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Encountering World Religions: Living with Hinduism · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the central Schreinfelder Church's pumpkin.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the Middle Way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're going to speak about encountering world religions living with Hinduism.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this is an increasingly greater issue for us as Americans as we encounter world religions in a variety of ways.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Just this year, 30 to 35% of Americans will travel outside of the country.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: If we do not travel outside of the country this year, 76% of us as Americans will travel outside of the country in our lifetimes.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's also a questioning about Christian distinctives and the benefits of Christianity when we hear of wars that are taking place between Ukraine and Russia, or the conflict in Northern Ireland between Protestants and Catholics over the years.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Many of us as Americans are have been exposed to the staggering number of refugees in our world, many of which are coming even to America.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: And today, as we think about Hinduism, the second largest immigrant group in Pennsylvania are those from India.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's important to be able to understand what Hinduism is, what it's about, and how we as Christians can live with it and also be consistent in our faith as well.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And to that end, we have Dr.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Rob Arner joining us today.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: He's been on Centrally Speaking Beforehand.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's also a board member of the Congregational Institute from the Central Schwankfeller Church, where even this past June we addressed living with world religions and particularly had a session on Hinduism.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Rob has taught world religions at Temple University at Cheston Hill College and now is a professor at St.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: Joseph's University.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, Rob, welcome again.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're very glad to have you.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Happy to talk to you, Drake.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Very glad that you can help us think through things about Hinduism in our area and living with them.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So let's start first with some statistics.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: How many followers of Hinduism are there in the Philadelphia area?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And how many Hindu temples are within the Greater Philadelphia area?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had to do a little bit of uh research on this one.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I did a search for Hindu temples in Google and a couple of search engines, and I was able to identify about 12 Hindu temples in the Philadelphia region, both in the city and in the surrounding counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: The largest Hindu temple outside of India in the entire world is located in Robinsville, New Jersey, very close to us, maybe an hour away or so from where I live in Richborough.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Akshardam Mandir.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Mandir is the Sanskrit word for temple.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's gigantic.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: The pictures that you will see online, they're just breathtaking in how beautiful this place is.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: It is a cultural touchstone of the Hindu culture in this region.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: In New Jersey alone is home to about 278,000 Hindus, making it the American state with the highest number of Hindu practitioners in the country.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: In Philadelphia and in the surrounding counties, there are about 128,000 to 158,000 Hindu in this region.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of people in this area and a large increase over the years in an area that would have hardly had any Hindus in maybe about 30, 40 years ago, right?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: In my region, I went to uh Council Rock High School, and we we live in the Council Rock district now.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was growing up in school, we had off for Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, as well as Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Nowadays, my kids have off for Diwali, which is the large Hindu festival of lights celebrating the victory of light over darkness.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's the biggest Hindu festival in most brands of Hinduism.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: That testifies to the increase in population of Hindus in our region.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the increase of its influence if it's now leading to public school holidays.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Many of our listeners might not know about how old Hinduism is and where it came from.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Could you just give us some basic background on how old is this religion and what is its main origin?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Unlike other world religions like Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, in which we can pinpoint an actual historical date for their founding, we can't do that with Hinduism.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Religious scholars believe that Hinduism is the oldest religious tradition in the world, and its real origins are shrouded in the mists of time, back before recorded human history.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: There is no one single founder or any one specific date for its founding.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Rather, it seems that elements of the Hindu worldview came together gradually over centuries in India.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: It did definitely did originate in India, but before history even began to be written down.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Does it have any overlap with Christianity?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do we have any similarities between the two?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it depends on how you answer that question, I guess.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But at least in terms of doctrine and official belief, very little.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's very little overlap between what Hindus actually believe and biblical Christian convictions.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: The most overlap that we could assert between the two is this broadly shared sense of the transcendent and the supernatural, that there's a spiritual plane of reality higher than the physical material world.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Beyond that, there's very little that they have in common.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is really important to realize is that a lot of Hinduism's cultural impact in our world is more on the unofficial scale.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of bleedover of the Hindu worldview into Western pop culture.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the pluralist metaphor that you might hear in some circles of religions as different paths up the same mount or rivers that all flow into the same sea.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's fundamentally a Hindu concept based on their conviction that all that exists is Brahma.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is the same reality, maybe under different names.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that relativism is, of course, a major facet of postmodernism today.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of reincarnation, which is so widespread in pop culture, is a cornerstone facet of the Hindu worldview.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I saw a survey by the Barnett group that about 20% of Americans and a similar percentage of Americans that identify as Christians believe firmly in some kind of reincarnation after they die, even though reincarnation is not a belief that is even remotely suggested in the Bible.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So these elements of Hindu syncretism are finding their way into American worldviews, even among practicing Christians.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then it shows up in things like films and novels or song.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think of some of the songs that talk about the world just being as one.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's a Hindu idea, more so than a Christian idea.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Great example.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, John, John Lennon, the the the new age spirituality of the 60s and 70s, that directly corresponds with the time in which Hindu belief started permeating into the United States.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: It arrived first on the West Coast in San Francisco and from there spread spread all over the place.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Since we're talking about differences here, of course, that Christianity believes in a triune God, but Hinduism, not into that, into many gods and many goddesses.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: What are we talking about here?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Five, seven, a hundred?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can you give us an idea?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is more than I can count.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: One popular statistic that was cited in a blog I read that was written by a Hindu practitioner claims 33 million gods.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But how anybody ever quantified that number is beyond me.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it it is very clear, even to a casual observer, that there's a vast number of different gods and goddesses that Hindu devotees reverence, just to name a few.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: The three big ones are uh Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the sustainer, and Shiva, the destroyer, and Kali, and Ganesh.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: But, and I think this is really important to make a distinction here, it would be incorrect to say that Hinduism is polytheistic, like the Greek and Viking mythologies or uh the Babylonian worldview.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Although there are these many gods, they are not distinct from one another, you might say.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: In Hinduism, all the gods and goddesses that you may encounter are revered as different manifestations of Brahman.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Brahman is it's certainly the most important concept in Hinduism.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: One phrase that religious studies scholars use to describe it is uh Brahman is the universal world soul or the ultimate reality, and everything that exists is Brahman.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Material things, uh, spiritual things, animals, plants, people, even the gods and goddesses are all Brahman.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hinduism is not, properly speaking, polytheistic, but good religious studies word to describe it its worldview is pantheistic.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Pantheism is a word that at its root means all is God.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because fundamentally, that is what Hindus believe, that everything is Brahman.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, very different than uh the Christian faith, uh, where there is a triune God and certainly not 33 million gods.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: A separation between the creator and the creation.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're they're different.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yes.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes, very much so.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just curious here, from your interactions with Hindus and your studies in Hinduism, how many gods does the average uh Hindu know?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it just they know there's a large number that are out there?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Most devout Hindu families will have a shrine with statues of these different gods and goddesses.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're favorites.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because in Hindu religion, all the gods and goddesses are manifestations of Brahman, it doesn't really matter which one you worship because ultimately you are participating in the same religion, whether you're worshiping Vishnu or whether you're worshiping Ganesh.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you pick the one that you relate to the most or that your family has revered for for generations.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's uh very much uh within boundaries, it's kind of like a choose your own path religion in that respect.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Choose your own uh path.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it does have sacred texts, correct?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: What would you call, I mean, the sacred text, of course, of Christianity, uh the Bible.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: What what is the the sacred text uh for for the Hindu and uh what what language is it written in?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So because of the diversity of Hinduism, there's no like universally agreed on uh sacred text, but the one that I think most Hindus would revere and and um have at least some knowledge of their texts that are called the Vedas.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: The word Veda in Sanskrit means knowledge.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the the Indian dialect that they were written in.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they were originally composed and passed down orally.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because Hinduism originated in a prehistorical context, a pre-literate context.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: They were composed by we don't know who and passed down orally over the generations, only being eventually written down centuries later.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So sometime after 1500 BC, they were written down, some somewhere between 1500 and 500 BC.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the Vedas are a wide variety of literature genres.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh poetry and philosophy and like wisdom literature about how to live a good life.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then there are some uh some narrative parts of it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the most famous narrative portion of the Vedas would be uh the Bhagavad Gita, a word that means uh the song of God.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a very popular story of Krishna, who was an avatar or a manifestation of the god Vishnu, who appeared to a charioteer named Arjuna and urged him to do his duty and revealed the oneness of the universe to Arjuna in the process.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the Bhagavad Gita is a very popular Hindu text, probably the most popular Hindu text.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: And what's the quality of the text?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is it in good shape?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is it does it have holes in it?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, been reproduced in multiple ways?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Just do you have any comments on them?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: With the Christian New Testament, we have a whole cottage industry of scholars studying the thousands of Greek manuscripts that testify to the reliability of the transmission from the time they were written in the first century down until they were standardized with the printing press.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: But with the Vedas, we don't really have a manuscript tradition.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are ancient manuscripts that are now centuries, even more than a thousand years old.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: But even the oldest manuscripts that we have are at least a thousand years after the Vedas were originally written down.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, and even longer than they were composed.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a a great gap in terms of the the textual transmission.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Not not something that's not something I'm I'm a major expert on.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Let's uh talk about the problems that Hinduism tries to overcome.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, most religions have a uh a problem, a difficulty that uh they're trying to deal with, of course, in Christianity.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's the problem of sin, uh wrongdoing uh that's either committed or um uh some uh some uh good that has been omitted.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: What's the problem in Hinduism that they're trying to that the the Hindu is trying to overcome?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Every good worldview has a problem and a solution to it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the solution to sin, you know.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: But in the Hindu worldview, the problem is actually the individual existence.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta explain something about the Hindu worldview here that makes it very, very different from the Christian and the monotheistic worldview is their view of time.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So in the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview, we view time as essentially linear, like a timeline.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was a there's a beginning to the story.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're somewhere in the middle now, and one day there will be an end, you know, resurrection, kingdom of God, new heaven and new earth.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: But in the Hindu worldview, the Eastern worldview, it is it's very, very different.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's time is best viewed as a cycle, it's cyclical rather than linear, like an eternal wheel.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: It had no beginning, no endpoint, only endless repetition.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: What goes around comes around.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the this cycle of repetition of time is called samsara.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's an important Hindu word.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's the the cycle of repetition that also describes the reincarnation cycle.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Within Hinduism, the individual person or essence is called an Atman, A-T-M-A-N, and an Atman is stuck in this endless cycle of birth, death, rebirth for all eternity.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because life here on earth is often full of suffering.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: This endless wheel of samsara reincarnation is a bad thing.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Metaphor that comes to my mind.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: You go to an amusement park, you get on a roller coaster, you enjoy the ride, it's a lot of fun.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Scream, you know, lots of fun.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: But imagine now you're stuck on a roller coaster for all eternity, just going around and around the same track, and the ride never stops to let you off.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is that fun?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe at first, but over time it grows wearisome.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: You want to get off the ride eventually.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And for Hindus, being constantly subject to birth, death, and rebirth with no end in sight is not an attractive prospect.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So for Hindus, the reincarnation cycle is a problem to be solved.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: They want to stop the reincarnation cycle.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then when one stops the reincarnation cycle, what do you call it?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is this uh nirvana?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, nirvana is a uh is a Buddhist concept.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's that was kind of like Buddha's uh transformation of the Hindu word.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: The ultimate goal of the Hindu life is something quite different from a Christian concept of life after death, like resurrection or being with the Lord, because samsara or the endless reincarnation cycle is itself the problem.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Finding a way to get out of it is the goal of the Hindu life.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that goal is known as moksha, M-O-K-S-H-A.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Sanskrit word that means release.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Moksha is when your individual Atman or essence is able to break free from the samsara cycle.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: But breaking free is not like freedom from, it's freedom to cease to be you, to cease to be an individual, you might say.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because an individual who attains moksha and is released from the reincarnation cycle is absorbed into the totality of Brahman.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: They become part of everything, you might say.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: One analogy that some Hindu writers use is picture a drop of rain falling onto the surface of the ocean.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: While it's falling, the raindrop has its own individual contours, its own spatial dimensions, it takes up its own space and it's and it's separated and distinct from the other droplets.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: But once it strikes the ocean's surface, the drop essentially ceases to be as an individual.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's absorbed into the totality of the ocean, like a drop in the ocean.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what moksha is.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's absorption into Brahma, the totality of the entire universe.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the trade-off, though, is that you cease to be you, you become one with everything.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the goal.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's the goal, is to get out of the reincarnation cycle.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: So very different than the new heaven, new earth that is promised in uh in the Christian faith.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, with uh the influx of Hindus, uh Hinduism in our area, you know, a number of our listeners might find themselves talking to somebody who's Hindu, and maybe a conversation comes up about religion.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: How how do you start to talk about religion uh with someone who's Hindu?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be a very different ball of wax than speaking to a skeptic or a non-believer.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because Hindus, people from uh eastern religions, operate with a very different conception of truth than Christians do.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hindus generally do not seek to convert people to Hinduism, they don't actively go out and try to make disciples for Shiva or Vishnu.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's some examples like the Hare Krishna's.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: They actively seek converts, but the vast majority of Hindu believers don't.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because of their ideological pluralism, they believe that everybody is already following their own path toward Brahman.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're Christian or Muslim or Hindu or an animist or atheist, even.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody is on their own path to moksha and absorption into Brahman.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no, in the Hindu mindset, there's no inherent advantage to being a Hindu over being somebody else of another religion, except maybe you might say that the Hindu person might say that they have a clearer grasp of what is true.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: When Christians quote Jesus as saying that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that nobody comes to the Father except through him, Hindus hear Jesus saying that he is a real path to moksha and Brahman.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: But they would disagree that he is the only path.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the most foundational question that we can ask of Hindus is what they believe the nature of truth is.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is everything true?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is everything pointing toward moksha and Brahman?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or is there a meaningful distinction between what is true and what is false?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Only if we can get a person to agree to the foundational principle that there is such a meaningful thing as truth and falsehood, can we actually make progress toward any kind of a common understanding?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: I guess in the middle of that, about is everything true?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, who is Jesus to the Hindu?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Is he is he a truth of many truths or uh an exclusive truth?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: For a Hindu person, Jesus is, they would say, a way to moksha, to Brahman, to absorption into Brahman, but not the way.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: So they would not seek to pull you away from your devotion to Jesus because they view Jesus as a valid path to enlightenment and release, just as valuable as their own.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Different from uh the the Perspective, isn't it?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: So well, with Hindus coming into this area for migration, immigration, uh, a number of our listeners might find themselves uh not only uh befriending, but maybe being invited to a Hindu home.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: How does one behave as a Christian in a Hindu home?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any uh advice for us?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like I mentioned at the outside, like there are now enough Hindus in my school district to justify the school district having off for Diwali.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So letting the light of Jesus shine to your Hindu neighbors is gonna look different in some ways to sharing the love of Christ with your secular agnostic neighbors.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: But in all cases, it's gonna involve treating them as individuals, created in the image and likeness of God just like you are, so that you know the foundation of respect and love has to come first.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Just like missionaries are taught very early on in their missionary training, not to see the people that they are ministering to as targets, you know, but as people to be loved, not targets for conversion, although that is the hope and prayer, but as our neighbors to be loved.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so generosity and charity and presence are going to be our duties toward our Hindu neighbors, regardless of the circumstances, even as we hold fast to the truth that God has revealed in Scripture through Jesus Christ.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I can think of one particular pastoral model that might illustrate some of the pitfalls that may come when you make Hindu friends.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's going to be interesting issues that you may have never dealt with before in your life.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do when your Hindu neighbor invites you over for dinner?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: The food that they serve very well may have been offered first to one of the Hindu gods and goddesses, whose shrine and statues you may see in their home as an act of devotion to Shiva, for example.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do with that food?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is eating that food participation in idolatry?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And thankfully, scripture gives us a little bit of a compass on that matter.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: In the first century, when Paul was planting churches among the Gentiles, many of the early of the first generation of Christians would be surrounded by pagan neighbors who would invite them over for dinner and serve them food that had been offered first to a statue of their god of the of the Greek and Roman gods like uh Zeus or Ares or Athena.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So Paul's advice in 1 Corinthians is really, really important about what to do, how to react, how to regard the food that is set before you.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there are two particular passages I would I would look at and hold both of these in tension with each other.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Christians should give a good close reading to 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and 1 Corinthians chapter 10, especially verses uh 14 to 33.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the apostle offers some very practical and nuanced answers to that very question.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's very practical then.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Rob appreciate directing people to those passages that warn uh not to be eating from idolatry, but also at the same time being kind and appreciative to hosts may also involve some wisdom, won't it?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit gives us that.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, he does.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate you taking some time today to talk with us about living with Hinduism.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Any final comments for us today?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I would uh examine your own Christian beliefs and ask yourself whether you are already being influenced by Hinduism without knowing it, especially in matters like reincarnation, karma, and pluralism.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, as these have uh seeped into the fabric of our uh modern world and uh find their way into song and movies and uh and other public discourse.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for the challenge, and thank you for this this interview, Rob.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, may God's blessings be with you.