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The Hindus are coming!!!

Jill

Run!

The whole article is ridiculous, but this part is my favorite:

In India, Ravi said, he was born into a family of considerable wealth and a caste status second only to priests. At the age of 3, he was stricken with polio. His family spent money on medicine and on sacrifices to Hindu gods, he said, but nothing helped. They concluded that his affliction must be because of bad karma, which meant he was suffering for the deeds of a past life.

“I grew bitter and angry about my condition,” Ravi recounted. “One day I was sitting on a bench and a Christian man dressed in a white robe sat beside me and shared with me that God really loves me and how He paid for my sins. All of my life I had been told that I am paying for my past sins.”

Fourteen months after the encounter with the Christian man, Ravi accepted Christ and his sins were removed.

“What a freedom it was, and still is today,” he said. “The guilt of karmic debt was gone, and I saw the reincarnation as a total lie.”

Unlike the totally for-real and provable Jesus-magic.

I leave you with Sarah Silverman.

11 thoughts on The Hindus are coming!!!

  3. The Pledge of Allegiance and U.S. currency bearing the phrase “In God We Trust” are two examples of faith in a monotheistic God held by the nation’s founders, he said.

    Only a religious paper would hear that and still be willing to print this guy’s opinions as an authority.

  4. Because it’s so much better worrying about living a good life to get into heaven than assuming you screwed up before.

    Bad things happen to all kinds of people. It’s too bad an atheist didn’t sit on that bench with him.

  5. Cola Johnson, it is, actually, but only slightly. True, it’s not healthy to have to live a life of fear lest every decision, or even things you can’t choose about yourself will autumatically ban you from heaven. It’s horrific for someone who personally believes that religion to be told that they are damned.

    But it’s definitely worse to be told you are damned for something that you apparently did in a past life- something you had not the slightest knowledge or control over, just because you suffer from bad things now. It would have been great if an atheist sat down on the bench, but for that man, whose life was spent feeling guilty about something he hadn’t done, it must have felt great to feel like that weight was taken off him. I’m not saying Christianity’s better than Hinduism (because in reality, the extremes of one are no worse than the extremes of the other), but that in his case, I could see it as being beneficial to at least believe he is not personally to blame for everything that’s ever happened to him.

  7. There is a strain of radical (what one might call right-wing) Hinduism in India that is worrisome but overall the religions influence should not trouble anyone in the least.

    If it does not make you riot or beat people up because they are a different religion than you or a different anything from you then I am A-OK with whatever you want to believe in.

  8. But at least the man is open-minded enough to change his religious views. First he changes from paying for his own sins to accepting that someone else paid for them, so when he finally does meet that atheist he’ll be ready to understand that he didn’t sin* at all!

    *Note that I’m talking about sin as a religious concept, not about crime or morality.

  9. Yeah the Founding Fathers were responsible for “under God” being in the Pledge of Alleigance in the same way they were responsible for the popularity of Elvis Presley and circle skirts with poodles on them.

  10. But it’s definitely worse to be told you are damned for something that you apparently did in a past life- something you had not the slightest knowledge or control over, just because you suffer from bad things now.

    1. How? Suffering is suffering, pure and simple. if your religion makes you feel bad about yourself, or the world in general, how is that even marginally redeeming?

    2. Some strains of Christianity do that, too. It’s called “original sin”, and you get to suffer for it through no fault of your own! How uplifiting is that?!

    Cola’s right. Sometimes “shit happens” is the most uplifting mantra of them all.

  11. Of course you would never ridicule anyone who would try to convert the man to Islam, Buddhism or any other religion. It’s just Jesus that it’s ok to patronize.

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