COMMENT While I may appear heartless to talk about the human disasters that we are facing as a nation, and attributing it to the finger of God, what needs to be said has to be said.

Too much has been happening to this nation in 2014 that, if we continue our path as nation, soon we will go to the dogs.

We may enjoy economic prosperity for a while, but soon, one disaster after another will be too costly for us, and we will never be looked up again the way people of ancient times saw the great city of Babylon as the centre of trade.

Some disasters are merely coincidental, but there are others that are God-sent signs that, if we do not change our ways, more disasters will come our way. This is the law of nature.

I am not only talking about the way we treat our environment, the forests and the ecosystems, but also the way we live as a people. How we live or choose to live will affect the ecosystems and the people around us.

My physics teacher in school used to teach us that there is the law of action and reaction, and the Bible teaches me that “whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap”.

The devaluation of human worth

I am talking of corruption, the wastages, the murders, the devaluation of human worth, the thwarting of justice, disintegration of the fabrics of society, the desecration of the Word and His Name.

And, there are also those who try to play the role of an all-knowing God when championing a divine cause using their tainted human justice system and methods. Others try to meddle with the secrets of nature to tap into the powers that hold the atoms together.

I leave it to one’s conscience to interpret these general terms that I mention. But name it and we have all these “wickedness” taking place here in this country. It is in the news every day.

People are talking about it in the coffee shops based on their own interpretations, but I deal with the macro. It’s the law of self-destruct that we have seen happening through the history of past civilisations.

Vengeance is God’s prerogative

Have you ever wondered that, apart from just a word of caution or two, Christians do not pick up a fight or use the sword to defend the name of God? The answer is: “Vengeance is Mine,” says the Lord.

God will defend Himself, His Holy Name and His Word.

As frail human beings, we have to stand aside to allow Him to recompense mankind for what they do to the environment, to their fellow human beings. When disasters hit, even innocent lives are being sacrificed. These so-called “innocent” people are by no means innocent by Edmund Burke’s standards, because they, too, did nothing to put a stop to the rot.

We blame the finger of God for the disasters that we suffer, but we should be blaming ourselves for our own actions. From time to time, God has sent people to warn us, but we choose not to listen.

Malaysian politicians have to realise that whatever they do in Parliament, the cover-ups, the most insensible policies they implement or things that they say, will affect the lives of thousands, if not millions of people.

It is not just the atrocious things being mentioned “within the four walls” that affect people and their livelihood.

When a million people’s cries finally reach the heavens, this was what happened to the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. When God’s judgment was finally meted, the two great cities were destroyed. We cry, “Why, God?”

If God did not spare the capital of the ancient kingdom and empire of Assyria, the same would have happened to Nineveh, as recorded in Jonah 1:1: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’”

In the eyes of God, only He has the power to punish mankind for their acts of wickedness to one another. When the cries of the people finally reach his ears, and we choose not to heed his voice implanted within each of us – the voice of conscience – disasters, one after another, sometimes simultaneously, will hit an entire city, an entire nation.

Unless the leader repents...

In God’s eyes, it is the country’s one major decision maker that He holds accountable. It includes the things he does or fails to do.

However, it is also the people’s response to the disasters. When He sends warning signs, it is a question of whether they repent of their wicked ways or continue to go against their own voice of conscience.

It is not my job to fingerpoint at anyone, but to tell the story as it is, that the course taken by this nation of ours can be reversed, if we choose to amend our ways. It is never too late. There is no face-saving, but what is required is simply a nation’s turnaround, 180 degrees!

To continue the story of Nineveh, after God’s servant, Jonah was spewed out of the mouth of the big fish, God instructed him to speak to the people of Nineveh. What is encouraging is that the leader and the people changed the course of their great city, and saved themselves from destruction:

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time:  “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.  This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:

“By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

Can we afford another disaster?

Our own prophets of doom, including Tindak Malaysia’s Wong Piang Yow, have said that we will finally hit the financial crunch if we continue with our ways. Besides fiercely pushing for a clean and fair election, he is now being proactive about food security.

History has taught us that when farmers leave their jobs and go into the cities, we may be heading towards a crisis. When people cannot get food, this is when they will hit the streets.

While my wife and I were in Mozambique, we saw how the raise of bread prices by just 10 sen had driven hungry people to become violent, and the windscreen of a car belonging to an expatriate friend of ours, who has nothing to do with the economic woes of the country, was also smashed.

The question is: Can we afford another disaster? Can we afford a disaster in the magnitude of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which hit San Francisco at 5.12am on April 18, 1906?

Or, perhaps, an economic disaster and the collapse of our financial system? This has happened to a number of countries, and if we do not heed the signs, we may join the list of bankrupts.

In countries like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, the price of a chicken could cost hundreds of US dollars, going by a news report I read when we were in Mozambique seven years ago.

If we continue to suppress the people, will it just lead to revolts? The French history has a lesson for all of us. By making the lives of the rakyat more difficult through the policies that affect their livelihood, thinking that it will force them to work harder to earn a living, will their cries not reach the heavens?

We have seen what happened in the history of other nations in the past, where the elites did nothing to help the people. Countries where the leaders work hard to lift the standard of living for the people, stop leakages and fight corruption continue to prosper.

Can we not learn from the failures of other political systems? Even a Malay proverbial saying teaches the wisdom of not attacking the dog until it decides to fight back.

Let us go back to the basics and listen to the voice of conscience, and cry up to God the Almighty to spare us the way He spared the ancient city of Nineveh.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.