Jesus Christianity and Church
03/14/2010 12:04 PM Filed in: Spirituality
On the way home from a Hindu Cultural Society Saturday meeting, I saw a Christian Church with the following saying posted on it’s display:
Two Great Truths:
1) There is a God
2) You Aren’t Him
Now as a Hindu-thinking person, this assumed separation from God is against my basic philosophy of life. I remember not being able to stomach this separation (and worse, the violence of it’s assumption) even as a small child. By the time I was 10 I had developed a personal philosophy that said “good things are inclusive things, bad things are exclusive things.”
Adi Shankara said that Brahman ( the unlimited and undifferentiated consciousness of the universe) and Atman (consciousness in the individual soul) are one. However, I can understand that the person who is writing this is attempting to make the reader understand that it’s necessary to be humble.
However, the cost of humility with this approach is one where a Christian-thinking person may become trapped into thinking and behaving violently in response to what, ultimately is a repressive act. What repression is that? That you are a part of God. God isn’t separate from you and you are not separate from God.
Another hidden cost of this perspective is one that divorces the devotee from being responsible for himself and his own understanding and removes thinking him/herself capable of merging with the God inside him/herself. One’s own actions then seem minor in the scope of God’s concerns and when bad things happen to us, we blame and think God to be cruel or unkind, not seeing how our own actions brought us to this place. Even karma is misunderstood to not be in the Bible, but it’s there in Galatians 6:7 as a principle, usually brought out to explain the righteousness of God in punishment. Punishment is meted out by one’s own Self (being not separate from God) and therefore you are responsible for it.
In fact, it’s the ego that creates this separation of ourselves from God, and I find it sad to think that a Church would be promulgating an approach that Jesus himself, I am sure, wouldn’t have endorsed! If there ever was factually a man named Jesus, from a Hindu perspective, he would be considered one of many Avatars (incarnations of God). Avatars always incarnate to teach a clear lesson. Jesus’ reincarnation and non-attachment to his body, as shown by his willingness to be treated so terribly show us some things.
In the Bible, Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) What a Hindu person understands is that Jesus is a guru, and in India, the guru is also God, as is the guest, the cow, Ganesha, Siva, Krishna, Rama and so on. Even Indians who worship Jesus and are Christians still do it in a Hindu way, using Ararti (waving of light at the chosen form of God) and consider God to be One, but with many faces that make sense to many different people- it’s just in their case, it’s Jesus who appeals to them. It’s this beautiful inclusiveness that is the hallmark of the Hindu approach to religion.
Also, when Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.” he says so without feeling he’s separate from the person he’s speaking to, nor separate from God. How different a conclusion that one can come to from this understanding! Now, the literal translation becomes a way to understand God more fully instead of merely believing that all other religions are making a mistake other than Christians.
Jesus is the only Son of God because he incarnated to show us that we are also the only Sons and Daughters of God. Because God is One, we are also all One with each other, with plants and animals and our environment. The culture of Indian that produced Hinduism has always understood this, even where individual egos have not and have perpetuated violence upon themselves or others.
I would suggest taking a look at Christianity through the eyes of a Hindu sometime, like in this example, nicely summarized by M.K. Gandhi (yes the famous Gandhi). You may find in it, the meaning behind the Bible and life itself.
Two Great Truths:
1) There is a God
2) You Aren’t Him
Now as a Hindu-thinking person, this assumed separation from God is against my basic philosophy of life. I remember not being able to stomach this separation (and worse, the violence of it’s assumption) even as a small child. By the time I was 10 I had developed a personal philosophy that said “good things are inclusive things, bad things are exclusive things.”
Adi Shankara said that Brahman ( the unlimited and undifferentiated consciousness of the universe) and Atman (consciousness in the individual soul) are one. However, I can understand that the person who is writing this is attempting to make the reader understand that it’s necessary to be humble.
However, the cost of humility with this approach is one where a Christian-thinking person may become trapped into thinking and behaving violently in response to what, ultimately is a repressive act. What repression is that? That you are a part of God. God isn’t separate from you and you are not separate from God.
Another hidden cost of this perspective is one that divorces the devotee from being responsible for himself and his own understanding and removes thinking him/herself capable of merging with the God inside him/herself. One’s own actions then seem minor in the scope of God’s concerns and when bad things happen to us, we blame and think God to be cruel or unkind, not seeing how our own actions brought us to this place. Even karma is misunderstood to not be in the Bible, but it’s there in Galatians 6:7 as a principle, usually brought out to explain the righteousness of God in punishment. Punishment is meted out by one’s own Self (being not separate from God) and therefore you are responsible for it.
In fact, it’s the ego that creates this separation of ourselves from God, and I find it sad to think that a Church would be promulgating an approach that Jesus himself, I am sure, wouldn’t have endorsed! If there ever was factually a man named Jesus, from a Hindu perspective, he would be considered one of many Avatars (incarnations of God). Avatars always incarnate to teach a clear lesson. Jesus’ reincarnation and non-attachment to his body, as shown by his willingness to be treated so terribly show us some things.
In the Bible, Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) What a Hindu person understands is that Jesus is a guru, and in India, the guru is also God, as is the guest, the cow, Ganesha, Siva, Krishna, Rama and so on. Even Indians who worship Jesus and are Christians still do it in a Hindu way, using Ararti (waving of light at the chosen form of God) and consider God to be One, but with many faces that make sense to many different people- it’s just in their case, it’s Jesus who appeals to them. It’s this beautiful inclusiveness that is the hallmark of the Hindu approach to religion.
Also, when Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.” he says so without feeling he’s separate from the person he’s speaking to, nor separate from God. How different a conclusion that one can come to from this understanding! Now, the literal translation becomes a way to understand God more fully instead of merely believing that all other religions are making a mistake other than Christians.
Jesus is the only Son of God because he incarnated to show us that we are also the only Sons and Daughters of God. Because God is One, we are also all One with each other, with plants and animals and our environment. The culture of Indian that produced Hinduism has always understood this, even where individual egos have not and have perpetuated violence upon themselves or others.
I would suggest taking a look at Christianity through the eyes of a Hindu sometime, like in this example, nicely summarized by M.K. Gandhi (yes the famous Gandhi). You may find in it, the meaning behind the Bible and life itself.
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