Many Ways or One Way?
Rosemarie Buxton of Episcopal Divinity School wrote in response to Professor Stephen Prothero’s book (God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter) and his article (Separate Truths) in the Boston Globe on April 25, 2010:
According to Karen Armstrong, the difficulties arise when one religion sets itself apart as the one religion and chooses to do anything to defend itself, a sin that many religions have been guilty of throughout history.
Coming from the pen of a Christian Divinity school graduate, i am very disappointed at the above statement.
Mankind is but one-kind. And so is creation-kind. Can an offspring say that he has two fathers or two mothers? That is not only vulgar but also foolish. That there is but one God, the creator of heaven and earth transcends any sort of debate.
Now, there are a lot of injustices that are going unpunished by the government(s). The socio, economic, political, environmental crisis we are seeing today is testimony of that fact. Justice is not being meted out to all. That is why the Bible stresses on the Day of Judgment, when the Lord of lords and the King of kings will be seated on the throne and render justice to the nations.
Now for this justice to be rendered with equity, there needs to be one law that is self-evident and transcends all other laws. This Law is the Law of Agape Love that Jesus kept and “exceeded the righteousness of the Pharisees” of His time and went and sat at the right hand side of God to judge the world.
“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for His friends” ~ Lord Jesus Christ (John 15:13). How much more “self-evident” and transcendent can you get.
To say that there are other ways or back-doors to God is an affront to the living God who is Jehovah Jireh–the One who provided this Way–an excruciating death for His son the Lord Jesus Christ only in order to fulfill the transcendent AND self-evident truth in John 15:13 as stated above. If there were indeed other ways then God was a stupid fool to take His son through this excruciating death. So excruciating that the Lord’s sweat turned into blood well before He was going to be crucified because He knew what kind of pain He will have to suffer.
So, i believe, after the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bhagavad Gita’s reference namely:
“As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!”
and
“Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.”
apply to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself–all streams have to end up with Him. In other words, at the Judgment Seat of Christ!
For more on these lines, please read this article especially tailored for an Agnostic or one who is secular: http://truthunleashed.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20
China’s methods of subverting USA and INDIA
There is an insidious attack by the Chinese–it appears–to subvert India and other non-communist states. A case in point is how the Chinese toy industry is used to sabotage Gun-Control that states like India enjoy today.
I was shocked when i saw this gun in my son’s possession. He bought it by himself in a nearby shop for INR 30 (USD 0.75). It turned out to be a toy gun. I had to explain to him at length how when someone sees this in his possession, they might act in self defense and hurt him. My blood brother Sudeep Motupalli Rao from San Francisco was also with us on a conference to tell him that it is a slippery slope to the real thing. Very soon he would want to use the real guns to get back at someone he does not like. He told him how guns are designed to not merely hurt a person but to kill a life which has survived fifty, seventy years through the world system.
In the United States, it is mandated now to make Toy Guns with a color to reveal that they are toys. But China, he said, has other ways that are also “insidious.” For instance, jewelery used to contain Lead but when the government banned import of Lead based Jewelery, China is exporting Jewelery that contains Cadmium, which is more dangerous than Lead. Sudeep holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering with a PhD in Environmental Engineering.
Coupled with this insidious attack through the toy industry, China through the Olympic committee gave India the only Gold medal. Now every kid should imitate Bindra–the sole model for them.
Whether China is deliberately doing this sort of thing is everyone’s guess. China could very well be a puppet in the hands of a much greater force, namely the MNCs. What remains however, is that we are battling against principalities in the heavenly realms to safeguard our neighborhoods.
The first world where most of the MNCs have their headquarters know very well that it is the Standard of Living that determines free flow of human capital back to its roots. They saw the devaluation of the American Dream in the World Trade Center attack. They now want to rub off the same thing on other countries as well especially on vulnerable countries like India where the person who has a voice at all, wears merely handloom clothing, which in their eyes lacks sophistication and therefore an easy target. Khadi served to make India self-reliant during freedom struggle. But in the global economy which is dominated by services, India has to show its clout. I recommend Sherwanis for the Indian political figures and IFS officers rather than the demoted handloom dress code.
Calvinism Debunked!
“Proponents who deny that salvation can never be lost, reason on the subject in a marvelous way. They tell us …..
That no virgin’s lamp can go out; (Matt. 25:8)
That no promising harvest be chocked with thorns; (Matt. 13:22)
That no branch in Christ can ever be cut off from fruitfulness; (John 15:6)
That no name can be blotted out of God’s book! (Rev. 3:5)
That no salt can ever lose its savor; (Mat 5:13)
That nobody can ever “receive the grace of God in vain”; (2 Cor. 6:1)
That no one can “look back” after putting his hand to the plow. (Luke 9:62)
That Nobody can “grieve the Spirit” (Eph 4:30) till He is “quenched,” (1 Thess. 5:19) nor
That Nobody, or body of believers, can ever get so lukewarm that Jesus will spew them out of His mouth. Rev 3:16
They use reams of paper to argue that …
If one ever got lost he was never found;
That if one falls, he never stood.
If one was ever cast forth, he was never in
If one ever withered, (John 15:6) he was never green.
If one draws back, (Heb 10:38) he never had anything to draw back from.
That if one ever falls into spiritual darkness, he was never enlightened;
That if you again get entangled in the pollutions of the world, (2 Pet. 2:20-22) it shows that you never escaped.
That if you put salvation away, you never had it to put away,
That if you make shipwreck of your faith, (1 Tim. 1:19-20) there was no ship of faith there.
In short they say:
If you get it, you can’t lose it: and if you lose it you never had it. May God save us from accepting a doctrine, that must be defended by such fallacious reasoning. (John Wesley)
A Dichotomy for ChurchState?
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”) of 2006 teaches that justice is the defining concern of the state and the central concern of politics, and not of the church, which has charity as its central social concern. The laity has the specific responsibility of pursuing social justice in civil society. The church’s active role in social justice should be to inform the debate, using reason and natural law, and also by providing moral and spiritual formation for those involved in politics. (Source: Social Justice, Wikipedia)
Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California quotes Martin Luther King Jr. as saying: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”
I respectfully disagree with them. First off, because Justice (which is attributed to the state) and Charity (which is attributed to the Church) are poles apart. Therefore, in order that there be no compromise on either (justice or love), both should operate in a single system—the ChurchState. In other words, in a single Court officiated by a single Judge, where there will always be a strong tension between both the Defender (charitable) and the Prosecutor (condemning). A church that settles for polemics remains a babe.
This very Court, in the absence of a neutral Judge (being that he is nominated and impeached at will by the state today), is in the hands of Media private enterprise, which can sway any side with money power. We should not give ourselves into such a resignation.