This is part of the series of Blogs and I hope that these answers will atleast help hindus resolve the doubts raised in their minds by christian missionaries. The intention of this blog is not to run down on Jesus, which is what an ordinary christian would assume. But it is to free the public from the propaganda that belief in christ is somehow essential for every one who wants to be the beloved child of god.
1. "Jesus was the first person to emphasize that love not hate is the ideal." - The life of many vedic rishis like vasistha and the later saints like Buddha and Mahavira is sufficient to prove that neither was Jesus the first person to emphasize love against hatred, nor was he unique in this matter. Infact it can be easily seen from the life story of these saints that their love and affection to people was not only free from hypocracy , greed, want of some heavenly glory etc but also extended to animals. Those who are filled with hatred will choose to pick up those examples who are imperfect and highlight their flaws at the expense of good qualities. But atleast in this regard the characters I have mentioned do not have the flaws which the missionaries would like to find.
2. "Jesus can only truly cure the sick and provide solace to desolate sections of society" - This is not true at all. We have a recent example in India, the Sai Baba of Shiridi who has performed miracles and cures at the same level of Jesus Christ, and he certainly not even a christian. There have been more examples even in the past including the likes of Tiruganasambandar. Just like among the christians, the hindus too have amongst them more charlattans and fake gurus than true saints. However the great saints of India, have never attached much importance to miracles(whether or not they performed them). The reason being that miracles and healings could only provide temporary solace to the Individual. Until the individual understood that material desires amount to nothing, and the only purpose of a long life was to reach atleast a more disciplined and sustained experience of spirituality, before making the journey to next life. The fact that praying to a God cures a person of a certain problem does not really prove that the saint or deity is all knowing. Further if failure in getting expected relief even after prayer to God is to be taken as a standard for deciding if that God is powerful ,in that case, even christianity has failed someof its more sincere followers. Similarly the chirstians like to argue that non christians could be cured of their problems only if satan decides to help them or only if they somehow unknowingly win the grace of christ. Not only can this argument be applied against the christians, there have been plenty of examples available to prove that even those who are cured of certain diseases at a certain stage continue to suffer again at a later point of time due to a certain other health problem or disease or pain at the time of death. Thus the christian cure is not a gurantee against future occurence of a more fatal health disorder.
3. "Jesus worked for the lowest sections, while Hinduism worked against the lowest castes"- This feeling is widely received by the affected sections of the society. But we need to see if the so called component of Hiduism called varnashrama as it was deviced really exists in the current society of India. The next question to ask is if the socalled varnashrama is responsible for the social inequalities. This question has been sufficiently addressed by aurobindo, ISKCON and Vivekananda that I direct the readers to their explanation of these questions. But if the flaws of the Indian society is to be taken as proof of the failure of the Indian rishis and Krishna , then how would any logical person accept the argument that christianity was somehow better when it was able to spread mainly due to imperialism and not until the christian world became millitarily powerful and not until they managed to enslave the africans, native americans and conquer India, and not until they tortured thousands of goan hindus. The christians would retort that Christ never preached inequality but Krishna and the rishis did. My answer is -If the Rishis were so fond of spreading inequality then why did they throw off all comfort and embrace the forests and why did they allow even scorpions to bite them , but refused to kill them. Krishna 's view on Varna is however sufficiently explained by ISKCON and the actions of Ramanujacharya, that I dont even think I need to defend it.
4."However inspite of the good qualities of the saints of other saints,Jesus was alone perfect". This is again a repetitive argument. Please ask the Christians to enlist the good qualities of Christ and compare these qualities with Vasistha, Buddha and Mahavaira. I think any logical and well read hindu would see that there is really no logical foundation to the argument in favor of a unique christ. An alternate christian tactic is to divert the attention by starting a discussion on Krishna's so called flaws . Even if we allow the accusations to pass, the uniqueness in terms of good qualities of christ would remain unproven. I again see no reason to defend Krishna's actions as they need to be seen from a spiritually matured point of view and it would be apparent that even if the so called actions of Krishna of stealing butter as a child, playing and teasing the village girls, use of cunningness against the wicked were all taken true, these actions in no way prove Krishna to be a wicked or a criminal person. A patient reading of Srimad Bhagwatam is sufficient to understand the incidents according to the prose of the work and not according to the imagination of the accusers. However incase there are people who want to still debate on this I redirect them to vaishnava forums who have answers to each of these silly questions.
5. "Christ was born to a virgin"- The argument here is that this is a unique incident. A little reading of pagan deities reveal that this belief is not unique to christ. Some christians like to quote vedas and say that it refers to a virgin son and that it is really a prophecy of christ. If this is to be taken as a prophecy which was fulfilled 2000 years after it was made, then in that case one cannot dismiss the other verses of vedas which are contrary to christian understanding of god. Rather one must conclude that christian understanding of god, is only a subset of the vedas -more comprehensive understanding of god. A more rational argument is that vedas also pointed to deities born to virgins and this again makes Jesus non unique. I dont need to go so far back in time, even the renowned saint Sadasiva Brahmendra was believed to have born to a virgin mother just over a few centuries back. There must be a logical reason to only accept that one incident alone was true, and really speaking there is none. Being born to a virgin proves or disproves nothing . Finally there is really an alternate christian legend which explains that christ had a brother. This leads us to suspect that this virgin story was superimposed by the early church by amalagamating the pagan legends in the many lands it conquered.
6. "People have been blessed with the vision of Christ". I am not sure whether any christian is really aware of this-"But people of other religions have also had these visions."
7. "Christ said that I am the only way". If he indeed said this, then he was not a fair person because he does not say what happened to people of his grandfather's generations and other earlier generations before him ? There are people who could argue that somehow christ mysteriously saved those deserving people who did not worship him. If that is the case, then we should all try to become a deserving person rather than focussing on accepting christ(and not be deserving at all). End of argument.
The vedas put a fullstop to all these motivated arguments of the missionaries by a simple proclamation
"Truth is one, the sages call it by different names".
Let us all focus on becoming good individuals rather than trying to superimpose the rituals and labels we follow on others.
