Apocryphy

Sunita Pillay, better known as Sarah Jael Pillay to her readers, was born to Indian immigrants in Chicago in 1972. Author of such bestsellers as The Right Way to Live (1999), There is No Such Thing as Too Much (2001), War Works (2004), and Straight Talk: Real Life Stories of Gay Conversions (2006), Pillay has secured a worldwide audience of believers whose numbers seem to be ever-increasing. Today in America, the conservative Christian Right is no longer a socio-political minority, thanks in part to revolutionary thinkers such as Sarah Jael Pillay.

The seeds of her convictions were sown in 1984, during a mock presidential election in her seventh grade social studies class, when a pre-pubescent Pillay cast her vote for Ronald Reagan. She has been a loyal Republican ever since. But something far more interesting than the vicissitudes of earthly politics occurred five years later.

During her senior year of high school, Sarah Jael Pillay discovered God.

Late one night, while idly channel surfing, she came upon the 700 Club Christian talk show. She had always been curious about the show, but never dared put it on in front of her Hindu parents. But she was alone that night when she heard the sound that would change the course of her life: a rendition of the popular Christian hymn “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” sung by a group of five-and six-year-old orphans in India. “I actually knelt in front of my parents’ television set and wept,” Pillay recalls. She considers that moment to be an epiphany. As a result, Pillay became a regular, albeit inconspicuous, viewer of the 700 Club and claims that Dr. Pat Robertson cured her of her manic depression, which in the past she had attempted to self-medicate with copious amounts of marijuana. “Just like that, I gave up the pot and the Pink Floyd and embraced a new drug, which was Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. All thanks to Pat and the show. I do remind him of that quite frequently!” Pillay chuckles.

Shortly thereafter, she became born again and changed her Indian given name to what she considers her God-given name, Sarah, referring to the loyal wife of Abraham in the Old Testament. Her middle name, Jael, alludes to another woman in the Bible who is said to have murdered a Canaanite army captain in his sleep, by using a mallet to drive a wooden tent nail through his temple. Pillay says she was drawn to Jael for her fearlessness. “She knew what had to be done, and she did it, without second guessing herself. That is true courage,” declares Pillay.

Her freethinking Indian parents, however, refused to call her by her new name, and never quite understood their daughter’s sudden attraction to Christianity. They dismissed her conversion as a phase, but eventually relented when she pleaded with them to attend a conservative Baptist Women’s college in Alabama, reassuring themselves that she would be far from the influence of libidinous young men. Judson College turned out to be the ideal place for Pillay. She felt “called” there by God, and the essays she wrote for her religious studies classes reflected this. They were filled with a Christian zeal that even her professors had seldom seen in their many years there. One of Pillay’s former Christian ethics professors, Dr. Bentley Jordan, remembers her as an “exceptionally Christian student who was very proud of her faith, despite, uh, extenuating circumstances.”

What Jordan cautiously refers to is one of the darkest periods of Sarah Jael Pillay’s life, of which she seldom speaks. “I want to share my experience with young people because I think it could help them make the right choice, the Christian choice, even though I, unfortunately did not.” Pillay goes on to bravely recount her brief but lurid affair with a fellow female student during the second semester of her junior year at Judson.

She and her “friend” were discovered in a compromising position in the library stacks by another student, who happened to be the editor of The Triangle, Judson’s student newspaper. Subsequently, a blistering editorial was written and the girls were inadvertently outed by the editor’s referral to Pillay’s ethnicity. As the only minority of Indian descent at the small college, the lesbian gossip spread like mold, visibly. “The hushed whispers on campus were the hardest part of my punishment,” Pillay explains with difficulty, “That, and losing my closest friends.”

After 6 months in the relationship and the ensuing public humiliation, a concerned faculty member took Pillay aside and told her about the organization Straight to Jesus. That’s when she came back to God. “Straight to Jesus was a life saver for me. After the first meeting, I severed my so-called relationship and spent several weeks after class in solitude and prayer. I attended weekly STJ groups and began to realize that the evil I participated in wasn’t about sex at all; it was about emptiness and disconnection from God. Most importantly, I discovered I wasn’t alone.” She still believes the entire affair was a test from God, which she failed. Ever contrite, Pillay accepts this as the cross she must bear. “All that time I felt I was so full of the light of God, but He was just testing me to see if I was a true Christian. I had to fall in order to be humbled before Him so that I could get up and help others.” And since then, helping others has become part of Sarah Jael Pillay’s mission.

After graduating from Judson with a Bachelor’s Degree in Ministry, Pillay spent the next 5 years participating in the Native Evangelism program of the Christian organization, World Missions. She spent time in South America, West Africa, and India and was relentless in her pursuit to spread the light of Jesus Christ to the poorest people on the planet. Pillay recollects, “As soon as they (the natives) accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, and believe me, it took some persistence, especially with some of the idol worshippers in India, doors would open for them, and they would become a part of the World Missions community. Then we could really help them with food and basic needs because we knew their souls had been saved.”

Most importantly, what Pillay learned from her experience at World Missions was that most people don’t know that they need Jesus in their lives, until they are shown. She became adept at teaching the poor how spiritually rich they could become by committing their lives and the lives of their families to Christ. “It starts with the women, actually” Pillay instructs, “They are the ones who are the primary transmitters of faith through a family lineage. Often times, if we got the woman on board with us, we cold get her to clandestinely instruct her young children in God’s Word. Then it was like dominoes. And we prayed and prayed for the family’s well-being, especially if there was a violent father in the picture.”

Even though she was well-trained for missionary work, Pillay eventually became tired of the constant travel and began searching for ways she could be of service in her own country. That is when she took a job as a high school teacher in the New York City Public School system. “Cities are hotbeds for all kinds of vice, and I thought the youth of New York City needed someone like me.” But after just one month, she abruptly quit her job and moved back to her suburban Kansas City home. “I discovered that God had another plan for me. Teaching was much harder than I had anticipated. Also, I had been so used to smiling at people, like I imagine Jesus would have, but I realized that you don’t smile at random men in New York because you invite depravity of the worst kind.” Instead of winning over the youth of New York, Pillay set to work on her first book, and she was only 28 when it was published.

It goes without saying that deeply religious themes penetrate Pillay’s writings. In The Right Way to Live, Pillay denounces the notion that there are many paths to happiness. She writes, “Simplify your life. Getting caught up in one pseudo-spiritual path after another is Satan’s way! Fixate on God, for He knows what’s best for you.” Pillay is on a mission to spread God’s word beyond the limited missionary sense. She wants to reach the people who might not agree with her. She’s hoping that they come across her work and feel challenged by it. “Even though my father was a Hindu, he did say that confusion can be a good thing, and I happen to agree with his point.” In reading The Right Way to Live, one might be confused by some of the tough language, but read further and you’ll see that the what seems harsh, has a silver lining of the living Word of Jesus Christ, which is pure love. No wonder this was a New York Times best seller. It seems that New York didn’t eat Pillay alive, after all.

In what might be her most famous work, There is No Such Thing as Too Much, Sarah Jael Pillay bemoans the fate of Biblical morality. She points to the edict found in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1 Verse 26. This passage gives man dominion over the earth and all of its creatures. She remarks, “We have forgotten that this planet belongs to us. We can take what is rightfully ours, provided we are not breaking any of the Commandments. What’s wrong with consumption—even what liberals call over-consumption— if God has decreed that it is right and good?” Pillay goes on to criticize whom she calls the “Green Meanies”, otherwise known as environmentalists, who insist that humans need to use less of the planet’s resources and protect what’s left. “Poppycock!” Pillay writes, “There is more than enough. And don’t forget Judgment Day is coming. Call it the effects of so-called Global Warming, but these cataclysmic events are in the hands of God, and we are powerless in the face of them. There will be only one way to survive, and that is by accepting Jesus in our hearts.” Pillay is known for these types of harangues, and that has the liberal left rallying against her. She is fueled by controversy and feels more righteous with each jibe or negative critique. Still, she has kept writing.

Pillay’s most derided book, War Works, is a response to the anti-war activists that she says, “make a mockery of the nobility of war and what it means to die for God and country.” Yes, people die in war, Pillay admits, but she goes on to claim that war, if fought correctly and with sufficient force, is like excising a tumor. “You meet that tumor with the sharpest knife, and cut it out quickly because you do not want it to metastasize.” Pillay rails against inefficient wars and claims that there is a right way and a wrong way to fight. But fight we must, especially against rogue Muslim nations such as Iran who are a threat to civilization itself.

Another threat, according to Pillay, is homosexuality, the subject of her most recent and most personal book, Straight Talk: Real Life Stories of Gay Conversions. “It took me some time to write this book, understandably, but it’s the one I’m most proud of.” Straight Talk is divided into ten chapters, each with a focus on a person who has made the permanent choice to shun homosexuality. The chapters explore each person’s life in detail and show how being saved was crucial in the process of conversion from gay to straight. It further illustrates how “happiness increases with each day away from being gay.” Praise the Lord.

Sarah Jael Pillay is one in a long line of writers who has forcefully tried to change people’s minds using controversial methods. And it seems to be working. “People need an authoritative voice in their chaotic lives, just like God in the Old Testament. They also need something to believe in, outside of themselves. If that something is as simple and as unified as God, what better way to bring folks together and really change this country’s morals for the better?”

Her parents probably don’t agree with her. To this day, their relationship is strained due to what they consider to be her constant lectures on the necessity for mass Hindu conversions. “I pray for their souls every night. I want them to be in heaven with me, but I was the one who made the choice to turn from darkness to light, and they didn’t. I don’t think about their suffering eternal damnation because that would depress me greatly and distract me from the work I was meant to do.”

Pillay’s faith has indeed helped her to persevere through the tense relationship with her parents, relatives, and friends. Yes, Sarah Pillay fervently believes that heaven is a place worth any tribulation she has to endure on earth, and she looks forward to the day that she will (hopefully) enter “God’s House.”