Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Thou Shant Evangelize!!!

Well, Well, Well!!

Now i'll write about one of the things i hate to the core.

Yes! You guessed it right! Its about Evangelism!!

Dictionary.com gives "the preaching or promulgation of the gospel; the work of an evangelist" as the meaning to evangelism.

Wikipedia says "Evangelism is a Christian movement for emphasizing personal conversion and the authority of the Bible or, by extension, any other form of preaching or proselytizing." It continues... Christians often characterize evangelism as "...one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread." Hehe!! So cheap a comparision! Religions do exist for the sake of bread eh??

In laymans' words, Evangelism is just the process of conversion from one religion to another (strongly followed by Christians n to quite a good extent by Muslims, by force during the medieval age, (Mughals)). Forcing one to change his religion by preachin him, brainwashin him n bribing him!

Note that i'm not criticizin the whole religion here n am just expressing my views on things i hate in their rituals. I do give my reasons. You are always free to comment whatever you feel honestly. Do share yo views. Its not meant to hurt ones feelings,even in case it has hurt you, thats yo problem.

Note that they claim that Jesus had said this to their followers - 'Yo, Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.

– Matthew 28:19,20 King James Version'

They say its their right to evangelize!

I had not bothered to know about evangelism since my engineering. Till then, i was not thinking about the society i live in to the extent i'm doin now! The first time i heard the word Evangelism was in 5th semester when one of the Microsoft's session in our college, when Mr.Kevin D'souza, .NET evangelist came to our college to evangelize us to .net. Prof.Victor, English Professor and the Principal of Degree College, Nitte, Bangalore, one of the chairperson invited to the session was surprized of the usage of the word evangelism in this context and he explained the usual n actual usage of Evangelism! Thats when i knew about it!

After the session, i recollected my sister telling me about Bhairappa's Dharmashri, I hadnt read it though i had bought the book long back. Just grabbed the book and started reading that. Boy!! How these people fool us around!! Was furiated about that aspect of Christians after reading it. Do read it when you are free. You'll get the tricks followed by them to evangelize!

After that, the major evangelist move i saw was that of stupid Benny Hinn's big programme for four day near my house! (@ Jakkur Aerodrome) I was laughing at the live telecast they were showin on TV! He was forcing people to just keep on saying Jesus! Jesus! and he will be healed! CRAP!!! What have they thought of these ignorant people! Just a move towards evangelizing 'em! They used to get such people to act and those fools would act as these idiots want and the innocent n the ignorant would believe that its true! Heck! I dont know what they get evangelizing people! (lumpsome Money?? eh??)

I forgot about that some days later till i met one in my company! He came as a tutor for a week! I refuse to disclose his full name. Lets keep it Mr.Rufus. He is a christian from Chennai! Came to our company as a Java trainer. He did his job to the required extent. Well, I have the habit of speaking to lecturers whenever possible. It was a tea break! We'd gone to the cafetaria! He was sippin his tea all alone! It was Dasara! 9th day! Aayudha Pooje! There was a procession going on the road with people dancing to the beats of thamate!

He saw that n asked "Why are they dancing??"

I replied "Its Aayudha Pooje! The 9th day of Dasara festival! They decorate their vehicles n tools they've got and worship god to keep them in good condition"

He replied "Oh yeah!"

I commited a mistake now by uttering this "Yes! Guess you guys have less number of festivals right??" I had to undergo a lecture for half an hour!

He started "You know, we dont have festivals. Its a crime to celebrate festivals! Though you say Christmas as festival, in core christianity, you dont follow any festival!"

I'm not able to recollect the exact words, but here are the excerpts i recollect from our conversation. I'll express my views inside paranthesis. I said "Is it??"

"Yes! You might have mistaken about Jesus Christ as our god! but you are wrong, Jesus is just the messenger of God! Our god is named Yehova! He is known in three forms. Father, Child or the Son and the Holy Spirit! God(Father) created the whole Universe in 6 days including Earth, solar system, all creatures, animals and man and all! ( Why didnt he mention about other galaxies??) After he created man (Adam and Eve) he let them free in Eden Gardens to just play! He said you can do what ever you want here and you are not restricted to do anything other than going to the tree of Knowledge! Even if you go there, dont ever try eating its fruit! ( Its an apple tree i guess. Now if he didnt wanted people to go there and eat, why should he have created that tree in the first place??) Adam and Eve hanged around Eden gardens but Eve was very curious(as every human being) about the tree of knowledge and she asked Adam to get the fruit from that tree! Adam initially refused but even he was curious n he got the fruit and they both ate it! They had created their first sin! God was furious about them! As part of their sin, they had their first child! From then on, human beings are creating sins after sins! A baby taking birth on earth is a sin! (Hmm!!!??) As we humans are creating sins to this extent, we'll go to hell if we dont take the side of God! God says 'Just worship me and I'll rip off all the sins you commit!' (So simple is it??)"

"Oh yeah?? How???"

"See, as i said, God has three forms(And you say god is one!! Huh!!), Father, Son and the holy spirit! Father sends his son to bear all the sins that his disciples commit! So any sin you commit n you truly believe in god, you wont get the punishment for your sins! All you need to do is believe in God and gods bears all the sins you do! God sends his own son to take the punishment of the whole set of people who believe in god!"

"What about the rest??"

"Why should he care about the rest?? They dont follow him and he is least bothered about those who dont believe in the ultimate truth!( What sort of god is he?? who cares about only those who believe in him??)

"Oho! that way?? Hmm" I said!

He continued to grind me with many more things i was totally not interested in! He explained more about Father, son and the holy spirit, the end of days, Lucifer, Armageddon n stuff like that! I was wondering why he was tellin me all this! At last after 30 minutes of boring, he said, "I stay near Frazer Town, Do come home every 12th of every month to get enlightened about the religion of Truth!(huh!!)"

I dint give a reply! I just came downstairs to attend the Aayudha Pooje in our office! I was waiting for an opportunity to get out when Deepak, our office boy called us to attend the pooje. I dint speak to him since then! Have seen him many a times since then i purposefully dont speak with him since then!

I explained it to one of my Christian friend who was close to me then, and she replied that he wouldnt have told you about such things without seeing interest in you! I had a big argument with her on this issue! I still continue such arguments with her! She wudnt find answers to such questions i ask! She just doesnt have the answer. I wouldnt like to discuss the topic of argument here as it might make some of the readers have bad opinion on me.

Since then, I am just against evangelism. Against people distributing pamplets about christianity! Muslims are no behind! I had just got a pamplet near the mosque just beside Shivajinagar Bus stand saying 'Discover Islam'!! Other than that, during the mughal rule or the bahamanis, or the ghaznis or the Ghoris or the sultans, they converted many Hindus to muslims by force! They changed the names of many cities to muslim name. Prayag became allahabad is just an example. They call their religion as the true religion and people of other religion as Kafirs. Have they seen the truth to judge people of other religion as hypocrites??

I suggest you to read 'Aavarana' by S.L.Bhairappa to get a feel for the muslim customs and their Ill treatment towards Hindus. They can follow polygamy haveing 4 wifes legally and many illegally, they can destroy temples of other religion n many other things! Shame on them! Muslim females are not supposed to show themselves to other males other than their family members. eh??

They curb if we destroy their masjid (Ayodhya, Babri Masjid), but have they forgotten that Babur constructed that masjid by destroying a temple in that place?? I am not asking for a Tit for Tat here but just bringing up the point!

I just want to bring up the point that we Hindus have never gone to anyone asking them to get converted to Hinduism! We believe in our ideologies and we never force others to follow us! Its in our blood! If they are interested in our ideology, we pose no barriers for them! We havent gone outside preaching our philosophy! Its only the outsiders coming in asking about us! We are self satisfied! Its these christian missionaries and the muslim prophets who want their religion to prosper by having more followers try evangelizing people! What do they get??

There are true believers of Christianity n Islam who wont evangelize! There are exceptions everywhere! But i'm talkin about the majority of people!

I'd like end this post with a quote by Gandhi here - "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

So true!!

1 comment:

Shrinidhi Hande said...

Good article. People power is the ultimate power, so that is the reason every religion want to increase headcount...