Posted on 08/01/2009 9:42:48 AM PDT by Steelfish
Perspectives of an Indian Convert July 31, 1993 Bobby Jindal
Editors’ note: On October 20 36-year-old Republican Bobby Jindal was elected governor of Louisiana. In the early 1990s, Mr. Jindal wrote two articles for America recounting his conversion from the Hindu faith of his parents to Catholicism.
The following excerpt is taken from "Has Ecumenism Made Evangelism Irrelevant?" which was published on July 31, 1993:
I was born in the United States immediately after my parents arrived here from India. I was raised in a strong Hindu culture, attended weekly pujas, or ceremonial rites, and read the Vedic scriptures. Though my prayers were a child’s constant stream of requests and broken promises, Hinduism provided me with moral guidance and spiritual comfort.
It never occurred to me that I should consider any other religion; to be a Hindu was an aspect of my Indian identity.
A childhood friend, a Southern Baptist intent on converting the world, first introduced me to Christianity by telling me "you and your parents are going to hell." I was hardly convinced.
(Excerpt) Read more at americamagazine.org ...
Editors’ note: On October 20 36-year-old Republican Bobby Jindal was elected governor of Louisiana. In the early 1990s, Mr. Jindal wrote two articles for America recounting his conversion from the Hindu faith of his parents to Catholicism.
The following excerpt is taken from "Has Ecumenism Made Evangelism Irrelevant?" which was published on July 31, 1993:
I was born in the United States immediately after my parents arrived here from India. I was raised in a strong Hindu culture, attended weekly pujas, or ceremonial rites, and read the Vedic scriptures.
Though my prayers were a child’s constant stream of requests and broken promises, Hinduism provided me with moral guidance and spiritual comfort. It never occurred to me that I should consider any other religion; to be a Hindu was an aspect of my Indian identity. A childhood friend, a Southern Baptist intent on converting the world, first introduced me to Christianity by telling me "you and your parents are going to hell." I was hardly convinced.
My friend’s exhortations did, however, prompt me to investigate my Hindu faith and motivated me to read the Bhagavad-Gita. Although I found the stories fascinating and the writing magnificent, I was uncomfortable when Krishna convinced a reluctant Arjuna to secure his rightful inheritance by making war against his cousins.
Though I did not like seeing a deity advocate violence, this feeling was not enough to reject an entire faith. I wanted to examine Hinduism on its own merits and doctrines.
The main tenets of the Hindu faith involve two basic beliefs. The first is that all souls earn their way into nirvana, a state of blessedness, through good deeds.
Since this takes many lifetimes, souls are reincarnated until they succeed. One’s material circumstances are based on the past life’s choices; the very worst souls are incorporated into animal bodies...
The second tenet is that all religions are equally valid paths to the same God. This strips one of the right to criticize any set of religious beliefs, including those of cults and other extreme groups. Thus, God is not concerned with having His followers believe in truth.
It is sincerity, and not content, that matters. Yet I had had for years a sincere prayer life and still felt a void in my religious faith. Though I was searching for an objectively true faith that would lead me to God, I was beginning to doubt this existed and was ready to accept the "philosophies," if not the religious beliefs, associated with Hinduism.
My journey from Hinduism to Christianity was a gradual and painful one. I was touched by the love and simplicity of a Christian girl who dreamt of becoming a Supreme Court justice so she could stop her country from "killing unborn babies."
I was also angered by the arrogance of my Southern Baptist friend who claimed his faith was the one true path to God. He seemed to deny the experiences of billions of people who have never seen a copy of the Bible.
I began reading the Bible to disprove the Christian faith I was learning both to admire and despise. I cannot begin to describe my feelings when I first read the New Testament texts.
I saw myself in many of the parables and felt as if the Bible had been written especially for me.
After reading every book I could find on the historical accuracy of the Bible and Christianity, I was convinced that the Bible had remained unaltered throughout the centuries and that circumstances surrounding Christ’s death led to the conversions of thousands.
However, my perspective remained intellectual and not spiritual.
My investigation of Christianity might have remained at this theoretical level had it not been for a short black-and-white film. Though its depiction of the crucifixion was harsher than that of many similar movies, something about this film hit me very hard. For the first time, I actually imagined what it meant for the Son of God to be humiliated and even killed for my sake.
Although the movie did not convince me that anything was true, it did force me to wonder if Christians were right. I realized that if the Gospel stories were true, if Christ really was the Son of God, it was arrogant of me to reject Him and question the gift of salvation.
It would require many hours of discussion with a pastor before I was ready to take that leap of faith and accept Christ into my life. It would take another two years for me to be baptized into the Catholic Church.
My parents were infuriated by my conversion and have yet fully to forgive me. I tried to prepare myself for the worst; though I was ready when they ended their financial support, I was not as prepared for the emotional battles.
My parents went through different phases of anger and disappointment. They blamed themselves for being bad parents, blamed me for being a bad son and blamed evangelists for spreading dissension.
There were heated discussions, many of them invoking family loyalty and national identity. My parents have never truly accepted my conversion and still see my faith as a negative that overshadows my accomplishments. They were hurt and felt I was rejecting them by accepting Christianity.
I long for the day when my parents understand, respect and possibly accept my faith. For now, I am satisfied that they accept me...
The motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith. If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family’s peace, were senseless. I was comfortable in my Hindu faith and enjoyed an active prayer life; I only gradually felt a void and stubbornly resisted God’s call from within the church.
It was Truth and Love that finally forced me to accept Christ as Lord. "Jesus said to him, ’I am the way and the truth and the life: No one comes to the Father except through me’" (In. 14:6). Christ’s redemptive sacrifice proved that God loved me and was lifting me up to Him.
ping
Classic Southern Baptist. lol. (I am one)
A - “The second tenet is that all religions are equally valid paths to the same God”
B - “My parents have never truly accepted my conversion and still see my faith as a negative that overshadows my accomplishments.”
If you really believe A, why would you react like statement B?
Good question.
LOL! He has a pretty dry sense of humor. Hilarious. “He said me and my parents were going to hell” “I was hardly comvinced.” Great stuff.
What an impressive and important testimony.
Because it is more about culture for his parents than it is about religion. In accepting Jesus Christ, Bobby went against his parents' cultural expectations. In a larger sense, the stress between immigrant parents and their more "Americanized" children can get pretty intense. This story is a good example of how that can play out.
If one examines the claims made by Jesus Christ, one must come to only 2 conclusions: He is either mentally deranged or truly the Son of God. There is no middle ground. He is not a great moral teacher, prophet of God, or ascended master.
If their culture trumps their religion, then they really don’t believe “A”, which was my point in the beginning.
Ah...but if he is the Son of God, then you have to contend with all the wacky, violent, racist, sexist stuff in the Old Testament. Give me a Jesus that isn’t affiliated with Middle Eastern/Judaic principles and family values and I’ll listen.
“Give me a Jesus that isn’t affiliated with Middle Eastern/Judaic principles and family values and I’ll listen.”
I can’t because He was in the beginning with God and actually appears in the OT, for instance, with Daniel in the fiery furnace, etc.
“with all the wacky, violent, racist, sexist stuff in the Old Testament.”
Ok, I’ll bite. Give me a wacky, a violent, a racist, and sexist thing from the OT and I’ll respond to it.
Bobby Jindal might be our only candidate left when the primaries begin. I hope Jindal is ready to run for President...we may desperately need him.
“The second tenet is that all religions are equally valid paths to the same God”
This is a politically correct tenet but not valid from the point of view of Catholic theology. If there are many paths to Heaven then it would appear sadistic for God to have the Son of Man tortured and crucified to death.
The world could have gone with Judaism, Buddhism and even Hinduism (assuming the latter two qualify as more than mere philosophical forays)
The case for Catholic belief and salvation through the risen Christ is brilliantly made by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in “Iesus Dominus.”
It is an unrivalled tour-de-force of theological scholarship.
See below:
Good point.
I am the son of a Cumberland Presbyterian minister and an elder in the CP church. I read part of then Cardinal Ratzinger’s writing and jumped over to the conclusion for the sake of time. To fully grasp some of what his is saying takes more time and thought than I have right now.
I found nothing that I would take issue with. I gathered that a main point of what is that most all Christian churchs have some fundamental beliefs (e.g. - the fully divine nature of Christ living among us, and in so doing, revealing God the Father to us, and our obligation as Chritians to go into the world to spread the news of Christ as Savior and his work of reconciliation on the cross) that we all share, and that we must remain faithful to our commission and religious heritage as revealed to us in canon scripture. He also made comments about the divine inspiration of the Scripture and the infallibility thereof.
Quite frankly, I think my denomination and me are closer to his beliefs than we are to some of the “mainline” denominations such as the Episcopal, Presbyterian US and Methodist. The cultural emphasis on “me first, me-ism, the “me generation”, and any and all other self-centered life philosophies has unfortunately crept its way into Christian churchs/ denonimations in this country and rendered them apostate and ineffective in many ways. Then Cardinal Ratzinger and I share the view that there are definitely absolutes established by God that should not be ignored. Unfortunately, they are being ignored on a wholesale basis in our churchs.
Even though I am a Southern Protestant, I think Pope Benedict and I share far, far more theological views than those we disagree on . . . though he vastly outclasses me in the completeness of his understanding and service . . . and of course his exceptional vocabulary!!
You are an honest man!
Very few members of other Christian denominations attest to Ratzinger’s brilliance.
His panoramic sweep and understanding of historical and biblical source material is simply breathtaking. It took me several days of careful reading to finish reading “Iesus Dominus.”
The Church is indeed very privileged to have him both as Shepherd and Chief Theologian.
One thing my father (who passed away last November at 86 years old) taught from the pulpit was that truth is truth no matter where it comes from. Pope Benedict impresses me as someone who is faithful to the scripture. A knowledgable and honest Chrisian cannot and should not argue a message with scriptural integrity no matter what their prejudices. I had much rather cast my support to a man like Pope Benedict who is faithful to the scripture than with nutjob Southern evangelicals like the ones shown on national news coverage a few years ago in Montgomery,AL carrying signs that said “God hates fags.” While I am certainly not supportive of the homosexual lifestyle and the radical “gay” agenda, their message was theologically incorrect. God loved all men enough so that Christ died for all, including homosexuals, though they must repent to receive the grace that he offers.
The point of all this is that the downfall of a lot of Christian churchs is that they do not adequately school their members in the scripture, and denominations who have little educational requirements for their clergy often spread incorrect doctrine. As a result, a poor understanding of Christianity is communicated by believers to non-believers. It is always humorous, though sickening, when a liberal non-believer tries to point out to me what us Christians believe. Rarely do they ever get things even close to right. In support of Catholics, your church’s commitment to the doctrinal education of your parishoners is far superior to Protestants, a rightly placed and commendable effort. There is a Catholic elementary school and prep school in my hometown.
Time to sign off. Good thread and good conversation. Thanks
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