What is it that Christianity possesses and Hinduism lacks because of which Christianity is spreading and Hinduism is not?

From Panca Pandava P

Transcript

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Question from Panchamanda through Hindu we see that all over the world and even in India Christianity is spreading quite fast so what is it that Hinduism lacks and Christianity possesses because of which people are converting towards Christianity and not towards Hinduism and even Hindus are converting towards Christianity answer we can look at this question at a social level at a religious level ultimately at a spiritual level at a social level Christianity offers humanitarian relief in many cases in Christianity there is not much positive knowledge about continental reality about the spiritual world, the kingdom of god and what happens over there and it focuses primarily on moral living and one aspect of moral living is caring for others so many Christians do humanitarian work and while doing humanitarian work they also convert the people for whom they are doing humanitarian work in fact like when the tsunami disaster happened and people were devastated so many evangelical Christian organizers were telling the refugees that convert to Christianity and we will rebuild your houses and everything it is quite distasteful at that time that actual calamity was being used to pressurize people to convert of course there are other Christians who do humanitarian work and then they also encourage conversion they don’t force like this but overall in a world where there is misery and suffering at the material level socially, economically if people convert and they are allured for conversion by promising of financial incentives then many people get allured and that is one major reason so what happens is this sort of conversion doesn’t really raise people from being materialist to being spiritualist people are seeking material relief and they get material relief but that is practically all that they get their consciousness doesn’t change much and in fact within Christianity meat eating is not at all discouraged it is an integral part even drinking is also allowed and that way people feel that they can still be religious and still and also be more profligate in many ways so from the social point of view Christianity seems to have material benefits and not much material losses but on the other hand we also see at the social level Christianity is getting severely beaten in many ways in Europe and America in Europe because of the child abuse scandals among the catholic church here for decades those scandals were going on so there were catholic priests who were abusing the children in their congregation minor children and church was concealing it and trying to protect those people instead of giving justice to those who were victimized and to create systems for avoiding justice or for avoiding such recurrences so anyway when this whole thing came to light and also because of the evils of institutionalization leading to hunger for power and other things actually in Europe it is very less the influence of Christianity is waning rapidly America is divided almost polarized between the right wing which is the Christians and the secularists so there are bible belt countries bible belt where people are strongly Christian and other places people are strongly secular many are strongly atheistic also so what the Christians have realized is that in these countries in Europe and America not much headway can be made further so that’s why they are focusing on the third world countries so where people have material prosperity as Prabhupada says when people do dharma for the sake of artha and kama if people can get artha and kama without dharma then they feel there is no need for dharma so that’s why Christians focus a lot on conversion in third world countries where people don’t have artha and kama so of course the artha and kama that is coming is not by practice of dharma in terms of doing yajna and living according to dharma but the idea is people come to religion for material motives also so many Christian organizers have recognized that third world countries like especially India are very suitable to conversion so they are focusing a lot of energy, capital and man power in trying to convert in India so this brings me to the second point that ultimately religion is like a marketplace so whoever does the best marketing gets the best maximum customers so often we see in a marketplace the lion’s share of the market doesn’t go necessarily to those who have the best quality products it goes to those who best market so we have to recognize the fact that many Christians are very dedicated missionaries they work very hard often their zeal may be misdirected in the sense that because they consider Jesus to be the only way so often they not only condemn other gods and other religions but they also when people get converted from say Hinduism to Christianity they insist that people destroy the deities which they were worshipping earlier and they consider it a religious activity to destroy other gods which they consider as false gods so in many ways the zeal is misdirected but still they have zeal so in the religious marketplace whoever does the best marketing most vigorous marketing gets the maximum customers people who see that Christians are available naturally their Christianity is visible Christians are accessible and people if they are interested in religion they often go towards Christianity now we also have to understand that often many Hindu organizations are caught in a sort of complacent self-righteousness they think that the Hindu Dharma is higher than the Christian Dharma and ultimately all people all paths are going to lead to God so even if some people get converted to Christianity they say that ok we Hindus are higher but if people want to go there they can become Christians and then after many lifetimes they will come and become Hindus and they become evolved so this is not people feel that Hinduism is not a missionary religion and that’s why Hindus should not preach and attract people this is completely contrary to history where we see Acharya, Ramacharya Madhvacharya, even Shankaracharya they travelled all over the country and they had active discussions debates, public talks they wrote books and they did a lot of people to bring people lot of efforts to bring people to God and Krishna himself says that those who share my message are very dear to me so because Hindus don’t do much vigorous propagation they are not so much in the market that’s why they don’t get much of the share and often humanitarian relief there are several Hindu organizations who offer humanitarian relief and but India is relatively speaking not as financially strong as many of the countries where Christianity is present and from there many Christian organizations get funds so in principle humanitarian relief is not wrong but when humanitarian relief is made into equivalent to or superior to spiritual relief that creates a complication that creates misunderstanding among people about what is true religion so beyond that at a spiritual level we have to understand that this is Kali Yuga and Kali Yuga there are many ways in which people become distracted from Krishna and one of the ways is also by sub-religious or pseudo-religious so pseudo-religious means some people claim to be God pseudo-religious means where literal aspects of religion are emphasized more than spiritual aspects this is what happens largely in many Abrahamic religions and of course we know that just because it is Kali Yuga doesn’t mean that everything has to be dark and bleak there is the community of Mahaprabhu who does want to help everybody become saved even in this age so to be still we share the legacy of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu vigorously Chaitanya Mahaprabhu offers the highest knowledge within the Vedic tradition within what is today known as Hinduism highest knowledge and the highest devotion and to the extent we understand it ourselves and share it with others in an intelligent way, to that extent we will be able to effectively share Krishna consciousness and spread Vedic culture so to the extent there are many western scholars who have actually compared the various religions, so there is a famous western scholar he has written that actually Hinduism has many features, for example its emphasis on vegetarianism its recognition of the principles of karma, recognition of it, understanding of reincarnation and its concept of its emphasis on the path of devotion its philosophy there are so many aspects to it which are very attractive so what will make sure that Hinduism continues and spreads in the coming centuries is that intelligent people rational people understand it and share it to a large extent current Hinduism runs around personality cults and that becomes a problem as long as the personality is there is good standing, then people flock and as soon as that person departs or falls, then everybody goes away also so individual charisma of certain people can lead to the formation of personality cults but that cannot be sustained what will sustain people in their spiritual quest along the path that is given in the Vedic culture is their proper understanding of the philosophical depth of the Vedic tradition and their subsequent inspiration to follow that path for that, the more we are able to present spiritual, spiritual consciousness teachings which are the culmination of Hinduism in a coherent way, to that extent spiritual consciousness will spread and if you look at the history of ISKCON itself in the 40 years that in the 40-45 years since Shri Prabhupada started ISKCON now, on his 50th anniversary we see that spiritual consciousness movement has spread phenomenally and the kind of spread that spiritual consciousness movement has had is in parallels in world history so how did this happen? Shri Prabhupada was asked and said that, Shri Krishna is all attractive, I simply represented Krishna, he attracted everyone else that means Shri Prabhupada was emphasizing the point that within the Krishna consciousness tradition itself there is enough potency to attract people but in this sense he presented in an effective, in an appropriate way so to summarize at a social, humanitarian level people need to be cared for and when there is a spiritual culture that caring will happen but if other religions provide that caring naturally people will be attracted at a religious level at the level of religious marketing whoever does the best marketing will attract the most customers so if people become more proactive in understanding and sharing their tradition that will also make sure that more people turn towards the Vedic tradition and towards the Sikh Krishna that is the conclusion of the Vedic tradition and last but not least spiritual level we need to channel ourselves into the mercy of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who is the Yuga avatar for the age of Kali and to the extent we share in his vision, we take up his prediction as our responsibility and try to share what he has given and present it especially not just centered on personality cults but based on rational systematic understanding then we can attract people sustainably and rapidly