Ungod the Mind, Undo the World: Beyond Christian Symbolism in Nagaland

I. Introduction: The Silence After God in the Hills. Nagaland proudly bears the title “one of the three Christian-majority states in India,” and yet beneath the surface of our liturgies, festivals, and religious institutions lies a growing vacuum, a quiet but unmistakable drift from transcendence. It is not atheism in its militant Western form that threatens us most, but an internal exile of God from the mind. While churches remain full, minds are increasingly emptied of the fear, knowledge, and majesty of God. The Naga intellect, once formed by Scripture, is now subtly being reconfigured by secular ideologies, academic materialism, cultural self-obsession, and moral relativism.

This is the central tragedy: we are un-godding the mind while still claiming the name of Christ. And in doing so, we do not simply abandon belief; we dismantle the very moral and metaphysical scaffolding upon which our culture, dignity, and community once stood.

This write-up explores the consequences of that intellectual apostasy. Drawing on philosophy, theology, and socio-cultural reflection, it warns that the loss of God in the mind leads inevitably to the undoing of moral order, cultural identity, and even rational coherence itself.

II. The Myth of Autonomous Reason: The Crisis of Naga Modernity

Modernity came late to Nagaland, but it came fast. Within a few decades, traditional tribal worldviews were replaced by democratic ideals, Western education, and market logic. While much of this brought tangible benefits, the intellectual cost has been quietly devastating. We began to believe, along with the secular world, that reason can flourish apart from revelation, that we can build education, morality, and progress while keeping God politely to the side.

But this illusion is not unique to Nagaland. It is the very assumption that Enlightenment Europe made: that human reason could serve as its own foundation. As thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor have shown, this project collapsed into relativism, contradiction, and despair. And in a post-truth global society, Nagaland is now inheriting this philosophical wreckage without having participated in the original debates.

In our schools and universities, we teach ethics without metaphysics, rights without responsibilities, and identity without transcendence. Students learn that truth is subjective, faith is personal preference, and God has no place in public reason. But such a mind cannot stand. Without God, reason becomes not the guardian of truth but the servant of desire.

III. Moral Relativism in the Hills: When Tradition Becomes Taste

It is often said that Naga culture is in moral decline. Corruption, addiction, sexual promiscuity, and violence are increasing. But these are not random developments. They are symptoms of a deeper collapse, a collapse of moral absolutes.

In traditional Naga society, morality was grounded in communal honour and reinforced by Christian teaching. Today, both have eroded. Tribal honor has been reduced to political convenience, and Christianity has become more ceremonial than moral. What remains is moral relativism: the belief that each person or tribe defines right and wrong for themselves.

This relativism is most visible in the public square. One leader’s corruption is defended on tribal grounds; another’s moral failure is excused as cultural expression. Youths justify sexual freedom as modernity; churches remain silent in the name of tolerance. But relativism cannot build a just society, it only justifies the powerful and condemns the vulnerable.

Scripture foresaw such times: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). When there is no shared moral order under God, society fragments into private appetites and tribal claims. This is not freedom; it is fragmentation masquerading as autonomy.

IV. Secular Modernity and the Naga Soul: A Civilisation Without a Centre

Nagaland is caught between two forces: a nominal Christianity that lacks depth, and a creeping secularism that lacks soul. In this vacuum, our people are searching, often without knowing it for something to center their lives. And in the absence of the true God, false gods inevitably rush in.

Secularism in Nagaland wears the clothes of modernity: government jobs as ultimate meaning, tribal politics as salvation, social media as identity, and material wealth as purpose. Churches are not absent, but Christ is often peripheral, invoked but not enthroned. Theology is replaced by therapy, sin by stress, holiness by success.

The result is existential confusion. Naga youth today are more educated and connected than ever, yet many are emotionally rootless, spiritually adrift, and morally indifferent. We speak of revival, yet few truly fear God. We promote development, yet ignore the collapse of character. We sing worship songs, yet live in quiet rebellion.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: when Naga minds stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing, they believe in anything. And when anything becomes sacred, everything becomes disposable.

V. The Return of the Pagan Mind: Old Idols in New Forms

Even as we lose our grip on Christian truth, we do not become purely rational. Instead, we turn to superstition, syncretism, and identity cults. Traditional animism returns dressed as nationalism. Tribalism becomes theological. Dreams replace doctrine. Sentiment replaces Scripture.

In this re-paganised mind, everything is enchanted but nothing is holy. The supernatural is welcomed, but without repentance. We pray for blessings but not for obedience. We seek healing but not truth. Like ancient Israel, we have golden calves but no burning bush.

This is not atheism, it is idolatry. And it is spiritually more dangerous than secularism, because it mimics faith while resisting transformation.

Paul described it with chilling clarity: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped created things rather than the Creator…” (Romans 1:25). When the mind worships itself, or its tribe, or its ambitions, it ceases to reflect God and begins to collapse under its own contradictions.

VI. Reclaiming the Mind in Nagaland: Theological Reason as Cultural Reform

If our moral and intellectual crisis stems from erasing God, then the recovery must begin by restoring God to the mind. Not merely in slogans or rituals, but in the actual structure of thought, our education, our public discourse, our theology, and our cultural imagination.

The task before us is urgent: we must re-theologise our worldview. Christian faith must once again shape how we define truth, justice, identity, and hope. Scripture must not only inform our devotions but our definitions. Christ must not only be preached from the pulpit but thought through in philosophy, policy, and pedagogy.

Faith does not cancel reason, it redeems it. Theological reasoning is not an escape from reality but the recovery of it. Only in the light of God can we see things as they truly are. And only when the mind is once again submitted to the Logos can society begin to heal.

VII. Conclusion: Choose This Day Whom You Will Know

Nagaland now stands not merely at a political impasse but at a profound spiritual and philosophical threshold. Externally adorned with Christian symbolism yet internally hollowed by tribalism, moral relativism, and cognitive dissonance, the crisis before us is not the absence of religion but the eclipse of truth. The sobering question is not whether we profess belief in God, but whether we have retained God in our knowledge (Romans 1:28). For it is possible to sing of Christ on Sunday and serve the idols of tribe, power, and pride by Monday.

To “ungod” the Naga mind is not to emancipate it, but to unravel the very foundations of moral coherence, intellectual clarity, and social order. Without the fear of the Lord, wisdom is replaced by noise; without truth, freedom becomes fiction. Yet even now, there remains a remnant call, a summons not to broad consensus, but to the narrow and costly way of transformation. It is the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2), the enthronement of Christ not merely in creed but in cognition, and the reordering of thought, culture, and conscience under the lordship of Jesus.

As John declared, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4–5). Let us then recover the mind before we forfeit the future. Let us enthrone the truth before the age enthrones confusion. For when Christ reigns in the mind, justice flows in the land, and a people once lost in contradiction may yet rise in holy clarity. The time to choose is not tomorrow, it is today.

Vikiho Kiba