I just read an amazing interview with Ram Gidoomal by Andy Crouch at Christianity Today, in my email this morning. The interview is entitled, “Christ My Bodhisatva.” I recommend a thoughtful reading of the full article (click on this link), but here’s a tantalizing snippet. It points us to a careful consideration of what in the Gospel is and is not meaningful to Hindus. By extension it directs us to a thoughtful contextualization of the Gospel for all cultures.
Andy Crouch writes…
You come from a Hindu religious background and attended Muslim schools in Africa, yet you became a follower of Jesus during your studies at university.
At the university, I was out of the family context, with the need for something that could make sense of the wider world in which I found myself. I started reading about Jesus. I was intrigued by the strong basis for his historical existence.
In my cultural context, the biggest religious problem is your karma: your karmic debt. What you sow, you reap. You come to this earth with a karmic account, then you die and you’re reincarnated, and that depends on how you’ve done in this life. When I read about Jesus’ death on the Cross, it wasn’t so much the sacrifice for sin that struck me as the sacrifice for karma. The Christians I met spoke of sin in this life, but that was meaningless to me. Karma was what mattered. So I decided, When they talk about sin, I think of karma, and I believe Jesus died for my karma, so I am going to accept him on those terms.
As my mother and others in my family challenged my faith, I found that biblical concepts were only helpful if they were properly translated. My mother would say, “Jesus is a swear word. They use it in the shop every day. Why do you follow this man?” She had followed a guru called Ramakrishna Parmahansa from India; then she switched to a guru named Radha Soami. One of the functions of a guru is to give you a mantra, but when she went to the initiation, some people got the mantra and others didn’t. She felt some of those who were refused were more deserving than her, and that troubled her.
So when she came to stay with us after our first child was born, she opened one of the Bibles that we had strewn all over the place, and she happened upon this verse, “Whoever comes to me, I will not cast out.” She said, “Your Bible is very strange! ‘Whoever comes to me’—define whoever!” She had a hard time believing that Jesus would never refuse anybody. But that’s the case, I said, because he’s the sanatan sat guru.
Sanatan is a Sanskrit word meaning “eternal”; sat guru means “true living way.” You can put John 14:6 in brackets after that! He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Guru is a living way. There are lots of sat gurus, but try to find a sanatan sat guru. No guru claims to be sanatan. Then she said, “Tell me more about this guru, who will love everybody.” So I said, “Not only is he a sanatan sat guru, he paid for karma. He paid our karmic debt.”
Soli Deo Gloria!
Why Were 32 Students Killed?
April 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment
The worst mass shooting in US history! Thirty two young people awoke early yesterday morning to brave the crisp morning air and trek to their classes at Virginia Tech. None of them imagined that somewhere else on campus, a killer was laying a trap, chaining exit doors, calculating his approach, preparing his firearms.
We have lots of questions. We want to better understand each individual that perished and appreciate their individuality and grieve with their families and loved ones. We want to better understand how we can keep our campuses and public places safe. We pray that these young people were believers and that those who grieve can experience the consolation of a loving Heavenly Father. Most of all, I think, we want to know why? The young immigrant student apparently picked out in advance those whom he would kill: why?
Jack Levin, who has studied mass murders for over 20 years, said this morning to MSNBC: “I can talk in general terms about this and I’m probably going to be right. In almost every case the motive is revenge. Usually the killer is on a suicidal rampage—he sets out to take his own life but first he takes his revenge on all the people he believes to be responsible for his miseries. Usually the killer has suffered from some catastrophic loss…”
Having worked for over a dozen years in clinical psychiatry I can understand clinical categories that might also describe the kind of person that Levin is speaking of. Perhaps the killer suffered from a chronic, altered thought process, never quite seeing the world in the same way that the majority of people do. Perhaps because of his unique biological makeup and possibly a traumatic environment earlier in life, he suffered from a personality disorder: anti-social; sociopathic; borderline personality. There are so many ways to describe the person after the fact though none of them alone could have predicted the carnage. I believe that Jack Levin is right, that somehow the bottom did fall out from all that had moored this killer securely in this life. Even more, I believe that a real relationship with Christ could have brought whatever his personal tragedy was, to a different outcome.
As post modern people we are so easily dismissive of God. I think that we are also more extremely individualistic than at any other time in history: a nation without community. We plan, and work, and apply ourselves, but when the bottom falls out we too easily plunge downward into darkness with nothing to break our fall. God is sometimes described in the Bible as a “Rock,” and as a “Fortress.” For those who believe, when the bottom falls out, God, our solid Rock is still there and we can only fall so far.
2000 years ago Jesus spoke to his disciples, in Luke 13:1-5 about well known disasters. “Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And He answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered this fate? “I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. “Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? “I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
On the strength of this passage it is important to say that in this, as in so many other tragedies, those who perished were not under the judgment of God! It shouldn’t be necessary to say this but there is always some religious extremist who seems to sincerely believe that “there is no such thing as bad publicity,” and then proceeds to make railing declarations of God’s wrath and judgment in the wake of a major disaster or tragedy. These students were not greater sinners than you or I; we all need the Lord.
Secondly, “repentance” means changing the way we think about something with the result that our behavior in turn changes also. A take away lesson for each of us is that we need to think about Jesus Christ if we do not know him and we need to think about Jesus Christ even if we do think that we know Him. Is He making a difference in our lives? Are we open to His wisdom and direction when the rug is pulled out from under us? In the story that Jesus told his disciples his point was that these events do and will occur in our fallen world. What we need to think seriously about is our individual relationships with God and in turn, our connection with each other in the greater community of a church. There is no doubt that a right relationship with God through Christ is preparatory for eternity as well as the strength and safety net for this life.
Categories: Commentary