THE Pope is in the confessional. The church has much to confess – 2000 years of mistakes and crimes. The burden of the guilt is too heavy to bear.
It is clear the church has to re-frame its message. But will it do so? It cannot, for if it were to reveal the entire truth, it cannot face the world. The present confessions are thus merely cosmetic.
But can the Church of India seize this opportunity – the decline of the Western church – to bring about a full-scale reform? It should. It has the cause. Why should the Indian church share the burden and the shame with the Vatican?
But does the Church of India know what has caused such shame? I wonder! The average Christian does not go beyond the Bible. A critical study of the Bible? Impossible.
India, Christians must know that Christianity is an Eastern religion. More so, a religion inspired by India, for the word of Jesus are the words of the East, of India in particular. Jesus could not have said: “An eye for an eye”. The words of Jesus are in fact those of the Buddha, who was the first to speak of “Universal compassion.”
The Church of India must say this openly – that its roots are in the East. The central doctrine of Christianity is “non-violence”. It was first proclaimed by Mahavira and Buddha.
Prof Whitehead says: “The trouble with the Bible has to do with its interpreters, who whittled down its sense of the infinite. And the first interpreter of the New Testament was St. Paul – the worst interpreter. Paul tried to take Christianity back to its tribal origin – the Jewish faith.”
So, the Christian faith today is more Pauline than Christian. Which is yet another reason for the Church of India to bring the Bible back to its real author – Jesus Christ.
For three centuries Christianity met with fierce resistance from the Romans, although it found favour with some Roman thinkers like Seneca, Cicero and Epictetus. In the event, the Romans romanised and paganised the Christian faith before they accepted it. This was the main charge of Martin Luther against the Papacy during the Reformation. Romanised Christianity absorbed the violence of imperial Rome and its organisational skill.
But why did the Europeans oppose Christianity? Because, says Max Mueller, the famous Indologist, that they did not accept the ethical obligations imposed by Christ. “Ours (European) highest ideal of life,” says Max Mueller “is a fighting life.” Not a life of Peace?
It led Max Mueller to the belief that there are two hemispheres in human nature – the active, combative and political on one side, and passive, reflective and philosophic on the other side.
And he mentions India, where “the other side” of human nature developed – not active, or combative, but passive, reflective and philosophic.”
Mueller goes on the say : “Of course, we should call these notions (of Hindus) dreamy, unreal, impractical, but may not they (the Hindus) look upon our notions as short-sighted, ruddy and in the end most impractical because it involves a sacrifice of life for the sake of life.”
History proved Max Mueller right. The west accounts for much of the bloodshed in the world. The world cannot forget the slave trade, the genocide of the Red Indians, the excesses of colonicalism and the Holocaust.
So the active and combative life of the West did not suit the “non-violence” of Christianity. The fact is : non-violence and an active, combative life are ill-matched. They cannot go together. Europe needed a “fighting life”. To make matters worse, Europe absorbed the legacy of Roman cruelty. So, is there any wonder if Europe and the west remained predatory?
