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Thursday, September 5, 2019

Why I Didn't Convert to These Religions


Various faith traditions over the millenia have made efforts to try to explain the unexplainable and make sense of the universe, to find our purpose in life and look towards something beyond the material.  Over the years, I’ve researched many of these traditions, and having decided to stick with the religious tradition of my upbringing, I note below why these other faith traditions didn’t convince me to convert (although many came very close).

Hinduism is probably the farthest removed from a helpful explanation of the human condition, for it merely recognizes the unfortunate inequality between people and, rather than being motivated to reach beyond oneself to help others, it simply places blame on them so as to relieve oneself of any obligation to serve others.  Hindus fear becoming like the less fortunate in a future life, and this fear motivates them to attempt to earn a better social standing.  Yet somehow this motivation does not actually do much to help those already in lesser position. 

Native American and many other indigenous spiritualities often recognize the importance of creation and our responsibility towards it, but they merge that which was created with Who created it.  Polytheism is an attempt to reach for an origin to what we see, yet somehow the idea of a single Source is lost on those who believe in various gods and goddesses.

For a long time I have been fascinated with eastern philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism.  Taoism focuses on the balance of everything in nature, which is absolutely true and beautiful to reflect on.  What it fails to recognize a loving Creator God behind the very principles that the philosophy observes.  Buddhism recognizes the inevitability of suffering in this world and acknowledges that it is desire that is behind suffering, yet it fails to recognize that our desires are not in themselves somehow wrong or misplaced, and therefore the premise of Buddhism’s attempt to snuff out desire is ill-placed.  The desire is placed their by our Creator God, and it points to an eternal existence that cannot be realized in our earthly realm.  It is not bad to want good things for oneself.  It only becomes bad when a person becomes a slave to the desire and fails to look beyond it.  Certain desires are certainly to be overcome with grace and discipline, but other desires point us to the very real human need to fill a void that can only be filled by God Himself.

Shintoism focuses on ancestors, believing that there is a divination process that takes place upon death, and one’s ancestors become gods who must then be worshipped.  Of course, one’s elders ought to be respected, and there’s truth in the belief of life after death.  But what’s missing is the Creator God.

Islam and Judaism, in my view, are two sides of the same coin.  Both recognize a single Creator God and the need to “do good”.  It would seem the reason Islam came into being is because of political reasons.  People longed for the one true God but couldn’t imagine “joining” the already existing Judaism (or Christianity, for that matter).  This is of course a simplistic observation of a mere amateur bystander.

Christianity, at its core, incorporates all of these aspects.  It recognizes the problem of inequality among people, the interconnectedness of everyone and creation, the existence of opposites in all aspects of life, the value of those who have come before us, and the recognition that we all it all to a single Creator God.  What distinguishes Christianity from Judaism and Islam is the level of control that we actually have over it all.  Judaism and Islam indicate that enough “good works” will satisfy God and grant us access to Him in the afterlife.  Christianity realizes the futility of this approach and instead notes that while we are indeed called to “good works”, these are not what “get us into heaven”.  Rather, it is simply God’s grace, a free gift of self-giving love, that enables us to be saved from our own downfall.  He loved us enough to take the blame for our sins.  No amount of penance would ever completely erase the wrongs of our erroneous thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions over the course of a lifetime.  Yet though He’s a just God, more than that He is a loving and therefore forgiving God. 

The difference between a Christian’s good works and those of a Muslim or Jew is that the Christian, if truly living according to the Gospel, does the good deeds out of a sense of gratitude to God for having been saved, not out of a sense of obligation or fear or in the hopes of manipulating God to favor her or him in the afterlife.  In other words, the Christian is motivated by love.

Except that many in-name-only Christians misrepresent Jesus and what He calls us to.  They prioritize the incidentals and minimize the crucial gospel-living behavior.  They worship in churches on Sundays (or Saturdays), they speak openly about their love of Jesus, they quickly point out the wrongdoing of others and quote relevant Scriptures to back up their judgment calls, they claim to love the unbelievers and want nothing more than to see them in heaven… All while they ignore the marginalized of society, focus only on the in-group (Americans are in no way immune to ethnocentricity, even if there isn’t a single ethnicity that defines Americans), and selectively point to Scriptures excusing them from help.  Luke 11:42 speaks to this phenomenon: “But woe to you Pharisees!  For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.” 

Yes, it is important to keep the Sabbath holy, dress modestly, and share the gospel with unbelievers… but not without also helping the immigrant, visiting the ill and prisoner, reaching out to the unwanted, speaking truth to power.  It’s not an either-or scenario.  Doing the outward, obvious, and – dare I say – easy part does not exempt one from the Christian responsibility to put oneself out there, risk ridicule and ostracism along with our brothers and sisters whom we are to help, serve, and thereby lead to Christ. 

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