message of peace or cheapness?

[surtibadshah]

hi friends i found this article. what you think about this?

http://www.intervarsity.org/ism/article/7624

[Eastern Mind]

More deception ... its always this sneaky deception stuff. Get your foot in the door.. I am not impressed. Why can't they just come right out front, state their intentions, and then go away. lol

Aum Namasivaya

[atanu]

One of the most effective students I have seen in befriending Hindus takes a genuine interest in Hindu culture. She watches a lot of Bollywood films -----

The above is a portion of strategy outlined in the cited article. Bollywood is american mentality peppered with indian curry masala. They are targetting those who are already christians.


So, we must continually put everything into God’s hands throughout the process of relating. Prayer keeps us in a solid relationship with Christ and allows us to acknowledge that God is the one at work through our relationships and that God is the only one capable of changing our friends hearts and minds.

That is good. But Let us see, whose hearts get changed? The hunter may become the hunted.

Om Namah Shivaya

[saidevo]

When an evangelical Christian forms a 'genuine rather than shallow friendship' with discerning Hindus (of them there are many), there is always a danger of the tables getting turned on the Christian!

[TatTvamAsi]

When an evangelical Christian forms a 'genuine rather than shallow friendship' with discerning Hindus (of them there are many), there is always a danger of the tables getting turned on the Christian!

Namaste,

So true! I went to a christian school pretty much all the way from KG-12. The high school was a haven for real fundamentalists. Many a christian tried to convert me and at the end of the senior year, these students were so vexed with christianity that they gave up their beliefs and trying to convert others!

Through conversation, back when I was not as aggressive in speech (;)), I got many of these fundies to question their own beliefs and then they came back to me and stated things like, "You're right! Man, I never thought about it that way!"

Although if a fundie came to me now and tried this conversion nonsense, I'd box his ears in. Dead-jew worshipers are torrid; as described in that article above. Using subterfuge and cunning to convert others is despicable. At least the muslims will never "pretend" to be friends or try to adopt Hindu ideals to convert you.

STOP ALL CONVERSION in INDIA!

Namaskar.

[devotee]

When an evangelical Christian forms a 'genuine rather than shallow friendship' with discerning Hindus (of them there are many), there is always a danger of the tables getting turned on the Christian!

Exactly ! They are happy with Christianity because they never are exposed to what true spirituality is. The exchange will be from both sides. Bible from one side & Vedanta from the other. Who will win ... it is anyone's guess. :)

However, those who are not well aware of the richness of Sanatan Dharma can get trapped. I have a friend who married a Muslim girl & became Muslim himself believing in his "modernity & openness". However, being his close friend, I know how much he repents the day he took this decision. Today he is neither a Muslim ( because he doesn't follow anything that the Muslims follow) nor he is a Hindu (because he got converted) ... he is emotionally cut off from his world which he loved most but took it too much for granted. He is always worried about the future of his daughter.


OM

[surtibadshah]

Namaste,

So true! I went to a christian school pretty much all the way from KG-12. The high school was a haven for real fundamentalists. Many a christian tried to convert me



Namaskar.



do such things happen in states?

[rcscwc]

When an evangelical Christian forms a 'genuine rather than shallow friendship' with discerning Hindus (of them there are many), there is always a danger of the tables getting turned on the Christian!
Exactly. That has happened many times, not only with the xians but muslims too. Kabir, though a born muslim was more of a Hindu. Raskhan was a muslim in nane only. Example of Yesudas is there. Recall the actor who played Arjuna? He was a muslim, but before Mahabharata was over he was a Hindu.

I will advise Hindus not to go out, but wait for the xians to come.

[Gotam]

When an evangelical Christian forms a 'genuine rather than shallow friendship' with discerning Hindus (of them there are many), there is always a danger of the tables getting turned on the Christian!

Namaste saidevo, TatTvamAsi, rcscwc and devotee,

when I read the above remark, I immediately thought this:



I will advise Hindus not to go out, but wait for the xians to come.

I think you have made a very important observation. Admittedly, I have no experience with dialogues between evangelical Christians and Hindus. When I first read about evangelicals on HDF, I even misinterpreted the term as having the same meaning as the German word "evangelisch", which in Germany means "Lutheran protestant". In my experience, German Lutherans have become quite open-minded and tolerant by now, so I wondered how they could be aggressive in India. Moreover, I have hardly met any Hindus in my life.

So who am I to say that you are right (or wrong)?

My opinion is based on a theoretical consideration.

Christianity as it has come down to us suffers from an enormous contradiction: from the outset and throughout the centuries, it has resulted from genuine religious inspiration with an emphasis on surrender and unity with God on the one hand, and the power struggle of a dominant clergy that have suppressed or misused ("if you can't beat them, join them, or rather: fake joining them") spirituality and free inquiry (in both the mystical and scientific fields) for their own ends on the other hand. In the mainstream churches, the emphasis was not on surrender, but on coercion and submission, on power. At the same time, and except for a few "dissonant" passages in the accepted gospels (believed to be biographies of Jesus), it was difficult to reconcile the churches' intolerance and narrow-mindedness with the example of Jesus that continued to inspire believers.

Many of the most fervent Christians are mainly attracted to their faith, and inspired, by Jesus' example of self-sacrifice and his recommendation/commandment to "love thy neighbour like thyself". This attitude prepares them for understanding and accepting a tradition that has been allowed to develop on the basis of the research, experiences and teachings of its living gurus, rather than resulting from persecution and distortion of everything that threatens orthodoxy. Christians often belong to their church as long as they do not see an alternative.

Here on HDF, someone has quoted Mahatma Gandhi's observation that Christians do not look similar to Jesus. This observation can still be made, and it is still founded because Jesus' example was replaced long ago by the prescriptions of a church (later churches) that pretended to represent him "on earth". When I think of Gandhi's "namaskar"-gesture when he was murdered, I am reminded of Jesus' "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". That is part of what I understand as surrender, and it is how Christians could have behaved if Christianity had developed differently. Some criticism of Gandhi may be justified, but with the possible exception of the Dalai Lama, no politician may ever have conquered more hearts in the West, and Indians should not forget to be proud of that.

Some of you have commented in HDF on Jesus' last words "why hast thou forsaken me", words that do not seem to express surrender at all, but dvaita. You are right, but at the same time there is a hidden advaita meaning in these words which even few Christians are aware of. The Christians' lack of awareness of the spiritual meaning of their own "example", even of his last words, is symptomatic for the paradoxes that have shaped Christianity, for its appalling betrayal of its own very heart. We Westerners are very lucky that the spirituality that was stifled in the West has been allowed to grow in India.

And that is my answer to your question: who will win? Both will win; by benefiting from Hindu Dharma, Christians will get rid of their contradictions. Their religion may not be "simpler" than Sanatana Dharma after all.

And now I wonder if what is needed in defense of Hindu Dharma is not friendly dialogue in the first place.

[DavidC]

[...]Some of you have commented in HDF on Jesus' last words "why hast thou forsaken me", words that do not seem to express surrender at all, but dvaita. You are right, but at the same time there is a hidden advaita meaning in these words which even few Christians are aware of. The Christians' lack of awareness of the spiritual meaning of their own "example", even of his last words, is symptomatic for the paradoxes that have shaped Christianity, for its appalling betrayal of its own very heart. We Westerners are very lucky that the spirituality that was stifled in the West has been allowed to grow in India.[...]

From the Aramaic New Testament (NT) that the Syrian Orthodox church has always had, Yeshua's (Jesus') final words on the cross are translated 'So this is my destiny.' The scholar George Lamsa of Syria translated the Bible from Aramaic and gives evidence that one or more specific Apostles wrote the NT in Aramaic. No matter what one's religion is if you read the sacred texts in a language that they were not spoken in you get some wrong ideas.

[Gotam]

From the Aramaic New Testament (NT) that the Syrian Orthodox church has always had, Yeshua's (Jesus') final words on the cross are translated 'So this is my destiny.' The scholar George Lamsa of Syria translated the Bible from Aramaic and gives evidence that one or more specific Apostles wrote the NT in Aramaic. No matter what one's religion is if you read the sacred texts in a language that they were not spoken in you get some wrong ideas.

Thank you for the information, DavidC.

A couple of years ago, a French scholar, Eric Edelman, wrote a book based on a translation into Aramaic of the Greek Gospels. To the best of my knowledge, this book, "Jésus parlait Araméen" (Jesus spoke Aramaic) does not exist in English. For his translation into Aramaic, he used an Aramaic gospel he calls the Peshita or Peshitta. Perhaps it is the text you refer to. This attempt to re-translate into the original language results in a number of discoveries of a deeper meaning of the texts that confirm what you say. Moreover, Edelman uses the teachings of modern Hindu sages in order to interpret the reconstructed "words of Jesus", and what he finds is striking similarities! Whether Jesus is partly a historical person or not (to a large extent, he is certainly a fiction), these similarities are of course only possible if there is some common wisdom shared by Hindu sages and the tradition that was partly at the origin of Christianity. I was thinking of that book when I wrote my latest post.

I also had Erich Fromm's "You shall be as Gods" in mind, in which he points out that Jews had the habit of quoting the first line of a psalm when they wanted to imply the entire meaning of the whole psalm. The words "Why hast thou forsaken me" are the first line of psalm 22 of the Jewish Bible (unfortunately called Old Testament by Christians). This psalm describes its author's shift in attitude from utter despair to hope and enthusiasm. Its last words are the words by which the gospel of John replaces this "Why hast thou forsaken me": "It is accomplished" (I am translating from my mother tongue, perhaps you say it differently in English). The reason will be that by the time this gospel was written, most Christians no longer understood this Jewish tradition. The bottom line is that Jesus is enthusiastic, not desperate when he utters his last words.

Finally, I have also read an article about the meaning of "El(o)i, el(o)i, lama sabakhtani" on a Dutch website, in which it is argued that this sentence is not Aramaic, but Hebrew influenced by Aramaic, which means that Jesus was definitely quoting the Bible. For our Hindu friends: the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic for Jesus can be compared to the relationship between Sanskrit and Pali for Gautama Buddha. If the Buddha had spoken Sanskrit to his disciples, he would have been quoting Hindu scriptures.

The last words in the Aramaic text you refer to may be an adaptation to the needs of a non-Jewish audience, like the gospel of John. For the purpose of HDF, I would observe once more that apparently, Christian tradition has been unable to conserve the original spiritual meaning. We have to reconstruct it, whereas our Hindu friends are surrounded by living gurus giving a living example.

Superficially imitating these examples of a living tradition instead of retrieving true religion (like Sanskrit "yoga", this Latin word means "connection") is certainly cheapness and an aggression rather than a message of peace. Let us hope the ashram referred to in the first post of this thread is not only that. But of course, Christianity and its churches have a bad record, so Hindu distrust regarding Christian acculturation seems justified.