Defense of the Faith - Eastern Religions & Worldviews
Vern Peterman · Jun 28, 2015
Defense of the Faith, No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49265857052

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Last week we actually had a second week on Western religions, and we still didn't finish. So we're just going to move on. One of the things I would recommend, because these days, especially post 9-11, a lot of interest in Islam, and a book I would recommend is Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Dr. Nabil Qureshi. So anyway, if you want to pursue that further, it's a very good one. Interestingly, his doctorate seems to be in medicine, but he's gone full-time on staff with Ravi Zacharias. Anyway, that's a recommendable book if you want to pursue that further.

We're going to move on to Eastern religions and worldviews. One of the things that's interesting is that for the last several decades, Eastern religions and worldviews have been marketed and leaked into our Western culture. So we have here, you know, go east young man, question mark. And by the way, what's the value for us as Christians to look at these Eastern and Western religions?

What's the value in it? Yeah, Stan? To me, it's like anything else. The more you understand, the more you can evaluate your particular position in your belief system. Okay. Yeah, it's understanding and respect to these other things. Okay, here's what I believe and here's what these other religions represent and it gives some better insight into what we believe and why we believe what we believe. It also shows Christianity is unique.

One of the things in Judaism, does God save you? Ultimately, in Judaism, you've got to do it, right? And so, there is no savior. Islam, does God save you? No. It's what you do. And the same, we're going to find out, is true of Eastern religions. You save yourself. So Christianity, in that respect, is unique in that God takes every measure to save you. Yes. But they don't see salvation as we see salvation. That's correct. That's correct. In other words, a part of it is, you know, what is the human need? And who is God? And what is our relationship to them? So the truth is, you're correct. You put your finger on it.

Salvation is not looked upon as universally the same. One of the other points we made, and it's the same of Eastern religions, is, is Christianity uniform and monolithic? Is it all the same? No, it is not. So there's a great deal of variety. Same thing with Judaism. Lots of variety within Judaism. Lots of variety within Islam. And there is even so much variety and conflict within those that different groups have fought other groups, militarily and otherwise. The Essenes hated the Pharisees and the Sadducees so much. They thought that God chose us, but God didn't chose them, and the Pharisees and Sadducees are all going to hell.

In Christianity, different Christian groups have fought one another. I remember Nancy and I, over in Europe, stayed in a place in the town of Bomberg, and right across the river from us was a large building, and we asked, what is that? And they said, oh, that was the palace of the guy who was selling munitions to both sides in the Thirty Years' War in Europe. So those who are Christians have fought one another. Those who are Jews have fought one another. A great deal of the loss when the Romans attacked Jerusalem is Jews killing other Jews. The Jews who would not fight were slaughtered.

So you have that in Islam. We've seen within this year the Muslims killing other Muslims. So there is not only not uniformity among different groups, but great division. And this is true also of the various ones in the Eastern religions. So let's take a look here.

In one of the things we have in number one here on page one, God is part of the religion at all is seen as within the material of the universe as are other aspects of spirituality. In Eastern religions we say as part of the universe, is there a term for that? What is that term? Pantheism, right? Whereas in Christianity, we would say, there is no place I can go where God is not present. In Eastern religion, God is in the material universe. God is in the material universe, and so that's pantheism.

Fundamental spirituality is seen as non-personal, and this is hugely different. In the end, personality in Eastern religions is an illusion. Whereas in the Christian viewpoint, and I would say it's true of Judaism as well, God is a personal being and our being made in God's image is a key aspect of that. So personality is central to Christianity and Judaism. It is not so much true of Islam, and it is definitely not true of the Eastern religions and worldview. So that's part one.

Personality and individuality and uniqueness of a single life are but temporal illusions, interruptions in the ever-flowing river of universal consciousness. What are they conscious of? Universal consciousness is ultimately non-personal. And so when you say, what are they conscious of?

It's ultimately getting rid of human individuality and will, is the ultimate in the Eastern view. I remember years ago, this is before Nancy and I got married, I spent actually a number of hours for days and weeks on end talking to Dr. Banu Dave who was a professor of religion in India and had come to the United States and the way he expressed it is that the world is but a dream of God and eventually God will wake up and the dream will be over that was his way of expressing Hinduism Next, human life is seen in view of the vast number of reincarnations. This is a huge perspective for the Christian to understand. That the person in the Eastern view, whether Hindu or Buddhist or something related to that, the person in the Eastern view sees reincarnation and the law of karma along with it, and it's law. It's not grace, it's law. is the Eastern view sees reincarnation as the perspective from which everything else is understood.

Yes? You make it sound like I'm hearing this. All of them are steeped in reincarnation. Is that true? In general, yes. And again, are Eastern religions monolithic? No. And there are also Eastern philosophies If we were talking about Taoism or Confucianism, various Eastern philosophies that have different perspectives. So, not monolithic, but that view of reincarnation is in general in Hinduism and Buddhism central to the religion and worldview. One of the things that it does, is that it sees the law of karma completely graceless. There is no grace in karma. None. No grace. You do something, you do something, and then that will turn around in the next life to have consequences. Absolutely.

And it just takes a number of reincarnations to get that all worked out. One of the perspectives that that brings about is that you don't want to mess around with anybody else's karma. They may be going through a difficult time because they're paying for their past life, and you don't want to mess with that karma by fiddling around or doing anything with their life.

That involves compassion and doing kind things to them or for them on their behalf. Which is the thing that when people say, oh, good karma means I'm going to, especially here in the U.S., I hear good karma all the time. Whereas this, oh, I'm going to do nice things for people. It's good karma. No, actually, that's the opposite of the doctrine of karma. Yeah, the doctrine of karma says you don't mess around with somebody else's karma. And so you might not want to interfere.

Yes? Do we as humans start out as humans or have we... Oh no. No, no, no. A human takes a while to be a human. Does it? Yes. Oh yeah. After a human, do you go down the other side? Well, no. Ultimately, in the end, moksha in Hinduism, nirvana in Buddhism is ultimately reaching a point of enlightenment where I no longer exercise my individual will. It's the extinguishing of the will. And the closest to that in Christianity is Quakerism, where Quakerism teaches that my will has been crucified with Christ.

Yes, very, very good point. Yeah, you'll see you ever see people in some kind of Lotus posture, you know, as a part of advertising. And people talk about, you know, some Zen. You use the word Zen and attach it to things. So yeah, it seeped into our own culture using, you know, pictures and terminology and things like that from the East.

And we'll touch on that here in a minute. Next one, morality and truth are not founded upon the infinite holy character of a supreme and personal God. to whom we are accountable upon the end of one lifetime, but rather upon the impersonal and rigid principles of karma which play within the almost endless cycle of life and death into life and death again and again and again. So rather than, here is an infinite and holy but personal God who is of who is of absolute moral character and at one lifetime I will stand before him. Rather, it is impersonal and I go through one lifetime and the next and the next and the next.

Yes? I was reading an article this morning about artificial intelligence. A programmer got into an argument with his computer about morality. The computer had no answer. It sounded interesting to watch. Yes, ultimately even morality, see in Christianity morality is based on a personal God with an absolute and infinite character. Morality doesn't have the same basis in the Eastern view. So now, aspects of this worldview have been increasingly marketed in the United States over about the last four decades. Maybe a little longer. We have seen it come in such forms as Transcendental Meditation.

This was the Beatles, Donovan, Mia Farrow, etc. Hare Krishna. Exercise and sports. And the reality is, I look at this and I say, well, some of this stuff I've actually even done. Martial arts, I've got some background in Judo and Aikido. Now, it doesn't mean that I subscribe to this, but I mean that's some of the ways it's come across. I used to sing Beatles songs, you know.

Health, acupuncture, Eastern alternative medical approaches and diets, etc. that come from the East. A book, Siddhartha, Touch for Health, The Divine Conspiracy. Anybody read Siddhartha? I've read that, Touch for Health, that's actually a book we have.

So some of these things come across, and it's not like everything is toxic, but it is a matter of recognizing, oh, that's where that came from. Okay? What about the feng shui? Feng shui, right? And yeah, there are principles that come, again, from the East that we've adopted in one way or another. By itself, you might look at it and say, well, okay, this actually might be helpful or useful.

I think there's probably some good things in yoga. Some of the martial arts, you can get in and practice them, I know personally, without being in conflict with being a Christian. Some of the rest of it, though, possibly not. Spiritual formation, yeah, that's something we're going to talk about later on in this elective. Spiritual formation is something I've termed as Christian Buddhism. It's basically Buddhism with a kind of a Christian terminology attached to it.

But yeah, that's another one. Movies and music, The Lion King, The Circle of Life, Star Wars, The Force. Ravi Shankar, sitar music, just a little talk with Jesus. Keep a little prayer wheel turning. There's no prayer wheel in Christianity, that's out of Buddhism.

Avatars. So that comes along in movies. New Age and reincarnation celebrities. We've got some of those. Advertising showing people doing yoga or meditating in a lotus posture. And that's one that you brought up, Wayne. Language, karma, mantra, nirvana, past life, next life.

Praying, even among Christians, praying a wall of prayer, bazing with prayer, those are actually Eastern terms. And yet you'll find those among Christians. And I'm not saying it's somehow horrible, awful, but the reality is that's where it came from. Okay, so while recent decades have undermined belief in absolute truth in Western cultures and even substantially among the Western religions, Eastern religions and cultures have been very accommodating of various religions and philosophies for centuries, unless a claim is made to absolute and exclusive truth. Does Hinduism have a place for Jesus? Yes, it does. Does Islam have a place for Jesus? Yes. The name for Jesus in Islam is Isa. So the reality is there are other religions that will accommodate Jesus in their total religious viewpoint.

Okay, so let's take a look at page 2 here. We have Hinduism has its roots in India about the same time that Moses was out in the desert tending sheep among the Midianites. Initially the religion was more focused on ritual involving and requiring priests, but later became more focused upon meditation. We can represent core Hindu religious theological belief as shown. So you have some initial beliefs and ultimately Hinduism has a trinity.

How about that? Brahman, Vishnu and Siva. And then the ten human incarnations which include Jesus, the various avatars. Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, etc. Those are all looked upon as the ultimate impersonal divine being expressing itself in a human being with personality. In Hinduism there is only physical death but no spiritual death since reincarnation keeps recycling the embodiment of the spiritual into a new physical manifestation.

So that's a whole different thought for us here. It takes 8.4 million reincarnations to become a human being and that answers your question, okay? So you're going to start off as other, you know, very rudimentary things and then be reincarnated ultimately. Ah, that's a point we make at the very last on here.

And so I put it as the question, how many birthdays has the universe had, right? Ultimately, the Eastern viewpoint is compatible with a very old Earth. If, however, and this is jumping ahead, but you bring up a good point, if, however, the universe is only thousands of years old, and I believe there's evidence for that, not proof, but only thousands of years old, then that is incompatible with the Eastern view. of such huge number of reincarnations. So that's an interesting point that you bring up, that the long age for the universe is compatible very well with Eastern religions. They have no trouble with that, no difficulty with that at all. But if the universe is shown to be younger, then that's a problem. for all of the long, many reincarnations, millions of reincarnations.

Are they stating that humans, the infinite existence of someone involved in that human being? Yeah, there's a long time not having humans is fine with the Eastern viewpoint because it would take a number of reincarnations to get to the point of having human beings at all.

Human beings being at some high point of the cycle of reincarnations. So this reincarnation then is the motivation behind higher paradigms, right? Where society keeps saying that things are getting better and people are getting smarter and the human race is getting to be It can be taken that way.

Ultimately, though, in the Eastern religions, if you look at it, the human being that is achieved, the ultimate is the one who has achieved nirvana, the one who has achieved, that's in Buddhism, who has achieved moksha in Hinduism, a similar term in terms of meaning. That's the ultimate for a human being. And ultimately you'll have both Buddhism and Hinduism end up with people who have the extinguishing of wills. In Buddhism it's the blowing out of the candle of desire.

It's desire that is the problem. And so you end up having the loss of motivation towards what you're talking about. If you lost your will and you lost your desire, wouldn't you just kind of waste away and die? Yeah, it might be, you know, where it's at. And that's why you'll have them just, you know, barely going along, just, you know, looking around for a bowl of rice or something to kind of subsist.

Another one, and this has happened related to Hinduism, Sikhism, S-I-K-H, where someone will be meditating and they'll just burst into flames, right there. That's the end of them. And that will be looked upon as a great end. So, in Hinduism, I'm looking at a paragraph right in the middle of page 2, in Hinduism it is the ignorance of the divine nature of humans and even that of evil spirits that is held to be the ultimate problem, although local variations of Hinduism and folk belief will cast that into varying perspectives. Salvation in Hinduism is entirely by works, instituted by the relentless law of karma, in which there is no forgiveness, only absolute enforcement of the law of karma. There is then both a resignation to karma and a reluctance to interfere with it. The law of karma overrides everything in my lifetime because my lifetime is only one tiny slice of my spiritual existence.

Yeah? When I was working one day there was an anesthesiologist that came in and wouldn't give anesthesia because there was bad karma in the room that he was going to be in and the old apartment. So he left and we had to look around and find another one. Delay all the surgeries because another person had to come in. We never knew what that karma was for sure. It was just a bad karma. He wouldn't act based on the bad karma that he sensed. Don't make him a spray for that. A spray? I think it would be more than that.

In the ultimate, Hinduism is impersonal, and so what you have is various derivations from that ultimate impersonal deity, and those derivations can end up being the focus of individual Hindus. met a fellow one time, he's gone home with the Lord now, but he was staying at a hotel and there was a Hindu fellow who was working, you know, doing some carpentry work at the hotel and he got in contact with him and he said, didn't I see you last night walking on coals? And this guy was a fire walker, right? And he says, oh yes, Govindra protects me. So a subsidiary deity can oftentimes in Hinduism be the focus, and so you'll have local variations in how Hinduism is expressed based on those subsidiary deities.

So you can end up having a focus on superstition, idols, and local cultural expressions. And some of those can be real curious. I saw one just recently where they were tossing babies. And that was a part of their local expression of Hinduism. So, they're supposed to bless the babies. Buddhism began with the teachings of its founder, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha. Now, 563-483, this guy is around during the lifetime of Daniel. It gives you a rough time frame there. Actual historical dates vary and are debated among scholars.

It is said that desire is the fundamental problem, and that the attainment of enlightenment, nirvana, is the extinguishing of the candle flame of desire. Freeze one from the ongoing cycle of rebirth, death, and rebirth again. Now, is Buddhism monolithic? No, it is not. There's a great deal of variation.

Some sects of Buddhism believe in an impersonal God, and then the demons are very spiritual derivations, and other sects don't believe in a God at all. So, fundamentally atheistic. You got Mahayana, Hinayana, Theravada, and Zen are some of the main branches. of Buddhism. And with Zen, what's the classic question in Zen? What is the sound of one hand clapping? So one of the things that Eastern religions can tend to go into is embracing contradiction. Whereas we have an idea in Western logic, A is not non-A, Embracing contradiction can be a part of Eastern religions and worldviews. The usual sense of Western logic does not apply.

It is one reason why science did not develop out of the Eastern world. Because science developed out of Western logic. Now, it doesn't mean that the Eastern world doesn't have science, they do, but it's imported from the West. There's actually some very good Eastern scientists out of Japan and China and places like that. But science originated within Christianity and the Christian worldview.

It's imported into the East. Let's take a look at the top of page three. In Buddhism, you have the four noble truths. Life means suffering. The origin of suffering is attachment. The cessation of suffering is attainable. And the path to the cessation of suffering, enlightenment, is eightfold. The eightfold path to enlightenment.

Now, does any of this have to do with God? Not fundamentally, right? Then, who saves you? You save yourself, and it's not salvation in the sense of my restoring a relationship with God. It basically has nothing to do with God. Nothing to do with God.

So here is the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, which is referred to as point number four of the Four Noble Truths. Right view, right intention, that's wisdom. Right speech, right action, that's ethical conduct. And then livelihood. And then right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration is mental development.

Nancy and I were at the Grand Tetons. And interestingly enough, we were going across the lake and there was a boat driver and nobody else got on the boat but Nancy and I. So they waited around and nobody else came. So Nancy and I were traveling across the lake and the boat driver had just graduated in religion, bachelor's degree in religion. And I said, you know, what conclusions have you drawn studying religion for several years?

She said, well, yeah, conclusion I reached is if you want special states of consciousness, go for Buddhism. If you want truth, go for Christianity. So that's a very interesting conclusion. As brought forward at the outset, Hinduism and Buddhism share similarities of assumptions about the world and life which make it possible to present perspectives that the two religions have in common. Like Hinduism, reincarnation and karma are generally central to the life and worldview of Buddhism. Also like Hinduism, there are aspects of Buddhism historically which do not set well with typical modern viewpoints.

Point one, women were considered a lower level of reincarnation than a man. So it's very chauvinist in its viewpoint. All other considerations and factors aside, modern Buddhism has tended to update this viewpoint where it has encountered the influence of feminism. But historically, women were considered to be a lower level of reincarnation. Let's ask this question. In Christianity, is a woman's position in Christ any different from a man's position in Christ? No, no difference.

As a matter of fact, 1 Peter 3.7, Peter says, show her honor as a joint heir of the grace of life.

Though there are many local variations within Buddhism, as with Hinduism, reincarnation and karma have tended to degrade into profound neglect, subjugation and abuse of animals and or people that are viewed as lower or retrogressive in the series of reincarnations. Buddhism had also been presented as kind and loving. As one would expect, apologists for Buddhism would indicate that such skewed teachings and practices are not correct, unenlightened, exceptions, etc. But the historical basis for these disgusting viewpoints and the logical consequences of reincarnation and karma remain. Let's take a look at some slides here. We looked at this last time. The Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, What we looked at previously, the Aryan religions, it's called, or Hinduism and Buddhism.

The views of history. The materialist view is history is either random and meaningless or mechanical and meaningless. The Eastern view is rooted in reincarnation, is history is fundamentally cyclical. Fundamentally cyclical. Whereas in the Western view, history is going somewhere. Not only do we have one life in the Western view, but history is going somewhere. One of the things that comes out of passages like Ephesians 1, 9, and 10 is all things are being summed up in Christ. God is managing all of history to the end that everything will be summed up in Christ.

So history is going somewhere, and that linear viewpoint is primary. In the Eastern viewpoints, everything is cyclical, based on reincarnation, cycles and cycles and cycles, and a great many cycles. If it takes 8.4 million reincarnations to get to the point of being a human being, that's lots of cycles. And the cycle, the circle of life and death, ends up dominating. That's the ultimate viewpoint. Everything is cyclical rather than linear.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam, history is linear. It's aimed towards a purpose and you have one life here. Lots of differences between Christianity, Judaism and Islam and within But in general, that's the big picture, that you've got one life here, right? One life here, and that's it. And then you're going somewhere else. You won't be here.

Here's a quote from Buddha. Through many a birth wandered I, seeking the builder of this house. Sorrowful indeed is birth again and again. So here is a picture for Hinduism. And I put there in Buddhism, that's the prayer wheel, right? So Buddha's last words, everything that has been created is subject to decay and death. Everything is transitory. Work out your own salvation with diligence. Buddha's last words. Work out your own salvation with diligence.

Another aspect of this that touches on scripture is that, have you ever heard of the Silk Road? This was an existence between Old Testament and New Testament times. So a couple centuries before the New Testament era, there was a trade from the East, and that got to be called the Silk Road, and it came into biblical places. Ephesus and Colossae and Antioch were all on roads that were part of the Silk Road network for trading in the Orient. So the Eastern philosophies and religions also came in with that trade. So we're buying and selling stuff, but we're also buying and selling ideas. And so a lot of those came into places, and so those were encountered by those Christians who were there in these cities. Antioch was actually the first place in the Roman Empire that the Silk Road encountered. And then for trade farther in to Rome and places toward the west, they came through Colossae and Ephesus.

So, here's Colossians 2.8, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. One of the things in the Roman Empire that it was completely legal to do is people could mix and match different religions.

Oh, I do this and this and this and this and this one. And it was thought to be fine to just worship this god and this one and this one. I've got this other little philosophy here. And mixing and matching and just kind of making your own personal blend was just fine. Nobody thought anything of it.

The one thing you had to do was worship the emperor. But that's just sort of to prove that you're loyal, patriotic. But everything else you can mix and match however you want it. And you can mix and match from different cultures. In Philippi, they had temples to Egyptian gods. So mixing and matching was just fine. And that's one of the things that comes out of the Eastern view is mixing and matching things is fine in the Eastern view because you can embrace things that are logically in contradiction.

One of the reasons for our looking at this, ever heard the idea that everybody worships the same God? Well, one of the things we see here is no they don't. Is God personal or impersonal? Or in some branches of Buddhism, no God at all. And so this idea that we worship the same God, in Christianity, That God is a God who is infinite and morally absolute, and He has certain character qualifications, and He's personal, and we're made in His image. That's not the case with Islam, and it's not the case with the Eastern religions, if they believe in a God at all. So there are distinctions, and it's not all the same God.

And so that's one of the reasons for understanding this, is just, wait a minute, we've got some important distinctions here, and it does make a difference. And part of the viewpoint is, what happens when this life is done? What happens when this life is done? What am I expecting is next?

That's huge. That's really big. Am I personally, going to meet the Lord, who is a personal being, or am I just dying in order to get ready for the next life? With an absolute, graceless law of karma determining what's next. And there's no way around it, I'm just going to go through millions and millions of reincarnations. Is that what's happening? And since I'm going to go through millions and millions of reincarnations, does it really matter what I do or don't do in any particular one?

Yeah? So with karma, if you do something bad, you get bad karma. So where's the definition of good and bad? Good question. That's not revealed, is it? Because you don't have a personal god who is fundamentally a moral creature and unchangeable, you don't have a personal God revealing good and bad to you. So you're left to guess. Here's a picture of the Eastern world. So what happened to Thomas the Doubter? Here's another interesting connection with the Eastern viewpoint here. Here's Thomas the Doubter starting about here.

He ended up in Madras, India. Both the Christians in India as well as external documents indicate that's where he ended up. Very interesting. So that's where this guy said, no, I don't believe Christ was resurrected. And then a week later, yes, he was.

He ended up going through Babylon and Persia and ending up in India, taking the gospel there. Interestingly, shortly after that, Bible story depictions have been found on Eastern Han Dynasty tombstones in China dating from 86 AD with Bible stories in them. And not just Old Testament stories, although there's that, but pictures of Christ's birth, etc. So the Gospel went from Thomas to others over into China, before the New Testament was finished. Isn't that amazing? So the Gospel was taken there then. Here's another one. What would Buddha do? What would Jesus do? What would Buddha do? I've shown you some hats. What would Moses do? That kind of thing has been carried along.

So here's John 14.6, expanded from the Greek text. Jesus said to him, I being in fact God, because that's the I am, egoe me, right? In contradistinction to anyone else and the singular way and the singular truth and the singular life, no one comes to the Father but that he comes through me exclusively.

This is the ultimate meaning of John 14.6, the language there. Does that exclude the other paths? Yes. He makes an exclusive statement. The tendency of the Eastern religions and worldview is to incorporate Jesus into the mix. Sri Ramakrishna lived during the middle 1800s. Hindu. Very much admired in Hinduism.

He meditated on various things over the course of his life and one of them he meditated on was Jesus. He just incorporated it. He didn't understand this, that Jesus exclusively, being in fact God, exclusively is the way, the truth, and the life. Here's Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, For by grace you have been saved, and that's perfect tense, completed past action, ongoing results into the future, through faith, and that salvation is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Christianity and its perspective on salvation is in sharp contrast with the Eastern religions and the other Western religions. It is unique. For someone to summarize it and say, have different paths to God, the Bible doesn't support that at all.

Here's John 3.16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. It's specific to Him, isn't it? And it's personal. You personally, and Him personally. Specific to Him.

There's nothing in what I've just quoted here that points to other paths. There's nothing that says you save yourself. Alright, other thoughts, comments, questions? So on your comment there, on your handout there for the ways to enlightenment, I thought that was interesting because it's a very conservative approach. You have to have a right view and a right intention and a right speech. These little things are liberally.

It's been interesting since I've worked downtown in a major corporation. We have a lot of folks who are from India and other places, and so I've come into contact with a diverse religious culture that really was not part of my previous exposure. What's fascinating is that I've got an Indian co-worker who's Muslim, and he It's very liberal, socially and politically liberal. because he was part of a minority in Hinduism, and they're incredibly oppressive and negative. He posts news articles very regularly on Facebook, and so I've read them over time, and there's one Hindu leader calling for the sterilization of Christians and Muslims in India, and those kinds of strong statements.

I was like, what? How is that? I mean, I don't know how that fits in with karma or anything else, but... It's amazing how those religions in India have met, along with Christianity, in ways that are very different socially than they did in the Middle East and Rome.

It is interesting, as you look at these various religions, almost all of them have some spectrum of pacifism to being very military and enforcement-minded. That's almost a universal pattern. Within Hinduism, there are some that are very forceful and military in their perspective.

In Buddhism, that was the religion of Japan when they attacked Pearl Harbor. The fellow who led that attack was Mitsuo Fushida. who after the war became a Christian. And my dad, as part of a network of pilots, used to fly him from Christian speaking engagement to another. So I actually got to spend time with him. But he was Buddhist all the way through the end of the war. A very interesting thing. Mitsuo Fushida was with the team that went into Hiroshima right after the bomb had been dropped, and because they didn't understand radiation, all the rest of his team that went into Hiroshima died quickly. Mitsuo Fushida, I think the Lord miraculously preserved him from that, and he became a believer, and by that time the rest of the people were dead, or soon to be dead, Mitsuo Fushida lived continuing his Christian testimony until 1976, a miraculous event.

But he was Buddhist and so this is an example of Buddhism will have everything from pacifism to being very military in its viewpoint. Another thing I find interesting in the United States is that the spread of atheism has actually come with a lot of atheists bracing pieces of Buddhism within that structure, because it sounds peaceful and friendly and nice. I think that's an interesting viewpoint.

Here's atheism embracing a religion, and it's because Buddhism has... I mean, if you look at the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, is it in conflict with atheism? Not really. And Christians are embracing Buddhism. There's an interesting conflict with the, as we'll address it later, contemplative spirituality or spiritual formation that's being embraced now. You go to Westmont College and they've got the Dallas Willard building. And so that's basically Christian Buddhism. So Christians are embracing Buddhism and atheists are embracing Buddhism.

Very interesting contradiction, apparently. It doesn't have to be a religion in the traditional sense. That's right. It allows people to grab pieces of it and feel like they haven't done anything contradictory. And it's a part of the Eastern viewpoint that is very syncretistic. I can take parts of it and Assemble that with other things and make my own. Customize it, personalize it.

Okay, let's pray and call it good here. Lord, we thank you just for your word that makes things clear. And also we see great distinction here. Are we looking forward to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us? the moment we close our eyes in death or are we just going through an endless cycle of reincarnations impersonal in the end and Lord you've given an answer to that and we thank you for making that clear because you love us and care for us we pray in Jesus name amen