Christians often think about evangelism in terms of what we say. It can easily become a formula of the right words spoken in the right way that amounts to faithfulness. In many ways, this is an entirely appropriate way to think. However, it’s also an incomplete way to think: our witness to the world is not just with our words, but also with our how we live our lives. We testify to the gospel as we live transformed lives.
As we think about reaching cross-culturally with the gospel, how we live is often as important as anything else. People want to see that following Jesus is a liveable way of being. This, of course, doesn’t mean that everything in life will be easy. But even in hardship, in the real cost of discipleship, we can demonstrate the goodness of God in Christ, living with real hope.
In this episode of the CCL podcast with Clive and Ben, we consider the significance of the Christian life as we reach out to Hindus with the gospel.
Links referred to:
- Evangelism and New Churches
- Satya Network
- Our Wednesday 7 June events with David VanDrunen:
- “The glory of true humility” (academic lecture) with David VanDrunen (Wed 7 June 5:00pm)
- “Virtue in an age of virtue signalling: Christian character in a characterless society” with David VanDrunen (Wed 7 June 7:30pm)
- Support the work of the Centre
- Contact the Centre about your ethical questions
Runtime: 34:23 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.
Introduction
Chase Kuhn: Christians often think about evangelism in terms of what we say. It can easily become a formula of the right words spoken in the right way that amounts to faithfulness. In many ways, this is an entirely appropriate way to think. However, it’s also an incomplete way to think: our witness to the world is not just with our words, but also with our how we live our lives. We testify to the gospel as we live transformed lives.
As we think about reaching cross-culturally with the gospel, how we live is often as important as anything else. People want to see that following Jesus is a liveable way of being. This, of course, doesn’t mean that everything in life will be easy. But even in hardship, in the real cost of discipleship, we can demonstrate the goodness of God in Christ, living with real hope.
Today on the podcast, we’re considering the significance of the Christian life as we reach out to Hindus with the gospel.
[Music]
CK: Hello and welcome to the Centre for Christian Living podcast. My name is Chase Kuhn and I’m coming to you from Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. I’m very excited today to be joined by two guests, which is not typical of our podcast episodes, but today, it’s a real privilege to have Clive, who is an evangelist to Hindus and a trainer for Evangelism and New Churches, an organisation that’s serving Sydney Anglicans, as well as Ben, who is the Chair of the Satya Network, which is seeking to reach Hindus with the gospel and to help churches do the same. Ben also works as an Assistant Minister at Auburn and Newington Anglican Churches. I was joking with Ben about just how long his titles are. Ben, congratulations for such a long title! [Laughter]
Ben: Thank you.
CK: Great to have you gentlemen with us. Thank you very much for coming!
Clive: Great to be here. Thanks for having us!
CK: Yeah, it’s a privilege—a real privilege.
The magnitude of Hinduism
CK: We’ve just come from having coffee, where I’ve been able to hear all kinds of wonderful things about your heart for the gospel and your work among Hindu people. Help us understand the magnitude of Hinduism: where it’s present and how it’s coming into more and more of the Western world—like in Sydney, for example, but for listeners elsewhere too. Tell us about that.
Clive: Well, you probably have heard, but India is now the most populous country in the world. It’s overtaking China. That’s reflection in the migration figures as well: Indians are now the number 1 non-Western people group. England is still number 1, but second is from India and then it’s China. So Indians are now the major migrant group coming to Australia from non-Western backgrounds.
CK: Wow! In terms of Hinduism and its presence around the world, obviously it’s in India, but where else is Hinduism expressed?
Ben: Hinduism is everywhere, basically. The British Prime Minister is of a Hindu background. When he became the Prime Minister, there was a Hindu ritual. Everywhere we look, there will be Hinduism expressed in different ways, and that sort of permeates all sorts of cultures and in all sorts of countries, because of migration. Also, because Indians, Sri Lankans and others go out and study, they become well educated and go to various countries, and when they do that, they take their culture with them. Hinduism is very much tied in with culture and family: these things aren’t separated. This is why it’s, in a sense, pervasive everywhere.
CK: Yeah. It’s fascinating to mention the British Prime Minister—that you can see Hinduism represented right at the top of a Western nation. Even for me personally, there was Hinduism in my North American town, which is quite suburban, but now that I’ve moved to Australia and live in Australasia, I’ve visited other neighbouring nations, and it’s amazing how many Hindus there are. Bali is very prominent Hindu place, as well as Malaysia. I’ve been to Malaysia a few times and there are so many Hindus in Malaysia. So it’s fascinating to see this, and I’m so grateful that you guys are helping us today to be more aware of Hindus living among us, and how we might be able to reach them for Jesus.
What people don’t know about Hinduism
CK: Tell me: what do you think most people don’t know about Hindus? I suspect most of our listeners don’t know a lot. Some will, but many won’t. What do most people not know about Hindus?
Clive: I guess when you think of Hindus, you probably think they worship lots of different gods. But most reflective Hindus would think that they worship one god, but in many different forms. They do believe in one supreme deity, but that deity is at writ, unknowable, and so he has to manifest himself in different forms.
CK: That’s fascinating, because I’ve always been taught there’s more than 30 million gods or something—I don’t know; sometimes people tell me 300 million; sometimes people tell me three. I don’t know. A lot of gods, is what we hear! [Laughter] But to hear that there’s a single deity manifesting himself, or itself, in all these different forms, is really eye-opening for us. So thank you.
How does that, then, play out in all of these different deities? Do people understand that every time they bow before an idol, or they go through a ritual, that they’re always doing that unto one god? Or are they thinking about it more specifically—about the specific god or the idol that’s represented before them?
Clive: Yeah. I think on a practical level, they do really love a particular god. Because the supreme or the one god is unknowable, they can’t really attach any personal labels to that god—whether he’s just or loving or merciful. This means that when they have an incarnation of a god, they’re able to personally relate to that god; it’s a little bit easier to worship. So on a practical level, they do really love their favourite god.
CK: Okay. So they’re looking for something to see—something to relate to. How does that relationship play out? Is it one of devotion, or is it one of affection, or is it one of duty, or is one of service? What kind of relationship are people expressing to these deities?
Clive: Yeah, look, there’s different ways that people try to relate to that god. But their devotion is probably the most common one: they want to feel an intimate connection with their favourite god. Others are more knowledge-based; others are more works-based or karma-based; but devotion is one of the more popular ones.
CK: Okay. Is that part of a Hindu’s way of thinking about the world of fulfilment? What are they after when they’re seeking that kind of devotion to a power?
Clive: It’s a good question. I think partly they are seeking that intimate relationship. But at other times, they’re just seeking blessing in this life. It can be fairly transactional, so they perform rituals and prayers to try and get some kind of outcome—whether it’s in their exams or in their job or their money—their finances—their relationships. So it can be fairly transactional as well.
On a deeper level, they want that connection, but they don’t seem to get that intimate connection. So on a practical level, it’s really trying to get certain outcomes.
CK: Yeah, thanks Clive! I’m thinking about this in terms of our own Christian living: we’ve been talking about how we can relate this to the Christian life. There’s an obvious point of contrast there: when we think about the gospel, we think about grace. We don’t do anything in order to get something from God; it’s because God has done something for us that we receive everything. That is a remarkable thing. But grace upsets that transactional way of living.
But before we point a finger at another culture, I think it’s fascinating how quickly Christians can slip back into that transactional way of living. Maybe we’ll come back to that in a few minutes and explore that.
The nature of Hindu worship
CK: On the transactional nature way of living, I remember going to a Hindu temple in North America and asking the priest about the kinds of duties that they were doing when they go into the temple. He talked about feeding the gods, bathing the gods, and changing even clothes and things for the gods. It’s about this service of doing things unto the gods for, as you’ve said, a blessing of sorts. We look at that through biblical eyes and laugh, because of the prophecies of Isaiah or other places, where we read things like “How could you carve something and do everything for your god when a god is supposed to be powerful enough to do it for itself?” (e.g. Isa 44:9-20, 46). How do Hindus understand what they’re doing?
Clive: I think partly it is out of that devotion: they think, “I want to be faithful to my god.” If they haven’t been to the temple for a while, they’ll feel that kind of spiritual urge: “I need to go and do something for my god.” So partly it’s transactional, but it’s also partly their conscience: they’re thinking, “Oh, I need to somehow serve my god.” So they go and offer things in order to honour their god.
CK: Yeah, fascinating. So it’s not just because they’re thinking their god is powerless, but actually one of service to the god in devotion. Does it ever register for them, do you think, that they are doing something that the god can’t do for itself?
Clive: That’s a good question. I’m not sure. What do you think, Ben?
Ben: I guess the key thing undergirding all of this is the transactional nature of worship. So even if there was something like that, it’s too risky to question god about something like that, and so the thing to do is to do whatever it takes to make sure they get whatever is needed for that particular end.
We’re not always thinking “transactional” as in thinking of an exam and passing an exam. In the more extreme cases, we were talking a bit earlier about in regional parts of India, it may be the case that a family has five or six children, and they don’t have enough to feed that family, so they will sacrifice the first child to the temple to be a worker in that temple and never see them again in order to make sure the other five children are then able to eat. In that sort of transactional nature, because the transactions are based on fear, desperation and need, even if there is what can seem to us like a very obvious contradiction or a very obvious breaking of some kind of logic, it’s too risky to go down that path of questioning those things, because it could just make things worse and worse and worse, especially if karma is right.
CK: Yeah, wow! So that kind of transactional way of thinking is really enslaving to people, because once you’re in a system where I must do something in order to get, if you break out of that system, there’s always that fear crouching at your door—that if I don’t do that—if I actually give up on this system, I may actually go without. So it locks people into a way of living and being, which is, I think, something really fascinating for us as we think about reaching people with the gospel.
Freedom from superstition and fear
CK: How do we see real freedom come to them as they receive grace, and what kinds of hurdles are present to people as they break out of that? Just talk about that for a minute: when you the present the gospel to somebody from a Hindu background, how do you help them get loose of superstition or fear?
Clive: I just think it takes a long time. I think people need to hear grace so many times before it actually sinks in, and even if people from a Hindu background do come to Christ, they will still have that in the back of their mind. If they go through some sickness, they’ll think, “Oh, is Christ upset with me?” It’s very hard to remove that karmic idea of retribution, or cause and effect, from even their Christian lives.
To be honest, I think a lot of Christians struggle with this too sometimes: “Why is God doing this? What have I done to deserve this?” But for people from Hindu backgrounds, maybe it’s even more ingrained, and so it’s important for them to keep hearing grace. Grace is so wonderful, we forget it even as believers. So just keep reminding them how much Jesus loves them, what he’s done for them and that he’s with them. It’s a beautiful thing.
CK: It is a beautiful thing, yeah. And it’s a great thing for us to keep remembering how important it is to live by faith in that grace over and over again—even as Christians, as we encounter difficulty, standing fast in faith that God is good and faithful, even when we feel pain, sorrow or suffering. We’ll come back to that in a minute as we think about witnessing to Hindus.
Morality for Hindus
CK: Just thinking about differences in culture, I’d love to hear about morality for Hindus. What is it that drives the Hindu moral way of life? What do they think about in terms of right and wrong, and how they ought to be living in this world?
Ben: I guess to start with, one key thing is that morality is very much attached to society—to the family structure. Understanding right and wrong is right and wrong in the context of relationships, whether that’s family or the bigger structure. This means that when I make a decision, I make a decision that I know will either positively or negatively impact family. If I had a sister, it would be impacting the sister’s potential marriage in the future. In terms of society, I have to think about whether that brings shame to the family and to the society or not. So morality, then, is very much tied into everything else that is around.
So in one sense, the objective right and wrong of morality that comes from a particular book, or understanding the truth about God, is really not the thing that is there. [Laughter] The thing that is there is that everyone is understanding and everyone is using as their worldview is that in all of society, morality is based on whether or not we are good or bad for that society, and the good or bad-ness of that society.
CK: Yeah, that is such a clash with Western ways of thinking! To take it out of this context for a moment of thinking about Hindus, I had friends who were in Africa recently for a conference. They mentioned talking about Western understanding and secularism, and the African brothers and sisters listening were open-mouthed, their jaws on the floor. They said, “How could somebody think like that? How could somebody be so individualistic?” It was really a shock to them!
Sharing a gospel communal mindset
CK: So as we think about encountering Hindus and talking to them about the gospel and even about morality, how do we work to understand more of that communal mindset that helps us to be aware of some of our own blind spots, but also to work to translate, if you will, the gospel into that context as a way of reaching people who are more community-minded. How do you encourage people to think differently in that way?
Ben: I guess one thing to do is to think about everything in the context of community. As churches, we may be saved individually, but saved into a community and a family. That’s the type of thing we really want to display to our friends from a Hindu background, because it will help them to see the reality that when we’re not taking them away from their family in order to be a random individual who has to somehow tough it out just with God alone. In actuality, it’s with God alone and the blessing of all these brothers and sisters we have. That’s a challenge for us—at least, in Sydney that’s a challenge for us—because it means more time [Laughter]—an investment of more time, not just at church and after church, but also in an investment in time getting involved in the messiness of each other’s families. That’s what it’s like in most south Asian background gatherings: you pass your child on to the other 180 aunties who are there, because they’re all part of the family. The child knows all of them and they know the child, and that’s normal. Then all the kids sleep in a pile on the side when it’s 11pm and all the adults are doing something. That’s an expected norm. So to be able to do that as churches—to show that we’re living lives and we’re living lives as families together is really helpful, because that’s the biblical, gospel way of life. [Laughter]
CK: Yeah, isn’t that interesting! I find that so helpful, Ben, and so frightening at the same time [Laughter], because, as a Westerner … I mean, I wonder what the listeners are thinking about—in terms of “Oh, that sounds really good!” or “Oh, that sounds terrifying to me—that I have to open my life up to so many people and have responsibility!” We’ve become so accustomed in the West to living our lives as we choose, on our own time, in our own way that it just sounds inconvenient to involve more people.
Personally, when I think about more people being involved in my life, I think about more mess being involved in my life, because as people used to say, “More money, more problems”, I think, “More people, more problems”. [Laughter] That’s just the way life works!
But you’re right, Ben: there’s a real blind spot for us in Western cultures where we can think that it’s about just me and Jesus. Even in church, it’s about me and my experience, getting what I want, when actually, no, we’re not saved unto things that I want; we’re actually saved unto belonging to a people—a new people. We’re saved from one people to another people. That’s something rich, wonderful, hard and beautiful, and we really need to transform our way of thinking about how we can be more countercultural today, even in Western churches. This might actually 1) make us more biblically faithful, but 2) make us a better landing place for people who are converting from other cultures, which is really great. Thank you, Ben!
Ben: Yeah. In one sense, we’re already on the back foot, because Hinduism is so tied in with culture. Just take Indians as an example—Hinduism and Indian culture, and all the forms that that takes: they are inseparable. They go together. So then the assumption is that Christianity and Western culture are all one as well. This means that when Hindus see Western culture, they think, “That’s what Christians do”.
So being able to show something different to that—to show that being a follower of Jesus and living in a way that is actually good and other-person-centred, and takes into account not just your immediate family, but also a very large church family, those things suddenly help people to see, “Oh, that’s not what we thought. It’s different from that. Maybe these people are actually trying to follow this Jesus, who they say is King and Lord and God, and that, just as an experiential thing, or an example that we can show, is actually very helpful for people to make them think outside the box.
CK: That’s great. And it’s a real wake-up call, too, for us about the ways that our faith has been so enculturated. So you’re right: you think about it, an Indian person thinks Christianity is just Western, so they turn on the TV and what they see seems Christian. This is shocking, because most Christians think, “No, that’s not us.” But you do wonder, when people come to church, how different that experience is and what they’re told about how different it is. Or you wonder about the lives the people live—how different they are than what the rest of the culture is doing or saying is true.
Ben: And are we displaying real communal life together? Western individualism and efficiency often dictates what we do on a Sunday: if the service goes for more than an hour and fifteen minutes, we think, “Oh, we’ve got to get out of here!” [Laughter] rather than, “Are we sharing our lives together? Are we having meals together? Are we inviting people in our homes or into our gatherings? Are we really displaying the communal life that Christ calls us to live, and the body that Christ has made us to be?”
CK: Yeah, that’s really helpful.
[Music]
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CK: As we take a break from our program, I’d like to tell you about some resources for your Christian life. First, we have some very significant events coming up with the Centre for Christian Living. On Wednesday 7 June, we’ll be hosting Professor David VanDrunen of Westminster Seminary California for two evening events.
We’ll begin from 5-6pm with a public lecture on “The glory of true humility”, and then after a break for dinner (when in-person guests are welcome to roam up King St for some delicious eats), we’ll come back for our CCL series event from 7:30-9:00pm on the topic of “Virtue in an age of virtue signalling”.
I really hope you’ll prioritise joining us in person or on the livestream for these events. As a reminder, we host these events on Wednesday nights so that church Bible Study groups can participate together. We’d love to have you or your whole group join us.
These events continue to be by donation, so come whether you can give or not. All the details can be found under the events tab on our website: ccl.moore.edu.au. I really hope that you’ll register and plan to join us.
Second, for those of you who are interested in learning more about reaching Hindus for Christ, there are some ways that you can benefit from the ministry of Ben and Clive, our guests today. If you’re in Sydney or you’re able to be here on 19 August, consider coming along to the Satya Conference. There are some significant guest speakers that day, including the Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel.
You also might like to consider reaching out to Clive about church consultations, where he offers to help congregations better be equipped to reach south-east Asians.
You can find out details of the conference and how to be in touch with Clive with the Satya Network website: satyanetwork.org. Now let’s get back to our program.
How Hindus think about Christian morality
CK: How do Hindus, then, think about morality in Christianity? You’ve talked, Ben, about the ways that maybe they might look at Westerners and assume they’re Christian; how do Hindus think about Christian morality?
Ben: Yeah. Individuals will be different, but I think, generally speaking, one of the problems is that when Hindus think about Christianity and Christian morality, they often look at the type of things that we say and then the type of things that we do, and see a mismatch there between our worldview and our practice. I think they think, “This all sounds very good”, but given inherently they are pluralistic in nature, in terms of their thinking, what it means that they think, “Well, that’s one way of doing it that could be good, and this is another way of doing it that could be good”, and they’re not really seeing that this is the way that we think is the best way to live.
What they’re seeing is that all Christians have all these things where we should be loving and other-person-centred towards people, but how that translates is when I need to meet with you, I’ll schedule a coffee that goes for no more than 45 minutes, because I need to go see someone else. There has been no Indian friend of mine that I’ve ever met with who has gone for less than 45 minutes. It doesn’t happen, because time and really listening to the other person, and really enjoying a meal together with the other person and sharing with each other is part of what it means to be good and to invite this person into your life.
We just need to be mindful of those things. It doesn’t mean now we need to schedule all meetings to be 3 hours long. It just means we need to be mindful of the reality that we say we want to be other-person-centred, we say that that what it means to adorn the gospel and follow Jesus, but that’s not necessarily how we act in terms of the practical things we do on a daily basis.
CK: Yeah. Real care for real people.
Ben: Yeah, that’s right. We may have a good view of right and wrong, and they may see that come out in particular things. But also those good, strong views of right and wrong that then hurt other people in the sense that they contradict what other people think, well that’s something that is really very difficult to fathom when you have a very, very large gathering, where everybody needs to be able to mix together with all their different views and thoughts and everything else. That also feels like, “Oh, this is going to break the community and this is going to be shameful to the community—to think something different from everybody else”. All of these things, then, I think, from a Hindu perspective sometimes come off as a contradiction unless we walk alongside them and show them in the daily life of a Christian what it looks like to live these things out.
CK: Yeah, fascinating! It’s so easy for us to make much of what we say and think that the only thing that matters is that I can say the right words—that it’s the gospel articulated in just the right terms that is going to be the effective witness to my neighbour. But you’ve just helped us to see that there’s a crucial component of deeds: living according to the truth really testifies to the goodness of that truth, which then probably enables a conversation about that truth as well. So it’s not that it’s just words and no deeds; it’s not that it’s just deeds and no words; but it’s actually both. They both really matter. The Christian life and our morality must shine forth, if you will, in that goodness of the gospel. I think this is what 1 Peter 2 talks about. That’s really, really helpful.
Conversations with Hindus
CK: So as you begin to have conversations with somebody from a Hindu background, where do you start? Clive, you’re doing this work right now: you’re consulting with churches about how to better reach Hindus. How do you start? What do you do as you begin to engage Hindus with the gospel?
Clive: Yes. I think what you were talking about in terms of word and deed is really important. For Hindus, propositional ideas are not as powerful as the experience of what they’re believing. Hindus generally don’t follow their gods because they’re convinced of a particular doctrinal truth; they follow because of experience. I remember getting on a bus and meeting a guy who’d just come from the temple. I said, “Do you always go this temple?” He said, “Oh, no, I grew up worshipping a different god, but it didn’t seem to work out for me. Then I came here and prayed to this god, and he seemed to answer my prayers, so now I come here.” [Laughter] It’s nothing to do with the ideas or the doctrine, but simply the experience.
Often when we think about how to share Jesus and our lives, we think about, “How do we engage the ideas?” Whereas for them, the experience of Jesus as a true and living God—a God who walks with us and changes our lives—that is more powerful and more relevant. So similar to what Ben said, we need to think about how we live authentic lives, trying to follow Jesus.
It doesn’t have to be all successful in that everything we say, we do. But in our successes and our failures, do we rely on Jesus? When we fail morally, do we say, “Lord, I’m sorry for what I’ve done and I admit what I have done, and yet, thank you for your grace”? That’s where we’re showing a different way to live that’s actually gospel-centred.
Persuading Hindus to follow Jesus
CK: Yeah, and how do we persuade people, then? On that really important point you’ve just raised, if someone’s going to jump ship because one god isn’t working for them, the call of the Christian life is not to come and have abundance, it’s actually to come and die, and if you lose your life, you’ll find it (cf. Mark 8:35). There’s so much promise for us that in giving up everything, we’ll receive everything. But the “everything” we receive isn’t necessarily bliss today; it might be more suffering and hardship today. So when you’re trying to break people away from “If I do this, then I’ll get that”, and say, “If you come and follow Jesus, what you’re going to get is, perhaps, suffering now. But it’s worth it”, how do you persuade people?
Clive: Yeah. I think prayer is the most important thing: encouraging people to pray to Jesus. Hindus are very happy to add Jesus to the 300 million gods. But as they get to know Jesus, they’ll see that he’s a true and living God, and he might not answer their prayers the way they want. He may heal them or answer their prayers in different ways. But he may also just reveal himself personally, and they will realise, “Actually, this is more than the transactional religion I’ve come from. This is a God who loves me, who wants to have a relationship with me, and who offers me eternal life.” That’s far greater than what I thought I was coming to get. [Laughter]
CK: Isn’t that lovely! It’s that thing that you said that they’re after: they want a god they can know, and ultimately, a god they say that they worship—who manifests himself in all these different ways and has to do so because he’s unknowable. But our God is known, he makes himself known, he is relatable and he is caring. He shows us so much of himself.
Clive: There’s a wonderful book called Found by Love by an ex-Hindu priest: he was following the devotional path, he poured out his heart to his favourite god, he was singing songs and doing prayers and rituals, and yet he hardly felt like there was love coming back the other way. [Laughter] One day, he was in an airport and he started reading a children’s Bible in a bookstore, and realised, “Hey, this is a God who really loves me and wants to know me.” He started reading more of the Bible, started following Jesus in a secret way, and even started putting some of those biblical truths into his public Hindu talks. His hearers said, “Wow, this is amazing! Where are you getting this stuff from?” [Laughter]
CK: Fantastic!
Clive: Eventually he had to admit to his guru that “I’m going to be following Jesus”. It’s quite an amazing story.
CK: What a lovely testimony!
Ben: Incidentally, this is why stories are so powerful, including stories from the Gospels. Pick any story of Jesus interacting with someone, and all of that is mind-blowing: God himself not only interacts with people, but he does so not in that sort of transactional way. These people have nothing they can give him, yet he goes to them. He goes to the women who are vulnerable. He goes to the people who are possessed by demons. He goes to all these people who are suffering, in strife and crying out. He goes, and not only does he help them with their immediate issues, but then he calls them to follow him. That’s unbelievable! That’s going to change everything they thought they knew about what it’s like to relate to God in any way. That already is such a big thing.
I think of this concept called “the god shelf”: you think about the god shelf and you think, “Hindus have a hundred gods on that god shelf—a hundred idols”. Then they have an experience that means that now they think that Jesus should be on that god shelf, because we prayed once and now the car’s working, and that’s awesome. Jesus is now god number 101 on the god shelf. Then actually over the next three years, it’s the experiences that come with the discipleship, as we mentor, as we invite them into our family times, as we do prayer time with them, as we read the Bible with them, as we interact with them when we are struggling, or when they are struggling, as we’re willing to go out of our way—all of those things mean that over a three/five/ten/fifteen-year period, those other 100 gods come off the shelf one by one. It’s because “Shiva doesn’t do this for me. Hanuman doesn’t do this for me. Ganesh doesn’t do this for me. It’s not only that Jesus does this for me, he’s with me all the time, but also all of the other people who Jesus is with all the time, they also are surrounding me and loving me and caring for me in a way that tries to model what Jesus is doing, even if it’s not perfect.” That’s profoundly powerful, right? Over time, that’s the way I like to think about the Hindu experience: discipleship really matters.
Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t do the evangelistic course, and that doesn’t mean we don’t do the evangelistic call at the end of preaching, and that doesn’t mean we don’t do all these other things. But often those things are either a step in the lifespan of discipleship with a Hindu person, where either they have been talking to somebody for a long time and then they finally get hit by it, or they get hit by it and then now there needs to be a “What happens next” to show what it looks like to live as a Christian. But either way, it can’t just be one or the others; it’s surely got to be both. I think that’s true of everybody, even if you’re not from a Hindu background. But it’s very much the way that they understand things from their worldview and mindset, because why would you leave all of these family connections and these people who will pick up your kids from school, babysit for you and do all this sort of stuff—why would you leave all of that for something individualistic, where even the people that you can see who also are followers of Jesus don’t really do that?
CK: I think that’s a real lesson for us, Ben—that we’ve become so accustomed to this individual, crisis-based evangelism: there’s an event; I call you to a response; you must respond now or else. In one sense, you want to say, yes, that’s true; that’s the call of life every day. Do you repent and believe? But actually, we’ve got to understand that sometimes there’s a process of people coming to the gospel and that, actually, we need to be patient in that process as people are, in one sense, invited to taste and see that the Lord is good. May the Lord clear the shelf! May he make it clear to them that he alone is the Lord—that there is no other—and that his glory will not be shared. But sometimes it takes a little time for people to see that as they begin to journey, taste and see.
Conclusion
CK: Brothers, I’m so grateful for the work you’re doing. Ben, Clive: it’s been such a joy to hear a bit about your ministry and about how we can be thinking differently. I really hope that people today have been encouraged to think differently just about how we might be prone towards our own individualism and ways that that might be a barrier to people coming to Christ. So may we prayerfully consider how we can reach others, especially Hindus, with the gospel.
Thank you, brothers, very much.
Ben: Thanks.
Clive: Thanks so much, Chase!
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CK: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.
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As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.
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Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Photo by Frank Holleman on Unsplash.
