Incarnated Christ in the pluralistic
world
My understanding about Christian
ministry especially pastoral ministry during my first year was preaching the
gospel of Christ to everyone and helping the people of God to grow in Christ
and whoever wants to follow Christ, give baptism and convert them into Christianity.
When we were introduced the concept of religious pluralism in the theological
methodology class, I was totally disturbed. The concept of pluralism is to acknowledge the
existence and presence of truth in every religion without demeaning each other.
It says every religion keeps God as centre and considers religions as way of
life and every religion leads to God or the Divine. It is as simple as that,
get into any religion, you will reach God. This concept indeed has led me to raise several
questions, don’t we have to turn people of
different faith towards Christ? Are we not called to proclaim about Jesus to
everyone? If their religion is enough for everyone then what is the necessity
of Christ incarnation? Scholars even gave answers for these. They say, if you
want to proclaim about Christ, go ahead and talk about the historical Jesus,
his life and his teachings but never go with the intention of converting them.
If they are willing to follow Christ give baptism or do all that is necessary
to take them in. Some of the convincing statements which the theologians make
are you as a Christian follow Christ and be faithful to Him, similarly let
others follow their gods and be faithful to them. Liberation theologians would
say that the reason for Christ’s incarnation is there was injustice in the
society, Christ came and lived for the cause of justice for the marginalized.
But none could convince me. If that is
the only reason, it is not necessary for the death and resurrection; it could
have been like ten avatars of Vishnu in Hinduism, because those were happened
for the establishment of Justice in the unjust world. I felt, there is
something more which God wanted to address through Jesus to the people of the
earth. The passage which was read to us gave me an insight to understand about
God and the purpose of incarnation of Christ. This passage is the speech of
Paul in Athens during his second missionary journey. Paul here addressing to
the Greek philosophers and they are the people of different faith. This passage
is neither an aggressive talk which calls the Greek to convert and be baptized
into Christianity nor it is a passive talk of diluting the work of God in Jesus
Christ saying you worship what you like but let me just say about Jesus Christ
of Nazareth. He was offering Christ to them with the bold hypotheses.
On considering the verse 22, Paul began
his speech by giving a positive note to them saying ‘I perceive that in all
aspect you are extremely religious’. For the word deisidaimon both positive and negative notion can be considered
whereas in this passage, Paul uses it as a positive notion rather to condemn
their piety by saying they are superstitious. In verse 23 Paul says that he was
carefully looking at their objects of worship and he found an inscription on
the Altar which says ‘to the unknown God’. Some scholars feel that Greeks did
not want to miss anything to be worshiped, so erected one altar for the unknown
God so that whichever God they unknowingly forgot to worship will be covered by
worshipping the unknown God. However, here Paul took this opportunity to unveil
the unknown God and expose Christ to them. Therefore, in this verse he reiterated about
the unknown God which he was proclaiming, in fact this word of Paul surely
might have caught the attention of the Greek listeners because here is a man
who is unveiling the truth of the unknown God.
Today as I
contemplate on this verse I also would like to pose a question to all of us,
are we bold enough like Paul to talk about the God they worship in other
religion. Are we in a position to say to Muslims
“Allah whom you worship is the same God I am proclaiming to you. Allah is
nothing but God in Arabic. Can we say to Hindus the Brahma you worship is the
same I am proclaiming to you Brahma is nothing but a creator. We cannot say
like this because we are Christians and they are from other religion. Therefore it is clear that religion acts as a
barrier.
Paul doesn’t say whatever they worship
is God, in verse 24 Paul exposed the
idea of the unknown God who was there since the creation.
He says that God is the creator of heaven and earth and all that is in it. Paul
continues to exalt God by saying that one who makes world and everything in it
is clearly far too great to be in confined in temples that humans build. In
verse 25 he further says God is the one who gives life and everything else for
human beings and how can such a great God be reduced to lifeless idol. Through
this he conveys that what you worship doesn’t glorify God but it puts him down.
In verse 26 he says through one man God made all the people and he made them to
live all over the earth. In verse 27 and 28 Paul says the God who sets people
all over the world wanted him to be searched and to be found. It would not be a
justice from the side of God if he doesn’t help the people to find. But In the
same verse it says God was indeed not far from us. What does Paul mean by this??
Did they find God? Yes they found that
there is God the supreme power because people in the earlier times seeing all
the creation definitely would have thought there would be someone behind this
creation as Rom 1:20 says through the visible creation we can find the
invisible attributes of God. God would have been happy that his people have
found him and after a while disappointment would have started to occupy God.
Because, though they found there is God it was exactly like the story of blind
folded men and elephant. When they were allowed to touch the elephant and say
what it is, one touched the leg and said it is a pillar, one touched the trunk
and said it is a tree, one touched the tail and said it is the rope but no one
found that it is an elephant. Similarly some found that God is the one who has
no limit and who has no end. So they worshipped all that has no limit and end
like fire, Water, Light etc. Some found that God is the image of human so they
made idols in the image of humans and worshipped. Some found that God is
powerful so they made idols of animals whichever is powerful in their eyes.
Though they found the different attributes of God they could not find who God
exactly is. Because concentrating only on the particular attribute doesn’t make
what God really is. Each one with their understanding started to look God
differently and made God as a superior Image as Holy, Powerful, and Sovereign
and there by created a gap between God and humans. Of Course each one can
understand God with their own understanding but is it not necessary to know
what actually God is? Therefore God takes an initiative to reveal Himself.
Till these verses, Paul’s viewed picture
of God to the listeners as Pluralistic. When they worshiped idols or the
creation, God was patient enough but in verse 30 and 31 says God overlooked at
the time of human ignorance. God
in order to reveal who God really is, to his people God incarnated and became
flesh and dwelt among the creation. Though
God is Holy, Powerful and sovereign, Jesus revealed Godself in every aspect of
Life and finally died on the cross to show that God is love and love is all
that is in God. Death was the option because that is the way people can
understand what love is by giving up the life for us. Through this the division
between God and human is broken, there is no longer God and human relationship
as master and slave rather parent and children relationship was established. So
in verse 28 Paul quotes one of the Greek poets who said ‘for we are his
offspring’. Through incarnation of Christ, God reveals and says, ‘I see you as
my own Children and so you look at me as your parent. I see you as my friend,
you also see me as your friend. I see you as my own brother and sister and you
see me as the same. But don’t see me as an enemy or the master that I always
have something against you to destroy you instead I love you’. Therefore the
incarnation of Christ has much broader understanding. If such a love is expressed
through Christ why is there still a problem in proclaiming Christ?
The main reason for the construction of
Religious pluralism is for the religious harmony. We couldn’t understand the
revelation of God in other religion because of the religious boundary. Even the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ is also not proclaimed boldly to the people
of other faith because of the religious boundary. Do we really need such religion
to hold on? Christ revealed God for the people of all the earth. Even Apostles
and missionaries were martyrs for the sake of Jesus Christ. We need to
understand early Apostles did not strive for the religious movements or for the
separate religion from Judaism. All that they strived for is to be a witness of
Christ and to proclaim Christ for all the people of the earth. They did not
want to convert people in to their religion nor did they just show the
greatness of their religion, in fact they didn’t have a religion. Only the
followers started to call themselves as Christians and later it has become a
closed religion. God dint want to reveal himself only in Christianity. It is
the human construct which limited the Incarnated Christ within the boundary of
Christianity and created the image that He is the God of Christians. So even if
someone wanted to follow Christ they have to cross their boundary and come into
the boundary of Christianity. God is not a fool to reveal himself only to a
particular community and command the entire world to be converted in to that
community and follow God. It is us who constructed the religion and limited the
works of God. Time has come for
us to acknowledge the presence of Christ in other religion and it is our duty
to unveil the hidden Christ as have rightly pointed out the Raymond Panikkar. Even
religious pluralism tries to bring every religion in unity, but what ultimately
happens is it strengthens the religion and dilutes the work of God. Since
Christians own Jesus Christ, we have to liberate Christ out of Christianity so
that every nation shall know that he is the revelation of God. As a called out community, ministers of God,
are we not responsible to learn and to share the mighty work of God which he
has done through Jesus Christ? Are we not supposed to proclaim Christ who is
the revelation of God? Are we not supposed to search the works of God in other
faiths? Let us be the children of God by proclaiming his work through Christ
and not as a religious Christian. God has done a mighty work through Jesus
Christ, are we not as a called out community have a responsibility to share
with our neighbours? Of course it is a challenging task to come out of
religious boundary and proclaim the works of God let us take an initiative to
cast out religious boundary and be united as one with Christ in God. Let God
grant us power and wisdom to take forward God’s mission. Amen
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