Hinduism: Consistently Inconsistent
People today have been entranced with the ideas of becoming one with the universe, an idea put forth by the Hindu religion. Upon studying Bickel & Jantz’s book ”World Religion & Cults 101”, I formulated the following essay to show some of the many contradictions found in Hinduism, and how Christianity answers to these ideas
Hinduism is the third largest religion of today, encompassing a large portion of Asia. There are more than 790,000,000 Hindus across the globe (13% of the world population). There are no definitive Hindu works, or prophets, because the entire religion was not established in one century, but slowly mutated across the ages into what it has become today. There are only a few ideas that all Hindus believes; these beliefs include: there are many gods (yet all is god and god is all), people are reincarnated after they die (based on a good and bad karma scale), and the whole point of life is to become one with the universe (god).
The world we live in is based on time. A day has a beginning, and an end. Therefore it stands to reason that this world too has a beginning, and an end. Hinduism has no true beginning, and an undefined end.
What is meant by no true beginning is that the origins of Hinduism can be traced to the Mohenjo-Daro society in northwest India about 4,000 years ago. During this time, there were no Hindu Gods, as to them, the universe was god. Then in 1500 B.C., the Persians invaded and merged their religion with the religion of the Mohenjo-Daro, thereby adding thousands of gods/idols into the belief system.
Then as to the undefined conclusion of humanity, we must look at their ideas on reincarnation. Firstly, reincarnation is the belief that after death, a “living thing” will return as something else (possibly a human, bug, bird, grass etc.). An example of this idea is found in The Lion King the Disney Movie, when Mufasa tells Simba that there is a “circle of life”. Hindus believe in reincarnation according to the karma scale. In order to understand this, you must first understand what Karma is. It is, simply put, whether something is a good or bad deed. Something that gives a person good Karma would be giving money to the temple, while stealing would give bad Karma. If your Karma is good at your death, you will be reincarnated to a higher form of life, bad karma makes you lower. Eventually, however, you will reach a point of perfection and become one with the universe.
The followers of Hindu Religion are put into different Castes, or social class. The four basic levels in order from highest to lowest are as follows: Brahmins (Priests), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaisyas (merchants and artists), and the Shudras (slaves). These castes are considered unchangeable during life, so a person is born into their caste and have no ability to change it until they have been reincarnated. If a Viasyas man desired to become a Kshatriyas, he could not (according to their belief system) join the new class in this life. He must build enough good Karma in order that in the next life he would be reincarnated as the next level. With this sort of idea, it would follow that society aught to have less and less Shudras, while the higher classes should indefinitely grow until there are no longer and bottom classes.
According to this interpretation of life, people/society should be constantly improving. If one were to take a good look at society of today, and compare it with the 1600’s (or any era before now), you will see that there has not improvement, but deterioration. There should be an end of time, but if things are only getting worse, then according to a Karma based system, that end will not come in a deteriorating culture.
Christianity is unlike Hinduism in these respects. The Christian Religion has a definite beginning, and a promised conclusion of time. The Bible (the Christian definitive work) begins with the creation of the world by a single all powerful being. It is written by many people throughout time whose lives can archaeologically be proven, and has since it’s beginning, never been dis-proven (there are plenty of people who disagree with the Bible, but no one that can tangibly disprove anything that it says). Then, there is also an end to time in the form of the return of Jesus Christ to the earth. Only after this life will perfection be established. This idea is congruent with the fact that this world is becoming worse, as Christianity never promises heaven here and now, but in what is to come.