Hindu aircraft maintenance
Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.
Okay, my headline betrays the amusement with which I originally intended to treat this Reuters story of airline personnel attempting to deal with their mechanical problems by sacrificing goats to the “Hindu sky god,” but it occurs to me that to laugh at this practice would be more appropriate for an atheist than a Christian such as myself.
After all, do I not pray before I travel? Am I not asking the God of heaven to watch over and protect me, not only on an airplane, but at all times and in all places? And it’s not as if they didn’t also fix the mechanical issue with the plane.
These officials believe, as I do, that there are unseen forces that affect the physical world we live in. They believe that these forces have their own purposes and that, by prayer or other form of appeal, we are able to interact with these forces and, if they give ear to our entreaty, to move them to stay their hand or change the course of things. And while today Christians pray in spirit and in truth, availing ourselves of the access we have been granted into the presence of the King of all Kings, in the times before Christ this same God demanded animal sacrifices for all manner of things.
So if I join with the atheist in mockery of this display of Hindu religion what am I really laughing at?
Rather than laugh at what, at first glance, seems foolish, I choose to take this opportunity to reflect on how foolish my faith appears to the world today, to be thankful that these Hindu people are able to place their faith in something they cannot see, and to pray that the God of heaven will lead them to faith in the only One who is worthy of it.
