Book Write-Up: Treasures in Dark Places, by Leanna Cinquanta

Leanna Cinquanta.  Treasures in Dark Places: One Woman, A Supernatural Mission and a Mission to the Toughest Part of India.  Minneapolis: Chosen Books, 2017.  See here to purchase the book.

Treasures in Dark Places is Leanna Cinquanta’s story of how she came to faith and became a missionary to India.  Cinquanta also tells about the Indian people who became involved in the mission, and she closes the book with two different stories: one Indian girl receives an education, and another Indian girl is tricked into becoming a sex slave.  This closing part of the book is a call to action.

The writing style of the book was rather dramatic and flamboyant, but sometimes that enhanced the book.  For example, Cinquanta tells the story of how she came close to becoming a Christian when she was trapped in snow while skiing, but, once she returned safely back to the ski lodge, she forgot all about her vulnerability and need for God.  She likened that to Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus, who submitted to God during the plagues but hardened his heart once the plagues had passed!

Her description of the Holy Spirit’s presence inside of her after she became a Christian was a compelling and vivid picture.  While her story about how she became a missionary was initially grandiose, as if God called her to convert India to Christianity single-handedly, that was counter-balanced throughout the course of the book.  Cinquanta did not always get what she wanted, for God placed her in an office job, while the work on the front-lines was to be done by Indian Christians themselves.  Cinquanta also tells the stories of how God chose certain people over others for specific tasks, and how their specific backgrounds equipped them.  In the course of the book, Cinquanta became one character among others, not the main star.  The main star was God.

The book is not exactly comprehensive in describing Indian culture and religion, but there are occasions in which Cinquanta provides glimpses into Indian religion: the disappointment of some Indians with Hinduism, and Hindu beliefs on heaven and hell.  Occasionally, reincarnation was a part of her picture of Hinduism.  Cinquanta’s view of Hinduism in this book was not particularly charitable, for she depicted Hindu gods as demons.  I tend to prefer Bradley Malkovsky’s more charitable Christian view of Hinduism in his excellent 2013 book, God’s Other Children: Personal Encounters with Faith, Love, and Holiness in Sacred India.  Still, Cinquanta speaks from her own experiences, and her stories provide a window into why some Indians forsake Hinduism for Christianity, as well as the uphill struggles they endure as a consequence.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through Cross Focused Reviews and Netgalley.  My review is honest!

Book Write-Up (Loosely-Speaking): The Bhagavad Gita As It Is

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.  The Bhagavad Gita As It Is.  Second Edition: Revised and Enlarged.  The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1983.

I was reading The Bhagavad Gita As It Is for my daily devotion over the past few months.  I was initially hesitant to do so.  Would God approve of me using Scriptures about another god in my daily devotion?  If I want to read the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, I reasoned, maybe I should just read it at night while watching television, when I am not reading something else!  Just leave it out of my daily devotions! I don’t want to transgress the first two commandments!

But I learned pretty quickly that this was not the sort of book that I could binge read.  I had to go through it slowly, though the pace would later pick up as I got used to the book.  I decided that reading and commenting on a page as part of my ten-minute prayer time would be a fine way to go through the book, allowing me to digest it a bit at a time.  Plus, I would be talking with the true God about the book, not a false god!

I was hooked when I started reading it, and one reason was that it seemed to be interacting with the sorts of questions with which Christians have interacted.  In the Bhagavad Gita, there is a war, and Arjuna is part of the warrior caste.  Arjuna does not want to kill people in battle, and he has a conversation with the god Krishna, who is his charioteer.  Krishna is a god, but he is on earth as a human being, with human parents; Krishna makes periodic appearances to set people on the right spiritual path.  Krishna commends Arjuna’s compassion, but he still says that Arjuna should do his job and fight the battles.  For one, Arjuna as part of the warrior caste is supposed to enforce earthly justice, and his enemies in battle are wicked people.  Second, Krishna says that everyone has an eternal soul, anyway, so Arjuna should not stress out about killing enemies in battle.  They will live on, in another form!  Krishna goes on to highlight, though, that people should be kind to all people and animals: they should not make “everyone has an eternal soul” as an excuse or license to kill, unless there is a very good reason, as in a just war.

That discussion reminded me of Christian debates over pacifism, just war, and the Israelites’ conquest of the Canaanites.  Is there a time when war is approved or sanctioned by God as a way to bring about justice?  Or does war violate the spirit of love, compassion, and empathy that God wants us to have?  Christians have tried to navigate their way through these issues and tensions, and the Bhagavad Gita appears to be doing something similar.

A lot of my reading was of the commentary by the Swami, who lived in the twentieth century, long after the time of the Bhagavad Gita.  Some of what he says about the Bhagavad Gita may be faithful to the text itself, and some of it may be his own ideas.  One can tell from the book that there are different interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita, and the Swami was making his own contributions to a larger discussion; in fact, his version of the Bhagavad Gita was controversial on account of its criticisms of other Hindu groups and schools-of-thought.

That said, the Swami’s comments brought to mind Christian discussions.  He said that we should be conscious of Krishna during our work.  That reminded me of the Protestant idea of the priesthood of believers: that a person can honor God in his trade or profession.  Other discussions called to my mind Christian discussions on faith, grace, and good works, and the question of whether people can graduate from rituals after they reach a stage of spiritual maturity.  Recall Paul’s depiction of the law as a schoolmaster in Galatians 3!

The Bhagavad Gita—-not just the Swami’s comments, but the Bhagavad Gita itself—-encourages people to forsake or transcend the material world.  Material attachments, such as a desire for wealth or sex, bring the worse out of people and enslave them, the logic runs.  According to this book, people should be so enamored with Krishna that what people think about them does not even trouble them.

One may be tempted to compare the Bhagavad Gita with Gnosticism, in that both exhort people to flee material slavery and to get in touch with the divine or the spiritual within themselves.  Judaism and Christianity, by contrast, have a more favorable view of creation, seeing it as a gift of God to be enjoyed.

But the Bhagavad Gita does not strike me as anti-material.  If the Swami’s translation is correct, it regards the material as a creation of Krishna.  (I wonder if the Bhagavad Gita is in tension with mainstream Hinduism on this, since, according to this book, mainstream Hinduism believes Brahma was the creator and afterwards became inactive.  In The Bhagavad Gita As It Is, by contrast, Krishna is the creator, and Brahma was his first creation.)  The material is actually seen as an extension of Krishna.  In contrast, Gnosticism tended to believe that a sinister or inferior sub-deity, not the highest god, created the material world and sought to trap humans with its pleasures and limitations.

The Bhagavad Gita As It Is also has exhortations about respecting the material.  Rather than seeking to conquer nature, we should respect all creatures.  The Bhagavad Gita As It Is is opposed to killing and eating animals, though it tries to explain and justify why the Vedas mandate animal sacrifice.  It maintains that people of different castes are to be respected as equals.  It says that Arjuna should perform his task of enforcing earthly justice.  I should also add that its anti-materialism is, in some cases, negotiable or qualified: a married person can continue to be married and to have sex, for example, but the sex should be for procreation.

One can ask why Krishna created the material world, if he wants us to forsake it.  The closest that I got to an answer in The Bhagavad Gita, As It Is is that being in the material world gives us an opportunity to long for the divine, to be united with the divine being who is our source.  As we get sick of the material and the frustrations that attachment to the material brings, we long for something more.  And, if we fail to do this in one lifetime, reincarnation will give us other lifetimes to get things right, unless we are hopelessly demonic (and that discussion, by the way, reminded me of Christian discussions about apostasy and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit).  My impression is that the Bhagavad Gita As It Is implies that beings started to forget God, and so they were placed in material bodies so they could become part of a spiritual journey back to God.  This reminds me, somewhat, of some of the Calvinist theodicies I have read: the ones that say that God ordained evil to create a spiritual drama, in which God can display God’s righteous attributes.

From a Christian standpoint, I believe in enjoying the material world rather than forsaking it.  God gave us pleasures to enjoy!  At the same time, there are plenty of New Testament exhortations against being greedy and materialistic, and these overlap, at least partially, with the sentiments of the Bhagavad Gita.

My next daily devotion project: the Catholic catechism!

Church Write-Up: Being Filled with the Holy Spirit

At church last week, the pastor preached about being filled with the Holy Spirit.  I am in a bit of a hurry, so here are some thoughts:

A.  The pastor was saying that a barrier many Christians have when it comes to being filled with the Holy Spirit is that there are a lot of other interests and preoccupations taking up space in their hearts.  A question that enters my mind when I hear this is: “Okay, so are you saying we need to be totally occupied with religion?”

I wonder the same thing when I read the Bhagavad Gita, As It Is, as Swami Prabhupada’s commentary encourages people to be totally occupied with Krishna.  At the same time, the Swami also says that we can go about our daily lives, doing our daily tasks, and yet we can and should be doing those things in a state of Krishna-consciousness.  That may have been what Paul was getting at when he said: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (I Corinthians 10:31).  (Paul, though, was talking about the biblical God, not Krishna.)


The pastor was probably talking about focus: we should put more focus on God.  Perhaps one can be conscious of God and one’s identity in God, though, while paying attention to other things.

B.  The pastor was saying that, when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, others will look at us and see something that they want and thus will become Christians.

The question in my mind is: “Do I look at Christians and see anything in them that I want?”

Here, I am not talking about hypocritical Christians, but those who sincerely believe and try to walk the walk that they talk.

Well, I can look at other people, Christian and non-Christian, and see things that I want in terms of personal characteristics.  I wish my social skills were better, for example.

Looking at Christians specifically, I can admire their joy.  That does not necessarily make me want to be like them, however.  I know a Christian who is enthusiastic about the Lord, for example, and that gives him joy and peace through life.  But he is also somewhat of a zealot, and he is very dogmatic.  I doubt that he has even thought much about, say, what someone with a homosexual orientation goes through.  I wish this Christian well, but I cannot say that I want to be like him.  And that’s not necessarily a horrible thing: I am where I am, similarly, and I do not expect people to want to be like me.

C.  I guess what I am saying in (B.) is that there is a part of me that considers Christian joy to be an uninformed joy, or a joy that comes with tunnel-vision.  The pastor, though, was emphasizing that the Holy Spirit gives us wisdom.

I struggle with that, albeit for other reasons than what I mentioned in (B.).  I can look back at foolish decisions I made, and I do not recall the Holy Spirit attempting to dissuade me from those foolish decisions.  Some may say that he was and I was not listening!

Actually, even now, when I look inside of me, all that I see is myself, rather than some other voice speaking to me and guiding me.  There’s just me in there!  Nobody else is home!  Or so it feels.

D.  The pastor  was exhorting people to be patient with God.  God may be waiting until we are ready before God fills us with God’s Holy Spirit.  Maybe foolish decisions can make one receptive to the Holy Spirit: the pastor indirectly refers to foolish decisions that he made.  The pastor also talked about the importance of prayer that includes praise, not just requests, and Bible reading that seeks understanding rather than simply plowing through verses.

Church Write-Up: Ramblings on the Holy Spirit

At church last Sunday, the pastor preached about the Holy Spirit.  Here are some items:

A.  The pastor said that the Holy Spirit is a person, but that many Christians do not talk as if he is a person.  Rather, they talk as if the Holy Spirit is some impersonal force, or God’s power.

This intrigued me, since I grew up in a church movement (Armstrongism) that explicitly taught that about the Holy Spirit: that it was God’s power, not the third person of the Trinity.  Armstrongism was marginalized within Christianity on account of its denial of the Trinity.  There were other reasons, too, but its denial of the Trinity was high on the list.  It is interesting that even many mainstream Christians talk about the Holy Spirit as if it is God’s impersonal power, even though, if you were to ask them, they would probably tell you that they believe in the Trinity.

I am currently going through the Bhagavad Gita, As It Is.  Swami Prabhupada provides the commentary to the Bhagavad Gita, and he disagrees with other Hindu interpreters of the work.  An issue that continually comes up in the book is whether the god Krishna, whom Prabhupada (and perhaps the Bhagavad Gita itself) regards as the supreme being, is personal or impersonal.  To be honest, I do not entirely understand what is at stake in this disagreement, but Swami Prabhupada accuses the “impersonal” side of being materialistic and atheistic.  It seems that Swami Prabhupada believes that Krishna is personal, but that he does have an impersonal element.  Why does the Swami believe that an impersonal conception of God is atheistic or materialistic?  Perhaps he believes that such a conception makes God look like impersonal material nature and robs the universe of a personal God.

Christian theology has debates about whether God is personal or impersonal.  There, however, different issues come into play.  There are Christian theologians who believe that God is impersonal because they think that to conceive of God as a person is to reduce God to the human level, to make God a big version of us.  This is the opposite of my speculation about what the Swami is saying: that the impersonal conception of God reduces God to the material level.  And, on the other side, there are Christians spokespersons who think that people prefer an impersonal version of God because that gets them off the hook morally: the people recoil from being accountable to a personal God, who may disapprove of their behavior, so they prefer an impersonal God.  I have not found a similar view yet in my reading of the Bhagavad Gita, As It Is.  As far as I know, both sides of that debate believe in karma and reward and punishment through the reincarnation process.  But critics of “atheism” usually do like to bring morality into the discussion, as if atheism lacks a moral basis, so I will wait and see if the Swami goes the same route in criticizing the impersonal conception of God.

Anyway, what I just said is based on my reading of the Bhagavad Gita, As It Is thus far.   My conception of what it thinks and why it thinks it may change as I continue to read.  And, no, I do not want to keep revising this post in light of that!

What does this have to do with the Holy Spirit, and whether the Holy Spirit is personal or impersonal?  Not much, perhaps.  Both sides in that case agree that God the Father and God the Son are personal, so they believe in a personal God.  They differ on whether the Holy Spirit is the power of this personal God, or a personal being in his (or her) own right.  But my discussion of the Bhagavad Gita was a nice tangent.

B.  The pastor was saying that the Holy Spirit goes with Christians wherever they go.  He was saying that we can shake hands with people at church, but, when we go home, we can easily feel as if we are on our own.  He said that many in the congregation dread shaking hands with people in church!  And he said that a lot of people are too involved in their own problems to help somebody else.  But we are not alone in those situations, he said, for the Holy Spirit is with us, even when we feel on our own!

I appreciated that honest acknowledgement of reality by the pastor.  This is not to suggest that he himself dreads shaking hands with people during the greeting time!  But, so often, pastors talk as if the church is, or should be, one big happy family where everyone likes each other, and yet reality is different, at least for some (maybe more).

C.  The pastor was talking about his own Pentecostal upbringing and how the Pentecostal church of his youth tried to force emotion out of people.  If people did not show a high level of emotion—-by clapping, dancing, or speaking in tongues—-then they were judged as spiritually immature, perhaps even unsaved.  The pastor wanted to make clear that this church (the Baptist one that he pastors) does not do that.  And he said that we should not judge the quieter, more reserved worshipers.

This was an interesting discussion, since this church (the Baptist one) is one of the liveliest churches that I have attended.  People clap and rejoice in their singing.  Yet, there are quieter people in the congregation, and the church seems to respect that.  I appreciate that.  I have attended African-American churches where I have felt judged for not being enthusiastic enough, or for not displaying a high level of enthusiasm.  This African-American church (the Baptist one) is different.

I will admit something, though.  There are times when the choir is singing, and someone stands up because she feels especially moved by the song.  I may still be sitting down.  But I am moved when someone stands up!

D.  The pastor also talked about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the sin that Jesus said could not be forgiven (i.e., Matthew 12:32).  Essentially, the pastor said that this sin is when a person knows that Jesus is real, but wants absolutely nothing to do with God.  This is problematic because, outside of faith in Jesus, there is no forgiveness.

I have some problems with this definition, but I cannot offer an alternative, at least not right now.  People can easily find themselves not wanting anything to do with God for a variety of reasons: pain, suffering, disappointment, apathy.  Does that mean that God will not forgive them if they do eventually decide to come back to God?  Maybe Jesus and Hebrews were warning people of what could happen if they left God: they could become so hardened that they would not want to return to God.  This “could” happen, but that is not the same as saying it “must” happen.

There is also the question of how much a person needs to know about God, before rejection of God becomes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  Just knowing that God exists is not enough, in my opinion.  I know a lot of people exist, but that does not make me accept them!  But knowing God in God’s goodness and walking away from that?  That is a bigger problem.  And that, I think, is the problem that the “warning” passages in Hebrews is addressing.

That said, I would still like to think that even a person who knows God in God’s goodness and walks away from that can still come back to God and be forgiven.  I mean, sheesh, ancient Israel in the Hebrew Bible continually walked away from God after experiencing God’s goodness, but God still encouraged her to repent and offered her forgiveness and hope.  The Prodigal Son of Jesus’ parable probably knew that his father was good before he left home and did his own thing, yet he still came back to his father, and his father forgave him.

A lot of times, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is defined as a continual rejection of God.  I have heard that in churches, and the pastor of this church may have been getting at that in his message.

Scattered Ramblings on Christians Leaving the Faith

For church last Sunday, I watched the service at home, since there were forecasts of heavy winds and rains.

The pastor was preaching about the Epistle to the Hebrews, specifically its admonitions to the Jewish Christians to stay in the faith rather than leaving it or drifting away from it.

The pastor talked about people he knows who used to be in church and left.  Some of their problem was hurt feelings: they were hurt by someone in the church.  The pastor said that Satan was the one trying to discourage them through those hurtful people.

The idea that God would let a Christian leave the faith troubles me, somewhat.  Don’t get me wrong: I am not for God using compulsion or violating people’s free will.  But I would hope that, if a Christian were to leave the faith, God would make at least some attempt to woo that Christian back.

I have been reading some of Robert Price’s writings over the past several months.  Robert Price used to be a Christian, but he came to be an atheist.  (Tonight he will be debating Bart Ehrman, another biblical scholar whose past includes a deconversion from Christianity, over the question of whether Jesus historically existed.)

Price, on his web site, features articles and sermons that he wrote at various stages of his spiritual journey.  I have been going through his sermons, reading one a day.  It is a bit jarring to read him talk about God as if God is real, and to talk about how God is at work in one’s spiritual life, while keeping in mind that he later left Christianity behind.  It is even more jarring because I agree with his sermons: they express Price’s problems with fundamentalism and embrace a version of Christianity that I consider to be open-minded.  Price as a pastor rejected fundamentalism and was open to the conclusions of historical criticism of the Bible, but he still saw value in spirituality and could derive edifying teachings from the Bible.  That is essentially where I am.  Yet, Price got to the point where he concluded that even this version of Christianity was wanting.  I wonder: Could that be me in a decade, or so?

I can somewhat understand a person leaving the faith for intellectual reasons: a person concludes that God is not real.  This happens to a lot of people, including (it seems) Price.  I have some difficulty, though, understanding those who leave the faith because someone in church hurt them.  Becoming discouraged with church, I can understand, but leaving God altogether?

Then there is the feeling that some may have, and I myself have had it, that Christianity feels like a straightjacket: being discouraged over failing to measure up to perfection on a continual basis, opening up the Bible and simply not liking the God who is there, or one’s heart not being in what the church says one’s heart should be in (i.e., service work, a particular dogma, etc.).  That could contribute to people leaving the faith.  Putting on an act in church, or engaging in worship that one has difficulty feeling, can become a burden.

I have to admit: one reason I stick with the faith is because I desire God’s blessing, whether that be positive or hopeful feelings, or material provision.  Incidentally, I read a Price sermon early this week about how we should worship God without expecting anything in return.  And I was reading more of the Bhagavad Gita, As It Is, and the commentator talks about how Krishna will bless those who come to him for material blessing or out of discontent with life.  Why would Krishna do this, if Krishna wants people to reject the material for the spiritual?  Because at least people in such cases are coming to Krishna for something, and that is better than not coming to him at all.  If people experience Krishna, even though they did not initially approach him for the right reasons, then maybe they will fall in love with Krishna, see the inherent value to a devotional spiritual life, and actually serve Krishna for the right reasons.

I was wrestling with the question: Would I worship God, even if God gave me nothing?  That is difficult.  Worshiping God because God is bigger and stronger than me is not enough: there has to be something within me that is actually attracted to God for me to worship God.  God’s love is something that can attract me to God, and that attraction has some measure of self-interest on my part.

My conclusion was that I would not leave God just because God did not give me what I want.  Even if I receive nothing that I want over the course of this lifetime, there is still a moral code, a rule about what is right and what is wrong.  There is a righteousness that does not relate to whether I get what I want in this lifetime.  If I have any unconditional commitment to God at all, it based on that realization.

Ramblings on Jesus Being an Absolutist, and Alienation

At church last Sunday, the pastor was saying that Jesus did not water down his message to make people comfortable.  Jesus said that either you are with him, or you’re against him.  There is no “I suppose so” or middle ground.

I’ve found myself grumbling against the pastor’s message the past few weeks, on the walk home from church.  I find this prayer time to be more worthwhile when I can find some common ground with the message, or something with which I agree.  Is that watering down the message, or sitting on the fence?  Well, I’m in the part of the week when I don’t particularly care, to tell you the truth!

Was Jesus so absolutist?  I can agree with the pastor in the sense that I believe that Jesus had the integrity to be himself: Jesus did not water down who he was and what he stood for.  At the same time, I think that Jesus realizes that we are imperfect.  In Matthew 19:11-12, for instance, Jesus realized that not everyone could be a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven.  And Jesus’ disciples had their flaws.  In my opinion, Jesus does not disassociate himself from people just because they cannot live up to perfection.  I doubt that the pastor believes that: he talks about how God spared his life, even when he was not walking the straight and narrow.

I decided to look up the biblical passages in which Jesus says that those who are not for him are against him, to get the context of those passages.  The passages are Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23.  The contexts concern Jesus’ defeat of demonic forces through his exorcisms.  I read the passages in those contexts and I wonder: who wouldn’t want to be for that?  Who wouldn’t want to be on the side of good, of liberation?

My reservation about such passages concerns my reluctance to want to toe the evangelical line.  For example, I am enjoying reading the Bhagavad Gita right now.  Would God not want me to do that?  I do not want to return to a dry Christian fundamentalism, in which I have to limit myself to a certain perspective.  I do remember, however, that there are many Christians, including conservative Christians, who are educated about other religions.

During my prayer on the way home, I was thinking about the unfulfillment that I felt when I was a Christian fundamentalist.  I thought about my reading in the Bhagavad Gita, or, perhaps more accurately, Swami Prabhupada’s comments on it.  According to my reading of that, it is possible to go through the rituals of religion and to miss the point.  One can fast and deprive oneself and give away one’s material possessions, while still being attached to the material, and alienated from consciousness of the divine.  That reminds me of my fundamentalist days—-doing the right thing, yet somehow feeling alienated, or as if I was amiss in some way.  I am not sure what I would have done differently: perhaps not worry about it so much.

Scattered Ramblings on the Second Coming and the Narrow Way

At church last week, the pastor was talking about the second coming of Christ.  He focused on Matthew 24:36-39, which states (in the KJV):

“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

The pastor was relaying to us the different interpretative options of “marriage and giving in marriage.”  He said that the passage is essentially saying that life was going on normally before the Flood came.  But then he referred to the intermarriage between the sons of God (whom he interpreted to be angels) and the daughters of men in Genesis 6.

A key point that the pastor was making, though, was that only a few were saved during the Flood, and that only a few will be saved when Jesus comes back.  He exhorted us not to get ready for Christ’s return, but to be ready.  If we learned that Jesus would return tomorrow, what would we do?  Would we be on the phone apologizing to that person we cussed out?  The pastor’s implication seemed to be that we should have taken care of that by now!

The pastor said that people before the Flood were doing their own thing, without much thought towards God.  The pastor also said that we may hear his message, then its effect would subside during the week and we would go back to doing our own thing.

The message was not particularly comforting.  But, like the pastor said, over the week, the effect of the sermon subsides, and I go back to doing my own thing.  And what is wrong with me doing my own thing?  God destroyed the earth with the Flood because of the violence of its inhabitants (Genesis 6:11).  They were not just doing their own thing, but they were hurting others.

Suppose that Jesus were coming back tomorrow.  Would I make a special effort to appease those who don’t like me?  Maybe, if there was a suspicion on my part that I would go to hell otherwise.  Do I feel like trying to appease people now?  Nope!

The idea of only a few people being saved bothers me.  I would like to think that God loves everyone and knows where they are.  Still, Jesus did talk about the narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).  I am somewhat on an interfaith kick right now, reading the Bhagavad Gita.  I asked myself if the Bhagavad Gita is so exclusive.  Well, in a sense, it is.  In the Bhagavad Gita, people enter the Kingdom of God when they cease being attached to the material world, and most people are attached to the material world!  Of course, Hinduism has a concept of reincarnation until people get things right, and that, in my opinion, is better than hell.  Yet, there are also references to hell in the Bhagavad Gita (or, perhaps, Swami Prabhupada’s commentary on it).

The pastor said, if I recall correctly, that if Jesus came into the church, only a few of us would be saved.  That is mindblowing.  I doubt Bhagavad-Gita-reading me would be in that number, if that is the case.  Or a better question would be: Why me, and not these others?  I can’t think of anything that makes me better than them.

Maybe, my problem is with certain concepts that are in the Bible.  I would struggle to have a generous, empathetic attitude towards people, if my mind were tied up in either the elitism or the despair that the “narrow way” concept can bring.  I struggle with those things anyway, as someone who is rather liberal and inclusivist, but I suspect that it would be more of a struggle if I were to become more of an exclusivist.

Book Write-Up: Christ and the Hindu Diaspora

Paul Pathickal.  Christ and the Hindu Diaspora.  Bloomington: WestBow Press, 2012.  See here to buy the book.

In Christ and the Hindu Diaspora, Paul Pathickal discusses ways that evangelical Christians can share the Gospel with Hindus in the Diaspora.  Pathickal provides background about the history and religion of Hinduism.  He also talks about reasons that Hindus have migrated to the West, their experiences as immigrants, and where many of them are religiously.  He bases his knowledge about where they are religiously on surveys.

Here are some of my thoughts about the book:

A.  The section that provided background information about Hinduism was helpful and interesting.  While I have learned about Hinduism from classes and reading, the information that Pathickal provided helped me to place what I knew in a context.  This was particularly the case with Pathickal’s discussion of three Hindu deities.  According to Pathickal, underneath the impersonal Brahman (ultimate reality, or universal spirit) are three deities: Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.  Brahma was the creator, and afterwards he was inactive, so Pathickal states that Brahma is “the least worshiped of the three gods” (page 21 of the mobi version).  Shiva is a god of destruction, but he destroys to clear the way for new creation, and Hindu ascetics are devoted to him because they want their lower selves to be destroyed.  Vishnu is a beneficent god and (according to Hindu legend) has appeared in many incarnations throughout history.  This description corrected misconceptions I had about Hinduism, placed things I knew in a context, and helped me to understand Hindu beliefs.

B.  Pathickal states that, for a number of Hindus, many Hindu deities are not as powerful in the Diaspora as they are in India.  In the Diaspora, the belief goes, Hindu deities would have to compete with other deities on those other deities’ turf.  Pathickal talks as if this is a widespread belief among Hindus in the Diaspora, even though his own survey indicates that it is not the majority belief among the Hindus that were surveyed.  Pathickal may be saying this to argue that a significant number of Hindus in the Diaspora are not overly attached to the Hindu religion, and thus they may be open to something else (i.e., Christianity).

C.  Hinduism is often seen as a tolerant religion, one that believes that there are many paths to the divine.  One of my favorite quotes in the book is a passage that Pathickal actually argues against: “The firm soul hastes, the feeble tarries.  All will reach the summit snows” (page 116; Pathickal cites a work by Edmund D. Soper).  I was thus surprised  to learn from Pathickal’s book that many Hindus are against Hindus converting to Christianity.  They are open to including Jesus in the pantheon of gods, but they are against Hindus rejecting the Hindu gods to become Christians.  A factor that Pathickal mentions is the responsibility of Hindu firstborn to honor certain Hindu gods and to support the family’s ancestors.  According to Pathickal, many Hindus have a problem when the Hindu firstborn become Christian and no longer practice these rites.

D.  Why does Pathickal believe that Christianity is true and Hinduism is false?  Pathickal occasionally uses apologetic arguments, such as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.  Mostly, however, his argument appears to be that Christianity can meet people’s needs better than Hinduism can.  For example, Pathickal contrasts the rather bland, vague (from a certain perspective) afterlife of Hinduism (after one has passed through various incarnations) with the joy that Christians think believers will experience in the afterlife.  I take some issue with Pathickal’s arguments.  For one, the fulfillment of biblical prophecies is disputable, or at least it is not as obvious as Pathickal presumes; many scholars argue, for example, Ezekiel foretold that events would transpire a certain way, but they transpired in a different way.  Second, just because a belief is unattractive, does that make it false?  Some Christian apologists would contend that a belief being unattractive may show it is true, for why would humans make it up?  Why would that not apply to the bland, vague (from a certain perspective) afterlife that many Hindus posit?  At the same time, I have to admit that there are features of Christianity that I think are fairer or more humane than Hinduism: Christianity lacks the caste system, for example.

E.  Speaking of unattractive beliefs, Pathickal talks about the Christian belief in hell.  Pathickal addresses the fear of ex-Hindu Christians that their ancestors are in hell for not believing in Jesus.  Pathickal assures them that we do not know what their ancestors’ eternal destiny is, but he also says that people’s ties to their family will not matter to people as much in the afterlife.  Pathickal refers to Scriptures to support this claim (i.e., Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22:23-46 and parallels that there will be no marriage in the resurrection, and Jesus’ statement in Matthew 12:48 and parallels that those who do his Father’s will are his family, more so than his natural family).  But that argument does not entirely rub me the right way.  If we are on earth to become more loving, as many Christians say, why would God want us to be less caring about our families in the afterlife?

F.  Pathickal wrestles with whether Hinduism is demonic, or a fruit of the human search for the divine.  He seems open to seeing it as demonic, in one place in the book, though he says that, out of love, a Christian should refrain from telling Hindus that.  Overall, though, his stance appears to be to treat Hinduism as part of the human search for God.  Humans want to bridge the divide between the human and the divine, Pathickal maintains.  Pathickal also states that some of Hinduism’s claims flow from a recognition of the truth.  According to Pathickal, the Hindu belief in multiple reincarnations before one arrives at union with the ultimate is rooted in the knowledge that humans in their sinfulness cannot be in the presence of a Holy God.  For Pathickal, Christians have the correct solution to that problem (i.e., atonement provided by Christ), whereas Hindus have a false solution (i.e., purification through reincarnations).

G.  Related to (F.), Pathickal’s approach to reincarnation aims to build bridges with Hinduism: to contend that Hinduism is aiming at something true or has a valid insight, yet Christianity is true.  While some may see that as rather condescending, the book would have been better, I think, had Pathickal used that approach more often.  Rather than saying that Jesus is better than Hindu gods and heroes, as Pathickal does, why not say that the self-sacrifice and fight against evil by Hindu gods and heroes are done more fully by Christ?

H.  Pathickal’s suggestions on how Christians can interact with Hindus and share the Gospel with them is helpful, overall.  He talks about how Christians can be good neighbors to Hindu immigrants, who are trying to adept to their new environment.  He informs Christians about Indian customs: for instance, he says that Christians should accept a drink when they visit an Indian house, since Indians offer guests a drink as an act of friendship and hospitality.  Pathickal states that Christians should attempt to clarify Christian teaching and tactfully correct any misunderstandings Hindus have about Christianity: a number of Hindus, he claims, judge Christianity negatively on account of how the British acted as colonizers of India.  There is nothing wrong with being a good neighbor, knowing others’ customs, and correcting misconceptions.  I am leery of the term “friendship evangelism,” which Pathickal uses, because it seems to me to be friendship with an agenda, or friendship with strings attached, or friendship that treats people as projects.  I read a quote that said “friendship evangelism is neither,” and I can identify with that!  Pathickal would undoubtedly deny that he is promoting this sort of friendship evangelism: he wants to love others genuinely, and to let people receive Christ when they are truly ready.  Fair enough.  But friendship evangelism can run into problems, if one is not careful.

I.  The book is well-written.  It can be repetitive, at times: Pathickal would discuss a topic or respond to an objection, then he would do so again later in the book.  Also, the part of the book that presents an example of how Christians can interact with Hindus had strengths and weaknesses.  The strength was that it presented Christians being polite and caring.  The weakness was that the dialogue eventually degenerated into a lengthy monologue in which the Christian was presenting Christian doctrine, with little interjection from the Hindu.
Overall, I found this book to be an enjoyable and informative read.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through BookLook Bloggers, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: The Hindus, by Wendy Doniger

Wendy Doniger. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin Books, 2009. See here to buy the book.

The Hindus: An Alternative History is a diachronic study of Hinduism that highlights the complexity and diversity of the religion. Many non-Hindu Westerners have ideas about what Hindus believe. They may be aware of the caste system in India, and the belief in reincarnation and karma. They may have the idea that Hindu Indians revere cows and do not eat meat. They may be familiar with the Indian custom of widows immolating themselves on top of their late husband’s corpse. They may know about certain Hindu Scriptures, such as the Bhagavad Gita, and Hindus’ loving devotion to their gods. Some may respect and admire (or disagree with) Hinduism’s religious tolerance, its belief that there are different paths to the divine that should be respected.

But, as Wendy Doniger shows, there is more to the story, in each of these cases:

—-The caste system was not always set in stone but fluctuated at times. There were power struggles among the upper castes, as well as attempts to democratize religion and thereby include the lower castes.

—-Reincarnation and karma are significant aspects of Hinduism, but so is going to heaven or hell after death. There is also a Hindu strand of universalism, which holds that a god may save people regardless of their lack of karma, changing them despite themselves; some even believe that hatred for a god can count as love, since it is a form of attachment to the god.

—-Vegetarianism did emerge within Hinduism, but the Vedas depict animal sacrifice, particularly the sacrifice of horses. There did exist some consciousness that animals should be respected, however, and Doniger lists different rationales for vegetarianism: a response to increasing violence, and a belief that a person could be reincarnated as an animal and thus should treat animals with respect in this life. In addition, while Hindus have valued cows due to the cows’ association with the priestly Brahmin caste, Hindus are not entirely consistent on this, for some Hindus have turned a blind eye when cows have been slaughtered for meat. Doniger also says that Hindus give cows the same liberty to roam that they give to other animals.

—-There was not always a custom of widows immolating themselves on top of their husband’s corpse. A number of widows kept on living after the death of their husband, even though restrictions were placed upon them. When the custom did emerge, Hindu limitations were placed upon it: widows with children, for example, could not engage in it. A number of widows have voluntarily immolated themselves out of respect for their late husband, believing that they are assisting their husband in reaching the afterlife, and that their practice will be rewarded. In many cases, however, shame is a factor, since a woman may be stigmatized as one who did not take proper care of her husband if her husband precedes her in death. Doniger addresses the British abhorrence of the practice and the issue of cultural relativism, and she arrives at a middle ground: respect the complex motivations that underlie the practice, and recognize that it has been criticized even within Hinduism.

—-According to Doniger, the Bhagavad Gita is not as prominent within Hinduism as Westerners may think, as important as the work is. For Doniger, the British prioritized texts in their attempt to understand Hinduism because of their own Protestant valuation of religious texts: Protestantism sees the Bible as the primary religious authority.

—-Not all of Hinduism has been tolerant. Some Hindus believe that they alone have the truth and seek to proselytize. There have been times of conflict between Hinduism and Buddhism, and Hinduism and Islam. There have also been times of peace, however, and Hindus have sometimes sought to unite their religion with other religions: to absorb aspects of other religions, or to harmonize their own religion with what other religions teach.

Many Western non-Hindus have an essentialist understanding of Hinduism: Hindus believe such-and-such. Even a number of Hindus, according to Doniger, believe that many of their rituals, practices, and customs are eternal. There is also a tendency to associate certain works with certain groups: the Vedas were composed by the priests. Doniger’s contention is that the situation is more complex than that. Hinduism is, and long has been, diverse. Customs were not eternal but developed in history, not always receiving universal acceptance. And, while the priests did compose the Vedas, the work also absorbed traditions from other Indian groups and castes. Some Hindu traditions actually posit atheist ideas, which occur in texts alongside traditions that believe in a god, or gods. Doniger divides her book by historical periods, and she largely comments on specific texts.

A criticism that I have of the book (or perhaps of me as a reader) is that I did not always grasp the rationale for or implications of certain Hindu beliefs and practices. Doniger demonstrated that Hinduism valued animals, but why did it do so? She referred to the Hindu belief that all of reality is a manifestation of a single divine essence. Stoicism believed something similar, as I read recently in Robert Price’s The Reason Driven Life, and its conclusion was that a rational essence pervades the universe, and thus events occur as they are logically supposed to occur: even pain has a purpose, namely, to build character. What implications has Hinduism drawn from the Hindu belief (or one Hindu belief) that all of reality manifests a single divine essence? And why were there Hindus who wanted to democratize access to the divine? I can think of reasons that democratization of religion is good, but I do so from a Protestant perspective, one that emphasizes a personal relationship with a loving God, who is the source of my being. I do not want to project my Protestant rationale and assumptions onto Hinduism, so I am curious about Hindu rationales for the democratization of religion.

Another question that occurred to me is why Hindus have deemed their gods to be worthy of devotion. I can tell you why I, as a Protestant, find my god to be worthy of devotion: because he loves me, because he is righteous, and because Christ died for my sins. But why do Hindus worship their gods? Again, what is their rationale? I do recognize, respect, and honor that there are strong traditions within Hinduism of love and devotion for deities, but why do Hindus love their deities? Doniger makes statements about Hindu views on the divine. On pages 108-109, in discussing the Rig Veda, she says that the gods are not necessarily moral, but they are powerful: “indeed the gods often lie and cheat far more than [their opponents] the antigods do; power corrupts, and divine power corrupts divinely…” At the same time, in a chapter on Tantrism, she discusses a tradition in which the god Shiva is a savior figure: Shiva sins and delays his own salvation in order to save others. In this case, a Hindu god is self-sacrificial, which is what the Christian God is.

There were other interesting details in this book. I think of Hindu opposition to homosexuality, which exists alongside a tentative acceptance of it as a concession to human weakness. There are also Hindu stories about the Flood, and one story that reminded me of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11: the gods are afraid of all these humans coming to heaven, so they set limitations on the humans.

Doniger’s book is informative and authoritative.

More on Christ in the Rig Veda (with a Question Mark)

This will be a post about David Marshall, but it will not concern his book that I am currently reading: True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. Rather, it will revisit his argument in Jesus and the Religions of Man that the Indian Rig Veda talks about someone who is like Jesus Christ. See here for my last post on this topic.

My problem with Marshall and the source that he used for this claim, Indian Christian Mr. Mandapaka, is that they did not cite primary sources in a manner that was accessible to me, and so I was not able to check them out to see if Marshall and Mr. Mandapaka were interpreting them correctly (as far as I could make such a determination, of course, with my limited knowledge of Hinduism). Their citation of primary sources was not specific enough, or I did not know enough about Indian Scripture to be able to track down the references that they were mentioning. But I found a blog post that actually cited the Rig Veda chapter-and-verse. The blogger calls himself Jl, and my impression is that he is an Indian Catholic. Jl links to the testimony of Aravindaksha Menon, a former Brahmin priest who converted to Roman Catholicism after studying the Vedas and concluding that they predicted Jesus Christ. (See also here for more references.)

What I’ll do here is two things. First, I will do a search on the one whom Jl considers to be the Jesus figure in the Rig Veda, Prajapathy, and see what I find. Second, I will post Jl’s reference to the Rig Veda (in whatever translation he is using), then I will search for the reference or a summary of it online and write what I found and concluded. I’ll link to what I find so that you can have access to the sources and make your own determination.

First of all, who is Prajapathy, which Jl says means “man savior”? I hate to use wikipedia as my source here, but just remember that I’m not writing this post to be the final word on the subject. Wikipedia states the following (see here): “In Hinduism, Prajapati…’lord of creatures’ is a Hindu deity presiding over procreation, and protector of life. He appears as a creator deity or supreme God Viswakarma Vedic deities in RV 10 and in Brahmana literature. Vedic commentators also identify him with the creator referred to in the Nasadiya Sukta…In later times, he is identified with Vishnu, Shiva, with the personifications of Time, Fire, the Sun, etc. Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 8.8.16 cites Viśvákarma is one of the prajāpatis, the sons of Lord Brahmā who generate progeny. He is also identified with various mythical progenitors, especially (Manu Smrti 1.34) the ten lords of created beings first created by Brahmā…” The article then goes on to list ten Prajapatis. Later, the article states: “The name of /PRA-JĀ[N]-pati/ (‘progeny-potentate’) is etymologically equivalent to that of the oracular god at Kolophōn (according to Makrobios), namely /PRŌto-GONos/.”

I’m not sure what to say here! I suppose that there’s some overlap between Prajapathy and Jesus, in that both are creators, yet (in some sense) come from somebody else. I don’t see anything about the sacrifice of Prajapathy in that article, but perhaps wikipedia does not say everything that can be said about him. I notice that there can be more than one Prajapathy in some Hindu traditions, and that seems to differ from Christian claims about Jesus (though, at the same time, Christianity does teach that all believers are sons of God). There also appears to be a difference of opinion as to how to translate the term “Prajapathy”. Jl says it means “man savior”, but wikipedia translates it as “lord of creatures” and says later on that the term is equivalent to “progeny”, which makes some sense, since Prajapathy presides over procreation. Whether Jesus can be considered a god of procreation and a protector of life, well, I don’t know. Somewhat, I guess.

Second, the references to the Rig Veda. After giving you the translation that Jl uses, I’ll be drawing from Ralph T.H. Griffith’s translation of the Rig Veda (see here), and, when appropriate, wikipedia’s summary.

Rig Veda 10:90:7: “At the time of sacrifice, the son of God will be tightly tied to a wooden sacrificial post using iron nails by hands and legs, he will bleed to death and on the third day he will regain his life in a resurrection.”

Griffith’s translation says: “They balmed as victim on the grass Puruṣa born in earliest time. With him the Deities and all Sādhyas and Ṛṣis sacrificed” (see here). The context appears to be the sacrifice of Purusha and the use of his parts to fashion elements of the cosmos and also the Indian caste system. You can read wikipedia’s article on Purusha here. As with Prajapathy, I have a hard time understanding or clearly conceptualizing what Purusha is: his name means “man”; he is the self that pervades the cosmos; deities called the devas dismembered him and used him to make the moon, the sun, and the wind; he was a primeval giant whom the gods sacrificed; he is the personification of absolute truth; and he is pure consciousness.

Rig Veda 10:121:1: “In the beginning, God and his supreme spirit alone existed. From the supreme Spirit of the God proceeded Hiranya Garbha, alias Prajapathy, the first born of the God in the form of light. As soon as he was born, he became the saviour of all the worlds.”

Griffith has: ” IN the beginning rose Hiranyagarbha, born Only Lord of all created beings. He fixed and holdeth up this earth and heaven. What God shall we adore with our oblation?” (see here). I don’t see anything about Prajapathy being the savior of all the worlds, though, apparently, Hiranya Garbha does sustain the cosmos. The only explicit reference that I see to Prajapathy (by the name “Prajapathy”, that is) in this chapter is in v 10: “Prajāpati! thou only comprehendest all these created things, and none beside thee. Grant us our hearts’ desire when we invoke thee: may we have store of riches in possession.” As far as I can see, this chapter is exhorting people to praise this god as the creator and sustainer (although other gods are acknowledged to exist).

Rig Veda 10:90:2: “This man, the first-born of God is all that was, all that is and all that will be. And he comes to this world to give recompense to everybody as per his deeds.”

Griffith has: “This Puruṣa is all that yet hath been and all that is to be; The Lord of Immortality which waxes greater still by food.”

Purusha does mean “man”, so I can understand where Jl is getting “This man”. I don’t see anything about an impending judgment, though.

Rig Veda 10:90:16: “This (sacrifice) is the only way of redemption and liberation of mankind. Those who meditate and attain this man, believe in heart and chant with the lips, get liberated in this world itself and there is no other way of salvation.”

Griffith has: “Gods, sacrificing, sacrificed the victim these were the earliest holy ordinances. The Mighty Ones attained the height of heaven, there where the Sādhyas, Gods of old, are dwelling.” What I get from this (which could be wrong) is that the gods went to heaven after sacrificing Purusha and making the cosmos out of him.

I don’t know why Griffith’s translation and the one that Jl is using are so different. Jl does not claim to be presenting a targum—-a mixture of translation and interpretation—-but rather a translation, period. (At least that is what I gather from his format.)

David Marshall: Christ in the Rig Veda?

In Chapter 12 of Jesus and the Religions of Man, “The Bonfire”, one of David Marshall’s arguments is that the Indian Rig Veda predicts the coming of Christ, in that it yearns for a god who will sacrifice himself for people’s sins, as well as has sacrificial rituals that can easily remind one of Jesus: a goat without blemish, putting a bush around the goat’s head, binding the animal to a post, driving nails into the animal’s four legs, the four priests dividing the cloth covering the goat among themselves, the rule that the goat’s bones must not be broken, giving the goat soma juice, a belief that the slain animal is to be restored to life, and the eating of the animal’s flesh. Marshall in his article here refers to these things, as well as states that the Rig Veda affirms that the god became half mortal and half immortal.

Marshall does not cite the place in the Rig Veda where these elements occur, but he relies upon Indian Christian Mr. Mandapaka’s book, Sacrifice, as well as lists what Mr. Mandapaka cites as his original sources. I read here, however, that these elements are found in the Purusha Hymn. When I checked the Purusha Hymn (see here) and the summary of it on wikipedia (see here), however, I did not see anything about commands for goat sacrifice, and yet there was something about a god sacrificing himself. But the death of that god is related to creation, since the cosmos is made out of his body parts. That’s different from predicting a god who will some day come and sacrifice himself for the sins of humanity. That concept may be in the Rig Veda (I don't know), but I could not find it in the Purusha Hymn.

There are some who have offered arguments against Christian applications of the Rig Veda to Christ, maintaining that Christian apologists are misunderstanding those passages. I cannot vouch for Dr. Johnson C. Philip and Dr. Saneesh Chertan, who wrote Nine Signs of Christ in the Rigveda?? (see here), for I do not know who they are. But I think that their points should at least be considered when studying this issue, for they go into the alleged details of the goat sacrifice that Marshall mentions (though they don’t respond to Marshall, but others who have made those points), as well as present alternative interpretations of the Rig Veda.

This may be something for me to study in the future, since perhaps Mr. Mandapaka goes into detail about where he found the elements of the goat sacrifice that he discusses. I wouldn’t be overly surprised if there are elements of Indian sacrifice that are similar to the ancient Israelite sacrificial system. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if there are alternative interpretations of the passages in the Rig Veda that Christian apologists apply to Jesus, as is the case with the Hebrew Bible.

UPDATE: Here is an article by Mr. Mandapaka. It's a place to start, perhaps.

UPDATE 2: I found this post, which argued that Jesus is in the Vedas, but it actually provided specific references.