When and How Did the Hindu Religion Originate?

[SaintJoeNow]

There is a beautiful side to evil. The warning in the passage is against studying strange religions because the beutiful aspects can become a snare. You can see in some of the posts in this thread how they are focusing on the beauty of Hinduism, which is not in reality beauty at all, there is nothing beautiful about Hinduism, it's evil, doctrines of devils, lies from Hell. I was into americanized Hinduism which was pretty strongly tied to traditional Hindu roots. I won't say the name of that Americanized sect because it's evil and I don't want to glorify it in any way and nobody should be touching it. The beauty of some of it, the experiences in meditative times, the poetic wordings of the religious philosophy...all seemed good and beautiful and now I know it's evil and it's nothing for a Christian to be studying.

Hinduism is creeping into the churches today under the mask of "the emerging church", with Acts 29 network being a main branch. We are supposed to defend the faith and address those who are trying to subvert Christianity as Jude and 2 Peter warned they would do..when they come into the church, but to go out studying their religions? That's not how God's people are supposed to be spending their time.

 

[Lynx]

I was wondering when he would find this thread.

 

[posthuman]

Which reminds me: you should read this too.

a very interesting book i remember fondly!
also this:

 

[posthuman]

(too late to edit)

here they are in free .pdf form:

the Tao of Pooh & the Te of Piglet

keep in mind, they are Taoist books, not Christian. but it may be enlightening to read from a Christian perspective, and to understand in an enjoyable and simple way what the precepts of Taoism are.

 

[Lynx]

"Wait, weren't we studying Zen?"

"That was Zen, this is Tao."

 

[SaintJoeNow]

If you die today, are you sure your sins are forgiven and you are going to heaven?

This works for talking to Hindu's the same as anybody else, as long as you are ready to give an answer for the hope that lies in you, you don't have to pretend like you think it's cool for somebody to believe they can be reincarnated to be a sinking cat or some other critter that goes around spraying on people to get even for annoyances in their past lives when they were dogs and got kicked around too much.

Hinduism is just another insane twist of a selfish desire to justify one's own existence in rebellion against God denying His right to rule over His creatures and confine all rebellion in the Lake of Fire forever where only the smoke of their torments will rise from the flames and they will be consumed by the flames

Some good old Hell fire and brimstone preaching will do a Hindu good...you have to make them doubt the lies they have been blinded to hold onto.

 

[Tintin]

There is a big majority of geologists that claim there is no religion in the world today that does not originate from Hindu.

I just reread this thread and have to question this. What do geologists even know about comparative religions? They study rocks!

Also, while Hinduism may be very old, the one true God is far older and was the original faith for all people (in some form) post-Flood/pre-tower of Babel.

As for the Indian girls I met, I made a mistake. I've got to know them quite a bit better and I now know that the one who recently became a Christian was actually a Sikh, not a Hindu. It's very interesting to learn about their lives and their culture, but they don't seem to know much about their ex-religions and their country's history.

 

[Nick01]

Hinduism isn't really one religion, so it's quite hard to say when it began. It depends entirely on which Hindu you talk to, and most Hindus only talk about 'Hinduism' when speaking to Westerners. I think about the closest we can get is when stuff starts to get codified in the Vedic literature about 1600BC. There are a lot of these texts - the more commonly known ones like the Bhagavad Gita is somewhere around 500-100BC, but the BG is a later example and isn't altogether relevant to a lot of Hindus.

Interestingly enough, the actual Hindu comes originally from a word used to describe the geographical location of a people (i.e. people who lived in a certain area relative to the Indus river), and only later (I think about the 1800s) became a term used specifically to refer to cultural and religious traditions.