The Three All-Important Questions
The Three All-Important Questions
All worldviews and religions need to take a hard look at themselves and at how they answer three inescapable questions:
Why are Christians so dogmatic? Why do they think their way is the only way? These lines are repeated again and again and reveal a prejudice on the part of the questioner. What else can be expected but exclusivity when truth claims are expressed? Growing up in India, it was always assumed that the predominant worldview was the only worldview. It was not uncommon to have pictures of gurus and teachers or some verse from the Gita or pronouncement of Krishna on the wall in every office and school. Should it have occurred to us who held different beliefs to question why they were being so exclusive? I do not ever recall in all my school days a Christian coming to speak to the student body. I heard principally—exclusively—from Hindus. I accepted that fact because they formed the large majority and theirs was the prevailing worldview.
Anyone who thinks that the Hindu message is not being “propagated” is simply blind to reality. It subsumes the culture of a nation of more than a billion people and it is the logical outworking of prior commitments to belief. Hindusthan, which is the Hindi word for India, means “the land of the Hindus.” And Hindusthani, or Hindi, as it is popularly called, means “the language of the Hindus.” The religion and its worldview inform every aspect of society and culture. Hindus themselves do not see their religion as inclusive of other religions; otherwise, why would Buddha have felt the need to reject the defining tenets of Hinduism in his quest for truth? And why would the parents of young people who are brought up as Hindus but have become Christians—young people like my brother-in-law—mourn their decision as a death? Hinduism is propagated, and I would expect it to be if that is what is truly believed by the person.
It is clear, abundantly clear, that all religions without exception are exclusive. All religions ultimately collect cultural trappings and in turn become identified with culture. Buddhism is not Hinduism. Islam is not Christianity. Jainism is not Judaism. Each has its own uncompromising moorings. Each is distinct from the others.
When I was in Turkey recently, a Turkish man told me that one question is asked of him more often than any other. When he gives his name and identifies himself as a Christian, the person talking to him will say, “But aren’t you Turkish?” “I am,” he replies. “But you just said you were a Christian.” He says, “I am Turkish and I am a Christian.” The questioner always looks totally bewildered. I guess people don’t remember anymore that most Turks were Christians until their country was conquered by Islamic forces and the people were forced to convert to Islam for economic reasons or for protection. But so go cultures everywhere. We have short memories.
When I became a committed Christian, a close Hindu friend said to me, “You have lost your originality.” He loved that word. What he meant was that only if I believed as he did was I an original, or unique. By my decision to follow Jesus, I became, in his eyes, no longer unique… “nonoriginal.” Before I became a Christian I actually believed very little about any spiritual matters. Is that what he would have preferred of me? The answer is yes. To believe nothing would actually be closer to his supposedly “believe all” faith.
Truth by definition excludes. We have to understand that by definition, truth excludes the denial of what it asserts. My ethnicity puts me in a certain category; my language puts me in a certain category; my education puts me in a certain category. All designations exclude something else. The problem with religious belief is that nobody wants anyone to preach a destiny that excludes anyone else, and so we reserve the description of evil for only the most heinous. And now some New Spiritualists would not even want that separation. Let’s examine the notion of truth.
Some years ago, I was to address members of the Bar Association of a particular state. As I sat down at the lunch table, the president of the Bar Association commented to me that I had to be pretty bold to come and speak at an event where people made their living by working with words. I took note, because in a way, one can reduce my profession to that as well, if nothing else is taken into consideration. Anyhow, I just smiled and waited till the lunch was over and I had been introduced. There was a sense of discomfort in the air… any time you are before an audience for whom everything is relative and they know someone is going to introduce you as an absolutist or holding to a hierarchical position, the sense of unease is almost visible. How odd that those who argue for the law are the least trusted with the truth.
As it happened, my talk was during the days of the Clinton presidency, at the time that he was accused of some indiscreet behavior, which he had denied. You may recall that when he was asked, “Is it true?” he brilliantly answered, “It all depends on what ‘is’ means.” That was the quintessential postmodern answer. We have gone one better now. The newest term for a lie is “I misspoke.” I am not even sure how to spell that.
As I stood up to speak to this rather skeptical and jaded audience, I began this way: “I have just come here from watching the news in my hotel room. May I give you the first three items in the headlines? The first was from a reporter with his roving microphone, asking people on the street if words had any particular meaning or whether the speaker reserved the right to infuse his or her meaning into the words. In our ‘salvation by survey’ culture, the answer was predictable: ‘The speaker has the right to assign any meaning he or she wishes to the words used.’
“The second item on the news was the roving reporter asking people whether morality has any point of reference or whether each person has the right to their own moral reasoning The answer was that each person has an individual right to determine their own morality.
“Those were the first two items on the news.
“Now let me tell you the third item: The United States has sent a warning to Saddam Hussein that if he doesn’t stop playing his word games, we will start bombing his cities.”
The facial expressions of those in the audience, dedicated to the practice of the law, suddenly changed. Isn’t it ironic that as a culture we have reserved the right to define words and determine morality for ourselves, but when someone else plays word games with us or is morally duplicitous, we threaten to bomb them? This is the hidden menace masquerading as enlightenment: We tell people they are free to choose their own deities because there is no ultimate Authority, but when someone chooses to believe in an ultimate Authority, on the basis of truth, at best what they believe is distorted by society or their representatives, and at worst they become the objects of ridicule. What if what they believe came from a flash of insight in quiet reflection? Is belief in an ultimate Authority by definition a wrong insight? Suddenly democracy and diversity disappear. To deny the law of noncontradiction is to affirm it at the same time.
I want to be careful here. I realize that this kind of “rationalistic apologetic” is evicted in the thinking of the New Spirituality. But I must remind the critics that all of their links to thought and to philosophy actually originally subscribed to this basic law of logic: Sankara, Buddha, as well as the Greeks. The mistake in the spiritual journey was making logic the only test, thereby carrying something legitimate to an illegitimate extreme.