Ελληνικά για το θέμα: Από τους Μπαχάι στην Ορθοδοξία
In
a nutshell: I was born and raised Hindu, then was Baha’i for 5 years
(2002-2007) before becoming Christian and finding the Orthodox church.
How exactly did this happen?
Well, as a Hindu, what I learned about
other religions were that there are many paths up the same spiritual
mountain to reach God. Maybe even the belief that the differences
argued about between different religions are like the blind men in a
room with an elephant, each feeling a different part and jumping to a
different conclusion about what it is – each accurately describing in
his own way what one aspect of the elephant was like, but unable to see
the whole, and so thinking the others were wrong.So
I didn’t really care that other religions said different things on
certain subjects, I just followed “my” way that I inherited from my
family and culture. I believed there was great wisdom in it, and
assumed that other religions probably also had great wisdom in them. I
became interested in reading about other religions as a hobby – and
loved seeing that the core spiritual teachings/messages seemed similar –
about love, prayer, detachment, and renunciation of self.
It should be noted I wasn’t reading
about hardcore theology of various religions – I was reading the
writings of various spiritual masters, mystical works, mythology, stuff
like that. I had no urge to look deeper into this mystery of how there
were all these different religions, or of looking more closely at the
differences; I thought it was a waste of time, foolish.
One thing I didn’t realize though, was
that that whole blind men and elephant analogy? It assumes that no
particular religion truly has an understanding of God – well, I
understood that, but it didn’t really bother me. It never occurred to
me that possibly one of the religions actually sees the whole elephant,
rather than only seeing a part. The idea was that it didn’t matter –
you didn’t need to understand the elephant as an elephant to get to
God, in fact maybe it was humanly impossible anyway, for people to
conceive of these things. It never occurred to me that God might have
ever approached us with a very particular way that He wanted us to
approach Him, rather my focus was on our imperfect selves trying to
reach towards God.
Then I came across the Baha’i Faith –
it claimed to reveal the elephant itself, saying that in the past,
people were only ready to be exposed to whatever particular part God
saw was fit at the time. So all the previous religions were chapters
in one book, leading up to this chapter called the Baha’i Faith that
reveals the unity of all religions. But not in a mysterious way – it
sought to provide distinct proofs for this.
This is what finally made me start
looking analytically and critically at all the world religions,
including the Baha’i Faith, to see how God’s web of different religions
were really and truly connected. This was key – until I started being
more demanding, I was undiscerning in my happiness to just accept all
religions as they were, like different flavors of ice cream. I enjoyed
what flowed; I ignored what clashed, figuring it was just to be
expected, realistically.
Different people will see through
different lenses. But as a Baha’i, I was told that if I looked really
hard, I would see that all the different religions really were one, and
furthermore that all of them awaited a Messianic figure whom Baha’is
believed to have come in the person of Baha’u’llah in the 19th century,
founder of the Baha’i Faith. This fascinated me – and both to better
educate myself and also to be able to teach members of other religions
about the Baha’i Faith, I started studying.
Now rather than leaving it all up to
mystery, I said the Baha’i faith had specific explanations as to how
all the religions are different paths to one God, right? This was
critical – in the Hindu mindset, I would never had tools/measuring
sticks that I expected to actually work in this undertaking, so I would
never seriously have undertaken it, or would not have had a way of
disproving/testing/evaluating any of these beliefs about religions
being essentially equal. At best, I would have prayed like Sri
Ramakrishna, who claims that Jesus, Mohammed, and other figures came to
him when he prayed, and so he believed whomever you prayed to, God
would come to you in that form – he experienced that, so he believed
that, never thinking maybe it was a delusion.
As Orthodox monks say, you can have delusions, or you can even have demons that approach you as angels of light!
Anyway,
back to the story. The Baha’i Faith stated that all the different
religions have the same, unchanging, essential, ethical and spiritual
teachings about God and soul and our purpose, but have different social
teachings about externals, or even about things like marriage – these
changing teachings are meant to suit the particular people/culture/time
to whom the religion is brought by a Prophet/Manifestation. However,
sometimes even the unchanging spiritual teachings are lost or corrupted
over time, and that also explains for some of the differences.
We could only tell what was right by
measuring it against Baha’u’llah’s explanation of all that was true and
false, for he had come to restore truth. This starts a nice and neat
process of circular thinking for determining what was true and what was
false in all the various world religions, to make them all match the
Baha’i Faith. It can be used to explain away anything, to make night
appear to be day – in fact, Baha’u’llah even says that you mustn’t
question the Prophet/Manifestation, that you should even accept that
day is night if he tells you that. Then he also says we must be
independent investigators of truth, listening to no one – all these
contradictions, but everyone denies they are contradictory, believing
all these paradoxes are true in some mysterious spiritually wise way.
Well. So there I was, studying along,
when I hit on just one event that could not be explained away by Baha’i
cleverness. The Resurrection. Here at last, was the only and most
effective measuring stick of truth, to sort through the claims of
religions unity.
The Baha’i Faith, Islam, and
Christianity clearly taught different things about who Jesus was. Well,
the Baha’i Faith claimed to be able to reconcile these differences,
but it was too contrary to all evidence. Christians claimed that Jesus
was God, was the Son of God, and all this stuff about a trinity, which
really I had no idea what they were talking about.
They claimed this resurrection, which
made no sense to me – not that I didn’t believe Jesus couldn’t rise
from the dead if he were God, but I had no idea what possible relevance
that could have, since I didn’t know/understand about the Fall, sin,
the Final Resurrection – I assumed these were all myths, with no more
relevant deep meaning than a fairy tale, except maybe metaphorical
spiritual meanings. I wasn’t even interested, because I never
understood what importance that event should have to me.
No Christian had ever explained that to
me – they’d just say crazy stuff like, “I’ve been washed in the blood
of the Lamb, and now I’m saved! Jesus died for your sins! Don’t you
want to be saved?” then they’d paint portraits of Hell – it all made
zero sense to me, just as though someone said, “My red balloon popped
and then candy canes fell out of the sky, your rabbit is winking at me,
doesn’t all this make you want to buy a new Nissan?”
I am not exaggerating – this nutshell
“Gospel message” makes absolutely no sense to a non-Christian, no real
meaningful sense, anyway. You just have no idea what they are so
excited about – so Jesus rose from the dead, big whoop, so what? Good
for him, but….so what? He healed people…he was loving, kind, innocent,
born of a virgin, sinless…. so what? I didn’t even grow up with same
concept of sin as Christians do, so “sinless” vs. “sinner” didn’t mean
the same things to me as to a Christian anyway. In other words, we
lacked the same language/doctrine/context, so the whole message was
being lost in translation.
The same things happen when Americans
decide they are interested in Hindu things – I am always suspicious
when I hear people throwing around words like karma and dharma, etc.
Do they really understand what they are talking about? It also makes me
suspicious that I here more Americans talking about tantric sex and
other exotic things, whereas the Indian Hindus I knew were just taught
to be devoted to God and pray and go to the temple.
Sex was a taboo topic, maybe too taboo.
Anyway, the point of this tangent is, I always felt very misunderstood
by Christians who had these wild orgy type images of what it must be
like for my family to be Hindu, and I felt almost equally misunderstood
by Westerners who rejected their Christian upbringing to come to
Hinduism thinking along similar lines.
Getting back to the story: Since I
didn’t have a firm grasp on what Christians were saying, it was easy to
let other religions explain it to me. Hindus told me that Christ was
an avatar just like any other Hindu avatar, or that Christ was actually
a great yogi who had achieved self-realization. Indeed, when I read
the Gospels as Hindu, that’s exactly how it came across when I was left
to interpret things myself (so much for sola scriptura).
The Baha’i Faith stated that Jesus was a
Prophet/Manifestation, just like Mohammed and Baha’u’llah, Moses,
Abraham, Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Adam (I knew nothing about the Old
Testament, so I had no idea that the specific way in which these
figures were being likened to each other was highly dubious).
He
was born of a virgin, he was killed by crucifixion, but he was not
physically resurrected. Some Baha’is are shocked to learn that it is
in Baha’i scripture that there was NO physical resurrection or
appearance to the disciples at all – most Baha’is think nothing is said
about this subject other than if it happened, it wasn’t significant
anyway, what mattered was a “spiritual” resurrection of the dejected
disciples, who after 3 days regained their faith and bravery and went
out to teach the Gospel.
I found it in scripture – NO physical
resurrection. Mohammed taught that Jesus was not even crucified – how
could a prophet of God be given a shameful death? No, he wasn’t
crucified at all, God took him up to heaven instead, and someone else
was crucified in his place and made to appear to be him, tricking all
who viewed it. And yet, if they were tricked to think it was Jesus, why
are they being chastised by God for believing it was Jesus?
That question is not answered, and yet
this frightening Jesus is waiting till the end times to return and
break all the crosses, judge all the Christians for believing in it,
and to proclaim Islam as the true religion after all. In fact,
Mohammed teaches that Jesus was a Muslim. Okay, this was getting too
bizarre even for me, with my ability to rationalize any contradiction
thanks to Baha’i mental gymnastics skills.
Baha’u’llah said that Mohammed meant
that Jesus’ spirit could never be crucified, only his body – but I
really felt that Mohammed meant exactly what he adamantly said…. so
that made the first crack in my faith in Baha’u’llah’s teachings.
Also, the Baha’i Faith sought to explain the true meaning of the
trinity, whereas Mohammed ranted about the trinity concept being a huge
mistake – and described a false understanding of it to boot. So this
stuff wasn’t adding up.
To make it even more shocking, I
started reading about evidence for Christ’s resurrection – not only did
I feel there was more evidence supporting this event than we have for
other events which we take for granted as being historically true, from
reading the Gospels and knowing the horrible deaths these apostles
underwent, it became very clear to me that they really believed in a
physical resurrection, and they were dying for something more than this
“be nice to each other” message. The Baha’i explanation was that
superstitions arose about the nature of Christ and his resurrection,
whether it was shortly after Christ’s death or as later belief, which
caused people to re-interpret these historical happenings, to give a
false interpretation of the Bible.
Paul himself is quoted by Baha’is as
evidence against the physical resurrection of Jesus or anybody else for
that matter. I’ve even heard a Baha’i quote the story about doubting
Thomas as evidence against the resurrection – pointing out that though
Thomas asked to place his fingers into he wounds, when Christ appeared
and offered, it doesn’t state that Thomas actually DID…. the
implication being that Jesus was not truly physically present and that
had Thomas tried, he wouldn’t have managed to touch the wounds – guess
Jesus just outsmarted him!
Probably the only reason he “tricked”
him was because (as with the rest of Christ’s ministry, as described by
the Baha’i faith) miracles were necessary for these backwards people.
But later prophets, like Mohammed and Baha’u’llah, didn’t give
miracles, not because they didn’t have power, but because people were
supposed to be more mature than that.
Anyway, the trouble is, as some Baha’is
were forgetting, according to Baha’i scripture, there was no physical
resurrection or reappearance of the material form of Jesus at all
whatsoever. So the real, official Baha’I explanation is simply that
the resurrection only means that the disciples regained their faith and
courage after 3 days to go out and proclaim the Gospel. It was thus a
“spiritual resurrection”.
The Gospel (according to Baha’is) was
simply Christ’s spiritual teachings of how to lead a good life and to
love God, and that he himself was a Prophet/Manifestation, so better
listen up. And any tales of any other type of resurrection or Gospel
were the result of later misinterpretations. However, Baha’u’llah
states that the Bible is not corrupted; rather it is wrongly
interpreted (unlike Muslims, who believe the Bible text has been
corrupted itself – another difference between Baha’is and Muslims,
despite Baha’i claims that both religions are one). So basically, the
Gospels are supposed to be full of allegory, including the story of the
resurrection. Here’s the thing though, there are glitches.
For example, Baha’is believe the virgin
birth actually happened (Muslims believe this too). The
healing/feeding miracles – Baha’is say some happened, but they should
always be understood in a spiritual sense, since that is what is
important, not these material things, of course! (Muslims just believe
Jesus was granted the ability of miracles by God). The resurrection of
Christ though – this miracle is flat out denied.
Why is this the only miracle that is
taboo to both Muslims and Baha’is? I wanted to know – why would all
the other miracles be okay to believe, but not the resurrection? Also,
if the Baha’i teaching that the New Testament is mainly allegory and
spiritual teachings, not literal at all…. well, why did it read so
matter-of-factly?
It doesn’t read like a mystical,
symbolic work at all – it is very direct, simple, and to the point. I
simply couldn’t believe that it was not intended to mean exactly what
it said – and that the earliest martyrs did not believe in this
resurrection – in fact, based on my research, the resurrection seemed
to have been the most important part of the story, not relegated to the
back-burner behind Christ’s spiritual teachings, the way Baha’is would
have it. If it were a false belief, what kind of God would corrupt
the teachings so quickly? What would be the point? And back again to
the question – what is the big deal about this resurrection? Why is
everyone seeming fixated on this one crucial point that can’t be agreed
on, that simply must be denied by both Muslim and Baha’i scripture? I
mean, he’s already being born from a virgin, so what if he also rose
from the dead?
This is what really made me start to
feel suspicious that maybe the Gospel was more than the good news that
this great Prophet named Jesus had come along to tell everyone to love
each other and to love God. Not to belittle that message, but there
was more to the story. I didn’t know what that whole message was, but I
decided I ought to find out what all this ranting and raving about the
resurrection was all about and why I should care.
By this point I had already seen all the
holes poked into the Baha’i Faith, so I officially resigned from the
Baha’i Faith on July 7, 2007, and became a “Christian” by default. I
know that is really weird, but that’s exactly how it happened! I guess
I labeled myself Christian, but I didn’t know really what the Gospel
was about – just that there was this guy Jesus who seemed to have been
born of a virgin and died and then lived, and everyone was excited
about it. It wasn’t a religious experience or even a true
understanding, so I don’t know if I was really a Christian. I do know
that I don’t think any of this would have happened if a Christian
friend of mine hadn’t prayed for me at that time – seemed like I was
lost in my happy web of delusion until after he prayed for me and it
all came crashing down.
So that gave me faith in this religion
too. Basically, for the past year since resigning from the Baha’i
Faith, I’ve just been studying.
I wanted to find out what the original
teachings of the apostles were, and what Jesus really meant to say to
us, since this entire journey had made me keenly aware of the issue of
corrupted teachings versus true teachings. And lo and behold, it turns
out there were tons of books written by scholars ever since that event
happened, trying to sort all of this out.
I was glad the books were there, but I
was even more confused – if this Resurrection was supposed to be so
important, how could people have lost the original message of what it
meant and what Jesus really wanted us to believe, what the apostles
really taught? Why were people today still looking to uncover the
original church of Biblical times (“based on the latest research!”) – I
mean, how in the heck could they have lost that information if it was
so important? How could they go around getting everyone (myself
included) all riled up about worried about this, and then not be able
to tell us what we needed to know about it?
At the time, I only had access to
Protestant books, and they certainly helped some, but they still left
me feeling that a lot was unexplained or random or didn’t make sense. I
didn’t really start to understand the “Good News” until I was led to
the Orthodox Church just this past April, on Good Friday.
I was loaned the book “The Orthodox Church“,
and the rest was pretty much history – it convinced me that not only
was the original faith of the apostles uncorrupted, that in that same
line of reasoning/faith, the ancient church was still alive – and
almost as proof, that book finally made the Gospel start to make sense
to me! I definitely believed in the importance of the Holy Tradition –
I never understood the sola scriptura thing I was reading in the
Protestant Books – they didn’t seem to realize there were large gaps in
what they considered to be simple teachings/knowledge, because they
were all interpreting according to some mysterious code that I hadn’t
been exposed to, but claiming it was just all “written in the Bible”.
Having read the New Testament first as a Hindu and then as a Baha’i, I
knew firsthand that there are all kinds of different ways to sincerely
misinterpret scripture. So I was grateful to finally come to a church
that had the holy tradition guided by the Holy Spirit to explain
things.
Also, to know what we don’t know too.
My experience with the Baha’i faith and investigation into corruptions,
etc., had built up my faith in what these earliest Christian people
taught…. and I didn’t understand why Protestants couldn’t have this
same faith? They lacked faith, and called it true faith.
I didn’t believe their idea that the
church was corrupted until the first Protestants showed up…. it
reminded me of the Baha’i way of thinking, a lack of faith, a hole
which is later stopped up with creations/hopes/interpretations of one’s
own, all under the false pretense of “true knowledge” and “faith”,
when really they seem to be weaving a web of their own liking, without
even realizing it. An unconscious denial of the power of the Holy
Spirit, to either think the Holy Spirit has checked out, is too
mysterious to know His workings, or to reduce His workings to only
babbling, despite Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit who would lead
to all truth, these seem like strange beliefs for people who really
have faith in Christ and the Bible to believe.
Another thing I noticed that the few
times I went to a Protestant non-denominational church prior to finding
the Orthodox church, while I liked the sermons and I learned to like
some of the songs, it distinctly felt like a memorial service for
Christ. Well, he did say, “do this in remembrance of me”, so that’s
exactly what it felt like…and the communion seemed really random.
Like, well, this was the eccentric thing that Christ wanted us to do,
so let’s do it! I don’t think the members of the church thought it was
eccentric, but really – with no other meaning than the symbolic one,
it just all seemed kind or strange to me – like some antiquated
practice that withstood the test of time, the bread and wine eventually
transformed to a cracker the size of a cheezit and a shot of grape
juice, the same way the gladiatorial displays in the Roman coliseum
have maybe been transformed into modern day football games in stadiums.
I am not saying this at all to laugh about it or to make fun – I
wasn’t amused, I was just mystified, but willing to go along with it
and figuring this was just the way it was.
At the Orthodox church, it wasn’t like a
memorial service for someone who had passed on to the next world, it
was worship – worship the way Hindus worship, truly believing that God
was present, singing to God, not about him, not singing to ourselves,
not singing for fellowship, not worshiping his idea, but actually
presenting worship as a sacrifice within the presence of God. – and
not being casual in his presence, but having a sense of holiness and
respect – not because people wanted to be goody-two-shoes, but because
if you actually believe that God is present, you’ll be alert, rather
than coming up with excuses about how God shouldn’t care about this or
that or the other, but naturally wanting to do your best in the
presence of God out of love and respect and acknowledgment of his
holiness.
I don’t know…I guess I felt like, as
much as I liked the Protestant church (the minister was great!), I felt
they were talking about something, about learning about something,
whereas at the Orthodox Church actually had it present. I also
instinctively felt that the Orthodox Church housed the wisdom of
elders, whereas the Protestant church housed the rebellious
self-confidence of a teenager.
Also, whereas when I was growing up, I
felt that Western Christians just looked down on Hindus as being
completely wrong and ignorant, I felt the Orthodox church revealed the
true way of worship, the true reaching out to God, that Hindus had been
trying to do. It makes me think of what Paul said when he was
in…Athens? That there was this idol of the unknown God, that they
Greeks already tried to worship, well Paul was here to finally teach
them who this God was, in the same way I feel that Christianity has
brought to light what Hindus have tried to do from times before the
Christ the Light came to earth, if that makes much sense?
So maybe Hindus do in the dark what
Christians do in the light? While fumbling and some wrong perceptions
can be experienced, learned, and propagate even more of such wrong
teachings in the dark, once you turn the light on, you realize – wait a
minute! I thought I knew how this whole room was set up and how
everything worked, but in reality, now I see it is different! Some is
the same, but now I can go about things the way they were intended.
Now, I no longer hold an elephant’s
trunk thinking it’s a snake and once in a while wondering what else
there is to it – now the lights are on, and I can see that wow! There
is an elephant in the room! Such is the differing result of humans
striving for truth in our spiritual darkness, vs. what happens when God
himself bringing us the truth with his light.
While I think the stereotypical attitude
of some Christians about Hinduism being totally corrupt and demonic
and awful is unrealistic, I have, now that I am beginning to finally
understand some of Christianity (thanks again, to the Orthodox church), I
am starting to see troubling things that I had been blind to before.
I came across a series of articles,
which point out some fundamental differences which may have seemed
irrelevant to me before becoming Christian, harmless when I first
became Christian by default, and now are starting to seem troubling in a
very real way. I don’t know if I agree 100% with the articles, but
they bring up some good points.
Right now, I am still overwhelmed by
trying to learn and participate as much as I can as a catechumen – it’s
all very recent, after I attended the EO church for the first time on
Good Friday, I became a catechumen on Pentecost – so it’s all happening
very fast.
But eventually, I would like to write
about Hinduism and the Baha’i Faith from an Orthodox perspective.
Particularly the Baha’i Faith – I have even kept the core books of the
Baha’i faith, some which are hard to come by actually, so that in the
future I’ll have them as reference. If you’re at all interested in
discussing more about this, the youngest of the world’s religions, a
messianic one where the founder claims to be the Return of Christ, I’m
planning on adding a thread about it in the OC group “Battling Christian
cults”.
I feel very lucky to have been brought
to the Orthodox Church. I feel lucky that it all happened so quickly
once I became Christian, involving little effort on my own part,
whereas others have searched many years as Christians before finding
it. I feel convinced that it was definitely beyond my doing – I’m
still amazed by it all. It has really made me believe in the power of
sincere prayer in bringing others to Christ.
Though I don’t feel ready to adequately
bring anyone else to Christ right now, I firmly believe in praying for
that to happen, praying really does have an effect that no amount of
talking/reasoning can do. I would never have come on my own I think,
despite all the arguments I encountered – I really believe it was
because my friend prayed for me, and God brought it about.
Until then, I was very happily lost in
illusions with a nimble way to deflect anything a Christian might have
said to me, to stay steeped in my beautiful cocoon, and a very hip one,
at that – one that seemed very attractive on many sides. God had to
wake me up to make me realize that beauty and wishful thinking are not
the same as truth, which is even more beautiful (and terrible!) than
someone lost in his or her illusions can even begin to imagine. There
is so much wrapped up inside of Christianity that you really don’t
suspect from the little flyers people hand out on street corners:-) At
least that’s how it seems now that I feel I am being guided in the
Orthodox way.
I know this was a really long-winded
and winding story, but I hope that reading it will remind you again to
pray for others to come to Christ, pray that God will lift them above
the many, many layers of illusion and denial that keep them from Him,
even those who might sincerely think that they do believe in Him when
they really don’t. That’s the state that I was in when I was Hindu and
Baha’i.
I was more interested in my concepts of
Him than in what He wanted me to believe. Also I hope that this
account may have brought some points to mind that will help you become
an even better teacher of the Gospel when you are approaching someone
who comes from a completely non-Christian background. To not only
bring them to Christ in a meaningful way, but to also bring them to the
Orthodox church, because I truly believe that Eastern Orthodox
Christianity is so incredible and can have a much stronger impact on a
person (particularly of Eastern background perhaps?), whereas the
Western approach to Christianity may just leave them wanting and
wondering and thirsting still. This is a big generalization, but I
worry that the Protestant or Catholic way of spreading the Gospel can
do more harm than good, driving people away from Christ, whereas the
Orthodox can bring healing and joy and understanding, drawing people
towards Christ. Of course what do I know, I may be totally (or at
least partially) wrong about this, but it’s a thought worth
considering.
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