Marbaniang, Domenic

To define nationality in terms of race and religion will immediately lead to confusion. For instance, if we define the term "Indian" (a nationality identifier) as "a person who belongs to the ancient races of the mainland of Hindustan and follows one of the ancient religions of the land, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, etc", then we immediately land into the following problems: 1. A Japanese Buddhist will not be considered an "Indian" because though he follows an ancient religion of the land, Buddhism, he doesn't belong to one of the ancient races of India. 2. Suppose, the same definition is accepted by the Japanese, i.e. they define "Japanese" as "a person who belongs to the ancient races of the mainland of Japan and follows one of the ancient religions of the land, e.g. Shintoism", then because he doesn't follow the religion of Shintoism but follows Buddhism, he will be no longer considered "Japanese" anymore. 3. However, i...

JESUS made a distinction between what belonged to Caesar and what belonged to God (Matt.22:21). He also spoke of His Kingdom as "not of this world" (Jn. 18:36). The New Testament clearly marks off the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man as two separate realms. Of course, even in the kingdom of man, political authority ultimately comes from God (Rom.13:1,2). But, that doesn't certainly make politics "Christian". For instance, Nebuchadnezzar's authority came from God (Dan.2:37), but that didn't make his kingdom a Christian kingdom or his way of doing politics "Christian". Similarly, Cyrus was called the "anointed" of God (Isa.45:1), but that didn't make the Medo-Persian empire Christian. It is always a threat to both politics and religion to fuse both of them together: not only do the people suffer, but they lose their freedom of religion as well. It doesn't matter which religion it may be, the loss of liberty is certain and ...