"Contextualize Theology" something to ponder

While my brief stay in the Republic Of Philippines, I came across this word 'dancing God'. In India, we do have a hindu's dancing god called Shiva or Siva. This Shiva is a god of destroyer (in hindu religions, they have god who creates, who destroy, so on and so forth). Filipino are jolly people, they are cheerful and cordial and the most friendly people in the Asia if not in the whole world. They love to sing and dance. We will find karaoke bar or eateries with karaoke machines in almost every kilometer radius. It maketh me to think life twice! We don't know what is tomorrow will bring. of course, for Christian, our unknown tomorrow is safely secured in the hands of God. But let us see our life here on earth.

When we think of contextualizing our theological ideas and interpreting the message of the Kingdom of God into our own context and experience, we can't rely so much on the tools and instruments of the western scholarship. One of the tool that we use without much given a thought is the culture. Since Christianity is a way of life (as against the idea of Christianity as religion). By saying that Christianity is a way of life, many times, we end up adopting western way of life. In strictest sense it is western culture. Another vital challenge is to dissect what is western and what is modern, though we live in post modern era. For the west, it is post modern era while for many Asian nations, we are struggling even to term with modern era. There is a problem where people who hardly attain modernity has to clash with post modernity and the result is complete chaos. Negligence to ones' culture and tradition is one of the serious fallout of endorsing western culture without knowing the consequence. This negligence also has a spiraling effect on the condition of our day to day life. People seems to be in notion that our culture and tradition hold no values for the present. On the other hand, failing to prove its worth creates a kind of catharsis for those who want to eat and sleep western!

For this reason, contextualization has a tremendous task before starting contextualization. Rediscovering and reinterpreting our cultural and traditional value become equally important in the task of contextualization.

Now, my dancing lesson come into picture. For Filipino dancing is a way of life, it signifies their joyous nature. God must be a dancing God if God is the God of Filipino!