World Mission of the Church - Lesson 18

Dr. Timothy Tennent
World Mission of the Church
wm601-18
Missions and World Religions

[00:00:00] Let me just may I say where I Hinduism. This is, by the way, a picture taken. Very, very close to where I work in India. You can see this is a at a gathering called the the Maha Kumbh Mela. It's this great festival and it was one of the largest gatherings of humans in the face of the earth. And the movement of Hindus was so great at this pilgrimage spot that it could be seen from space. You always hear. The only you can see from space is the Great Wall of China. Now there's the mirror. It's hard to grasp what this looks like in person. My daughter was just there just last summer for a Kumba Mela. Not the Maha, just a Kumba mela, which is a really big one, but not the one that occurs every 12 years. This is like a really major one, but it was still about look like, about like that. And so when I brought Bethany over the crest of this hill to show her the Ganges River and these pilgrims, she just gasped. I mean, she couldn't believe it. She'd never seen the sea of humanity like you see in North India. And there's just nothing like it. I mean, if this state, that little state where we work, if that state was a country, an independent country with a six most populated country in the world. That's not counting pilgrimage. Anybody who comes there, this is just normal people living 160, 180 million people live in that little state. So this is this is either Pradesh. So Hinduism is found mainly in this, and this is a particular time of Hindu celebrations on defining Hinduism. Very broadly here as a collective term. Hinduism refers to a wide variety of religious attitudes in India, a wide array of religious attitudes, beliefs and practice of India, which have been united through the caste system. 

[00:01:58] The sacredness of ancient scriptures. Belief in karma. And the transmigration of souls, what you probably know of as the reincarnation of of souls. I use the term transmigration. The caste system is a social system which separates people. And there are four basic classifications of caste in India, the high caste Brahmins. Then you have the Qataris, the Shias, and the shooter is the Brahmins of the priest. The Qataris are the warriors. The vices, the merchants, the Sudanese or the servants. And then you have those that are caste out of the caste. That's where we get the word outcast from in our language that have been cast out of the caste system because of various things they've done that are known as Dalits. That's the majority of Hindus or shooters and Dalits. So that's the caste system, the sacred, the ancient scriptures. They have scriptures they call their collective term, for it is the Vedas, the Das, which they regard as sacred. All Indians, except the basic authority and sacred of the Vedas, though they emphasize different parts of it based on their their groups belief in karma. This is the idea that every action in your life has certain kinds of reactions that affect your existence and your future existences. So calm as a form of so in reaping every action has a consequence. And so therefore all much of Indian life is based on calculating this what creates good or negative consequences. And that affects how everything is understood and done in India. So naturally, talking about sin or talking about righteousness is thought of in karmic concepts in India. And then the transmigration of souls. This is the idea that you have in Hindu belief and essence of yourself. They call an ottoman, which when you die, will migrate to a new place based on your karma. 

[00:04:00] Previous karma or accumulated kind of have different kinds of karma, but based on different kinds of karma, you will be situated and reborn as a shooter or as an animal or whatever based on your past karma. So this affects also Indians view of the world and view of history in view of everything. So these are all things that are very important ramifications for Christian Proclamation and are kind of general statements about Hinduism, though obviously there's a lot a lot to be said about it as a religion. Now Hinduism is primarily found in India and even in global Hinduism. If you actually look at who are the Hindus that live around the world, in the USA or wherever, it's mostly the Indian diaspora that is Indians who have relocated around the world. So this is highly, though not exclusively, but highly identify with Indian peoples. Therefore, India becomes the important place to discuss Hinduism and how its how it relates. India is normally divided between north and south. And so you have this west and east central and also the extreme light blue country over there are not country, but part of India as a result of partition, because you'll remember now that you know all your geography, that you know where Bangladesh is, you know where Pakistan is. And of course, that was all part of India. So when partition took place in 47, they divided India to separate the Hindus and the Muslims. So Pakistan was separated off of India and so was what they called East Pakistan. So East Pakistan and West, they literally split. Pakistan was split the two countries. And that, of course, was an impossible situation to be like. You know, it'd be like what would happen if Quebec were not quite that bad, but almost if Quebec became independent, you almost sever Canada in half. 

[00:05:59] And that's kind of what happened, except it was a complete severing. There's no way you could physically get from east to west Pakistan. So this created a war and eventually Bangladesh gets spawned off is their own country. But this whole tribal part of India, which was just part of the normal American, William Kerry's day, kind of part of Bengal over into that and up into the northeast is a tribal area. They've never been Hindu. Nothing to do with Hinduism, no background in Hinduism. They know less about Hinduism than you would know about Hinduism, but they were not Muslim. So when partition took place, they retained that. And so India has this little small corridor which connects over into that rather large section of India, which is very, very different. And most of those peoples are great number of would have become Christians. And if you look at this map here. Oh, I don't. I thought I had it there, but I don't. The map I had put on there showed the Christian where they're located. Virtually all the Christian any are located in the dark blue down in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and portions of Karnataka. These three blue states here and way over there in this extreme northeast. So if you know our student Tally Jameer, a student here, he's from that Northeast section, he's from that tribal part of India, a different region, part of India. And then the Hindu heartland is over here and we're way up in the north. You can see well, you can't see the name of it Sea Otter Pradesh, when extreme northern part of that state there on the right. Okay, so Hinduism is known of being very eclectic. Just to summarize a few basic points, there are Hindus who believe in many, many gods. 

[00:07:46] It's been estimated up to 330 million different gods worshiped in India. And there are people who believe in one ultimate God and don't believe in many gods. So all of that is found in Hinduism, both polytheism, monotheism, it's all present. They accept the idea that there are many, many paths to salvation. They call these paths markers. They believe in many, many ways that one can be saved. You can see how conducive this is to kind of modern West, especially under postmodernism. Try to reduce everything to one's own individual narrative. No matter narratives can be final or normative or over against somebody else's narrative. Well, that's where Hindus have been for thousands of years. So they don't have to worry about post-modernism. They've lived it for thousands of years. That kind of mentality is very much present in India. Much of their religion is tied in to how to reconcile what they call the one in the many. Ultimately, they believe everything must come down to one essence. Hinduism is basically monastic. And so how do you reconcile the appearance of multiplicity with the reality that there's only one essence? So they believe ultimately that everything is somehow part of God, part of the ultimate reality. And they don't believe there's ultimately any distinction between realities and on the ontological level. So that affects a lot of things that one would say to a Hindu in general. This is making a broad statement, but I would say that historically and in my experience as well, Hinduism tends to defeat opposing views both. They've had extensive exposure to Islam and Christianity. Muslims invaded India and ruled it for over 400 years. The Christians were there by proxy to the British for 400 years. If you include the East India Company and through all those years they defeat mainly not by opposing views or saying, No, you're wrong, but by absorbing them. 

[00:09:56] So, Oh, yes, you're right. That is right. That's also right. Everything is okay. I never had too many Indians. Tell me I'm wrong, but always I'm right. As long as I think my right is about. It was long. Everybody else has been right. Everybody's right. Hinduism likes to absorb everybody into. So the best the best example of this is actually Buddhism itself. There's two or three things that are like fundamental to Hindu thought Hindus based on certain ideas. And Buddhism comes along and denies all of it. All of that is wrong. I mean, just completely wrong. It doesn't exist. Buddhism made this huge challenge to Hinduism. That's in the fifth century B.C. By a thousand A.D., Buddhism has been a sponge from India. And Buddhists to this day are basically a very, very tiny part of India. Not because they kick the Buddhist out, but they manage to absorb it and they were able even to reconcile Buddhism. So now the Buddha is one of the incarnations of one of their gods, and he was sent to deceive people. And, you know, it's all becomes part of their system. I always say if the Hindus can absorb the Buddhists, they can absorb anybody, because the Buddhist had the most precise denial of the most fundamental insights of Hinduism. This is part of, I think, what happened. I see this all the time in India. The Gospel has a difficult time in promoting the uniqueness of Christ. That is, the number one stumbling block is the uniqueness of Christ. It's just so difficult. They're happy to accept Christ, they're happy to worship Christ, they're happy to adore Christ, or they will be thrilled if you get a picture of Jesus on their walls. You will see in the marketplace in India, you'll see they'll sell these beautiful paintings of all kinds of Hindu gods. 

[00:11:51] I know all the gods because I learn to recognize all the iconography. So you can sort of it's okay, you know, there's Krishna, there's, you know, Hanuman, there's whatever gods and oh, there's Jesus, you know, just one among many gods. It's very much a part of the Hindu. So you go into a Hindu home. I find a picture of Jesus on the wall right next to a picture, you know, of one of their gurus or one of one of their gods they worship. Just to give you a very quick look at our ministry in North India, I just thought to be helpful to see kind of a quick view. This is our campus in north India where I teach right at the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. And it's a beautiful location right in the state to Pradesh. You would now look at this picture. You wouldn't think that there was could possibly 170 million people around us. But we're actually in a place that is where Buddhist, Tibetan, Buddhist have come and been given a claim of the government to emigrate from Tibet. So we're actually literally surrounded by Tibetan, Buddhist, Buddhist colonies. So we have a lot of Tibetan Buddhist there. We have, of course, many, many Hindus. It's quite a eclectic place, and we share this property with the Buddhist monastery, which is over on the right, and then we're over here on the left. You can actually see the Buddhist in this picture, but they're there on the property. This is like our main classroom building where we teach and so forth. This gives you a little feel for our classes. This is one of my classes, students in my class. This is a different class. But you can see the ladies and the men. 

[00:13:27] They sit separately in India. One is that we do in India. This is a publication and you can see that in India I publish the name Frame Rise Darmanin, that's my name in India that I work under, but that this is a publication that I mentioned to you that actually looks at questions that Hindus ask. And so to give you some examples of this. I did research to determine what are the most likely questions that a unbelieving Hindu would ask of a Christian worker. And I mentioned one is already. Why do Christians not take Prasad This whole thing about meat sacrifice to idols. That's a really important question to Hindus. Here's another one we get asked a lot. Should I worship Jesus Christ and follow him even if my parents insist that I remain a Hindu? You'd be surprised how often that's ask us. My parents would not permit this. And even people, not just young people, I mean, even people that are adults of their own children will ask this question How do Christians regard going against your parents wishes? They ask that all the time. You worship Christ, we worship Krishna. Why can't you worship Christ? And we worship Krishna. We believe that God has come to Earth at many times, in many ways reveal himself and help us. Why do you insist that he only came to Earth once? If he came once, why couldn't he come in other times? There always is to us. Why do you only go into a house one time? You say Jesus came once and never comes back. That's not a very good. That's not very hospitable. Why would he not come back again? We believe he's come many times. You Christians need to open up a little bit. 

[00:15:10] He's been here many, many times. And he came as Krishna. I came as Shiva came. You know, whatever this is, ask all the time. Why would God choose only Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world? Why not Rama? Rama is worshiped in our area very heavily. We're asked this constantly. This is one you know, you wouldn't think this. This is one that we ask as much, but we get this ask so much. It actually made the top 20 most asked questions. We hear some Christians praying to God and some praying to Jesus. Are they praying to two different gods or the same God? They are always confused by that. You keep saying you believe in one God, but we don't believe it because I hear you sometimes praying to one God, sometimes another God, Jesus, this spirit that they just don't understand all that. So anyway, that's part of why I think you have to study other religions is to get inside someone's mind so that you can better articulate the gospel to them. So our students go through this training, they learn how to respond. They go through a curriculum very similar to ours. They graduate. This is graduation day. They go out and we have these meeting. This is a meeting taken. And this is actually in a site called Orissa State, 97% Hindu. It's the most pop, most Hindu state in all of India. We have church planning work there. And these are coming to hear a message and to see a movie. We show movies. They love movies. Just look at the faces you saw in the movie, the young and the old. So I thought I'd give you a young and old ears. That's actually a little boy, a little girl listening to the message. 

[00:16:50] And India has a tradition of when a girl gets hurt and they say her head completely off. I mean, she save her hair. Now, it's not that bad. They shave their hair. They think they're really convinced and maybe they're right, I don't know. But all across Indians with the Christians or Muslims or Hindus are very much convinced when a girl gets to be a certain age like it's one, two or three, they will shave off their hair completely and like totally bald, because that's the only way your hair will come back thick. And if you notice, Indians have very thick hair as a rule, and culture is obviously acceptable as a general rule. And so they all attribute this to head shaving. So that's why this little girl doesn't have much hair. I get offended. Just know just that one time you do it. Then we have these wonderful breakthroughs where God is pleased. This particular man that has his hand extended is one of my students, Tim Lama. Well put in Nayak and I'm a well actually went to this village when I when I first met Lama. Well, to go back a little bit, he had been beaten so badly that it was in the front row of my class, and I just couldn't help but notice that this poor young man was severely hurt and he had actually been by appointment a week or so since he'd been beaten up. And so he was, you know, getting over it even then. But he was badly bruised. He told me that, you know, there have been this village where he'd gone. And so when he finally graduated, I asked Lama, Well, I said, Where where are you going to go? And he said, I'm going back to that village. 

[00:18:22] So he goes back to that village and they take his Bible and they he had this Bible like we all do, written in and on highlighted. They ripped it in a thread and threw it into the the monsoon mud and kicked him out. He had these speakers, Indians love speakers, and they're speaking to five people. They'll use a loudspeaker and they'll carry these speakers with them into these villages. It's really quite amazing. A little tiny village, a set of speakers up, and they just have certain ways. They like to preach and speak. And so they hear these speakers and they kick them out and throw in the mud and all this. But he kept going back. He kept going back. And that's him baptizing the first 30 people into that church in that village. So inspiring. I know this man very well, but now he's gray headed. He's getting early gray. But this is about ten years ago. Or 12 years ago. But. He's one of our senior leaders now leading work in Orissa, and he's now planted a number of churches. And even this village has a school, a Christian school there. It's just amazing the work that he's doing because of the gospel. Here's another one of our graduates, Adzuna, also working in Orissa State. And this is a church. We have a lot of churches like this. No family life centers. You know, there's no basketball courts, there's no Internet, none of that kind of stuff. And that's I had to shame anybody because I you know, I understand we're in a different context here. But in India, you know, we have to appreciate the fact that the gospel is flourishing quite well without parking lots. And I've read in the church both material one time that, you know, if you don't have so many parking spaces per member, your church will not grow as the. 

[00:20:01] Oh, it is hilarious. You know, it Maybe that's true in the West. I'm not, you know, again, trying to say what how these things may apply in the West. But I know when the gospel is preached, people respond, They come and they don't necessarily have to have a parking space. These people don't have cars anyway. Yeah. Besides the Enron and even the baptismal picture, it looked mostly like women. Right? Well, in that case, they do baptism separately. So, in fact, I'm glad you said that, because I have a friend, David Sweet, of a Gordon College who came with me in India, take shots of a very big baptism break that we had in Saharanpur that I told you about a while back that has the these low caste scavengers. So we had 42 baptism in one day. He came in there, but because the women all go first, all of his footage was of women. Even though there's 20 men at the end or so, or 50 men. So it looked like it's all women. But that being said, I still say that the most responsive group in India among Hindus are the women. So I would say as a rule, most of our churches are mostly women, including this one here. But there are a lot of men there just over on the far side. You can see them in the picture. Yes. Why is that? Because culturally men in India are much more tied in to various kinds of repercussions culturally. If you become a Christian, so for example, they don't call it this, but things like our Social Security and pension plans and very schemes that the government has to help people. If you become a Christian, you'll lose it. Know it's a financial problem. 

[00:21:36] And so a lot of husbands will just say, we can't afford to do that, you know, And those are some of the issues. But women are more sensitive to the gospel, I think, as a general rule. Around the world, I found women are sensitive to spiritual. Things are often quicker to come. And men. It's funny because we go into the village and we often prayed for all men, all in the middle come out. And so you have a, I can gather, all men in the marketplace and we're preaching or whatever. And the ladies that will come with us will go into the homes and have tea with all the ladies. And that's all said and done. They will really brought in the fruit while we're caught having the official meeting. So, you know, this dynamic is there in India. It's quite amazing. How is that fair for women if their husbands? Domestic violence or things like that where there are. Yeah, you know, it's a huge problem. And there are times when because it's arranged marriages where we have Christian girls regularly, the parents get wind of the fact that we're going to Christian immediately arrange a marriage with a Hindu man. It happens all the time and it creates a huge problem for us. Well, it's a case by case thing, really. We have situations where, you know, we've had women prayed for years for their husbands. It's difficult to object to arranged marriages in India. Culturally, it's almost impossible to stand up against their say no. And so it creates other kinds of messages which are even harder to get rid of. And so typically, the girl is asked to go to the parents and ask for them not to go through with it as politely. 

[00:23:09] This would not be happy. This is going to create problems. Please do not press this. And many, many parents, just out of sheer love of their children, will take heed to that and will not if their daughter makes a real plea about it and how really important it is that she married a Christian man. But some will not. Some will stand firm, you know. So we've seen both of those, and that's generally what we have to do. They can. And occasionally another way is to send the pastors. We found that if you send to senior male pastors that are flooding the community to the parents and explain to them the situation that it's against Christianity to marry a non-Christian and that this will create problems for her and sometimes they'll respect that. You know, it's difficult or difficult. This is actually the same group that you saw that's in. Yeah, it's that group there. They're celebrating because they just laying the foundation for their building, their first church structure, which will help them together, their people together, because it is really difficult to meet during the monsoon rains outside like that. So they're really excited and they're celebrating that victory of this building. And then the pastor. This is the pastor here on the on the left with the white shirt on. He is brought back. Well, this is example of a church church worshiping here in one of the buildings. But I don't have the picture. I had some picture I dropped on my slides, but I have some of the omitted here. But we bring them back to main campus every year for training. So it used to be we'd have like 15 or 20, but now we have about over 400 of our pastors that are brought back. 

[00:24:51] So it's a huge expense for us to bring them back. But we are committed to bring back all of our graduates who have planted churches back in order to do follow up and occasion preaching. And then we have regional ways. They have accountability, of course, during the course of the time. But that's a little flavor of kind, of course, of our Christian brothers working with with Hindus. All right. Questions or comments? Yes. It would seem that for a religion that so often. Just to be clear, the Hindu constitution or the constitution makes it clear that all religions are to be respected in India. That's the law. So in that sense, there's technically no reason why a person could not belong to any religion. The thing that they make against the law is converting to a different religion. That's what they're upset about, not the presence of Christians in India. The government always acknowledges the presence of India. Some just last year made a very powerful speech where he acknowledged the important role that Christians have played in the history of India and the modern, modern democratic India, etc., etc.. The problem they have is with Christians addressing their message to a Hindu. That's what they get furious about because they see it as taking them from something. If Christians are going out and saying, you know, you stay in your Hinduism but also accept Jesus, they wouldn't care about that. They'd be happy with that. But the fact the Christians are proclaiming that you need to become a Christian and leave behind your Hinduism is considered a very offensive. And that's what they're upset about. There are states all across India, in North India, that have non conversion laws where it's against the law to convert people. 

[00:26:40] Several states have non baptismal laws and this is to keep down what they call coercion. So that's where the point of disagreement or the general idea. The idea was if you're a traditional Christian family in India and you have children, you're allowed to raise them as children. No problems. But just never go and address it to a Christian. And by the way, they're just as adamant, the Muslims on this point. And in fact, the Muslims have probably had more bloodshed in India than the Christians, because they are also very upset of Muslims trying to confront Hindus. So this is the whole idea is keep India happy about keeping their community separate and don't have one group trying to win over the other. That's what they're trying to stop. Oh, that's fine. The Christians convert to Hinduism, and that happens in the sense that Hindus will go into these tribal areas where they've been mass conversions and they'll try to make them give them all kinds of pressure to convert back. And occasionally it happens. So if a tribe moves back into Hinduism, it'll make headline news. And though all of the rejoicing that, you know, now they've reclaimed, there's a whole movement in the actually that's that the English translation would be the reclaim movement when they're out reclaiming or back in Hinduism. And that gets support and there's all kinds of government groups that give money to help there. So that's part of the Hinduism is not on equal footing. It has superior status in India and there's a huge movement, especially in the North, to make Hinduism the official religion of India and to change the constitution. That's very popular. And if that happens, we are all in deep, deep trouble because the we're living the legacy of Nehru and Gandhi, which believed in a kind of big fabric of diversity in India. 

[00:28:26] So we actually benefit by the liberalism of Indian society, the idea that there are many religions here, but there's a very strong movement and growing stronger every year that wants to change that. And so I've seen, especially since 93, when the Congress party came out of power and the current BJP came to power the last 11 years, you can see decidedly every year it gets more difficult, every year, more problems. So this is mounting in in north India and even spreading to south India some. Okay, That's real quick. Do the final one and then maybe we can wrap this up. We're getting close. Buddhism is the other one that I want to say a word about. Buddhism is largely an ascetic religion, founded in the fifth century B.C. by a man named Siddhartha Gautama. He was a Hindu from the Qatari tradition who taught four noble truths and an eightfold path to salvation. And this flies in the face with Hinduism, which says there are many, many paths to God. Buddhism prescribes one particular path to God, and this was taught by this particular person named Siddhartha Gautama, who, after his revelation was known as is known to this day as the Buddha. So the religion is those who follow the Buddha is called Buddhism. Scholars are divided, but most scholars believe that he's from Nepal. There are a few that believe that he's from Orissa, a certain state of India, but is largely agreed that he's most certainly a Nepali and he migrated to India and all of his teaching was done and started in India, a place that's today called Varanasi. Students who come to India with me every when I go to bring Olympic team to India, I make sure they go to visit Varanasi. 

[00:30:25] This is like the Mecca is for Islam. This is the where they make the bodies. It's where they have all their most sacred spots in Hindu around the Ganges River. He came to this place. They're known as seven off the little outskirt of Varanasi. And he taught these truths, these four noble truths. And the just affordable truths was acknowledging that life is full of suffering. Suffering is caused by desire. Desire is ceased when you extinguish the ego, the self, the idea of self. And then the last is there is an eightfold path in order to achieve this. So basically the Buddha is like a doctor. He prescribes the problem of the human condition, which is suffering. He says, the reason we suffer is because we have desires. So we got to get rid of the desires. The only way to get rid of desires is to extinguish this terrible thing called self. And if you extinguish the self, then you're released into what's called nirvana. That's a basic general statement about Buddhism. So the Eightfold Path is a very specifically prescribed path, which originally was a monastic path and still is from any Buddhist, but travels through to get to Nirvana. Buddhism denies any ultimate reality of God or the individual self. This is, of course, as we maybe allude to briefly, the heart of Hinduism is identifying yourself, your art, and with the ultimate reality, the universe Brahman. So Buddhism denies both God in self does not exist in Buddhism, and Buddhism seeks the idea of self to detach from the self and detach from all desires and the realization of nirvana. And there's various schools of Buddhism which advocate how to go about this. Most of you probably heard of Zen Buddhism, which is a that's a Japanese form of Buddhism, which is focused on meditation. 

[00:32:25] Meditation is the key to this success along the path. Other people believe it is done through devotional wisdom where you devote yourself to a particular deity like Pure Land. Buddhism will devote themselves to Amitava Buddha. This one Buddha recite his name over and over again and believe that will help them. There's all kinds of schools, there's philosophical, there's socio political schools, there's meditation, all schools, all kinds of different schools. But a lot of it is based on either some kind of right living or proper Meditation is prominent in various schools of Buddhist thought. About 80% of Buddhists around the world accept the idea that you cannot do it on your own without the intercession or intervention of some enlightened being who's gone before you. Who's traveled this path and made it to Nevada. And they believe there's certain people that got to the point of Nirvana and could have gone into nothingness. It is their final state. Emptiness or nothingness should not, though they call it, and denied that state and came back to help other people. Someone who said, If you live a perfect life or a great life, you'll go to heaven. And they they go through like hundreds of lifetimes perfecting themselves. They finally get to the threshold of heaven, and the pearly gates are opened up and they said, You can come in. They said, Well, now that I know I can come in, I'm going to go back another lifetime and help other people who need my help. So this idea of someone helping you, giving you assistance is very, very important in Buddhism. And that person that that figure is called a Buddhist. It means an enlightened being. Bodi means enlightened the word. It means being an enlightened being bodhisattva. 

[00:34:16] So Buddhism revolves largely around these ideas and various combinations of these ideas. Is a spirit being. This is a person who is formerly human, who now dwells in a special chamber. You cannot see them, but they are in a chamber of what they call samsara. They're not talking about. Well, let me finish. So that person dwells in that chamber and that's and therefore, they there's things they can do for you and help you from that point. But they have also the ability to project themselves into a leader or a guru, a person who will say, I am the embodied, current embodiment of that bodhisattvas. So in that sense, you could have someone that you revere in some way that you think will help you, but they're a projection from this particular bodhisattva. I mean, this is obviously difficult to say all this in 5 minutes. Right. But this is like a massively complex religion. But that's the gist of it. Yes. What would be the motivation? This is one of the again, where there are tweaks of Hinduism because karma has no place for compassion or grace. What you do is what you get. Case closed. So the idea of a the incarnation of Christ or some kind of vicarious suffering is impossible. So Buddhism introduces the idea of Zacharias suffering that someone out of compassion would come to you. So this is the way that ethics gets brought into the Eastern world. Ethics was not possible in Hinduism. And so everybody realizes that if you don't have ethics, you're bankrupt. There's got to be some way that can help you. So Hindus would see a person, a beggar on the street and say, well, they deserve that because they're bad karma. And this day you'll see people suffering and they won't give them any money. 

[00:36:06] But the Buddha has introduced the idea of compassion as a way of saying we're superior because we show compassion, because compassion is a value that people see as important. Passion is not a. That raises a very important question, and it is a really good question. There's no way I can answer that in the time we have, because you're right, it's a really important question. And I never I thought all chapter in my book to ethics in Buddhism, where that does come up is called Karuna in their theology. But they have ways. They talk about how it functions and what it means and ultimately does not mean. And you're right, that is a big issue in Buddhism. You guys are really way ahead of me. Most believe that Christ was a body saatva was a light being, and that if you know, he could be helpful in some intercessory way. Now the enlightened being thing works around certain schools of thought, which all highlight a particular one that they believe is the best and most effective. So Buddhism is much more practical in that sense, and this is what works for me. And I don't really care what works for you, that works for you. Great. If someone is trying to prove that theirs is better than yours, there's not as much of a factor in Buddhism. Yes. Well, I talk about. Yeah, that's another really big philosophical point. I mean, the gist of that would be that they essentially believe that the self does not and never has existed. So you're extinguishing that, which never you only through phenomenon logically doesn't exist, not ontologically, but there is a school of Buddhism, certain school, its musical kora that accepts the idea of a stream of consciousness is just not your consciousness. 

[00:38:00] There is a what they call a storehouse of consciousness, and they accept the idea. Another major school, the biggest school of Buddhist classical. My yarmulke does not accept that idea. So that consciousness is a really important thing in Hinduism, Buddhism. What is consciousness? How important is it? How does your consciousness relate to yourself? All these are really, really big issues in Buddhism. We're just kind of looking here at kind of the bottom line point. I'm trying to my main point in all this discussion is to say, what is the stumbling block? We have coursework in all of these if you really want to delve into it. It's quite fascinating. And if you're going to work in Southeast Asia, you should do that kind of work among Buddhists or Hindus. It's obviously important to have some basic coursework in this, but I would say the biggest kind of problems that I think that we see in Buddhism is number one. The idea of some objective object of faith as the basis for grace. Buddhism is filled with compassion and grace concepts, but there's no objective basis for it. There's no in fact, there's even these bodhisattvas which comes back in the kind of question was asked earlier, Why would I would do this? Part of their theology says the bodhisattva also realizes even when he's about to enter Nirvana, that even he will not ultimately be saved. So everyone is saved. So some self-interest, even in going back. But the problem is that there is no way of demonstrating how this particular human person who is sinful and fallible could somehow be in a position to save other people and that these people exist as exist. And so that objective object of faith is really important. 

[00:39:48] People will often say, because I have trusted and I'm Taba Buddha, I know that I'm saying, okay, but why does Amitava Buddha give you this assurance? What is the basis of that? The second big problem is there is a denial of any true ontological category of ultimate reality. There's Buddhism talks about gods and goddesses and bodhisattvas and all of this. But it's not the way we would talk about it. When we use the word God, we mean an ontological category of being that is over against everything that we know is the created world that had no beginning or end and all that. When the Buddhist talk about gods or goddesses, they are talking about something very different, something that is temporary and is part of a delusion, but may be a very important thing for you to use at this particular point in your journey. So they're quite happy to say people are praying to God or hope to die one day and be with God and they have heaven and they have all kinds of things. But even heaven is part of a larger category of allusion in Buddhist thought. So the only old reality in Buddhism is what's called Dharma Kiah or Sonata. These kind of categories of nothingness, emptiness, not fellowship with a personal god. So one of the problems in talking to Buddhist is there. So I believe in God. I love God, I worship God, but they're not talking about what you're talking about. And so it's part of the whole issue of working with Buddhist to realize fundamentally and everything that's true to Buddhism, there is no ontological ultimate reality. And therefore they're that's why they're called atheistic in a technical sense or non theistic, because they do not accept the category of God despite all the God language. 

[00:41:41] The category of God, as we understand it, is a denied by Buddhist. Yes. There isn't that ultimate reality. The goal is. Ultimately, there's no basis for it. Ultimately, it's a world denying faith or religion. And ultimately one has to really wonder whether they have an adequate basis for meaning and purpose. I totally agree. That's a big problem, I think, in Buddhism, and I think their history shows that. I think the same with Hinduism, actually. I think there's a real difficulty with establishing a telos. An ontological eschatology is what creates the sense of meaning and purpose. History is moving toward a goal, and this history is established because of God's plan that makes gives all our lives meaning. But in Buddhism, Hinduism that is absent is secular cyclical history. There is no concept of a telos, an end. And even even in Hinduism, even if you finally die and you finally achieved the call moksha and you are absorbed into Brahman, which is their idea of the ultimate goal of any Hindu. Still, some day Brahman will be reabsorbed back into this, their idea of reality, and they'll spew the world all out again and you'll start all over again. I mean, maybe 8.6 billion years down the road, but some point will happen again. So there's no final way. You can say history comes to a close. Even in Hinduism, there's just simply no proper view of history. And what's so interesting, if you don't have a proper eschatology. You can't have a proper review of history. If you have a proper view of history, it affects your ideas. Of my actions today have consequences tomorrow, you see. And if you can't have that, then you have no sense of time and how time relates to your actions. 

[00:43:51] So there are so many fundamental building blocks that make the Christian Proclamation very possible. That assumes certain conceptions of time and history that are present even in unbelieving people in the West, because the Christian worldview is in their blood, as it were. Whereas in Hindu in India, that's not there. And therefore, there are so many things that make it very difficult because you are just working in a very alien environment to the Christian cosmos in the Christian worldview. Any other questions or comments before we I did actually want to say a little brief thing about China and Japan is that's on the chart the beginning, but we're basically through with the main stumbling blocks. I'll only start with Peter and go across and. They do have creation stories, but these are creation stories that don't represent a beginning the way we would define beginning, but part of the cycle of over going cycle. So they have that. The Hindus are quite happy to absorb all of this as a telling of the story that is not rooted in historiography. That's the weak link is the historiography part. When we say God created Earth in six days, for us, that's a still that's a historical statement to them, that's a theological statement only. And so what they would say is that you drive, meaning because of this statement that God started things this point, that's what gives you meaning. Okay, great. But they don't believe that's historically definable, which most scientists would probably agree with. And therefore, science, because it deals with repeatable events. So science and history are two different things. So because science deals with things that you repeat, whereas history deals with unrepeatable events that are unique. Science really can't speak to the origins of the world in terms of who got the world started, because that's that's a question of something that unique and happened in history. 

[00:45:55] So science only has deals repeatable as well. India is famous for believing repeatable events, and so there's no problem with the idea of scientific testing at that level. And so they have been quite good at certain technological things that they've been able to produce and done. They have nuclear weapons. They've got, you know, things like that. They're very, very advanced on computer technology and all that. But none of that is linked to any particular historiography or nor does it call them to the now and the Hindu kind of general conceptions. It's not not there. Okay, Let's go. I'm sorry. Real quick. Well, it's actually Brady. His question is part of their creation story. And the Rig Veda, which is their oldest Veda, is called There is a collection of 1028 hymns in the 10th chapter of this collection. There is a in the 90th verse, there is this story or this account of Brahma called Brahma creating the world. And so he creates the world by dismembering himself, just like, you know, from his head. This was created from his arms, which is part of this whole divine, you know, connection with human race. So out of his head, he creates the Brahmans, high caste, Brahmans and the cow. And so because of that, the council gets very special status in India, because it's part of the Brahman creating the creation order. And by the way, the shooters are crowded out of his feet. So that tells you something about their thought about the shooter. Okay. Just to finish that general survey across the 1040 window, the Chinese and Japanese religions, rather than going in in particular about Daoism or Shintoism or Confucianism or whatever, but there's a wide range of philosophical and societal religious beliefs in this region. 

[00:47:49] And by the way, Buddhism is also very dominant in this area, which I think we said before would apply there. But but in the case of other things which emphasize sincerity and orderliness and personal and public conduct based on precedent, that's all the Confucian orders is based on proper precedent. So this kind of idea of producing societal order and dictating how relationships are to be governed, I mean, in the Confucian system you have five basic societal relationships, so everybody falls into one of these five categories. And there's certain ways that you relate to those who are older than you, younger than you, you know, ruler, subject, husband, wife, your parent, child and so forth. So these kind of relationships are carefully structured and scripted to produce proper conduct that mimics the past precedent of glory and victory. These are two sides and are thousands of years old as they look back in their history, the time when we were successful and powerful. These are the the ways that we live. So we want to reinforce those particular actions. And that comes out very powerfully in Confucianism, Daoism, as well as Shintoism. They all have extremely positive views of human nature. One of the saints. It's actually called a saint, a Confucius, but it's a sign of Menzies who was an interpreter. Confucius, as it is the nature of water to flow downward. So is the nature of man to do good. Very, I think, typical example of something that would come from this tradition. If you ever had the chance to read the Daodejing, it's in our library. So will copies. The Daodejing is like the key text of Daoism. You'll find it very, very interesting and very different kind of reading than anything else we've looked at or you would look at and you could read it easily in an hour or so. 

[00:49:59] The number one stumbling block in this context is the idea of inherent sinfulness, not the idea of sending, but of being a sinner. In the old famous Reformation, discussion about God loves the center and hates the sin and all that, that really does come to bear on all of this. What does it mean to be a sinner and how is sin understood in the context of that? Martin Luther said, We're not able not to sin. 9:09 Bukhari. And the reason they said non passing nine Pickering is because that revealed the inability of the human race to ever produce righteousness, which is the key to the here and the gospel. That is a huge problem in this context because the sin is not viewed. It's more viewed as we would call breaking the law. You ran a stop sign. You shouldn't have run the stop sign. That's a very different conception of sin than the kind of moral ineptitude of the human nature. And that comes out in many of the discussions, this whole center versus sins, outward acts versus the inner state, the kind of classic comparison of a guilt culture versus shame culture. They basically the distinction is that in a Christian culture, people that sin will experience a sense of guilt because they have internalized into their conscience and heart a set of standards through which they measure themselves and feel they fall short and therefore feel guilty. So they hear in their hearts, Thou shalt not commit adultery. If adultery is committed, there's that sense of guilt. Because I know in my heart this was wrong. That's the kind of guilt axis that you're thinking about in this context. That is not the dominant way that the whole thing happens in the context of guilt orientation. 

[00:51:58] You look inward in a shame orientation. You're looking outward at the larger society. What will bring shame to those around me is not geared toward any divinely given ten Commandments or whatever. This is geared toward the society and the society. If my parents disapproved, that causes me. And that's and that shame feel is the main way the ethical actions are motivated, as opposed to saying you should not do this because it's wrong. So that guilt versus shame axis becomes a huge factor in how people talk about the gospel with people in this particular context that you have essentially, generally speaking, guilt cultures, shame cultures and fear cultures. And this is a classic example of the shame cultural context. All of this is meant to again whet your appetite for the importance of various parts of the mythological discipline. And one of this would be that if you were going to go into 1040 window, for example, or work among immigrants in Detroit. It would be really helpful if you're going to work in North Africa or the Middle East or in Detroit to have a good basic working knowledge of Islam, because that's part of the discourse, that's part of how you're going to be able to interact effectively. And this gives you some feel for the fact that people from different backgrounds will have very different stumbling blocks. And what will be a stunning block for Hindus, very different than a muslim, very different from a Buddhist. Very different from this. And therefore, this affects our preparation, our strategy and the way we preach the gospel, just as Dr. Verner showed, I think, in Book of Acts. What are the questions that is so important and good missionary strategy? Okay. Any final questions or comments? To bring this to close. 

[00:53:59] Yes. Our individual world religions class was going to make their way to some. Only the Islam class will make it as some like, and it's available also on the liberal training board for free. Even now, all the lectures are there on that website. This typing that you're hearing now is also going to be part of that. But there's no plans for some like to do more than the Islam class. I don't think you have to suggest. Well, like everything else, I think if I was in your situation as a theological student, I would try to find a way I could read the Koran, for example, as maybe part of my reading or reflection. I think it's a good place to start. There have been many, many great books on Islam. If you pull off my syllabus from the website, you can see, you know, the books are required for a course that's a you could began in our library has good books on Islam. It might be helpful if you're starting from that point. Yes. We're. Evil gets introduced in this context through people, not because people are evil, but because they will get on the wrong track and create wrong precedents. About how they respond to things. So if a wife, for example, is rebellious against her husband, it's not because she's a sinful person that therefore produces X rebellion. That's why a culture would tell you she has disregarded her parents. In the way she was raised, the way her mother was regarded by her father and her father regarding her mother. And she's going against that. And therefore, she has projected onto her husband that's brought shame to her husband and to her parents. And that's the source of it. Rather than looking for an internal. 

[00:55:47] That's our point of view. What was the origin of that in one's heart to produce that? That's a guilt run the shame axis thinking. That's what makes it so difficult because when we're talking about sins, God forgiving of your sins, we think of that in terms of that most basic problem of the human nature, quite apart from the fact that we do sins or sinners that we are, that we perform sins, we are sinners. Whereas in their context, that's not the consideration at all. Even Buddhist in Thailand have said to us, We're convinced that Christianity is true, but we can never become one because it would dishonor our parents. So there's no problem in theology, but it's that point of parental shame. They're not prepared to make that step. It's mostly used as a complement to Buddhism and even in some ways Daoism, which would be a non theistic kind of. Religious worldview. But when he was asked about it, he says, Well, you know, I leave heaven to the birds because I have enough problems, enough problems establishing order in society. I worry about heaven. So you're right. He was not geared toward talking about God. So there are various, though, Confucian interpreters that have tried to find ways to bring it in in some way. So it makes it more complicated than just asking about Confucius. But I think you're right. Confucius was not at all concerned with theism. That didn't seem to have been very important in establishing a society that was orderly and would be healthy. Okay, two more. We'll. We'll stop. Yeah. How would you answer the question? The state of. And all in 30 seconds, you know, if you ask is an illusion of peace, you have to ask it in a number of categories. 

[00:57:48] You say, is it peaceful historically? Has this long been marked by peace? Historically, answer is no. If you ask the question exegetical, does the Koran espouse peace? Essentially, the answer is no, though there are certain groups that are protected from any violence, and that would include the Christians and the Jews, which are given status, protective status in the Koran. So the Muslims do not have the right to kill people that pay this particular tax. But on other people, they are given all kinds of freedom to slaughter them or whatever, and that's in the Koran. So in that sense, you know, as exegetical issue there, you have to also look at it from their their legal tradition. Does a legal tradition have a long history of making decisions because they're court decisions and their Sharia laws are very, very important to how you interpret the question. So how has the legal tradition come down when it comes to deciding in favor of or against certain kinds of violent acts? And again, the answer is that, generally speaking, the Sharia law has not favored pacifism at all and has been more likely to promote various kinds of military or other kinds of actions to alter their history. So I don't think Islam would be characterized as a religion of peace, in my view, and that's hard to prove. I mean, they have to show me in each of those strands how it's true. The problem comes is and this is where the terrorism comes in a nutshell, is that every religion has the right to police its borders. That is fundamental to me, to what it means to have a religious community. So Christianity has the right to say to a Unitarian with the greatest respect, you're outside of historic Christianity because Trinitarian belief is essential to Christian faith. 

[00:59:39] You know, there may be a lot of diversity within our camps, but we know there's certain boundary walls. Islam has not done a very good job of that. They themselves admit that, moderate Muslims admit that. So what happens is take, for example, the idea of being a martyr. The Koran does say that martyrdom is to be valued. A martyr will go to heaven. All that in the Hadith and in the Koran. So martyrdom is valued. Muhammad is the one that uses this expression mother of all battles. That's something that's part of Islamic tradition. So there's a lot of very, very important precedents that Muslims draw from. But the Hadith condemns suicide. The Quran only commends active martyrdom where, you know, if you are in the battle, Muhammad says, and you get killed, then you'll go to heaven. Well, that's what we call passive martyrdom. You know, you you're not trying to kill yourself. You're is out there fighting and someone shoots you or stabs you die. That's different from driving a plane into a building when you kill yourself. So what happened when the Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up or herself up, which is now herself last week? This particular act cannot be reconciled with the Koran or Hadith. Suicide. Al Bokhari, one of the earliest Muslim leaders, said suicide. Muhammad was against suicide. Who? It was like one of the companions of Muhammad. There have never, ever been proper legal rulings on that from Muslim law courts. That said, that is not properly defined martyrdom. So that's a problem. Number two, they are never allowed to kill other Muslims. And the World Trade Tower was filled with hundreds of Muslims that were killed that day. And so there's all kinds of problems. And so I think why should Christians be the one to tell Muslims what I just told you or your crimes as this in your body says that, you know, what's your problem? We have no right to tell them where their boundaries are. 

[01:01:32] This is their problem. And we have to maybe help them. But at some point, moderate Muslims have got to speak out and say this is where Islam is. And anything beyond that, we're going to condemn and they're not prepared to do that or I shouldn't say all of them. Some of them have, but many of them are not. And therefore, it's going to keep going out and out and out until some where you draw the boundary. It's just like our own problems in our own community. At what point do you finally say, okay, that's unacceptable, that can't be a Christian practice. And for us it's homosexuality and, you know, ordaining gays and lesbians and all that. That's our kind of boundaries. But when it comes to the Muslims, these are their issues. Muslims condemn homosexuals shoot you if you're homosexual. That's not an issue for them. But these are their big issues. They're struggling over it. And the fundamentalist who have taken this to the extreme have taken over this. And they're claiming their interpretation is fully consistent with the Koran. That's, you know, everybody's answer. All right. One last question and we'll have to have the. Surveys. Give a. That you recommend Protesters Library. That's a good question. The problem with some of the overviews is that they are inaccurate. I would say that probably something like the Romans handbook to Religions is probably as good as it gets. I would recommend if you could just buy one book, The Best Introduction to World Religions that I think put it succinctly and is actually remarkably accurate is when food cordons neighboring faiths. That, to me, is probably the best job I've seen. He's a professor from Taylor University and he's done a really good job and he's written from a Christian perspective. 

[01:03:24] So you also get some insight on how Christians understand it. But it's Winfred Cordon. Best place to start. I would say to give you a nice survey of the three seven Christian Roundtable. Yeah, that's of course, the best book. I don't want to mention my book. There's no book that actually gives you how Christians respond to Muslim objections or Buddhist objection or Hindu objections. Then my book is no book like it. Actually, that is the only book out there that does that. And I do precede the whole chapter with a brief summary of all the religions, but more detail that you find in one food Gordon's book.