Christians; how do you regard Hinduism?

[thucythucy]

275. I think most faiths are an attempt by human beings to answer

the fundamental questions about the nature of existence, about life and death, and how to live a moral life in a material world that often seems to encourage greed, violence, and the exploitation of others.

The Bible, like the Bhagavad Gita, is the written account of one culture's attempt to grapple with those questions. The Greek Scriptures (commonly called the New Testament) is an attempt to reconcile Hebrew Scripture with the Roman-Graeco world-view. As such, all these scriptures are influenced by and bound to their specific cultural contexts.

For me, being a Christian means taking to heart the two commandments that Christ told us were the most important to come out of all of Hebrew Scripture:

1) You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

2) You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The Bhagavad Gita has a core message pretty much identical to this: you should love God, and you should do good in the world. In fact, all the world's major religions have an analogue to "the Golden Rule"--beyond which all else is cultural iconography.

And so the Hebrew and Greek scriptures get bogged down in all sorts of extraneous, culturally-tied admonitions about ritual and cleanliness and the like, while the Hindu scriptures (from what I understand of them) also often reflect what might be seen as cultural/political/social messages extraneous to the basic core message of seeking Godhead as the source of all life and love; and reflecting that love as the love of others, and abandoning the centrality of one's own life as set against the vast reality of existence. Just as Buddhism--which in its earliest form had no "god" at all--has down through the years been adapted by a variety of cultures in different ways. Sometimes this reflects an attempt by those who "get" the message to offer analogies and symbols people can understand (and remember, almost all these writings originally come down to us as oral traditions, then written texts in an era when the overwhelming majority of human beings were illiterate). Sometimes the messages are diluted, mis-translated, or, in the case of post Constantine Christianity, co-opted by the political powers that be in an effort to retain power by claiming "God" is on their side. Sometimes, though, the core truth shines through, and what has lasted reflects what has proved most useful to multitudes seeking these answers.

As a Christian I see no reason to try to push, convince, or even reconcile my beliefs in the validity of those two "commandments" with any other faith, though the more I learn of Hinduism, the more it seems to me that the search for self-realization in truth and the quest to be more compassionate to ourselves and others is at the heart of that faith as well. Remember, Mahatma Gandhi was a devout Hindu, as well as a political revolutionary, perhaps the most successful of the twentieth century. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a devout Christian, and also a political revolutionary, perhaps the most successful in American history. King adopted his non-violent campaign for African American civil rights directly from Gandhi's "Satyagraha"--which was not only a campaign of non-violent disobedience to political authority, but also a religious practice firmly based in Hindu theology. So evidently Rev. King had no trouble reconciling one with the other, and if the two were to meet, I doubt they'd quibble about which faith is "true"--as opposed to how best to apply their faith to meeting injustice with justice and hatred with love.

BTW, your vision of Christianity accepts the most reactionary, fundamentalist version of that faith as indicative of the entire theology, just as your vision of Hinduism seems hardly well informed. To me, the more one learns and studies the heart of both beliefs, the more one delves into the underpinnings of both, the less there is to "reconcile."

Folks I would consider genuine--and not facile--Christians abandoned all that nonsense in Leviticus long ago as Bronze Age effluvium irrelevant to Christ's central message, just as the modern Hindu scholars I've read separate out the caste system and cultural misogyny from the central truths offered by that ancient and profound theology.

As I said in an earlier post, try reading some Christopher Duraisingh for an answer to precisely the question you're asking. And if you haven't read Joseph Campbell's "The Masks of God" you should check it out for its amazing (if slightly dated) overview of how all the world's major religions resonate with the same basic messages.

There is a whole world of religious thought out there that bears no resemblance to your stereotype of what constitutes progressive Christian thought. If you're really interested in answers to your questions, there is a wealth of material to help you in your quest.

Best wishes!