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[Joint Venture]

What makes you so sure that Christianity is the true religion and not, for example, Hinduism?

Also, there's a guy called Leo Gura who has a website and channel called http://www.Actualized.org and he leans more on the Hindu side. The problem though is that he came out with a video saying that after we get enlightened, whenever that may be, we choose to do the whole suffering/pain process all over again and it happens an infinite amount of times. I really want to believe that we just die once and go to heaven forever. What makes you so sure that Christianity is right and all these Eastern mystics and philosophers are wrong about karma, reincarnation, etc.?

[jimwalton]

I believe there is some truth in all religions. None of them is completely lies. But I am convinced that Christianity is the correct one, and here's why.

Weighing and comparing the major religions of the world, there seem to be only two that really rise to the top: Christianity and Hinduism. Islam (and many others like Mormonism) is just a cult, or distortion, of Christianity. Buddhism (and others) is just a cult of Hinduism. Confucianism is really a philosophy of lifestyle, not a religion per se. When I weigh Christianity and Hinduism, Christianity seems to far outweigh Hinduism in its realistic portrayal of God, reality, evil, pain, salvation, life, and death.

Islam? As I mentioned before, Islam is the greatest of the Christian heresies (to use a phrase from C.S. Lewis). Mohammad took Christianity and changed it, removing Jesus from deity, and putting Mohammad as its greatest prophet. But it still has Abraham, Moses, etc.

One of the things about Islam that doesn't make sense to me is the radical transcendence of Allah: the distance between man and God is impossible to cross. Repetition and submission are the rule, not any kind of a relationship. And there is no certainty of heaven for the common person. It is all "the will of God," they say. One's destiny is left at the mercy of an unknown and unknowable will. Zacharias says, "When relationship is swallowed up by rules, political power and enforcement become the means of containment." We've seen that to be true.

Islam is a religion of the Book, as opposed to Christianity, which focuses on the person of Jesus. But how does one hold that the written text is perfect (which it is not; there are textual variants)? Also, Jesus didn't come to give a certain group of people ethnic worth. That's Islam. Jesus loved the world and came to save the world.

Truth has to correspond to reality, and so at least on this fundamental level, correspondence to reality is what anyone would look for in "proving" any religion. But I'd also say, before we go on, that very little (if anything, when it comes right down to it, depending on your philosophical viewpoints) can be PROVEN. Most of the time we use adductive reasoning: inferring as wise as we can the most reasonable conclusion. In both of these areas I think Christianity has strength.

1. Though I know there are many disagreements (and I might as well draw a target on my back for saying this), YHWH is the kind of God we would expect if a God truly exists, and Jesus is the kind of person we would expect to see if God visited the planet. Their beings conform to our highest reasonings of theology and philosophy. God must be all-knowing, all-powerful (without self-contradiction), completely other (transcendent) and yet completely engaged (immanent), loving but just, judging but merciful, maintaining standards and yet full of grace, never-changing but flexible to human situations, communicative, good but can crack a whip when that is called for, eternal, creator, able to work wonders, and yet knows how to play by his own rules at the same time. This is the God we would expect to see, and this is the God we see in the Bible. As far as Jesus, we would expect compassion, power, kindness but doesn't take guff from detractors, fearless, relational, words of authority and truth, knowledge of people and situations, knowledge of the past and future, sacrificial and not self-oriented, and full of patience but not a pushover, meek but not a doormat, assertive, humble, and yet confident. This is exactly what we see. It corresponds to reality.

2. The Bible presents a world that we see. It presents a world where evil is real (as opposed to other religions like Hinduism), and where God lets things take their course but intervenes to keep his plan of redemption on track. It portrays humanity as noble but hopelessly lost, moral but corruptible, both good and evil, torn between self and others, having a conscience, knowing purpose, aware of morality, acknowledging beauty, capable of creativity, but in some ways animalistic and capable of horrific behavior. We see all these things in real life.

3. The Bible portrays "religion" not as a way to earn a place in God's graces, but as God reaching out to us, to love his way into our hearts. To me this corresponds to reality, because if we have to earn our way, we are all in hopeless trouble. But if God would just reach out to us, invite us into the kingdom, pay any sacrifices himself, and make a way for us to find him, come to him, and be redeemed, this makes sense as the only possible way someone could ever find salvation, and this is what the Bible teaches.

4. A true religion must engage the whole of the human nature, not just the mind and not just the emotions. It can't possibly just be about swaying to the music, entranced and brainless, caught up in the rhythms, spells, notions and potions. By the same token, it can't possibly just be about deep philosophy, ironing out theological conundrums, connecting intellectually with the mysteries of the universe and transcending humanity to enter the divine. True religion engages the mind and can fulfill the most intellectual queries, but at the same time enjoy expression, joy, uplifting emotions and the pull of our hearts. True religion is for the scholar and the child, the patrician and the plebeian, the civilized and the barbarian, the slave and the free, the man and the woman, the scientist and the poet. Christianity conforms to these categories.

5. A true religion must make sense out of history. It doesn't function above it or without it, compete against it or necessarily endorse it. Christianity (in contrast to Hinduism and Buddhism) is a historical religion where God works in history and among history, accomplishing his purposes, involved in people's lives, bringing out the redemption of all creation.

6. A true religion must makes sense out of science. It doesn't function above it or without it, compete against it or necessarily endorse it. Christianity teaches principles of cause and effect, beauty, regularity, predictability, beauty, purpose, design, and a world in which science is possible.

7. Christianity teaches purpose, significance in humanity, forgiveness for wrongs, life out of death, hope for the hopeless, redemption, fairness, love, beauty, a God who is there, knowledge, conscience, renewal, and meaning. I think it addresses all of these (#s 1-7) with far greater satisfaction than other religions to such a great extent that I consider Christianity to be true.

I haven't even mentioned such things as the beauty, power, and authority of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus, and the life changes that Christianity brings to so many. Such things are convincing to me, but objects of scorn to others.

I am well aware that in drawing up this list I will draw the ire and the fire of many. Obviously, if everyone agreed with me, all would be Christians. Since all people are not Christians, there is heated disagreement about the things I've said. Granted, understood, and noted. But since the question was, "Why do I think Christianity is true over against the other religions?", I hope I have answered the question to your satisfaction.

To me Hinduism is weighed in the balances and comes up lacking.

RELATIVITY. Hindus seem to believe in the relativity of truth. They can believe that there is one god, 330 million gods, or no god at all. Or they believe that we are gods or can be gods, or that god is in each of us, and each of us is a part of god. As a believer in objective truth, these can't all be true. They contradict each other, and it is inconsistent to me.

And yet Hindus seek after truth to discover ultimate reality. I sense a disconnect and a contradiction. The Upanishads, where mystical experience and intuition override reason and even cast doubt on the possibility of knowing ultimate truth, is inconsistent to me. Hinduism doesn't seem to be a commitment to propositional truth or to the world as an object of reason.

Ghandi said, "God is truth and truth is God." What does that mean? It doesn't say whether the existence of God is true or false.

NATURE AND CREATION. If the universe is not the creation of a personal God, but is rather a sort of unconscious emanation from the divine, then we have no legitimate subject-object relationships, no particularity, but only a blank unity. In such a view there can be no foundation for knowledge, love, morality, or ethics. Without an absolute personality, there is no diversity or distinction basic to reality at all. Ultimate reality is a bare unity about which nothing may be said.

EVIL. If Hinduism teaches that evil is an illusion that can be overcome by meditation, to me that is inconsistent with reality. I have found evil to be very, very real.

SUFFERING. Compassion motives me to do what I can to alleviate the sufferings of other people, but if suffering is paying back one's karma and we should just ignore the suffering in other people, to me that is callous and inhumane. And if all human suffering is deserved, are there no good people, truly spiritual people who escape it?

Hinduism sees life as basically painful and full of distress, and yet the supreme Brahman has no part of this insufferable universe. It seems cruel to me. It seems fundamentally anti-social. Its inherent caste system designates some people as outcasts because they were born into the wrong family. There is no vision where we show compassion to humanity, try to right wrongs, heal hurts, or even overcome injustices or inequalities. There is no apparent concern for humans as real persons.

AFTERLIFE. We are to seek the self (Atman) behind and within the body and the senses, but then we are supposed to dissolve all personality into the unimaginable abyss of Brahman. So I don't get it: are we to find ourselves or dissolve (full renunciation) ourselves?

MORALITY: It seems (and please correct me) that morality is to be found in denying oneself all forms of material, emotion, and even spiritual rewards and property. To me that is not morality. Morality, instead, is active goodness combined with passive restraint.

SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. One progresses in spiritual depth by good works, hoping to improve one's karma. To me the idea of earning one's way into God's favor is simply a losing proposition, especially if there are no good people on the earth, if evil isn't real, and if morality is denial of self.

PERSONALITY. Since humans are personal, it makes sense to me that we have a personal source, a personal Creator, not an impersonal Brahman of ultimate reality.

UNION WITH THE DIVINE. In Hinduism we are to seek union with the divine, but a Hindu can't tell me who are "we," who is the "divinity," who is the "self," or how real any of this is. Why union with the divine if I'm already part and parcel of the divine universe? My deluded self is supposed to cease to be deluded so that I emerge as the real self. At the same time the god ended up in embryonic form while I became full grown, so that I will give him the privilege of birth and lose my humanity to find my divinity. No wonder I'm confused. Union with the impersonal absolute defies language, reason, and existential realities. It doesn't satisfy any longing for relationship. It doesn't seem either philosophically or theologically coherent. But all the while I'm supposed to deify myself while diffusing myself.

SCRIPTURES: I'm supposed to move to the supreme truth that I am identical with God, but Hindus point to their Scriptures as truth. But Hindus can't claim that all ways true for the simple reason that other religions deny the eternal truth of the Vedas. Even some Hindus do.

In addition...

* I find the sexual playfulness of Krishna and his exploits with milkmaids to be problematic.
* I read that some respected Hindu philosophers and thinkers consider it to be one of the most contradictory system of life's purpose ever expounded.

REINCARNATION: From a Hindu perspective, attaining Nirvana is not often achieved by humans. Though it is the goal, few there be that find it. What that means, however, is that reincarnation for most people is an ENDLESS cycle of meaninglessness. Beings circle through an eternal chain of human being, animal, insect, cow—whatever—in search of the almost impossible to grasp golden ring of Nirvana. Each cycle is weighed according to “goodness” as to whether or not one advances upward in the line or downward, but how can one be a good cat or a good bug? And since they are told in life that life and even their station in life is determined by fate (karma), and it cannot be changed (and they shouldn’t try), their theology teaches them they are hopelessly caught in a meaningless string of determined life cycles that they cannot alter, from which they will likely never escape, and therefore, at core, life for most is ultimately meaningless.

I find Hinduism inconsistent and not true to life.

[Joint Venture]

About reincarnation, my sister's guru says that people never go back to animals in the chain and everyone gets enlightened at some point. And meditation can reduce the amount of evil you experience until you reach enlightenment. Still open to differing opinions though. And finding yourself is dissolving yourself because in reality, you don't exist. You think you do but you don't. That's what they say. You realize and experience ego death which is enlightenment and you realized you never actually existed, or something like that.

[jimwalton]

> everyone gets enlightened at some point.

So it doesn't matter how good or bad a person is, everyone gradually earns their way to Nirvana? If the world is slowly becoming better, one life at a time, little by little, why is it that it looks exactly the opposite?

> And meditation can reduce the amount of evil you experience until you reach enlightenment.

It is my observation that reducing evil is not a function of meditation. Our world has more and more senseless shootings, threats of war (Iran, N Korea), poverty and disease. Meditation, in my experience and observation, doesn't and can't reduce it. I'm just giving my observations about life. These are some of the reasons I find Christianity truer to reality than Hinduism.

> because in reality, you don't exist

See, I just can't buy this. I believe in observable reality and the reality of self. To mangle Descartes: "I think, but I don't exist." Doesn't make sense to me.