Risen Apes or Fallen Angels

By Reuben David

Besides Valentine’s Day, the month of February also marks the 200th anniversary of the world’s most renowned evolutionary biologist: Charles Darwin. Darwinians are busy celebrating this man and his theory of evolution, a theory that debunks God as the creator of man.

Caught in the festive mood of Darwin’s birthday, it may come as a surprise to the scientific world that Darwin is not as popular as they portray him. Despite the technological revolution and advances in science, and regardless of learning the theory of evolution in their high school biology classes, a majority of the Western world are still creationists who believe God made man.

 

 
One should not forget the force of religion is extremely strong in society, and the common man is weary of believing he has evolved from the ape. Man is not a social animal—he is a unique creature endowed with an insatiable curiosity to discover his own roots. It is we who wonder who we are—not the animals. It was not an animal that wrote the book The Origin of Species. It was a man, driven by a transcendental desire to discover himself, who set out to explore the species.
 
In Darwin’s homeland of the United Kingdom, the respected polling firm ComRes has reported that the public doubts Darwin’s theory. According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, poll results showed that, “In the survey, 51 percent of those questioned agreed with the statement that ‘evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages.’”

The Gallup Poll in the United States reports that fewer than four in 10 people believe in evolution. The survey shows only 14 percent of people believe in evolutionary theory, while the Pew Research Center puts it at 26 percent.

Both Gallup and Pew reveal that 43 percent of Americans favor the creationist theory. These results are not good news to evolutionists and secularists.

In an attempt to rescue Darwin from dissolution into history, secularists are on a busy campaign of placing billboards that read “Praise Darwin” and “Evolve Beyond Belief.”
In the great enterprise of science and evolution, this type of “God language” is freely used to lend credibility to the Darwinian movement. In the U.K., prayers were offered at the tomb of Darwin as a sign of respect. The West is so Christianized in its culture and ethos, it’s simply impossible to rid religious language and substitute it with scientific language. We may even argue that in the great battle of the survival of the fittest, religion has overwhelmingly evolved as the dominant belief of humankind, where the idea of God has deeply entrenched itself into the human heart.

In a sense, we can agree that Darwin’s idea of evolution did turn into a revolution. However, today it risks the danger of dissolution. It’s not that his ideas are construed as completely false, but there may not be any serious takers for the following reasons:

1. Belief in God as the Creator of man provides man with intrinsic dignity. The Christian doctrine that man was created in God’s image grants man a profound honor that evolutionary theory cannot. We may like animals, even have them as pets, but if we were to decide between a human baby and a cat, many would favor the human baby. I wonder how many parents would spend their money treating their dogs for depression if they had a child suffering from a terminal illness.

2. During Darwin’s day, the discovery of DNA was unheard of. Today, the miracle and mystery of DNA reveals incredible sophistication and engineering that is hard to believe could have evolved by mutation without supernatural intervention.

3. In Darwin’s Black Box, renowned biochemist Michael Behe writes about “irreducible complexity” at the molecular level. Cells in the human body are complex and arranged in an intricate design, arguing for a designer.

4. Leading Nazis and early-1900s influential German biologists revealed in their writings that Darwin’s theory and publications had a major influence on Nazi race policies. Darwinism at its root deems the value of life to be nothing beyond survival, thus placing adaptation of the species beyond individual human life. A belief system that, when distilled, leaves no value on an individual’s existence does not settle well with most people.

5. Darwin’s theory of evolution offers no hope for a dying man because it proclaims a universe without ultimate meaning. People are not satisfied to know only of their origin—they long for answers to their condition, salvation and destination. As such, very few are wholly content in Darwinism but feel compelled to search outside of it.

There are many books that attempt to explain Darwin in purely atheistic terms. However, newer research on Darwin reveals he was an agnostic—he doubted the existence of God. He was a churchgoing man, but later rejected traditional Christianity. In many ways, Darwin was out to discover the meaning of life and ended up settling on the origin of it. But we are not creatures with mere physical bodies. We have a soul and a spirit that is transcendental. How can a soul and a spirit mutate through natural selection?

 

This article appeared in RELEVANT MAGAZINE

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/features-reviews/god/16086-reuben-david

The Third Jesus We Need To Ignore

By Reuben David

A recent book that’s appealing to a lot of post-moderns titled The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore by Indian-born doctor-turned-guru Deepak Chopra has got a lot of people seriously interested in thinking about Jesus–albeit in a different way. Definitely not in the way Jesus would want you to think about Him. This is a dangerous philosophy floating around with a lot of mumbo-jumbo sticking to it, much to the delight of unhappy Christians. Chopra, author of over 49 books on new-age subjects, portrays Jesus as a mystical person not the Savior of the world, certainly not an exclusive Savior. Jesus is not the only son of God, He is not the only way to heaven, He is not the exclusive God and the only God that orthodox or Biblical Christianity believes. To Chopra, Jesus would never offend homosexuals, or sinners. He simply accepts them. He is here to make us all experience God-Consciousness–a term confusing and bewildering that many despaired Christians find riveting due to its esoteric appeal. Sadly, many Christians who don’t understand the deceptions of Eastern philosophies like Yoga and New Age would easily shift their worldview to this new-age claptrap.

In The Third Jesus, Chopra writes there is not one Jesus, but three. First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, priesthood and devout believers. And finally, there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the Church built in His name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.

Chopra is arguing for a syncretistic Christianity, a mix and match, a pot-luck faith where we all feast on different foods. The question is: how sure are we that we are not feasting on contaminated food, even worse food that can poison our soul?

This is classic postmodern inclusivism, a kind of Hegelian dialectic, which argues there is no right or wrong thesis but a synthesis of two opposing ideologies.

It’s the tragedy of western Christianity that in many churches and institutions Jesus has been deconstructed to become a laconic teacher, a pagan Christ, a Gnostic revealer, a de-enlightened male, a magician, a cynic philosopher. Put simply, He has been transmogrified. It’s a fascinating word that American Heritage dictionary says, “To change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre”.

Chopra is reducing Jesus to be another eastern mystic and not as the incarnation of God. Jesus is certainly eastern, precisely middle-eastern, but the geographical origin of His birth doesn’t reduce His deity. Jesus still remains who He is: the only incarnate God who lived on earth. The world’s calendar divides on His birth, AD and BC.

Chopra is teaching nothing more than pagan Eastern Mysticism which says that we are all “God”. “God” in Eastern Religions is all creation. It says that everything in creation, the rocks, the stars, the planets, bugs, fish, animals, human beings all inclusively make up this single holistic “God consciousness”. Eastern philosophies make no distinction between holiness and sinfulness. The idea that man is a fallen human being is considered to be an affront to human dignity. It accepts that mankind is inherently good and that we all can experience God within without ever having to place faith in Christ as our redeemer.

The essence of Chopra’s argument is that Christianity needs to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth. In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he truly is–someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance, and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.

Article appeared in Relevant Magazine:

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/features-reviews/reviews/book-reviews/142-the-jesus-we-need-to-ignore

Evangelical Atheism

By Reuben David 

I was recently at a debate at the University of Minnesota where two interesting speakers took on the subject of “Can we be good without God.”Ever since 9/11, the subject of religion and God has come under intense public scrutiny. This debate was one such scrutiny. Dan Barker, a former evangelical pastor turned atheist apologist, argued that there is no scientific evidence for God and that God is not necessary for human morality. In his latest book, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, he shares his story of conversion to atheism and how we could live without God. Countering Barker’s points was Dinesh D’souza, author of What’s So Great about Christianity. D’Souza reminded the audience of nearly 1,500-plus students that modern day science is based on three faith-based propositions: the universe is rational, the universe is not only rational but also lawful, and the rationality of the universe mirrors the rationality within our own minds.

Barker, who is also the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), tried his best to persuade the audience to consider the bankruptcy of religion and God. There was the preacher in him coming out when he held the Bible and read a few verses pointing out the absurdities, inconsistencies and violence. Now, this is fascinating. Not many atheists of the old were enthusiastic let alone passionate in spreading a passion for atheism. But today’s atheists—fierce, passionate and driven by missionary zeal—are proclaiming a new way of living: A life without God. A society without religion. A world without faith. But is this possible?

While everybody is entitled to opinion, not everybody is entitled to facts. Barker’s idea may be appealing to the Western world where only a fraction of the world’s population resides. Believers in God are plenty and the majority of them live outside the West (although God is still popular in the West). For the millions of people who share this earth, no amount of scientific evidence or reason is capable enough to shake the deeply entrenched and lively belief in God that marks their everyday life.

One of the key arguments the new evangelical atheists—men like Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris and others—have been raising is that religion is dangerous and poisonous to society. They are echoing the utopian world that John Lennon sang about in “Imagine.” This is a complete misunderstanding of religions across the world. Except for a small number of religious fanatics, the rest of the religious people in the world are to a greater degree living in relative calm. The technological sophistications of the 21st digital century have not dampened religious revivals across the world. Religion is growing like wildfire today as never before. Religion thrives in underground churches of China, particularly Christianity as former Time journalist David Aikman recounts in his book, Jesus in Beijing. Aikman predicts, “Within the next 30 years, one-third of China’s population could be Christian, making China one of the largest Christian nations in the world. These Christians could also be China’s leaders, guiding the largest economy in the world.” In Nigeria, both Islam and Christianity are growing rapidly. India has never witnessed a decline in religion, and it’s doubtful it ever will because religion and God are part and parcel of Indian life.

This does not mean people outside the West are intellectually lacking or simply indulgent in blind faith. Or at worst delusional, as Oxford biologist and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins notes in his best-selling book, The God Delusion. But rather believers in God worldwide have integrated God seamlessly into their lives without caving into atheism even though life is not fair, questions abound aplenty and God never seems to grant His appearance at every whim and fancy. The reason is simple: Every human being breathes air to live and yet nobody gets to see it. It is invisible. Yet they believe the air exists. We might say, well, we can feel the air. But so is God, many feel Him though they don’t see Him.

Belief in God or theism enjoys the world’s highest converts. Billions believe in God without anybody convincing them of God’s existence. Why is this so strange and yet so real and prevalent? The subject of God, contrary to what the atheists have come to believe, is refreshingly alive in the minds of millions.

This article was published in RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/features-reviews/god/15942-evangelical-atheism

What is so great about Christian missions?

By Reuben David

Among many parts of the world Christian missions and missionaries are hated and misunderstood as agents of neo-colonialism, moral imperialists or simply purveyors of western ethos. As someone from India I have often seen locals staging protests against Christian mission agencies and evangelistic outreaches. A recent report of violence against Christians in north India spotlighted the seething anger of local nationals against the growth of Christian missions in a developing country like India.

Deep in the forests of Orissa in north India the tribal population is big in number. These marginalized people were often seen as outcasts, unwanted and a menace to the society. The tribals never had access to proper food, clothing and shelter. They were oppressed by the rich landlords who rule with an iron-fist. Most of these tribals were often found to have the dreaded disease—leprosy. According to Hindu worldview the belief of karma states that some people are destined to be born as poor, low caste and leprous and there is nothing one can do about it. In other words if you are born into a particular background, let’s say, a low caste, you are pretty much imprisoned to your fate.  You are destined to your background and cannot come out of it. For the tribals this meant they were not allowed to come into the mainstream society. Most of this tribal population were degraded and hunted down.

The tribals never knew the meaning of human dignity because they lived under tyranny. They never understood the meaning of love because they have only seen hatred. They never knew that there could be people who could love them because they never knew of Christianity.

It was in this setting that the Christian missionaries boldly ventured out to proclaim the freedom and dignity that Christ brings to every individual. As soon as the tribals heard the good news of Jesus Christ they began turning to Christianity in droves.  For the first time in their lives they felt accepted, loved and welcomed into the family of God. This was powerful. This was life changing. This was transforming their outlook on life. All this was possible because of Christian missions. The most famous Australian missionary Graham Staines who lived and worked among the tribals of Orissa in India was targeted for his Christian charitable work. One day when he was asleep in his van with his two little boy, angry haters of Christianity doused him with gasoline and torched him to death. The missionary had to pay a great price for his missions. Yet the glorious work of the Christian missions did not stop. The widow of Graham Staines publicly forgave the killers of her husband and two children. This once again proved the power of Christian love.

The power of Christian missions in today’s word, especially in Asia and Middle East is mind-boggling. Only Christian missions have the answer to the questions of human dignity and salvation.

There are billions of peoples outside North America who desperately need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. It is time that western Christians shed their complacency and lukewarm Christianity and wake up to the great calling of the Christian missions.

Only Christ has the answer to the dying billions of the world. This is why I am very passionate about Christian missions and its eternal impact on human civilization.

 This article appeared in the Feb 2009 edition of Minnesota Christian Chronicle

 

 

 

The Passing of an Era – A tribute to Bakht Singh

by Reuben David, Visiting Scholar, The Wilberforce Forum

 

A Christian convert from Hindu Sikhism, Bakht Singh, died in India, in September, 2000, at age 97. He was one of India’s most prolific church planters and a most remarkable evangelist.

In January 1915, a young lawyer from India, Mohandas Gandhi, returned to his homeland from South Africa with a new resolve to liberate his homeland from the domination of the British Raj. Elsewhere in India, in the northwest region of Punjab, a young Sikh named Bakht Singh Chabra had a dream. It was a dream that haunted him for years, a dream that would later catapult him to becoming one of India’s most prolific church planters and a Christian evangelist of world renown.

“In my dream as a young boy” Bakht Singh writes in one of his more than sixty books, “I was climbing a high and steep hill. With great difficulty and struggle I would reach the top. As soon as I reached it, somebody would come along and hurl me down. As I fell, the sharp points of the rocks would dig into my ribs. I would be in great pain, so much so that I would cry out in my dream. But in the end I would find myself lying on soft silk cushions. I would wonder that the pain of falling down was worth landing on such soft silk cushions.” That recurring dream proved to be prophetic of his conversion, later, to Christ.

Bakht Singh was born on June 6, 1903, in the northern region of Punjab that later became part of Pakistan. Born into a family who strictly observed the Sikh traditions, he would spend hours in gurudwaras (the Sikh temples) and observe all the religious rites. Sikhism, a derivative of Hinduism, was founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539). The Sikhs believe in the unity of God and the brotherhood of man. A typical Sikh maintains the five Ks: kes (long hair), kangha (a comb), kirpan (a sword), kach (short trousers), and kara (a steel bracelet). The word Sikh means a disciple, and their common family name, Singh, means the lion.

Like others of his heritage, Bakht Singh hated Christianity from his childhood. He once tore the pages out of a Bible that was presented to him in school, keeping only the leather binding. Little did he realized then that God already had plans for his life.

In 1926 Singh sailed for England to study mechanical engineering at King’s College, London. He promised his parents his loyalty to the Sikh religion, but his student years changed all that. He was captivated by the aristocratic lifestyle he observed at King’s and, before long, he started smoking and drinking alcohol. He learned to eat with knife and fork, visited the theaters and dance halls, and wore expensive Western clothes. Most shocking to his friends and family, he also cut off his long hair – the outward mark of his religion. “I became an atheist,” he said, “a socialist and a free thinker.” Yet there was still a deep emptiness in his heart that haunted him. Eventually, despairing of his new lifestyle and his dark view of life, he began a search for inner peace.

An Awesome Power

By 1928 Singh had occasion to travel to Canada, and during the transatlantic passage he noticed a small sign announcing the Christian service held in the ship’s main dining salon. This captured his interest. Curious to know what Christians do in worship, he entered the room and sat down on a back bench. He had never read the Bible or participated in any Christian service. He had never heard about salvation through Jesus Christ. But when he knelt with the others for prayer, he felt an awesome power lifting him up. “I was trembling,” he wrote later. “I felt a divine power entering into me. Joy flooded my soul. Unknown to me, I was repeating the name of Jesus again and again. I felt great peace.” he said. Thus, a once proud Sikh was won to Christ.

From that day on, Singh was known to spend hours reading the Bible – as much as 14 hours at a stretch. His former desire to read popular magazines, newspapers, and novels was replaced with a passion to know the Bible and to plumb its depths. He was baptized on February 4, 1932 in Vancouver, Canada, and immediately began sharing his testimony with those around him. As he matured in his faith and his understanding of the word, he felt called to full-time ministry, and began studying seriously to that end.

When Bakht Singh returned home to India as a Christian, on April 6, 1933, his parents met him at the Port of Bombay. Reluctantly, they accepted the idea of his conversion, but they urged him, at all costs, to keep his newfound beliefs a secret. But Singh refused to comply and, from that moment, his family deserted him. Suddenly homeless and driven by his passion for Christ, he began to preach on the streets of Bombay. Before long he was preaching to large crowds and holding revivals throughout the country. Crowds thronged to hear him. He was a powerful and winsome speaker, and the passion in his words attracted tens of thousands to hear about Jesus Christ. And his sermons were always followed by signs and wonders.

A Dynamic Witness

Singh’s biographer and co-worker with him for over 50 years, Dr. T. E. Koshy, who was chaplain at Syracuse University, says, “The early years of his ministry were marked with signs and wonders. People fell to the ground crying for mercy.” Dr. Ravi Zacharias, the most prominent Indian-born Christian teacher and apologist of our day, says, “I was a young Christian when I heard of Bakht Singh. His impact for Christ in India and worldwide has been immense.”

Bakht Singh’s preaching impacted the religious landscape of Hindu-Muslim India as no Christian teacher had ever done. People from all walks of life flocked to hear him. He eventually went on to plant thousands of churches all over the sub-continent and many other parts of the world.

The great British church historian, J Edwin Orr, said of him, “Brother Bakht Singh is an Indian equivalent of the greater Western evangelists, as skillful as Finney and as direct as Moody. He is a first-class Bible teacher of the order of Campbell Morgan or Graham Scroggie.” American author Dave Hunt writes, “The arrival of Bakht Singh turned the churches of Madras upside down. Crowds gathered in the open air to hear this man of God. Many seriously ill were healed when he prayed for them. The deaf and dumb began to hear and speak.”

“Singh’s role in the 1937 revival that swept the Martinbur United Presbyterian Church inaugurated one of the most notable movements in the history of the church in the Indian subcontinent,” notes Jonathan Bonk, in the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. But Singh did more than preach the salvation. He launched the indigenous church-planting movement that was so essential to the rise of Christianity in India, contextualizing the gospel to the local culture. Eventually he saw the formation of more than 10,000 “houses of worship,” and he traveled the world, setting up churches in Australia, France, America, and England, as well as Pakistan.

In Total Dependence

Another missionary, statesman, author, and teacher, Norman Grubb, said of him: “What impressed me most on my Asian visit was my eight days with Bakht Singh of India and his co-workers and congregations. Here was to me a sample of the coming church of Christ … In all my missionary experience I think these churches on their New Testament foundations are the nearest I have seen to a replica of the early church and a pattern for the birth and growth of the young churches in all the countries which we used to talk about as mission fields.”

Singh was a friend to leaders such as Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Jerry Falwell, and John Stott, to name only a few.

“Singh taught total dependence on God and urged people to get their own Bibles and study them. He was known to read the Bible on his knees,” says David Adimoolam, who was for many years a member of the assembly organized by Bakht Singh. “He was strict yet gentle,” he says. “Those were days when we felt the glory of God coming down. Singh was a man of prayer. He emphasized the importance of the word.”

At his death in the Central Indian town of Hyderabad, his ministry headquarters, on September 16, 2000, at age 97, Christians worldwide commemorated the life of this man of God. An estimated 600,000 mourners attended the funeral. Some also reported that a mild tremor had hit the city a few hours before his death. And on the day of the funeral, the entire city witnessed a rare phenomenon – a rainbow over the sun as flocks of doves flew above the funeral procession. Coincidence or not, many took these events as a sign.

Today, as India is undergoing a new wave of attacks on Christian and their churches, there is good reason for alarm. The international community has been slow in responding, but the resolve of the church has only increased. Persecution, though terrible, cannot stop the progress of the Word of God, and the passion of Indian believers today, including those in the churches organized by Bakht Singh, are armed with conviction and a profound resolve to overcome and endure. And for those who knew him, the memory of the great evangelist, Bakht Singh, is an ongoing reminder of what God can yet accomplish through those who are wholly devoted to Him.

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Reuben David holds a Master of Science degree in Journalism from Bangalore University and is currently a graduate student at Regent University. He is a visiting scholar at The Wilberforce Forum, a division of Prison Fellowship in Washington, DC.

 

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Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.

The right to preach

By Reuben David

What an insult to Hinduism? A US-based Israeli born preacher, a middle eastern religious message of love and prayers, an expected crowd of 30 lakh, a 2000 strong choir, 67 giant screens, 1,50,000 watts of sound effects, all set in a sprawling Jakkur ground and lots of posters, billboards and pamphlets is supposedly going to wipe out a 5000-year-old strong Hindu civilization? This is a crazy joke! Hinduism is needlessly humiliated, I am afraid, not from the likes of Benny Hinn and others, but from BJP leaders, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Jagarana Vedike and other enraged right winged Hindu fundamentalists. Any sane, civilized, informed, Hindu, Muslim or Christian citizens of India ought to first think that human beings are free to think and choose their own faith.

Agitating and threatening that “a civil war” would result if Benny Hinn does not pull out only reflects intellectual and moral pettiness of BJP leaders and Hinn’s critics. How can a three-day prayer meet convert and change centuries old Hindu faith? Hinduism has no missionary zeal because it does not fear being defeated. It survived several religions mainly because it tolerates does not irritate, it accommodates does not exclude, it encourages religious plurality not religious hatred it believes that intimation of truth comes to us in many ways. It proclaims Satyannasti paro dharmah (there is no religion higher than truth). The Vedas echo Satyameva Jayate (Truth will conquer). The Bhagvad Gita says, “Let good thoughts come to us from all sides” or “The truth is one but the wise call it by many names.” Hinduism is a way of life and is not a militant faith as it has been portrayed by Hindu hardliners. This tells me that the message of Christ’s love for mankind and Christian prayer gatherings, even if led by men like evangelist Benny Hinn or others is no threat to Hinduism. Hinn has preached earlier in Mumbai and we have not heard of any civil unrest or bloodshed. Why the agitation?

Distinguished Kannada writer U R Ananthamurthy has reportedly exhorted Chief Minister Dharam Singh not to attend the event, describing it as a case of “mass hysteria”. Stirring undue rage against another Christian preacher seems to be driving people hysterical. We are not expecting a gang of Christian terrorists to show up in Jakkur Airfield, it is shameful to see the indecency of some BJP leaders and Hindu seers to attack the very constitutional religious freedom in India. Ours is a secular democracy because of its Hindu ethos. No country in the world has harmonized cultures derived from the great religions the way India has. All cultures have thrived and been transformed in the civilizational crucible of Hindustan.

We expect leaders to be peacemakers not peacebreakers. Indian democracy allows for freedom of expression. Why are not some Hindu leaders agitating against Sai Baba, Shankaracharya of Kanchi or Matha Amrithanandamayi and other Hindu religious heads that command significant crowd? Why not boycott the greatest of Hindu gatherings, the Kumbh Mela, that attract nearly 12 million people. Christians do not agitate these gatherings nor do they burn pictures of river Ganges or swamiji’s. India’s foremost Hindu leader Swami Vivekananda was not rejected when he proclaimed the message of Hinduism at the Chicago meet in 1893. Christians in America never attack Hindu leaders rather they engage in civilized debates. Welcoming is an Indian Hindu hospitality. American democracy and religious freedom has cherished another Indian born US based Hindu exponent, Deepak Chopra, who expounds on ancient Vedic texts and defends Hinduism. Christians in America are not burning pictures of Chopra and filing lawsuits. Why do we Indians, inheritors of ancient Hindu ideals, which preach tolerance and universal brotherhood attack Christian leaders?

The Hindu mind firmly believes in the Vedic thought “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the world is one family) It does not subscribe to just one belief, one philosophy, and one dogma but is ready to absorb any thought, so why not listen to Evangelist Benny Hinn preaching about Jesus Christ. It’s another thought to absorb, it is up to each individual conscience to accept or reject any message. If the freedom of will, choice and conscience is attacked then where is democracy and what happened to the greatness of Hinduism?

The dangerous anti-social elements are those who attack religious freedom. The message of Christianity is simply this: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3: 16. Evangelist Hinn cannot but preach the love of Christ to all mankind. Critics, including some Christians, have charged the evangelist as a charlatan and a fake healer. Why attack a message of healing? Why not charge the same against Sai Baba and other healers who avowedly claim as healers. Evangelist Hinn repeatedly affirms that he is not the healer but Jesus is. If somebody gets healed, it’s cause to celebrate, if someone is not, there is no reason to attack. Nobody pays for healing, why then mindlessly attack the evangelist. To be healed of any ailment is better off than being swallowed alive in the Tsunami? Does every medicine in this world heal? If it heals, it’s cause to be happy, if not try another medicine, but do we attack doctors and the field of medicine. It is up to each one’s faith and belief. Civilized democracy does not fear message of love and healing it has to only fear message of hatred and terrorism.

Think of the religious hostility sparked by enraged BJP leaders and other vested groups.

Secularism is more than just a theory or concept in Hinduism. It has a long history of religious tolerance, acceptance of diversity of spiritual paths, reasoning and discussion and the right to think, express and dissent. That is why concepts like blasphemy, evangelism, proselytism and crusade or jihad are alien to Hindus. Noted Indian President S Radhakrishnan and a Hindu intellectual once said, “Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God. In the search for the supernatural, it is like traveling in space without a boundary or barrier.” Go Indian, take the Hindu idea that says all rivers lead to the ocean, and take a plunge into another river, this time on the banks of Jakkur.

When Girls Marry Dogs And Gods Drink Human Blood

By Reuben David

I am appalled as an Indian to read of my country so deeply lost in mindless religious barbarism. While BJP leaders and Hindu seers rant and rave against a Christian prayer gathering— a constitutionally protected freedom to preach one’s religious beliefs—meanwhile Karnamoni Handsa, a nine-year-old girl weds a stray dog in northern India shocking the collective civility of Indians.

Some people can write off the incident as an isolated case, some multiculturalists might even defend the practice as a cultural expression, some intellectuals could even debunk it as a social aberration and some could be indignant but they are all still missing the bigger picture of the Santhali tribe to which the girl belongs. The Santhals number around 7 million and imagine a tribe resorting to girl-dog weddings because little girls grew “dog teeth” in their upper jaws and “dog teeth” were considered a bad omen. The only way out was to get the girl married to the dog or else the evil was sure to haunt. Tooth problems are best handled by dentists but strangely enough Indian collective progress seems to eclipse villages like Dhanbad, where ignorance, naivety and poverty seems to be charting the graph.

India is scaling mountains in information technology making global headlines. We even pride of nuclear capability. Some even wreck public peace and properties marching in justified rage to protect religious ideals and even file lawsuits against a whistle-stop visitor like Benny Hinn, who came, who saw, who prayed and who left. And noted columnist like Thomas Friedman puts India’s IT prowess on the pages of New York Times and yet few and fleeting are the progress made in shaping India’s cultural and human dignity much of which is dictated by pantheistic Hindu beliefs that settles like a cloud over the rural, real India.

The animal-human wedding even grabbed headlines in BBC and the world laughs at these dastardly practices. Yet we don’t get to hear self-styled BJP cultural czars protesting and stirring rage against such inhuman practices. Wonder when the outrage would make BBC or CNN headlines! Wish we could see people rioting, vandalizing public property and storming prayer halls to ban the uncivilized and inhuman practice of subjecting little girls to wed stray dogs!

Years ago in 1987, eighteen-year-old Roop Kanwar was forced to throw herself onto her burning husband’s pyre because she had no right to live as a widow. The Hindu practice of sati (bride burning), another social evil justified on religious grounds had claimed many lives. In the 1800s 438 widow burnings were reported around a 30-mile radius of Calcutta despite the belief that divinity was perceived in Bengal as Ardhanareeshwara—half male and half female—and yet women were esteemed low. It took a foreigner like William Carey to ban the practice of Sati. We have come a long way from religious fanaticism and the rioters don’t seem to get it. India needs to foster dignified human existence not pseudo-religious fervor.

In fact, the canine-lass wedding, for once has redefined news. Gone are the backwoods, newsy examples, “If a man bites a dog” that makes a news, now if a girl weds a dog it makes BBC news uncovering the dark cultural contours of India. The Internet, the newsboy of the global village, gets it to every bedroom in the global village. Sitting here in a small town in the northwest province of United States I am watching and reading India’s happenings. I encourage myself that things would change, and I need not feel embarrassed to explain why certain things happen back home. And just then another news flash hits me again as I surf around the net. This one turns me off, angers me and eats away my India.

The headline is bold, “Five year-old boy sacrificed in Jharkhand” I expected the worst in the news lead and sure it was. A little lad’s head is chopped to appease the goddess Kali. Interesting enough, the boy heads out to watch television in Sardar’s house and doesn’t return home. A worried father asks his oldest son to find his younger brother. The search proves futile as the older one discovers his brother lying in a pool of blood in front of the picture of goddess Kali. The scene ends. Once again religious belief in the heartland of northern India has devoured the head of an innocent boy. This is so sickening and pathetic to hear happening in the 21st century. Civility could not enter where TV entered. How could a TV watcher fall prey to the charms of a religious belief that some gods show up in dreams and ask for human blood? How could this be? How can this not rankle the rank and file of our society? How can kids be exploited in the name of casting away “bad omens”? Children are so precious and are so naïve.

I like to see protests, rage and agitation against these malevolent religious practices. Can we have a ban on people preaching and practicing that gods need human blood? Can we let the dogs stray and give the little girl a doll to play with?

The Jesus We Need to Ignore

 By Reuben David

 

 

A recent book that’s appealing to a lot of post-moderns titled The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore by Indian-born doctor-turned-guru Deepak Chopra has got a lot of people seriously interested in thinking about Jesus–albeit in a different way. Definitely not in the way Jesus would want you to think about Him. This is a dangerous philosophy floating around with a lot of mumbo-jumbo sticking to it, much to the delight of unhappy Christians. Chopra, author of over 49 books on new-age subjects, portrays Jesus as a mystical person not the Savior of the world, certainly not an exclusive Savior. Jesus is not the only son of God, He is not the only way to heaven, He is not the exclusive God and the only God that orthodox or Biblical Christianity believes.

 

 

 

To Chopra, Jesus would never offend homosexuals, or sinners. He simply accepts them. He is here to make us all experience God-Consciousness–a term confusing and bewildering that many despaired Christians find riveting due to its esoteric appeal. Sadly, many Christians who don’t understand the deceptions of Eastern philosophies like Yoga and New Age would easily shift their worldview to this new-age claptrap.

 In The Third Jesus, Chopra writes there is not one Jesus, but three. First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, priesthood and devout believers. And finally, there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the Church built in His name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment. Chopra is arguing for a syncretistic Christianity, a mix and match, a pot-luck faith where we all feast on different foods. The question is: how sure are we that we are not feasting on contaminated food, even worse food that can poison our soul?

This is classic postmodern inclusivism, a kind of Hegelian dialectic, which argues there is no right or wrong thesis but a synthesis of two opposing ideologies. It’s the tragedy of western Christianity that in many churches and institutions Jesus has been deconstructed to become a laconic teacher, a pagan Christ, a Gnostic revealer, a de-enlightened male, a magician, a cynic philosopher. Put simply, He has been transmogrified. It’s a fascinating word that American Heritage dictionary says, “To change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre”. Chopra is reducing Jesus to be another eastern mystic and not as the incarnation of God. Jesus is certainly eastern, precisely middle-eastern, but the geographical origin of His birth doesn’t reduce His deity. Jesus still remains who He is: the only incarnate God who lived on earth.

The world’s calendar divides on His birth, AD and BC. Chopra is teaching nothing more than pagan Eastern Mysticism which says that we are all “God”. “God” in Eastern Religions is all creation. It says that everything in creation, the rocks, the stars, the planets, bugs, fish, animals, human beings all inclusively make up this single holistic “God consciousness”. Eastern philosophies make no distinction between holiness and sinfulness. The idea that man is a fallen human being is considered to be an affront to human dignity. It accepts that mankind is inherently good and that we all can experience God within without ever having to place faith in Christ as our redeemer. The essence of Chopra’s argument is that Christianity needs to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth. In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he truly is–someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance, and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.

This article originally appeared on relevantmagazine.com

 

Meeting God in the monsoon

By Reuben David 

Psalm 107: 9. “For he satisfieth the longing soul…”

I cannot forget those immortal moments when I got soaked in the pouring rains of the Indian monsoon. I was on my way home from my high school. The roads were flooded; here and there rivulets of water washed up dried leaves, cola cans, and dirt mounds, and the sidewalks looked clean and neat. Pretty excited I ran in the puddles splashing water all over my body. I looked above and the sky seemed to pour more water on my face drenching me into a feverish thrill.

My school bag, wet and dripping, hung heavy on my shoulders. My shoes were waterlogged and wading in the knee-deep rainwater seemed ethereal. It’s a fleeting thrill that any young boy or girl would experience when it rains. At least in my hometown, you could see kids playing around merrily in the muddied rainwaters. Ah, that was not the end of my happy moments, the smell of the red-wet earth wafted in the air kindling in me a strange sense of pleasure. It was de ja vu. It was nostalgic. I didn’t know when I had experienced that feeling in the past. But it was nostalgia unknown.

The smell of the wet earth was to me far more aromatic than any perfume. Did you ever get to smell a rain sodden earth? Nature’s smell sometimes stirs deep longings in the heart. It seems to suddenly unfold a dream that was waiting to happen really. Inhaling the entrancing earth smell provided me a wondrous backdrop to reminisce the many joyous moments of my life. I thought of the friend who smiled at me in the school. It gladdened my heart. At school I wanted everyone to love me whether they liked me or not. I dreaded being ignored. My heart couldn’t take it. However, today, my mind was recapturing the smile of a friend at school. Then, I thought of my mother who tended to my drenched body. She would hurriedly fix me a steaming cup of hot Indian tea. I thought of my father’s kind eyes. Although my mom would berate me for getting soaked in the water, my dad would just find towels to get me dry. They were little acts of kindness but they added to my happiness.

I thought of all that was good and glorious. It made me happy. The smell of the soil had worked wonders in my whacked out life. The pouring monsoon showers rejuvenated my imaginations. The more my mind dwelt on what made me happy, the more I wanted those moments to linger on. I felt inconsolable when images of immortal happy moments seemed to get washed away in the driving waters. Why was I so happy? What was I dreaming about when the waters drenched my body? What was the thrill that wouldn’t let me go? I was made from earth, and I knew, to earth my body would return. The earth seemed to me my familiar friend from, which I was made and to which my body was destined to return.

But the nostalgia, the longing for the unknown joy was too much to bear. And I would cry that I might have it again. But when the summer came it seemed brutal, the red-wet earth would turn into burning cakes of sand. It flashed my mind that my nostalgia, the longing for joy, the incessant craving for the happy moments, arose from the depth of my heart. It arose from my spirit. It had to do from my innermost being. The pleasure had to be from somewhere, better yet from someone who had created this longing in me. This longing is real, ineffable and intangible. It calls us. It wakes us up. It surprises us. You never go too far in life where you never long too much. The seasons of life only augment the intensity of the longing.

Talking about death, Victor Hugo writes, “The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies which invite me.” It’s a familiar symphony that haunts us unaware. While the fleeting experience of monsoon would vanish the incessant desire of finding my life’s joy would ever haunt. It had to be only God who could satisfy my yearning than anyone. Absence of God only makes the longing painful. Nothing else fills. Only God was big enough to fill my longing. Apart from Him I am always inconsolable. I cry without God. I am lost without God. I love Him. I desire His consolation. When was the last time you desired God? Haven’t you experienced those moments of dryness in your life? You think you are full but you are empty. You think you are flourishing but you are actually drying up. You realize you are drained, alone and unhappy. Even though you pray, fast, sing, attend church, read Bible, go to mission fields and do the right thing, yet there is a haunting loneliness and dryness that pervades your life. Even when the sensual enjoyments reach their peak, they secede soon. They vaporize like mists in high noon. And the heart cries again. Does this portray your life?

Have you ever felt like this before? Maybe you are going through these moments right now as you are holding this book in your hands? You are not sure you want to read this book? Yet another book on spirituality! Will I ever find the life I am dreaming about? The life that haunts me, and yet eludes me. The life that Jesus talked about—the abundant life! Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

We all have our own life, our own little life that we live everyday. Some live a quarter life, some a half-life, and many others live like they are really dead. The most miserable life is to simply exist not knowing why one is living for. Many are lost for real life and are in search of a life beyond their everyday existence. Only a few have discovered the abundant life. The life that swells with joy, the life that is beyond existence. One of the most devastating experiences of a Christian is to be a Christian and still not experience Jesus to be ‘the delight of his or her life’. Christian thinker C.S.Lewis describes the situation very aptly, “We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory) We are far too easily pleased with what we are doing in the now. We have no clue of the infinite joy that is offered to us in Jesus.
 
We have been looking for joy elsewhere and finding it nowhere. We have heard sermon after sermons on how to mature in our Christian walk. We feed on tapes, CDs and TVs for more of our Christian enrichment and yet still the longing for authentic intimacy with Jesus haunts us and we don’t know how to experience it. Very few of us have experienced the abundant life that Jesus promised us in the scriptures. King David, a busy man, ruler of a nation, with all of his wealth, pomp and glory, still finds himself empty and bewails, “…My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (Psalms 84:2.) King David was a chosen man of God. He met God early on in his life; he encountered a bear and a lion and prevailed over them in the power of God. He even took on the big giant Goliath. So many miraculous experiences, so many encounters, and yet he felt that life wasn’t satisfying without diving deep into intimacy with God. He was panting after God.

He was crying out for more of God. He wanted nothing else but more of God. His heart was restless. His body ached. It was the inner ache of the human spirit that cried out for its Creator. St Augustine too cried that way, “Oh, God our hearts are restless until we find our rest in thee.”

When were the last time you cried wanting God more? I mean not some long, fancy, flowery prayer but deep, passionate, heart rending cry for more of God? A child when lost cries out to her mother. For it knows nothing can substitute the feel of her mother’s lap, nothing can equal the comfort of being cradled by her mother. And so should we, like a child, cry out to God for that’s where our real comfort is. Without the touch and comfort of the presence of Jesus we are but cosmic orphans, waifs of the universe, left alone and abandoned. We all have gone through many religious experiences, done many things for God, been there in that mission field, explored those mission courses, taught Sunday schools, preached in churches, poured over Bible. And yet still the heart feels an inconsolable longing to enter into intimacy with God. Without intimacy with Jesus we will only be religious Christians, professional Christians, more adept in defining Christianity than experiencing Christ.

We all have gone through rough moments. We all go through seasons of search and hunger wanting to know what makes life enjoyable, meaningful and authentic. I remember my seasons, when as a teenager I hungered after love, someone to make me feel complete, someone to whisper in my ears, “I love you”. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to love. As a child I enjoyed the attention of my family members, my aunts, my uncles, my sisters. There was a sense of naivety that made me forget life. I reveled in the feeling that I was the center of everyone’s attention. I wanted to be loved always and never hated. But those years didn’t stay longer. I had to grow up even though I didn’t like. And when you grow up people’s affections are not the same anymore, the younger siblings grab the attention and worse, you might even fade out from other’s minds. People might like you but you never feel loved. You never get to feel that you are wanted. You dread the fact that you are no longer cherished by the ones who once flocked around you. No one gives you a kiss or a hug or a pat on the back.

The seasons of life change but the hungers of the heart grow deep. And my heart hungered for more. Nothing would make me happy except God. For some reasons I spent more time thinking about God than my own school courses. God fascinated me. He drew my attention. My years in school and college flew by like a season of the past. I ran to every Christian meeting to find more of God, was the first to be in outreach programs to revel in the joy of sharing Christ with others. My heart was panting to know more of Jesus and experience His fullness. It was a longing that was inconsolable. Nothing was able to console my longing for my Creator. Just as a child would cry inconsolably to reach her mother’s lap, so are we creatures inconsolable until we climb onto the lap of our heavenly father. The longing for the immortal union with God is real, deep and is never satisfied in earthly pursuits. CS Lewis captures the moment brilliantly when he says, “In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, . . . I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency.

I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both . . . Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. . . .Here, then, is the desire, still wandering and uncertain of its object and still largely unable to see that object in the direction where it really lies . . . Heaven is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience. The scriptural picture of heaven is therefore just as symbolical as the picture, which our desire, unaided, invents for itself . . . (The Weight of Glory).

When I was an undergrad student in India, I was part of a group that met every Thursday on the college campus for prayer. So many guys and gals would come around and ask us, “What are you all doing instead of having fun?” I wanted to say; sure, we are having fun. But how do I explain to them that believing in God and experiencing God was fun, too? What do you answer to a group of college students whose whole worldview revolves around the most bandied word ‘fun’? How do you explain fun? What is funny to you may not be funny to me. Worse still, what is funny to the other may be hurting to me. Or you. “Have fun?” they chorus, not realizing what fun really means. We few Christians were actually having fun with God. Yes, we were having a jolly good time with God. I happened to meet one of the curious onlookers and began to talk to him during free time. He was in my class studying psychology and literature. I guess he really wanted to know why I was chasing after religious experiences (that’s what he termed our Christian fellowship) instead of reveling in the enjoyments that youth hood brings.

It seemed to him that religion, God and Christianity in particular were a waste of time and that, and they stole away the joys of a human being. I asked him, “Do you know that to enjoy anything in life you first need to have the capacity to enjoy? What if your eyes were blind and that you couldn’t see a sunset to enjoy. What if you were deaf and you couldn’t hear a lovely music? What if you couldn’t speak and you couldn’t enjoy conversations. What do you enjoy in life when the very capacity to enjoy isn’t there anymore? He paused at me, looker around, scratched his head and with a forlorn look walked away. I guess he was pondering over his own observations. As followers of Christ we were all in communion with our Creator who had fashioned the very ‘capacity for enjoyments’ in our body and He the creator was far more enjoyable to us than just the object he created. It’s like talking to Henry Ford who created the Ford cars.

It’s like talking to Isaac Newton who founded the laws of gravity. It’s like chatting up with the poet William Blake who wrote so many poems. And, here we were lost in the awe of one who even created this very feeling of ‘awe’ in us. God was to us the author of all pure pleasure. He was far more fun to us than anything else. What can the world offer in return to the hungers of our human heart? How sad many of us nominal Christians, namesake followers of Christ, church attending Christians, cultural Christians, political Christians have lost in the bargain for a deeper experience of true joy in life. There is an inconsolable longing in all of us. The woman at the well of Samaria had no clue when she came to draw the water what awaited her. She came to the well to satiate a physical longing in the body but upon finding Christ she returned back finding rivers of living water able to satisfy the hungers of body and soul. She went about proclaiming to everyone that Christ the messiah had filled her heart. Her heart was overflowing and she couldn’t contain it. The Bible says in John 4:26, “The woman then left her water pot, and went her way into the city and said to the men: Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?” An overflowing heart affects others. A joyful Christian affects others. We are known by the level of joy we possess. What is filling your heart? Like the Samaritan woman we have to come to the end of our life, we have to find ourselves in a state of thirst, having exhausted all, we come away to the well to satiate our thirst and there when we have hit rock bottom, Christ finds us and offers us rivers of living water. He fills our longing