{"id":4622,"date":"2010-06-04T11:03:45","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T15:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=4622"},"modified":"2010-06-05T14:08:51","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T18:08:51","slug":"what-a-difference-christianity-makes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/what-a-difference-christianity-makes\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Difference Christianity Makes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chuck<\/a>
Chuck Colson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

6\/3\/2010 – Chuck Colson –
\nA recent issue of Time<\/em> magazine tells the story of Nirupama Pathak, an Indian journalist murdered by her own mother. Being charged with killing your own daughter by itself is enough to make the news. But what makes this story especially compelling for the Indian media is that Pathak\u2019s mother is alleged to have killed her to avenge her family\u2019s honor.<\/p>\n

By some estimates, dozens of such \u201chonor killings\u201d occur in India each year. It\u2019s a crime that rightly shocks the Western conscience. It\u2019s also a reminder of the way Christianity transformed the Western world. <\/p>\n

According to prosecutors, Pathak was murdered because she wanted to marry a man who belonged to a lower caste. She then compounded her offense by becoming pregnant with his child. <\/p>\n

The transgressing of caste boundaries lies behind the large majority of these killings in India. Despite the country\u2019s rapid modernization, relations between upper-caste women like Pathak and lower-caste men are violently opposed, especially in rural areas.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t surprise us that the area where most of the \u201chonor killings\u201d take place is also where sex-selection abortion has created the worst gender imbalance in India. There are only 861 women for every 1000 men. It\u2019s a place where \u201cgroups called khaps run kangaroo courts,\u201d enforcing the \u201cvice-like grip\u201d they have over women and the demands of the caste system, and they do it through intimidation and murder.<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u2019s a world much like the classical one that Christianity turned upside-down.<\/p>\n

In her new book, Paul Among the People<\/a><\/em>, classics scholar Sarah Ruden writes the common view of the Apostle Paul as an \u201coppressor of women\u201d could \u201chardly be more wrong.\u201d With the exception of a handful of high-born matrons, the Roman world often treated women worse than it did cattle.<\/p>\n