Calcutta (Kolkata), India #1: Heaven and Hell

India is a world of stark contrast. Wealthy and poverty-stricken. Clean and dirty. Civilized and horrifically barbaric. Healthy and diseased. Light and dark. Life and death. Good and evil.

Heaven and hell.

And what is most fascinating, is that all of this contradiction cohabitates; in the same city, on the same street, on the same block. At first glance it seems to be intermixing, blending into one, but this is only a façade. If you peel back the skin of this world to see what is underneath you won’t have to look far to see the constant conflict, the war taking place between heaven and hell.

We took a bus ride through the city a couple of days ago, two hours out into the countryside to visit a rural clinic owned by the hospital. While walking on the streets going from place to place it is easy to look at the dirt road in front of your feet and be focused on the destination, but looking out that window, I was confronted with harsh reality. I made eye contact with people on the street. The suffering runs deep in the hearts of many of the people, so deep you can feel it in the way they walk, in the way they stand, in one glance of their eyes.

Their eyes speak as to the hell they have experienced here on earth.

One woman walked up to the bus while we were stopped at one of the few traffic lights in Calcutta. She began rapping on the window begging for money. My normal response would have been to easily look away. It is what we have been conditioned to do. We are told don’t give them money or packaged food mainly because all it does is feed the crime lords who own them. And this makes sense. But here I was on this bus and I suddenly chose to look into her eyes, into her soul. And underneath it all I could clearly see it. Hell. The ache in my spirit as my chest began to burn and we pulled away and I prayed the only prayer I could think to pray in that moment, “God, save her.”

I am becoming poignantly aware of the effects of suffering to those who see it as needless and purposeless. This is the same suffering that exists in America, and yet it is not as easily hidden or covered here.

The man who is most likely in the end stage of Tuberculosis outside my window, who every morning coughs until he pukes.

The children on the street with torn clothing and precious, little, dirty faces begging for money. Sadly, they are skillful little con-artists who have been trained by sick men and women.

The woman at Mother Theresa’s Hospice House for the Destitute and Dying whose face had been completely and intentionally burned off by acid. Her mother-in-law had been displeased with her. And this is socially acceptable and common. She didn’t even have eye sockets left.

The thousands of girls being held as prisoners and solicited for sex daily within the borders of this one country. Exposed, exploited, unclean, outcasts who have had their childhoods ripped from them.

The story we heard of a tradition in a Hindu family. When a woman’s husband dies it is common and even sometimes expected for the widow to thrust herself onto the funeral pyre and burn to death.

The trash, human waste, and stray animals everywhere you look. A breeding ground for disease.

And down the street from all this mess is the wealthy community, segregated with their BMWs, expensive clothes, indoor plumbing, and air conditioning.

The Moslem “call to prayer” heard from my window several times in the day and night from the community to the left of our guest house. That eerie sound haunting my dreams and the reminder of the years of animosity and killing between the Moslems and Hindus in India.

The woman who came into a rural clinic requesting pain medications for her back. Her husband had been beating her for 20 years and divorce is not allowed in the Hindu faith. When I asked the doctor what could be done for her, he gave a hardened response that this happened all the time. There is nothing we can do. So we medicate the symptoms.

And the utter emptiness, the ache I can see and feel when I lock eyes for just an instant with someone on the street. Hell.

On this bus ride, with my eyes burning and my chest heaving, I could not suppress an overwhelming and inexplicable longing for heaven. Heaven for me and heaven for the people here. And this longing has never been stronger than I have felt here in India. In my ears played a song by Phil Wickham, with lyrics that echo the cry in my Spirit for this season.

You wrote me a letter and you signed your name
I read every word of it page by page
You said that you’d be coming, coming for me soon
Oh my God I’ll be ready for you

I want to run on greener pastures
I want to dance on higher hills
I want to drink from sweeter waters in the misty morning chill
My soul is getting restless for the place where I belong
I can’t wait to join the angels and sing
My heaven song

I hear Your voice and I catch my breath
Well done my child, enter in and rest
Tears of joy roll down my cheek
Oh it’s beautiful beyond my wildest dreams

I want to run on greener pastures
I want to dance on higher hills
I want to drink from sweeter waters in the misty morning chill
My soul is getting restless for the place where I belong
I can’t wait to join the angels and sing
My heaven song

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to have peace in Christ. I think I have preached this wrongly for quite some time and for that I repent. Yes it is true, that we are made whole in Christ and that we can come to him for all things. In him we can find peace and joy for the present despite our circumstances. This I believe. This however does not answer the question as to why sin still has a hold on the world; why suffering still runs rampant even in the lives of those who believe. And why this ache, even in my spirit, for complete restoration still exists. This is why I also believe that when Christ breathed his last and said “It is finished,” that this statement was an eternal one. That yes, it is for the moment, but it is also for the future. One thing has become more increasingly apparent to me recently, and that is…

That it is all riding on Christ’s return.

I tend to minimize this fact. But this is something to hope for and to long for. The end of what I see as needless suffering. Hope. Heaven.

So what does this mean for me now? This means I am to be involved in the process of preparing the world for the time when Christ will return. I am blessed to be involved in the process of bringing heaven to earth. God let your Kingdom come. A prayer I am sad to say I rarely pray. Because I often forget that the Kingdom of heaven is now, here, in this very room at this very hour. That I have the choice to bring heaven or bring hell to the world in all that I say and do each day.

The bus ride ended that day in a small rural village in the outskirts of Calcutta. We spent two hours checking blood pressures and taking heart rates of the patients who walked in. But more than that we smiled and we laughed and we tried to learn the language of the people there. We got down on our hands and knees in the dirt to play with the beautiful children and we laid bare our hearts, with open hands to serve these people. The effects were tremendous as the children followed us around the village smiling and laughing and holding our hands. The parents and adults smiled warmly, coming out from their doorways to say hello. Joy. Beauty. Heaven.

Heaven and Hell.

It is no doubt a world of contrast, but more disturbing is the reality that this war is not just external, it is a war being waged within my own heart. The darkness, the hell I possess inside of myself is no different from the darkness and hell I see here. I am saved yes, but I am being saved. And it is a slow process.

And yet, faithfully, the choice is there each and every day. Do I choose heaven or do I choose hell? And what do I bring to the world around me?

Heaven or hell.