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.
No comments:
Post a Comment