Sadguru Yeshu and 'The Yeshuyana' (book)

[satyendas]

Dear Indian Christian friends,

I would be interested in hearing some different thoughts of how you feel that Yeshu can understood well by Hindus. In my experience I feel that Yeshu can be know, loved and worshiped in many ways that many Hindu people can be comfortable with.

For anyone is interested, I have recently published a book that explores this. It is a telling of the overall biblical and Yeshu story - from creation through to new creation - in a way meant specifically to help Hindus understand and follow Yeshu.

If anyone would like to read and share their thoughts I would be interested to hear.

It is available in English, Hindi and Bengali - as a printed book and also as a free PDF e-book at the following links:

The Yeshuyana (English print book)
The Yeshuyana (Free English PDF e-book)
Yeshugatha (Hindi print book)
Yeshugatha (Free Hindi PDF e-book)
Jishuchorit (Bengali print book)
Jishuchorit (Free Bengali PDF e-book)

 

[Ugly]

Guessing you did t read the 'no soliciting' rule when you joined the site.

 

[didymos]

I'm not interested in sad gurus.

 

[satyendas]

My apologies if posting those links was not appropriate on the forum. I was just hoping to get some engagement / discussion around how Jesus can be known and followed with cultural authenticity by people of Hindu background.

 

[pwrnJC]

satyendas....
I respect your idea of wanting so desparately to win Hindu peoples over to JESUS CHRIST. They, like every other culture, past and present, have to come to JESUS as a child, free from assumptions and pre-conceptions and study HIM, through the written WORD, totally done in Faith as they begin their new walk in CHRIST. Accepting the fact that the blood of JESUS can clease their sins, and believing that HE is their Savior and having their minds transformed and renewed by HIs Holy Spirit.

Eskimoes, Buddists, Communists, Humanists, Jews, Arabs,Hispanics, Voodoo Doctors, Politicians, and Transvestites and all must come to JESUS in simplicity, putting aside their former 'religious' trainings (should they have any) and start fresh with JESUS CHRIST. In short, share JESUS where you are....with your Hindu folks and let your example be their compass pointing them to JESUS CHRIST.

 

[satyendas]

pwrnJC,

I appreciate your desire for all people to come to know Jesus. However what I am getting at is that I think the vast majority of Christians have never really come to terms with the enormous cultural baggage that accompanies most attempts to share Christ with non-Western peoples. To almost all Hindus Jesus is thought of as a Western god, because Western style spiritualities, forms of worship, discipleship have been imported from abroad. This creates very large barriers for Hindus to really encounter Christ and develop their own ways to faithfully follow Jesus. I am talking about contextualization, which missiologists have long taught to be essential, but which overall has been very poorly applied by most missions movements. And this is a theme that right from the NT church has been recognized as essential. For example, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 made it clear that non-Jews did not need to conform to Jewish culture, but needed the freedom to develop their own expressions of faith from within their own cultures.

We need to realize that none of us have a culturally neutral expression of faith. Our styles of discipleship and spirituality are the product of our own heritage, culture, background etc. And we need to enable Hindus and in fact all people to discern their own ways to faithfully follow Jesus through their own culture. They don't need to become Jewish (the big question in NT times), and they certainly don't need to adopt an imported Western culture.

So what I am seeking to do is present Jesus not through Western tradition (after all, Jesus was not Western but Jewish, and the forms of modern church and mission would have been very foreign to him), but in a way that Hindus can much more readily understand - without the barriers of Western culture in the way. To give one example from the book... As a Jew, Jesus was often called 'Rabbi', (meaning 'Teacher' in English). In India, an appropriate title for Jesus as teacher could well be 'Sadguru', which is an extremely rich term, and in fact some believers from Hindu background who want to express their faith in authentically Indian ways already do use this term. It means 'Eternal and Supreme Teacher - one who as the embodiment of the divine is himself the teaching - and who leads the spiritual seeker from darkness into light and union with God.' And there are also many other ways that Jesus can be known through Indian culture and traditions.

Questions of culture, and what types of faith communities new believers are expected to join are of paramount importance in helping people of non-Western cultures to follow Jesus. If interested in considering these concepts further, I would highly recommend taking a look at 'The Kingdom Tree' video. It's a diagrammatic teaching video that helps provide a solid biblical framework for some of the concepts I am talking about.

 

[MattArnold]

Namasté Satyendas,

Thank you for your wonderful work in The Yeshuyaha! I received a copy of it yesterday morning and have been spending some time in between reading other work for my MA on Pioneer Ministry (Fresh Expressions). My heart is full of joy at seeing this work available for your Hindu brothers and sisters.

I fully understand the need to contextualize things for those in different cultures and am so pleased someone has taken the time to write this book. I know that there was a contextualized church in India and those parts before the British Empire came along with its Western brand of Christianity, and effectively did what the Roman church did at the Synod of Whitby when it squashed the indigenous Celtic Christianity which was in the islands before the RC imposed their brand of Christianity. So God bless you for producing this material which I'm going to be using amongst the spiritual seekers in Mind, Body, Spirit fairs in the UK where we get a lot of Hindu people, or those who want to follow a Hindu / Buddhist path. This is a real "gift of tongues" you have sir - and thank you for exercising that gift to remove the unnecessary barriers we Westerners instinctively raise for those who like Jesus but don't like his Christians, because his Christians are so unlike Jesus (to paraphrase a quote (or misquote?) from Ghandi - who himself was a big fan of the Christian author G K Chesterton).

I work with contextualizing material for those indigenous cultures in which I'm called to be the hands, feet and mouth of Jesus - the Pagan / New Age cultures. I fell into this because I found that simply saying "Jesus is Lord" and using tracts which were in "Christianese" were not communicating effectively with the people. I could say the Gospel message in the most eloquent way to these people, but if they weren't understanding the message, it was not effectual. And yes, I too receive lots of negative comments from misunderstanding Christians who say I "shouldn't go to those places" or "I'm mixing evil with good" - because they don't understand contextualization, the history of how their brand of church came to be, and that Jesus is working in the world outside of their narrow brand of Christianity.

You have probably heard of the terms "Missio Dei" and "Double listening" in missiology by the work you have produced in The Yeshuyana. It was only when I discovered these that I turned from being one of those Christians who say "Jesus only" (though I never resorted to using capitalization (which is shouting in internet culture, again "respect" in one culture being played out as "disrespect" in another culture)) and understood Jesus is the Latin (Romanised) version of Iesous which itself is the Greek name for Yeshua (Hebrew). Jesus also has many other names - Emmanual (Isaiah) / the Divine Creator (John 1:3) / Yeshuji (Hindu) / Isa al Massih (Muslim) / the Starbreather (my own name for him as someone into particle physics) / the God of Green Hope (The Message) and so on... "At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow" doesn't mean the literal name "Jesus" because there are many people in the world with that name - especially of Spanish / Portuguese origin, it's about the Entity and authority behind the name more than the letters in the name.

A great book on the subject of missiology is Vincent Donovan's Christianity Rediscovered, which every Christian who is serious about being following the Great Commission should read.

I pray that more and more people are raised up as workers to bring the contextualized good news of Jesus to those in the various tribes and nations around the world, for that's where we're to go - to the ends of the earth. And there will be those in the Kingdom of God whom God knows and we'll all be very surprised to see there because we didn't call them "Christians", yet were true followers of the Risen and Ascended Master Jesus. The next Reformation is happening, and it's happening in the fields of contextualized mission.

I love the "Kingdom Tree" video and will be using it in my own work, both as a "Pioneer Minister", but also as an "Advisor in Evangelism" to my deanery in the UK. Thanks for the link!

Every blessing with your ministry and may your work be the means by which many may become followers of Yeshuji (Jesus to us "Roman" Westerners ).

Namasté
Matthew Arnold, Lay Pioneer Minister for Fresh Expressions, "Growing Disciples" Advisor in Evangelism.