Hinduism And New Age Cults

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I wanted to say a couple of things before we get started. So firstly, today's topic is
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Hinduism, and in what way, shape, and form do we, as the body of Christ, come into contact with it?
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What do we understand about it, and how do we give the gospel to the Hindus that we meet? But before we do that, let me pray.
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Our loving Father, we thank you for this evening. Thank you for bringing us here safely, and I thank you that those who couldn't come can still watch from home.
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Lord, we pray that as we look into this particular religion and their beliefs, that you would give us an understanding of where these people are and their understanding of God, and how we, as people who have been redeemed, be able to share the gospel in a clear and meaningful way.
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And we know that you have saved us, each of us here, from various circumstances, and we pray that you would be gracious and pleased to save people from the
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Hindu religion as well. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, so when we think of Hinduism, like when we think of Mormonism, I think a lot of us have seen
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Mormons come down your door and knock, and so we may have a pretty good experience with maybe
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JWs or Mormons, but Hindus typically are not a very proselytizing group, so you won't get
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Hindus come and say, hey, you know, come worship with us. Although my mom actually said that there was a couple of women who came to a home, one
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Diwali, and said, would you come and celebrate Diwali with us? We have some good festivities and snacks and things you can come and enjoy.
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That was unique, I've never heard that happen before. But who are Hindus?
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So I come from India, about 80 % of people there are
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Hindus, and Hinduism is both a religion as well as a culture, and even if someone is not explicitly worshiping the god of the
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Hindus, it's a part of how they live their lives. Now, for us, many of us are not missionaries going to India to be talking to Hindus, but there is a lot of Indians here, and in my community, there's neighborhoods that are plenty of Indians there, and not all of them, but many of them are
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Hindus. And just as in India, between the religious Hindus who actively understand and worship their god, to the cultural
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Hindus who have Hinduism as part of just the way they grew up, celebrate
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Diwali and the festivals here, and they have their idols at home that they worship. So there is a cultural and a religious aspect of Hinduism that's kind of integrated with Indian.
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So today, when we look at some of the underlying beliefs and how they look up to God and salvation, hopefully you'll be able to see how to bring the gospel to bear in a way that's clear and the way they can understand.
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Now, outside of this explicit Hindus, we have something else that's a little bit more unclear.
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So many of you may have heard of the Transcendental Movement. You know, there was this guru who actually came up with this idea of how you can meditate and get rid of stress, be having a calm and a peaceful life, and then how this can actually impact your physical way of living and be clear.
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The Beatles, I think, kind of made them very popular when they started to follow, and then they had a fallout, and then they broke away, and then they gave up all the secrets that they heard internally.
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But the idea of meditation and the idea of there is some way in which we can actually connect with the spirituality is kind of deep in people, and especially in the
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Western world where people have become so materialistic and kind of lost sense of the nature that there is a soul that you need to deal with rather than just satisfy yourself with the material goods and pleasures.
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People are somewhat attracted to something that they have been missing, and so when things like Transcendental Meditation come along, or even just meditation, people realize, hey,
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I've been missing something, and can I find some help to nourish my soul? And that's kind of the attractiveness of what you see in the
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New Age type of spirituality that you see here. So you get different classes for yoga, different classes for meditation.
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In my company, we have a few things there that people do. Now, we'll talk a little bit more about what they are, but these are some touch points.
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When you think of Hinduism, you have the core Hinduism, but there is various aspects of Hinduism that are in our culture in our
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Western world today. So the goal of my time that I'm gonna spend here is focused on evangelism.
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So how can we understand this people group? What do they believe?
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How can we express our love for them as love for the people who are lost that are around us?
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They may be your doctor, or they may be your coworker, or just someone that you've heard about, your neighbor, and you wanna be able to express your love to them through the gospel.
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And to do that, if you understand where they're coming from, you will be able to have respect for where they come from.
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This is one of the things I struggle with the most, because I come from India. I'm almost like that person who has eaten food idols, food sacrifice to idols.
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So I don't wanna go anywhere near because there's a lot of things from my background that I wanna be very careful of.
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In fact, when I first thought about teaching this, I was like, do I really wanna teach what Hinduism is? Because there is some things here that are,
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I think, very deceptive and very dangerous. But at the same time, when you look at the bulk of the people we talked to, they are not teachers of Hinduism.
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They have this mindset, the way they think through the lens of Hinduism. And when you understand what that framework is, it's helpful to say, here's how the gospel needs to be presented so that it is clear that people can understand what the
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Bible says about Jesus Christ. So that's my goal. My goal is that when you understand what
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Hinduism is, you will be able to speak the truth in love in a way that they can understand the truth.
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All right, so that's my introduction. Now, this is also a series on cults.
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So there are some aspects of Hinduism that would connect directly with the sociological cults.
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Guruism is a big part of Hinduism, especially when it came down here, but it's also popular there. And there are some sects within Hinduism that can actually function very similar to the cults that we actually see here.
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The charismatic type of cults that actually bring people in and then you have some brainwashing and then there is people just following it blindly.
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So that aspect is there, but also when it comes to the broader aspect of cult in terms of the deviation from the truth, this clearly is a religion that does not worship the
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God of the Bible and no truth as the way God has revealed it to us. All right, so with that,
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I'm gonna give you the three main sections that we wanna cover and then we'll dive through them one by one and then understand
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Hinduism. So the first one is the source. So source, who's the savior and how do you find salvation?
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This is what we wanna find in each of these area for Hinduism for this evening.
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So for us in Christianity, how do we know the truth about God, truth about ourselves, truth about salvation?
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It is the Bible. So the Bible is the authoritative source of truth for us as believers. So the question is, what is the source of truth for Hindus?
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So we'll come to this in a moment, but there are two aspects of the source for Hindus, depending on which primary strand you look at and I'll talk about both.
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One of them is they do have religious books. So we'll talk about what those religious books are and why they have authority over the
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Hindus. And then there is an inner experience. So this whole meditation thing that comes about, there is something about the nature of the individual that they actually value that you can actually find truth through your inner experiences.
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So there are at least two sources of truth when you come to the Hindu religion and then we'll unpack what they are.
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Savior, for us, it is the Lord Jesus Christ, like Jonathan read Colossians 1.
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It is Christ, him we proclaim. He is our savior and there is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved.
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And when it comes to Hinduism, again, there are a few different strands.
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One specific strand has a devotional element where you have gods, small g, gods that they would compare as equivalent to Jesus who could provide them salvation.
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And ultimately, coming back to this inner experience, there is something within themselves that they see as redemptive and we will see how that works with regards to salvation.
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For us, our salvation, so source, savior, salvation, our salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone.
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So it is by faith we are saved through the finished work of Jesus Christ. And for Hindus, there are three different ways.
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And once again, we'll come and unpack them. One of them is the way of devotion. That's probably the closest that you will find toward the
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Christian way of thinking about how we come before God. You trust in this
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God, you love this God, and then you give everything to this God in terms of finding your way toward salvation from your state.
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And we will see what that state is that they want to be saved from, which is not exactly sin the way we see it.
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And then in addition to devotion, there are two other ways. One of them is the way of works or karma. And we'll see what that means for them to do things in order to find ways to come out of the problem that they are facing.
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And then the third view is the view of knowledge or jnana. And so there is a knowledge that actually provides salvation for them.
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So these are three different ways in which they will look for redemption, as it were, from the problem that humanity is facing.
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So we've seen the source, what savior and salvation look like. As I said, there are a few different strands and we'll pick them apart.
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Oh, by the way, before I begin the source of my material, so I'm gonna just give you some highlights. So if you're interested,
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I wanted to take my book and talk from it. But my view, the book that I've written is very focused on one specific strand of Hinduism.
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Whereas the material that I used is from Dr. Timothy Tenet. So you can find him for free in biblicaltraining .org.
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And he does a pretty good job. He gives you an overview as well as a detailed study on Hinduism that covers the breadth of Hinduism.
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So I'm gonna use his material to kind of walk us through the big picture. All right, so let's begin with Hinduism.
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In its broadest sense. So when you think of Hinduism, there are two extremes, if you will, when you think of Hinduism.
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Hinduism has got many different variations to it. So it's almost like Gnosticism. How do you say
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Gnosticism? We got some central ideas, but then there is all these different variations. And when you think of the two biggest, to the two extremes, if you will, of Hinduism, on the one hand, it's a polytheistic religion.
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So there are many small g gods. Many, many, many, many gods. And you could actually pick one of these gods as your god and then worship this god and then try to find help and salvation and everything you need through this particular god or gods that you, in the multitude of gods that you have.
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So that can be a very polytheistic. There's idols, there's temples, there's a lot of rituals that all go with this polytheistic faith.
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And the majority of Hindus, whether it's cultural or religious, would be in this sphere where most
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Hindus would have some god that they personally love and have an idol for at home.
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And their thinking is broadly in this relationship with this god or gods that they worship.
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On the other extreme, you have the pantheistic version of Hinduism. And pantheism is more of a philosophical way of looking at God and reality and who you are and how do you find redemption.
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And this is the one that I actually wrote my book on. And we'll spend some time on this because underlying even the polytheistic
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Hindu worldview, there is a reliance on pantheism. So there are some philosophers who speak very clearly and directly and understand what the pantheistic view of Hinduism is.
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But this is not a common knowledge to all Hindus. Most Hindus don't, they know some of the terms and what they speak to, but they don't really know all the intricacies of what pantheistic
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Hinduism is. It's a very deeply technical, philosophical view. But this pantheistic
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Hinduism gives a base for polytheistic Hindus. So sometimes you're like, polytheism seems like very absurd.
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But it's like, no, no, no. There is something much more richer, deeper, more meaningful that kind of underlies and grounds the polytheistic worship.
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And so even if I don't understand it, I know that there are things there that actually undergird and build up our
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Hinduism as a whole. So those are the two extreme strands that you wanna be thinking of, polytheism and pantheism.
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And depending on whom you meet, they may either have a very strong handle on this and you wanna be talking to someone who is a pantheist and talk about how the
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Christian worldview is different as the monotheistic religion with regards to pantheism and a personal
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God versus an impersonal God. Or you may wanna talk about how Jesus is the savior.
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There is only one God and it is Jesus Christ and there is no competition with other gods in a polytheistic worldview.
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Because most polytheists would add Jesus as one more God with the gods that they can all worship.
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So those would be the two strands that you wanna think of very broadly. Now, so I mentioned there were three ways of salvation that people have and those are called margas or ways.
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What are the ways to salvation? How do you find redemption? And I haven't told you what they are trying, what
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Hindus typically try to find salvation from, but I'm gonna get to that in a moment. But because I just mentioned pantheist and polytheist, it's probably helpful for you to know these three ways one more time.
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So three ways I mentioned where, I'll start here. This is devotion or bhakti.
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There is a way of devotion that leads you to salvation. There is a way of works of doing the right thing, the right actions that lead you towards salvation.
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And then you have the way of knowledge and that's the pantheistic thing where you actually have an understanding of ultimate reality and of yourself and how you can be one with the ultimate being.
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And that's the way of knowledge. So devotion, works and knowledge and we'll kind of cover all of these as we unpack more material from here.
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All right, so that gives you the overview. So let's come back to the first bullet, which is source.
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I mentioned that there are two types of authorities for authority for the
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Hindus. The first one is they have some books that they regard as authoritative over them.
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So there are many books that Hindus have, but if you just look chronologically at the various books that they have, the earliest would be the
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Vedas and the earliest of the Vedas would be the Rig Veda, which is the most ancient of the books that they have.
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Now, the Vedas in some part of the philosophical system would be, some would consider them to be eternal, you know, that they were actually there from eternity past.
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You know, that's the kind of authority that this book actually has. And, but historically, the understanding is it was verbally communicated over a long period of time before it was actually written down.
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And so anytime we talk about the historicity of the Bible and the chronology of these writings, most of the
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Hindus would say, well, it might have been written or we have documents much recently, but they don't compare with like the many manuscripts and the historical authentication that the
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Bible has, but it has a very ancient background, even though it wasn't all written down. So that will be the view of authority of the
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Vedas over the Hindus. And the Vedas have a lot of things in them.
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The Rig Veda has hymns to these gods. And many of these gods are like the nature gods from the past.
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So when you look at the polytheism that comes later, many of these gods don't have retained the same name, but they can be varied and then come back in more later writings as the gods that are worshiped.
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We'll talk about the names of those gods later. But Vedas are held in high regard by all the
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Hindus. Not all the Hindus would have read these books, but they are considered ancient and authoritative.
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The other book that people hold on to are the Upanishads. Actually, I had the time period, just let me...
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So the Vedas in Upanishads are between 1200 BC to 400
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BC. That's the Vedic period and the times of the Upanishad. And the
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Upanishads are the philosophical discourse on the Vedas. So these were people who just looked at the
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Vedas and said, how do I grasp reality as it is? And so that whole philosophical pantheistic thinking comes from the
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Upanishads. So anyone who is from this philosophy, who can explain pantheism of Hinduism, will rely heavily on the
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Upanishads in order to communicate what they believe. So you have the
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Vedas, you have the Upanishads that come following it, and many of the material I'm gonna speak to will come from the
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Upanishads. And then you have the two big epics that most of you may be familiar with.
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It's called the Ramayana and Mahabharata. They are like Homer, but like a thousand times longer.
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Very, very, very long stories of what is considered by Hindus as historical.
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And those are the places where we would actually talk about how the Bible, when it talks about history, we have a very specific correlation with other historical documents, whereas the history that is here sounds more like stories that have been made up with some historical elements that were there at that time period.
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So there's a lot of stories that you come from Ramayana and Mahabharata, two very, very big epics from which people look to how gods operate on earth.
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What are some of these concepts, especially when it comes to what is the law that governs humanity?
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How do you relate to people? All of these things are kind of embedded in these stories. And you have the gods operating here.
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Ramayana deals with the god Rama. We'll talk about him in a moment. And how does he deal with the problems that he faces?
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And Rama's considered this god of righteous, this righteous god who does everything well. And so he's an exemplar in some ways of living a life that is virtuous.
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And so Ramayana gives you that big picture there. Mahabharata has many elements.
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One of them is the Lord Krishna, one of the gods that's extremely popular.
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He would be the god that's most worshiped both in the polytheistic camp, interestingly also in the pantheistic camp because in the book
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Mahabharata, there is a smaller book. It's actually called the Gita. That may be, some of you may be familiar with, the
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Bhagavad Gita. And many people may not read the Mahabharata as a whole. It's huge. But the
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Bhagavad Gita has got this poetic and yet very deeply philosophical teachings that are very appealing to a lot of people.
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So people just get the Gita and then it's like Ecclesiastes kind of getting insight into deep things.
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And this is Krishna himself talking and explaining the universe and how he is the ultimate being and all of those things are embedded here.
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So most Hindus would be familiar with the Gita. So they may not be familiar or may not have read a lot of the things but they would at least know major sections of the
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Gita when they are in understanding their faith. And in addition to these, there are many other popular texts as well.
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So these are all the various texts that exist. The one thing that I mentioned earlier is when we look at the historicity and authenticity of the
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Bible, the Christianity is a historic religion and you have a very simple way to authenticate what is said to be true in time and space.
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Whereas many of the books here are, there's a lot of claims that are made about the historicity of these books but they don't have the kind of validation that the
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Bible has. So just something to keep in mind but these hold authority over the Hindus. So the second aspect of authority that I was talking about was the inner experience.
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And in order to understand that, I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and talk about some key themes and this will kind of lay out how a
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Hindu looks at the world that he lives in. And I think once we understand these categories, it'll be helpful to see how they look for inner self, look inward in order to find the truth.
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What does that mean? And we will see this in a moment. So I'm gonna give you a few different names. Some of these may be alien to you but some of them you may be already aware of.
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But these will give you the categories or concepts that are deep in Hindu thinking through which you can communicate with people because when you talk about God, we mean something very specific from the
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Bible. This is the nature of our God that we worship. But when a Hindu hears the word
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God, they are not always interpreting it the same way that we do.
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And so when you understand what God and these concepts mean, then you'll be able to speak with them in a way that you can communicate clearly what the
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God of the Bible is. So let's begin with the first one. The first concept that is central to Hindus is
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Brahman. It's B -R -A -H -M -A -N. There are three words that sound very similar.
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One is Brahman, one is Brahma without the N and then there is a Brahmin, B -R -A -H -M -I -N.
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A Brahmin is a human being who is in the high caste, who is a priestly caste.
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So you could be a Brahmin if you were born into the Brahmin family. A Brahma is, we'll come to him in a moment.
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There is a, in the Bible, we have Trinity. They have something called the Trimurti.
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So there is this three beings that together make like a
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Godhead. Brahma is one of them. He is the creator God. You have Vishnu, who is the preserver and then you have
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Shiva, who is the destroyer. So the three together form the Trimurti. So that's Brahma.
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But the term that I want you to think about first is Brahmin and who is
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Brahmin or what is Brahmin? Brahmin is the ultimate reality. When they think of what is the end of, what is the chief end of man is to glorify
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God and enjoy him forever. God is our ultimate being in Christianity. In Hinduism, the ultimate, ultimate being would be
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Brahmin and who is this Brahmin or what is this Brahmin? The philosophers are the ones who try to unpack that for you in the pantheistic
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Hinduism. And they would say Brahmin can either be nirguna or sarguna.
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Guna is attributes. Nir means no, so attribute -less God. Or sarguna, which is he has some of all the best attributes.
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So you could either see him as one or the other. And depending on which strand of pantheism you pick, some would say this
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God is so far beyond all that we can conceive of that he has no attributes even.
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That's the ultimate being. Or that all of the perfections that we know of, he has them to the maximum level and that would be a sarguna.
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And generally speaking, the nirguna will be one level above the sarguna depending on who you talk to, which is, yeah, you can get to the understanding of the attributes, but you need to kind of transcend that to get to the real being who's behind that all.
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That's the concept of Brahman, ultimate reality. All right, so that's what's on the top, as it were.
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Then the next term that you want to think about is atman. Atman, you can simply translate it kind of like soul.
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And the key to understanding atman is each of you has the, is the atman.
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Actually, it's not has the atman, is the atman. So your soul identifies with kind of like a world soul, that which is pure and undefiled and perfect.
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And for you to recognize who you are, you need to know this atman that's in you.
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And how do you, and this is one of the paths of salvation that they talk about is when you recognize that the atman and the
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Brahman are not distinct, but one, you have achieved salvation.
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Sounds somewhat abstract and hard to grasp, but this is kind of central to the pantheistic understanding of, you know, in pantheism, there is no different.
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Everything is God, pan, all, theism, God. I mean, that's a simple way of saying it.
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But for the Hindu, we have a few more concepts I haven't talked about. When the individual realizes that there is no differentiation between the ultimate being and the individual, that's the knowledge or the revelation that gets this person to that higher state.
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Now, it's not just an intellectual understanding. It starts with the knowledge intellectually, but it needs to be an experiential understanding.
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So you have to experience the divine in the way in which you self -realize and connect with the ultimate being.
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And that's the redemption that we were talking about. So remember I told you about two sources of authority. One is the books and the other one is your inner experience.
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And this is that experience that the Hindus rely on when you look at and understand that your
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Atman is not distinct from the
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Brahman and you are one with him. And your goal is to realize that union with the
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Brahman. So that's a goal of... One of the goals of the
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Hindus. Actually, it's the ultimate goal of the Hindus to find that union with God. There are a few other terms there.
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In order to explain this, there's a lot of different languages and I will give you a couple of illustrations. One particular
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Sanskrit term that's very popular is Tat Tvam Asi. Tat Tvam Asi.
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That, thou, art. And the idea is that thou art is Brahman.
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Thou is you, the Atman, art, you are one. And so there's a lot of little illustrative imagery to kind of communicate this truth.
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And for people to kind of comprehend and internalize and then experience is their path to redemption.
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Now, all of this is more on the philosophical side. But coming more to the practical side, there is a term called
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Samsara. And it's like a cycle. So people today don't live like this huge, you know, in the
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Himalayas, like as a hermit and apprehending and becoming one with the divine. They're just going about their job, doing things the way we do.
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Messing up life, being messed up and having to deal with things like all people need to do.
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Now, how do you get from where you are to where you need to go? So the issue with Samsara is that there is a cycle of life and there is a cycle to cosmic cycle where everything goes in a cyclical way.
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But more importantly, well, for you, you are going through a cycle. So for believers, we say it is appointed for man to die once and then the judgment.
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You are either right with God or you pay for the consequences of your sin.
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Whereas in a Hindu's life, it's because of this idea of transmigration, you have multiple life cycles through which you go either up toward the divine or you go further away from the divine.
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So the Samsara is the cycle where each person is responsible through any of these ways, through devotion, through works or through knowledge to come closer to your ultimate state of being, which is to realize
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Atman and Brahman are one. So through karma, so if you did bad works, there is a, maybe this is a good time to talk about karma as well.
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Karma is this inviolable law of the universe where everything you do, there is a consequence for it.
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And so karma will, your actions can either help you or hurt you.
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And in Samsara, people are stuck in this wheel. They go from birth through rebirth to rebirth, millions, thousands, millions, how many ever times it takes.
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And it's not just humans, you can go lower than a human, you can go to a lower life form and then come back up.
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And so this is this not endless, but very, very long cycle through which you need to, people typically come to a realization of the infinite.
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Now, what complicates things here in the cycle is there is this thing concept called Maya. People generally use the term illusory nature of the world in terms of Maya.
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Illusion is not the best term to use it, but it's probably one simple way to talk about it, which is you look at the universe, you look at the world around you, it seems to be what you see, but you don't quite get it.
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There is something here that is deeper and richer that you don't quite understand.
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And how do you look past this Maya? Sometimes they talk about it as a mirror with dust on it.
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And there are ways in which you can look through the smoke of Maya to get the reality that's underneath this world.
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And let me, I know I'm running short on time, so let's move quickly. The idea is at the end of samsara is you want to achieve moksha or salvation or be coming out of the cycle of this samsara.
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All right, so I think with that I'll stop here and I'll switch to a few examples.
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I wanna make sure we finish on time. One of the concepts
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I think you wanna be thinking about when you talk to Hindus is, not all of them, but many of them think of truth not necessarily in just simple propositional statements and objective data points.
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So one of the ways that people think of learning is that the truth is pretty obscure.
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It's hard to grasp. So someone who's teaching you the truth wouldn't normally say, can you just grasp what is true?
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So for example, if there is a particular dot next to that camera there, and it's hard for most people to see, but someone who's trained or self -realized can see that particular dot, all this person will say is, can you see that camera?
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And it's like, okay, get a grasp of the camera. It's close enough to where you are. And from there, I'm gonna help you kind of get zoom in on something that you currently can't see.
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That's how you kind of look past the Maya and get to the reality. I think spiritually the dot, but that's a concept that Hindus have with regards to truth is not just like, okay,
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A equals B, but there are things here that you have to realize and you kind of come to it through stages as it were.
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And then now, I'll probably give you a couple of examples just so you can think about common analogies that Hindus have.
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One thing is called the rope snake analogy. So this is a very popular illustration that is used.
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So here's a man that comes in, it's got variation, but let's say he comes into his tent and he sees a snake.
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He's terrified, his heart starts beating. He's like, okay, I'm gonna die. This thing is gonna kill me. And then later he finds out that it wasn't really a snake.
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It was actually a rope. It just looked like a snake. So this is that whole idea of Maya coming in where there is something there that actually has a very real effect on me, although it wasn't a snake in reality.
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So when you look at the world and you interpret it in a certain way, you go through life experiencing everything that you do, but you need to be able to see past that snake appearance to the reality of what is underlying that object that you have seen.
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So that is one way that people normally use to talk about, okay, how do you interpret your, whether it's a sense experience or your intellectual experience of how you look at this universe?
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There is something that's underneath this that you need to get to. I'll use a couple more examples.
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One is the clay pot. The clay pot is, you know, when you have a pot, you can see the pot distinguishing the air from inside from the outside.
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So there is some way in which this is holding air and that air is distinct from the air outside.
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But if the pot breaks, then you realize that there is no distinction between the air inside and outside.
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They're all the same. It is just that there is a pot that gives you the concept of differentiation between yourself and the
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Brahman. And when you realize that that pot is just a object that is transient, but what is underneath the substance is actually the same, then
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Atman becomes Brahman and you become one with the ultimate reality. So those are the types of imagery that people use to say, okay, here is how the appearance looks like, but that's what we wanna get to.
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And that's the concept that we are trying to get underneath. And I'll give you one final illustration and I'll wrap this section up, which is the monkey -kitten analogy.
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I didn't know this till I read it from Dr. Tennant. And this one, this is actually like Calvinism and Harmonianism.
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So the story is this, and actually some we know. So for kitten, when a mom wants to rescue her kitten from danger, the mother cat grabs the kitten by the scruff of the neck and then carries the kitten to wherever it needs to go.
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So when it comes to salvation, this is God kind of grabbing a hold of you and taking you to wherever you need to go.
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You are kind of almost just flowing through as God does the work. It's the idea of grace.
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Grace is there, but it's different than our grace in terms of how people are rescued. And then the other one is the monkey.
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And the monkey, and this I don't remember, I have seen it, but I don't remember from experience, is apparently the mom just goes to the monkey and the monkey's job, the baby monkey's job is to grab a hold of the monkey's hair.
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And so it's your job to kind of hold on to God as God kind of takes you from wherever you are to where you need to be.
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And that was just an illustration of how they think of salvation and their relationship with God through going from where they are to where they need to go.
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All right, so we've talked a lot about this philosophical view.
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So this is the underlying concepts through which people look at reality and where they need to go.
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But the more common worship happens in the polytheistic view.
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And I talked about the Thirumurti, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. So Vishnu, and this is where you have incarnations.
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And they would believe that Vishnu, this preserver God, comes down as a man at varying points in time.
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And so this incarnation of this God can take the form of Rama, which is that virtuous
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God I talked about, Hanuman, which is this monkey God that helps Rama, Lakshmi, which is the
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God of wealth, Saraswati, God of knowledge, Krishna, that we talked about earlier, which is this great
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God. We have a Hare Krishna movement, which has been popular here. So that's one set of gods.
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And then when you look at the other third of the Thirumurti, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, under Shiva, you have,
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I mean, this is just some that I've picked that are like 10 different incarnations of Vishnu. For Shiva, it's
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Durga, Kali, Ganesh, Saraswati. I mixed Saraswati up. So these are all these various gods that they have.
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Each God has a certain attribute. They appeal to the devotee for a specific reason.
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So for example, Durga would be this God that just vanquishes evil. And it's pretty graphic in the way in which the stories are given about ripping apart these demons and drinking their blood.
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And it's like, and I had to pass it back, if you've seen the idols there in India when you were there, they can be scary when you look at some of these idols that just stand with blood dripping down.
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But the thing is, each devotee picks either because it's a family God or it's a community, this is the
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God they worship, or you can just pick a God that's your personal deity and then worship. So those in the polytheistic tent, and not just polytheistic, even the pantheistic would observe this as a path of salvation, which is they would go to the temples.
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The temples would have a lot of idols. Like if you go to the temple, I think in Ashland, they have many different stations where different gods are worshiped.
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And if you go in a certain time, you get to see the pujas that they do where they would wash the idol and the people will bring food and celebrate or worship the
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God over there. And so for us as believers, when you think of what
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Acts 17, Paul comes to Athens and sees all these idols, his spirit is very provoked. And I'm thinking, how does
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Paul speak the rest of Acts 17 after the spirit that is provoked the way he does? And I think that's where we need wisdom because we wanna be able to speak the truth clearly, never compromising it, but be able to communicate to these people who are lost, who do not know the
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God of the Bible. And for us to understand some of what they think will be helpful in terms of communicating the gospel.
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So I have five minutes. Let's quickly get to the last part, which is how do we give the gospel to a
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Hindu you might not meet in your neighborhood. Let's talk about how
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Hinduism became popular here. So the Chicago Religions Summit, thank you.
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That's when Vivekananda came here. He's called Swami Vivekananda, like a guru. He was a follower of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who was a very, like this deep philosopher who understood how these three ways of knowledge, devotion and the works come together.
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And Vivekananda came here into the scene and then challenged, and if you think of the time period is the late 1800s, when
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Christian liberalism was at its height. Remember I was talking about how materialism people get fed up and they want something spiritual and they find the meditative methods in Hinduism.
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And here, when Christian liberalism is kind of raising its head, here is someone who comes with a genuine, believing what he holds to be true, bringing a new concept that's actually inclusive in the way that it's able to grasp all of these different ways of thinking and not doing this petty infighting between religions.
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You can actually worship the true reality that is behind all of your little gods.
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And so Christianity becomes one of those little subsets. And he's like, you guys can worship yourself. We're not gonna come and proselytize you because Hinduism is so big that it can actually embrace
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Christianity within itself. And so everybody goes like their minds are opened, as it were, as Vivekananda brings this concept of Hinduism to the
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West. And that's, so this is like a late 1800s is when that actually comes in and pluralism explodes after that, where you now have like a center of gravity and Hinduism plays a huge part in that aspect.
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So when you think of Hindus now, you wanna be thinking of pluralistic thinking.
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It's very syncretistic because its system has the way of pulling together a lot of different truths and then holding them together.
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And so when you talk about God, you wanna be able to talk about the God of the Bible in a way that is distinctive and distinguished from the polytheism and the pantheism aspect.
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So when you talk about someone on the pantheistic side, you wanna be clear that you're talking about a personal
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God, not just an impersonal being. And when you talk about here, you wanna talk about the knowability of God.
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We all know the incomprehensibility of God. So there is some ways in which we recognize what they mean.
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There are things that you cannot quite understand. God is transcendent. And yet what God has revealed, we can know.
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He's not like a nirguna attributeless God. This is a personal God with true attributes. It's not just that he's accommodating for us with showing us some attributes.
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And when you come to the God here, you wanna be talking about this personal God as the ultimate being, not just as one of the many gods with some attributes that are in conflict with other gods, and it is just a temporary aspect.
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So when you talk about Jesus, that's why Colossians 1, he is in him the fullness of God dwelt in bodily form.
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This is not one of your avatars or incarnations, but this is the incarnate
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God -man, the only God -man. And he alone has the fullness of God in full form.
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All right, maybe just a couple more minutes, I'll wrap this up.
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So karma is a term that is used pretty heavily in our culture. Everybody kind of knows cause and effect.
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And I think when we talk about works in the Christian faith, we can connect pretty easily with people that just naturally have an understanding of sin and consciousness, and there is a consequence for what happens.
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And so their religious system has that already pretty laid out for them. And they have the concept of dharma, what is the right thing to do in your situation where you are placed, and people need to follow that dharma or the way of works in order to reach where they need to go.
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And I think when we talk about sin and redemption, we can talk about how we fail.
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And this is where we can contrast this good works versus bad works to every work before this thrice holy
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God. If you sin once, you've sinned. You cannot redeem yourself out of your state.
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So you can contrast the common understanding of karma and how you have these multiple cycles till one day you are one with God to it is appointed for man to die once, and then the judgment.
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There is a lot of other things we can talk about like creation and how we have this creator, creature distinction.
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And the thing you want to take care here is anytime you talk about the God of the Bible, it could be easy to be brought in and put with the many other gods that they have.
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And you want to be talking that we are talking about the ultimate being, what they would consider as a nirguna
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Brahman. In that category is where we look at the Father, Son and the
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Spirit. And this is not a small g God. When we talk about who is our creator and who is the one we are accountable to.
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All right, so let's wrap this up. We talked about the three major categories, sources of authority.
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One is what are the, they have books, it's Vedas, Upanishads, the
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Gita, these are popular books, but ultimately it's about you having self -realization and recognizing
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Atman and the Brahman are one. When we talk about a savior, and once again, depending on where you stand, you may have a small g
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God here, or you're looking for one of these ways in order to reach the ultimate being.
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And salvation is either through knowledge, knowledge, devotion or works.
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And for us to be able to speak the gospel, the gospel doesn't change. We have a thrice holy
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God and this is a monotheistic God. He is the father, son and the spirit and one
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God. And we are sinners and all of everyone can recognize that.
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And there is no way for me to be right with God on my own. And which is why
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I need the God man as my substitute. Because many of these gods that come to rescue typically kill other enemies and rescue temporarily the devotee.
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Krishna would give you a little bit more philosophical view about himself. But here we have the God who actually takes my place and is a substitute.
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And I think that's a key aspect of the gospel we wanna emphasize. And that there is a consequence.
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And the way we apprehend this is by faith alone in Christ alone. So the gospel is still the same, but knowing where the person is coming from, you'll be able to emphasize those things that would be important for them to hear.
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All right, I think that's all I had for today. Let's pray. Loving father, we thank you for this evening.
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I thank you for how you have opened our eyes when we were in the kingdom of darkness, when we were pursuing our own ways.
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Not many of us here were Hindus, but we were lost and rebellious and you were gracious.
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So father, would you help us when we meet people who are Hindus to be able to come alongside and give them the gospel and work with each person as you would give us opportunity.
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Be pleased oh Lord to rescue people who do not know you and give them a knowledge of the truth.
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And father, I also pray that this evening as we head back home, that you would give us all a safe travel back.
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I thank you for this local body where we can meet together. In Jesus name we pray, amen.