victims.

Church members come from the real world to the Sunday service with problems, issues and questions. When they leave the service after the benediction, they again enter into that real world. Our church members are wrestling with a host of issues and problems – rise of prices of basic commodities like rice, dal, sugar, unemployment, poverty, sickness, family problems, failure of crops, corruption, injustice, marginalization, discrimination, increase of the gap between the rich and the poor. Rich are becoming richer and poor are becoming poorer. The sermons and ministries of the church do not touch these things.

The OT prophets like Amos, Micah spoke about the prevailing situation in the society. They spoke about the ill treatment of the poor, widows, orphans. They spoke against corruption in high places. They related their faith in God to the concrete, contemporary problems and issues in the society in which they lived. Their intention was to make their society a better place.

Where is the prophetic voice of the church?

What does the church service on Sunday morning mean in general to the congregation?

1. It means many things. One of the things the church service means is hope. Church service tells congregation members that there is hope in this life, like Psalmist in Psalm 27 says, “I would have fainted unless I lived to see the goodness of the right in this life.” There is hope for this society and the world. There is hope that this society and world will become a better place to live in.

In order to tell that there is hope in this life, the pastor or the preacher should know what the concrete problems and issues that the congregation members are wrestling with. That means, you should know what is happening around. Then only you can relate your faith in God to these problems.

The gospels and the epistles in the NT were written to particular churches or Christian communities, addressing their problems and issues. The gospel writers and the writers of the epistles knew the concrete problems and issues. They related the gospel of Jesus Christ and their faith in Jesus Christ to their specific problems and issues. In this process, they narrated the life of Jesus Christ, his teachings and deeds. That means, they made Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ and their faith in Jesus Christ relevant to their present life and context.

This is what we need to do in our ministry. Know what is happening around you. Know the existing problems and issues in the society, you and your congregation members live in. Then relate faith in Christ to these problems.  

You give them hope in this life. That God is with us in our struggles. God is still in control. God can and will change the present situation to a better one. You move them from the state of despair to a state of hope, from hurt to healing. 

2. The second thing is, through your ministry you encourage them to go back and make a difference in their community or society. To strive to bring a positive change in their society. Not to leave that world and not to pretend that we belong to some sort of fantasy world. But remind them that we serve a God who has come into this world through Jesus Christ. He cares for this world. He is concerned about our problems, the challenges and issues we are facing now. This God is with those who are striving to make their societies better.

Christians should be committed to the kingdom of God and its values of justice, peace, love and unity. We should live an alternate existence of love and justice, offering prophetic witness and voice.           

Anything Precious is not Cheap

Jesus in his ministry used parables taken from the day-to-day life of people to teach deeper truths. It is said that one-third of his teaching is in parables. In Mt. 13 he used several parables to teach about the kingdom of heaven/God. In verse 44, he tells, Kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field; it is like the pearl of great value. Kingdom of God is something of great value. One has to search for it. Jesus, in Mt. 6.33 said: “Strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

The content of Jesus words and deeds is the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven. His Galilean ministry started with the proclamation of the coming of the kingdom of God (Mk. 1.15). His miraculous deeds were the indicators of the presence of God’s kingdom. In Mt. 12. 22ff. when Jesus healed the one who was mute and blind, the Pharisees said that Jesus did that with the power of the Beelzebub. But Jesus responded by saying that “If it is by the spirit of God I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.”

What is this kingdom of God? Mt. 12.22-32 indicates that bringing healing and wholeness to the body of the person demonstrates the presence of the kingdom of God. In this passage Jesus says two things that are interrelated: binding the strongman and the healing of the person. It is already said that the sickness was caused by the evil spirit. Jesus is dealing with the cause that caused pain and suffering in the person. Jesus is making right the wrong done by the demonic and oppressive forces.  It is this transformative action of God in the lives of people that is evident in the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is to this transformative ministry that we are called for.

However, it needs commitment, persistence and sacrifice. The merchant searched for fine pearls and when he found one, he sold all that he had and bought it. Anything precious is costly. Establishment of the kingdom of God and its values of justice, peace, love and unity is costly. It demands commitment, persistence (I prefer this word to ‘determination’), sacrifice (here comes the priorities) or “willing to lose in order to gain”. Jesus says that “whoever wants to be my disciple let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

To be instruments of God’s transformative action demands a conscious, willful commitment to the mission, persistence in the work, and sacrifice (willing to lose).

One thing most apparent is that in spite of possessing the things most desired, happiness and contentment still elude those infected with “affluenza”. “Affluenza”, according to the authors of the book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (John De Graff, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor), is “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” This metaphor of a disease is an apt characterization of a malignant condition that is eating into the entrails of urban India. People want to buy more and more things. This can cause stress. Stress can come from plain greed masquerading as the “noble” desire for a higher standard of living. In order to maintain higher standard of living, one has to work more time. So one is overworked and pressed for time. It is said, American couples have only 12 minutes a day (at an average) to converse with each other.

People have less time because they work more. They work more because they want more to maintain a higher standard of living. That means, as a society we are choosing money over time.

What are the consequences of this choice?

1. We have new form of “homelessness”. We have people living under the same roof, but hardly have time to connect with one another. Someone wrote a book with a title “Is there a home in this house?”
2. The most corrosive impact of consumerism is on human relationships. Consumerism thrives by promoting use-and-throw culture. Attitudes formed towards things (use-and-throw) eventually get transferred to people. As things are discarded after use, people are also thrown out once they lose the capacity to participate in the cycle of consumption. Because in consumeristic culture human beings in themselves do not possess value. Their value is directly proportional to their capacity to buy things.

Here the irony is, living beings find their value and worth and identity in non-living things.   

1. The consumeristic culture, as a result, has promoted greed and hoarding – accumulation of wealth and material things. Mother Teresa said: “Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing.”

In India it is evident that, although since 1990s there has been a period of sustained economic growth as the country moved towards a more market-oriented economy, the economic growth did not benefit all Indians equally. The benefits of globalization has created two Indias: India shining and India suffering. Middle and upper classes in urban areas have benefited under “India Shining”, but the poor have suffered a decline in living standards and rising food insecurity. Poverty and malnutrition, especially among women, children, and people who belong to scheduled castes and tribes, remain very high.

Large sections of Indian society suffer from gross poverty and deprivation, which co-exists with high and very high incomes and growth rates of income for a very small section. One-third of the world’s poor live in India. 83.6 crore Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 a day or Rs. 600 a month. Over 20 crore Indians sleep hungry on any given night. About 7000 Indians die every day of hunger.  India has the second highest poverty—after Nepal—among all Asian countries.

About 20 lakh children die every year as a result of serious malnutrition and preventable diseases. Nearly 50% of children suffer from moderate or severe malnutrition. This is one of the highest levels of child malnutrition in the world. Nearly 30% of newborn are underweight. 79% of children of age 6-35 months are anaemic.56% of married women are anaemic.

The apathetic attitude of the government towards the poor and the hungry is well sustained by the Indian society in general. As Jean Dreze, an economist and academic, said: “The government can’t get away with large-scale famine, but it can get away with chronic hunger. It has become an accepted part of life in India.”

Greed in Christian Religion

Greed has also entered Christian religion. Mushrooming of corporate churches, corporate Christian organizations and corporate Christian gospel reflect the mammonization of God and religion. The “gospel entrepreneurs” with their claims of unhindered direct access to God craftily unite God and Mammon with their make-rich-quick “good news”. These “gospel entrepreneurs”, particularly megachurches and televangelists, subscribe to corporate standards of operation with wealth as the highest “spiritual” value, and prosperity as their gospel. They advocate marketing approach to Christ and Christian religion and give optimistic messages intended to “make people feel good about themselves.” Their philosophy is to make the church as uninterfering and entertaining as possible in order to attract more “customers” into the “spiritual corporate company”. Their doctrine, known as Word of faith, is essentially that God rewards one’s faith almost always in the form of an abundance of wealth. They keep reminding the members the law of reciprocity: “Give generously and you will receive generously from God”. Consecration of wallets is their theology. This “spiritual culture” is not only in step with the corporate greed culture around, but also funneling crores of rupees annually into the coffers of these “spiritual corporate companies”. The number of God’s crorepathis is on the raise.

Some time ago I happened to meet a Christian real estate agent. She said, God is the greatest realtor, because he owns the entire universe. But what she forgot to mention was, the unique son of this “greatest realtor” once said: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk. 9.58).

Greed plays an important role in the fall of Adam and Eve. It is at the root of sin.

The desire in Eve for the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not arise till the intervention of the serpent. It arose only when the serpent “described them as desirable in order to be like God.” This awakening of her desire for the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is made clear in the text: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3.6). This was not “a momentary desire, but fundamental yearning.” Underlying the desire to possess what God possessed was the greed of Eve and Adam: to be wise like God.

Therefore, greed is at the root of sin. Greed is the essence of fallen human nature.

What are the consequences of greed?

1. It promotes an egocentric outlook on life. What follows, then, is the neglect of higher ideals in the “icy water of egoistical calculation”, as the Communist Manifesto puts it. This is clearly evident from the fact that America has the world’s highest rate of divorce and, according to family counsellors, “arguments about money are precipitating factors in 90 per cent of divorce cases.” I was told by an Indian Christian leader who works among college and university students that the number of potential divorces among families where both spouses work in IT sector is raising alarmingly.
2. “Chronic self-absorption”. The unremitting craving for things leaves people with little time and patience to think about others. Hence people become unmindful of the maladies of their society. For instance, how many of them know that 83.6 crore Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 a day or Rs. 600 a month. Over 20 crore Indians sleep hungry on any given night. About 7000 Indians die every day of hunger.

Mother Theresa once said: “One of the greatest deceases is to be nobody to anybody.” It is poverty to live for oneself ignoring your neighbor’s suffering, hunger and death. These neo-poor look with their eyes the suffering and hungry, but do not see. They listen with their ears the cries and agony of the poor and hungry, but do not hear. Because they are absorbed in self-gratification. This is the generation that the consumeristic culture creates.

Proverbs 1.10-19 says: “My child, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us wantonly ambush the innocent; like Sheol let us swallow them alive and whole, like those who go down to the Pit. We shall find all kinds of costly things; we shall fill our houses with booty. Throw in your lot among us; we will all have one purse” – my child, do not walk in their way, keep your foot from their paths; for their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed blood. For in vain the net baited while the bird is looking on; yet they lie in wait-to kill themselves! And set an ambush-for their own lives! Such is the end of all who are greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.”

However, it is character that communicates eloquently. As someone said, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”

Jesus emphasized on the importance of character: “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person” Mk. 7.20-23. What you are inside is more important. Because from it flows attitudes and behavior.

1. Behavior flows from character

The way we behave is based on our inner character, the seat of values. We may try to change our behavior without changing our basic character. We may learn to speak nicely. We may learn to preach like a highly spiritual person. You may attend personality development programme to learn personality development methods and techniques to shape your behavior and attitudes. This might work for a short time. But it is not long lasting. It is like constructing a beautiful mansion without foundation. People may appreciate it for a short time. However, it does not withstand the trying situations or circumstances. It is like the house built on sand in Jesus’ teaching on two houses built on two different foundations (Mt. 7.24-27). You know what happened to the one built on sand. “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell.” Jesus says, “Great was its fall.” If there is no fundamental character strength, life challenges will cause true motives and behavior to surface. That will be a humiliating experience. Because our true colors have been exposed to public.

2. Perceptions flow from character.

Seeing flows from being. The way we view the world, things and other people is based on what we are inside. Our worldview and value system are based on our character.

How do we treat other people? Do we value a person based on what he/she possesses or on the baggage he/she carries? The baggage may carry education, social status, economic status, family background….

Read James 2.1-9 – Favoritism. Vv. 1-5: “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here please,” while to the poor you say, “Stand there,” or “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?”     

Without transformation of our heart, we do not treat other people as possessing inherent human value and worth, or being created in the image of God.

That is why Jesus emphasized on being born again or born anew. As we surrender ourselves to God, God transforms our heart, our character and our being. Our minds will be renewed. This brings a change in our actions (Rom. 12.1-2, 9-21).

The Cross of Christ: An Epistemological Turning Point

A fundamental theme that coheres I&II Corinthians is the character of Paul’s apostleship. Paul explicates this in response to the Corinthians’ perception of apostleship and their criticism against his ministry characterized by sufferings or “weakness”. Paul’s lack of “words of wisdom” and his “weakness” were contrary to their perception of apostleship (I Cor. 2.2-4; 4.10; II Cor. 10.10; 11.30; 12.9-10).  In II Corinthians it is evident that the criticism against Paul’s apostolic ministry is instigated by the “super apostles” because it did not conform to their criteria for what constituted apostolic ministry (II Cor. 2.14-6.10). The “super-apostles” had considerable influence in the Corinthian church, with their ecstatic visions, miracle-working powers, and oratorical skills (II Cor. 10.10; 11.6;12.12). Their perception of a true apostle is based on the “face” or outward appearance (II Cor. 5.12). On the basis of this criterion, the “face” of Paul is weak and inferior, not glorious like their “faces”. They boast en prosōpō, which Paul terms as boasting kata sarka (II Cor. 11.18).[2] Thus, their criticism of Paul based on the standards kata sarka is directed mainly at the character of Paul’s apostolic ministry, namely “weakness” or suffering (II Cor. 4.7-12; 6.3-10; 10.10; 11.5-6; 11. 23-30; 12.5-10; 13. 3-4) and lack of perceptible ecstatic manifestations of the Spirit (II Cor. 5.12-13; 12.12).[3] What the Corinthians questioning Paul about is the apparent incompatibility of the gospel of power and his “weakness” or sufferings. So Paul wants to explain to Corinthians “why his apostleship took the form it did”.[4] In view of this Paul directs their attention to the eschatological significance of the death of Christ.

In II Corinthians Paul, for the first time, mentions the death of Christ in the context of the “unglorious” character of his ministry: persecuted, afflicted, perplexed, and struck down (II Cor. 4.8-12 cf. I Cor. 4.9-13). He again refers to the death of Christ in order to give ground for the Corinthians to answer “those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart” and to be proud of his ministry (II Cor. 5.12-15). As mentioned above, the perception of the opponents, as well as that of the Corinthians, is that the visible ecstasy is a sign of apostleship. By contrasting those who boast en prosōpō with those who boast en kardia, Paul indicates the inappropriateness of the perception and the criteria of the former group. This is more obvious in II Cor. 12.1-12 where Paul says that even though he too could claim “signs of a true apostle” such as “signs, wonders and mighty works,” and boast about the “visions and revelations of the Lord”, instead he boasts in his “weaknesses”. He validates the character of his ministry by appealing to the death of Christ: “he died for all” (II Cor.5.15). For Paul, the love of Christ manifested in Christ dying “for all” controls him. This love expressed by the cross of Christ is defined as existence for others (II Cor. 5.15; cf. Gal. 2.20; Rom. 14-15).[5]   

Paul points out that  the death of Christ has brought a change in his (and his associates’) perception: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view, even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way” (II Cor. 5.16). Some of the scholars like Alfred Plummer and Rudolf Bultmann take  kata sarka[6] adjectivally, thus modifying christen. This interpretation implies that in II Cor. 5.16 Paul is referring to “fleshly Christ”. On the other hand, scholars like C.K. Barrett and J. Louis Martyn, support adverbial meaning of kata sarka. Furnish points out that “whenever Paul does construe kata sarka with a noun or pronoun (Rom. 1.3; 4.1; 9.3, 5; I Cor. 1.26; 10.18), the phrase follows the noun, whereas here kata sarka precedes the proper noun, Christ.”[7] Moreover, Paul in II Cor. 2.14-6.10, is mainly concerned with the turn of ages that the death of Christ has brought and the perception associated with the old age and that of the age initiated by the Christ event.[8] Therefore, Paul, in II Cor. 5.16, is not concerned with Christology, but rather with epistemology. He wants to point out to the Corinthians that the death of Christ has brought an epistemological crisis. This is not a private event relating to Paul and his associates, but, as II Cor. 5.16-17 shows, it is an event of cosmic proportions.[9] Kainē ktisis taken in the context of II Cor. 2.14-6.10 as well as the background of the expression in Judaism (I En. 72.1; Jub. 4.26; IQS iv. 25; IQH xi 10-14) has mainly the eschatological meaning. So “now” in II Cor. 5.16 refers to the “eschatological now”. Paul is saying that there are two ways of knowing and it is the eschatological event of the cross of Christ that separates these two ways of knowing: one is, “knowing kata sarka”, and the other “knowing kata stauron”. Kata sarka is associated with the old age and Paul, in the past, knew Christ in that way. Paul says that this way of knowing is past for the one who is in Christ. But Paul’s opponents are boasting kata sarka (II Cor. 11.18 cf. 5.12).

It is often understood that the opposite of kata sarka is kata pneuma. However, Martyn persuasively argues that Paul does not actually use this expression nor does the one he has employed in I Cor. 2.14, “to discern spiritually” (anakrinein pneumatikōs). Martyn suggests that this could be due to the misinterpretation by the Corinthians of his reference to such a remark in his first letter. So the other way of knowing is, what Martyn calls, “the way of knowing which is granted at the juncture (or turn) of the ages”, i.e. “knowing kata stauron.”[10] The eschatological event of the death of Christ determines the believers’ perception of reality, which is contrary to the perception kata sarka. Martyn explains that “those who recognize their life to be God’s gift at the juncture of ages recognize also that until they are completely and exclusively in the new age, their knowing by the Spirit can occur only in the form of knowing by the power of the cross.”[11] This is confirmed by the “eschatological now” (‘now’ in II Cor. 5.16) of the believers’ existence and the wider context in which Paul has been discussing the character of apostleship, where he has characterized his apostleship as a “carrying in the body the death of Jesus” and “being given up to death for Jesus” (II Cor. 4.10-11). As Christ is regarded now only as a crucified one, so from now on those who are in Christ are to be judged not kata sarka but only kata stauron.[12] In other words, it is the cross which determines the character of the new creation. The presence of a new creation means that the old-age standards, such as wisdom, power, nobility according to the standards of the old age, are not valid (I Cor. 1.26-29). Paul’s reference to the ‘new creation’ in II Cor. 5.17 is polemical and with it he confronts those in the Corinthian community who are following the old age norms, particularly to judge the leaders (II Cor. 10.1-11). In the new creation, contends Paul, no one is judged kata sarka.[13]

Therefore, the problem of the Corinthians is their epistemology, where they failed to perceive in the cross of Christ the epistemological turning point. They also failed to understand that in the new creation the standards and the conduct that characterize the old age are inappropriate. The fundamental eschatological reality is that Christians stand at the juncture (or turn) of the ages. Paul maintains that the understanding of this eschatological reality determines one’s perception of Christ and inferentially of Paul’s apostolic existence and ministry. For a believer there is a new way of perceiving the reality, that is, the way of “knowing kata stauron” and a new value system and so the perception and the value system kata sarka are inappropriate.

The Cross of Christ: Its Intrinsic Association with Paul’s Apostleship

Paul has perceived his vocation, received from God, as “the call to engage in the eschatological struggle at the juncture of the ages,”[14] where some are being saved and others are perishing (I Cor. 1.18; II Cor. 2.14-16). This realization of his vocation has shaped the character of Paul’s apostolic ministry. In contrast to Paul, the Corinthian believers, particularly the opponents of Paul, want to avoid that crucial juncture and its struggle by associating themselves with the accepted pattern of perception, values and behaviour in the Greco-Roman society. Thus, they live in the “old age”, as though the eschatological event in the cross of Christ has not yet taken place. Paul charges them that they are sarkikoi, i.e. “the people of the present age”[15] and are behaving kata anthrōpon, particularly regarding the leadership in the Corinthian church (I Cor. 3.3-4).

The following characteristics of the leadership in the Greco-Roman society indicate how it has influenced the perception of leadership in the Corinthian church:[16]

1. The personality-centered politics is a characteristic of the Greco-Roman society. The underlying dynamics is that of inequality of relationships: the superior (or the leaders) and the inferior (or the common people). The inferior are dependent on the superior for their survival, and so associate themselves with the latter. Plutarch succinctly indicates the benefit of associating with the one having reputation: “But the safe and leisurely way has been chosen by many famous men…For just as ivy rises by twining itself about a strong tree, so each of these men, by attaching himself while still young to an older man and while still obscure to a man of reputation, being gradually raised up under the shelter of his power and growing great with him, fixed himself firmly and rooted himself in the affairs of the state” (Plutarch, Moralia 805 E-F). The superior, thus, cultivate a large following of subordinate adherents to enhance their own status in the society.

The personality-centered politics in the Corinthian church is reflected in the slogans of the members: “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas” (I Cor. 1.12). This is reinforced by their “boasting about human leaders” (I Cor. 3.21) and being “puffed up in favor of one against another” (I Cor. 4.6). A secular understanding of the elevated position of leadership and thus the underlying distinctions in rank and status between the members in the church and the ‘apostolic’ figures like Paul, Cephas and Apollos made the members to be associated with one or the other of these figures for their own advantage. They considered it important for them to be patronized by one of the “apostolic” figures. Such an attitude of patronage towards the relationships within the church is strongly denounced by Paul (I Cor.1.11-17; 3.1-23). Paul exhorts that this perception of relationships within the church is symptomatic of “the present age”, which has resulted in eris and zylos, even though, he says, the Corinthian believers’ very identity and existence are grounded in the cross of Christ, which is the power of God that saved them from the “present age” (I Cor. 1.18). Therefore, their social value system is associated to the “present age”.  

2. The socio-cultural ethos of the Greco-Roman society involved an obsession with status. Because of the gulf between the minority of the wealthy and powerful elite, and the great mass of the poor, the Greco-Roman society was preoccupied with status.[17] The distinctive language Paul uses highlights such a situation in the Corinthian church: “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (I Cor. 1.26). The features of social status, such as wealth, power, nobility, and wisdom, are considered to be important criteria for the leadership in the society (cf. I Cor. 1.26-28).[18] Philo in his treatise That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better, comments on the lifestyle of the ruling classes of Alexandria: “Those who take care of themselves are men of reputation, rich, leaders, men in the enjoyment of praise and honour; moreover, they are healthy, stout, and vigorous; living delicately, nursed in luxury, strangers to labour, living in the constant company of pleasure, and using all their outward senses to bring delights to the soul…” (X, 34). Thus, the qualities such as reputation, wealth, and honor are important for leadership.  

Few “wise”, “powerful” and “noble born” Corinthian Christians (I Cor.1.26) measured their value and worth and of others in terms of the accepted secular standards of high rank and status (I Cor. 4.18). Sophia logou or sophia anthrōpōn “had connotations of power in the sense of importance or worth” in the Greco-Roman society.[19] In other words, there is a social value and power associated with “words of wisdom” or “human wisdom” or “wisdom of this age and of rulers of this age” (I Cor. 2.5 cf. 1.17).[20] This is a highly valued feature for recognition and reputation: “Indicative of this wisdom is the significance placed on the social class and the importance of boasting in the establishment of personal reputation” (I Cor. 1.20-22, 29; 2.6).[21] Thus, it constituted a social definition of power rooted in the values cultivated by those in the society, who had wealth, status and honor. This led to leadership crisis, which consequently resulted in serious divisions within the Corinthian community. Instead of offering a bit of conflict management to reconcile the warring parties, Paul affirms the message of the cross as a critique of human wisdom. Human wisdom is bound to misconstrue the character of God and the way God works in the world, and a community’s behavior based on human inclinations, not surprisingly, results in jealousy and factionalism (I Cor. 3:3-4). The Corinthians must readjust their vision. They must come to a different way of viewing God and their life together. Thus Paul points to the message of the crucified Christ as the wisdom and power of God.

3. An accepted aspect of leadership in the Greco-Roman society was self-promotion.[22] On the one hand, leaders would elevate themselves, and on the other hand, their followers, with certain element of self-interest, would praise them. Self-promotion as an important tool for social status is clearly pointed out by Plutarch: “There are the feelings and language to which we are prompted not only by stratiōtai and the neoploutoi with their flaunting and ostentatious talk, but also by sophistai, philosophoi and stratēgoi who are full of their own importance and hold forth on the theme” (Plutarch, Moralia, 547 E). In the Corinthian church such “boasting” was also a part of the leadership dynamic. Boasting not only on the basis of the prevailing social norms such as wisdom, but also about human leaders was very much evident in the church (I Cor. 1.20, 29; 3.21). 

4. Enmity, in Roman politics, was a tool of self-promotion and self-preservation. It was seen as a necessary evil in self-advancement.[23] D.F. Epstein, in his book Personal Enmity in Roman Politics explores the importance of enmity for successful politics within the Roman world. Paul rebukes Corinthians for “jealousy and quarrelling” and terms it as belonging to those who are “of the flesh” (I Cor. 3.3).

Therefore, the existential tension in the Corinthian church is a result of trying to live in two diametrically opposed social worlds (I Cor. 3.1). This tension must have been more for those who were “wise”, “powerful” and of “noble birth” according to the standards of “this age” (I Cor. 1.26; 4.8, 10). For them, to pattern their perception, values and conduct kata stauron would mean shame and weakness, for the message of the cross is foolishness to the “wisdom of this age or…rulers of this age” (I Cor. 1.18, 21-23; 2.6). Hengel says that the cross was considered to be a “particularly cruel and shameful death, which as a rule was reserved for hardened criminals, rebellious slaves and rebels against the Roman state.”[24] He goes on to say that “the word of cross” “ran counter not only to Roman political thinking, but to the whole ethos of religion in ancient times and in particular to the ideas of God held by educated people.”[25] The cross of Christ and its proclamation would have been foolishness to and was surely considered despicable in the prevailing Greco-Roman culture. So the cross and the value system associated with it are a scandal to the wider society. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine why Corinthians, particularly the elite and the powerful in the church, followed the perception of the wider community with regards to the leadership in the church.

Paul, on the other hand, finds his calling in the eschatological centrality of the cross. He finds himself standing at the juncture of ages engaging in God’s eschatological struggle to liberate and reconcile the world (II Cor. 5.18-20). He uses an image to describe his apostolic ministry in 1 Cor 4:9: “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals,” to challenge the “kingly” (I Cor. 4:8) style of leadership highly valued by the Corinthians.[26] He uses a similar image in II Cor. 2.14-16: “[T]hanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.”

On 1 Cor 4:8-13 Martyn comments:

The picture Paul employs is in part that of the Roman circus in which the last act (the eschatological one) is that of the gladiators who are eventually to die a public, spectacular death enjoyed by the (cosmic) onlookers. In this picture, Paul implies that the Corinthians understand themselves to be safely in the stands, already filled and already rich. By contrast, his vocation places him down on the blood-red sand where the Two Ages meet and collide in the paradoxical life-giving cross. The vocation to life which God grants is given nowhere else than in the struggle and daily suffering and victorious rejoicing at this eschatological turning point where God elects what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.[27] 

Paul exercising his apostolic role at the turn of ages proclaims the message of the cross of Christ, which is foolishness and weakness to “the wisdom of this age”, but is the expression of the power of God (I Cor. 1.18) and the wisdom of God (I Cor. 2.6-7). The inappropriateness of the wisdom of this world at the juncture of ages is evident in the action of the rulers of this age, crucifying “the Lord of glory” (I Cor. 2.8) and also in God choosing “what is weak in the world…what is low and despised in the world, things that are not” (I Cor. 1.27-28). Paul, thus, asserts that God has turned the value system of this world or this age on its head, i.e. God has “made foolish the wisdom of the world” (I Cor. 1.20), because wisdom and power have been redefined by the cross of Christ (I Cor. 1. 23-24). F.F. Bruce rightly comments that “nothing could be more subversive of these canons in the first century Greco-Roman world than the proclamation of a crucified man …as Lord (of glory).”[28]

Paul draws the attention of the Corinthian believers to the mode of his apostolic existence. He reminds them of his own “weakness”, “fear”, “trembling” and lack of eloquence, which signified an inferior status in the Greco-Roman society: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” and “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (I Cor. 2.2-4).[29] Paul identifies astheneia as a mark of his apostolic mode of being (I Cor. 2.3; 4.10; II Cor. 10.10; 11.30; 12.5, 9-10). In II Corinthians he lists in a unique series the “weaknesses” that characterize his apostolic existence (II Cor. 4.8ff; 6.4ff; 11.23ff; 12.10). Paul presents his hardships in his apostolic task in I Cor. 4.8-13 to remind the Corinthians of his “ways in Christ Jesus”, in comparison to the privileged social position of those whose conduct is characterized as arrogant and boastful: “you have all you want; already you have become rich…you have become kings” (I Cor. 4.8). He contends that the apostles have “become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals” (I Cor.4.9). From the world’s point of view they are “the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things” and Paul emphasizes that this position of theirs continues “to this very day” (I Cor. 4.13). In this way the mode of his apostolic existence is very much rooted in the cross of Christ,[30] for in II Cor. 13.4, Paul characterizes the crucified Christ as astheneia: “he was crucified out of weakness, but he lives by the power of God.”

Paul strongly argues that his “weakness” is not an evidence of his powerlessness nor does it discredit his apostolic ministry. Rather paradoxically, God’s power is manifested in his weakness (II Cor. 12.9-10; I Cor. 2.3-5). Furnish maintains that the series of antitheses in Paul’s list of hardships is to show that the weakness actually discloses the power of God (II Cor. 4.8-9; 6.4-10).[31] Paul boasts in his “weakness” because of this paradox of power in weakness, rather than in the heavenly visions and revelations, which he could claim (II Cor 12:1-10). He further says that his apostolic credentials are evidenced not through the “signs and wonders and mighty works” (II Cor 12:12), which he could claim if he wanted to, but through the hardships which he has endured for the sake of the gospel (II Cor 11:23-33). The paradox of power in weakness stands in contrast to his opponents’ understanding of God’s power, that is, God’s power makes the individual powerful in some noticeable sense. For them power and weakness are incompatible. For Paul, weakness and power are not mutually exclusive, but are coterminous. Paul, thus, consciously subverts the conventional socio-cultural standards by depicting the character of his apostleship and his style of preaching in conformity with the “wisdom” and the “power” of God manifested in the cross of Christ.[32]

Not only is God’s power manifested in his “weakness”, Paul maintains, but his “weakness” in his apostolic ministry has an intended purpose of community building (II Cor. 10.8; 12.19; 13.10). It is observed that in II Corinthians in all the lists of “weakness” or sufferings that Paul experienced, except in II Cor. 12.10, the notion of diakonia is included (II Cor. 4.8-10; 6.4-10; 11.23-33). Paul is rejoicing not in weakness per se but because of its constitutive purpose of serving Christ and the community. That means “weakness” refers to a mode of human existence, marked by willingness to endure suffering and hardship in giving oneself in service to others.[33] Paul says this in contrast to the ‘leaders’ who made the members of the Corinthian church as their slaves and exploited them for their own self-serving goals (II Cor. 1.24; 11.20). He is arguing that even though his weakness reflects social inferiority as per the prevailing social value system, it serves the purpose of community building (II Cor. 10.8;12.19; 13.10).[34] Thus, it identifies him with the cross of Christ, which symbolizes the existence for others (II Cor. 5.14-15).

Paul further characterizes his ministry as “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus” and “always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake” (II Cor. 4.10, 11). The purpose clause in these verses, hina, denotes the purpose: “the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” and “the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh”. Thus, the paradox of life in death is articulated in II Cor. 4.10,11. Paul exhorts the Corinthians, who could not reconcile his sufferings and his apostolic ministry of the “extraordinary power of God”, that the paradox of life in death is inextricably connected to his vocation at the turn of ages. Paul, in II Cor. 4.12, summarizes the benefit of his ministry of sufferings to those he ministered: “death is at work in us, but life in you”.

Thus, Paul acknowledges that the paradox of power in weakness and of life in death is fundamentally associated with his apostolic ministry. This paradox is very much evident in the cross of Christ. Therefore, the cross of Christ is intrinsically associated with the concrete existence of the apostle Paul at the juncture of ages.

Conclusion

Paul’s perception of his apostleship is kata stauros, not kata sarka as maintained by the members and Paul’s opponents in the Corinthian church. In contrast to the personality-centered, status-oriented, self-promoting and self-preserving leadership model of the Greco-Roman world, which the members and his opponents in the church are following, Paul characterizes his apostolic ministry as the paradox of power in weakness and of life in death. He acknowledges that the reality of suffering or “weakness” is intrinsic to his vocation, which “is the call to engage in the eschatological struggle at the juncture of ages.” He exhorts that it is in his “weakness” that God’s life-giving power is manifested. He exults in his “weakness” because of its constructive purpose of community building.  

[2] Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians: Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1984), p. 308.

[3] Raymond Pickett, The Cross in Corinth: The Social Significance of the Death of Jesus, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 127.

[4] V. Furnish, II Corinthians, p. 42.

[5] Pickett, The Cross, p.145.

[6] Kata sarka occurs nineteen times in the undisputed letters of Paul. Excluding the two occurrences in II Cor. 5.16, of the seventeen, it is used thirteen times adverbially, while four times as adjectivally.  

[7] Furnish, II Corinthians, p. 313.

[8] Martyn, Theological Issues, pp. 92-93.

[9] Martyn, Theological Issues, p. 94.

[10] Martyn, Theological Issues, pp. 107-108.

[11] Martyn, Theological Issues, p. 108.

[12] Furnish, II Corinthians, p. 332.

[13] J.R. Levison, “Creation and New Creation,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin, eds. (Leicester: IVP, 1993), p. 190.

[14] J. Louis Martyn, “Focus: Theological Education or Theological Vocation?” in USQR, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3&4 (1974), p. 219.

[15] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1987), p.122.

[16] Andrew D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of I Corinthians 1-6, (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1993), p. 92.

[17] Richard A. Horsley, I Corinthians, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), pp. 30-31.

[18] Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership, p. 96.

[19] Pickett, The Cross, p. 65.

[20] Pickett, The Cross, p. 76.

[21] Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership, p. 113.

[22] Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership, p. 96.

[23] D.F. Epstein, Personal Enmity in Roman Politics, (London: 1987), p.28.

[24] Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), p. 83.

[25] Hengel, Crucifixion, p.5.

[26] A. Katherine Grieb, ““The One Who Called You….”: Vocation and Leadership in the Pauline Literature,” in Interpretation, Vol. 59, Is. 2 (April 2005), p. 159.

[27] Martyn, “Focus: Theological Education or Theological Vocation?” p. 220.

[28] F.F. Bruce, I & II Corinthians, (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1971), p. 36.

[29] By saying this “Paul is not simply subordinating the means of communication to the efficacy of the gospel. Nor is he merely using the typical rhetorical device of an orator deprecating his own ability in eloquence. …In Paul’s day, eloquent speech…was also associated with other marks of high social standing (such as those Paul mentions in I Cor.1.26-28).” Charles H. Cosgrove, The Cross and the Spirit: A  Study in the Argument and Theology of Galatians, (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1988), p. 46.

[30] Cosgrove, The Cross and the Spirit, p. 78.

[31] V. Furnish, II Corinthians, p. 280.

[32] E.A. Judge, “Cultural Conformity and Innovation in Paul: Some Clues from Contemporary Documents,” in Tyndale Bulletin 35, (1984), p. 14.

[33]Thomas Stegmann, The Chracter of Jesus: The Linchpin to Paul’s Argument in 2 Corinthians, (Roma: E.P.I.B, 2005), p. 207.

[34] Pickett, The Cross, p. 194.