A Fresh Perspective - 10/10/08
Harvard professor Diana Eck has been lecturing and writing for some time now on the religious diversity in America. She tells about an elderly friend in India who asked her once, "Do you really believe that God came only once, so very long ago and only to one people?" Professor Eck remarks, "The very idea that God could be so stingy as to show up only once, to one people, in one part of the world exploded my understanding of incarnation."
She contends that the obligation of Christians is not to merely talk about what we believe to people of other religious traditions, but to listen to whatever witness they may have. Only then do we have a context for dialogue.
She believes that there is a time and place to share our Christian witness, but it should not be from the perspective: We have the truth and you don't. She says, "I think the thing that many people who are not Christians feel about Christian evangelism and mission is that it's so one - way. It is so one - sided. It's all mouth, you might say, and no ears. And as a Christian, I would say that is a wrong understanding of what kind of relationship we should have with people of other faiths."
She argues that the church does not have a corner on compassion and love and the virtues that Paul describes in his letter to the Galatians as the fruit of the Spirit.
She likes to tell the story of a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Boston, where the image of the bodhisattva (enlightened being) of compassion, named Quan Yen, was smashed by some boys in the projects next door. When the vandals were caught, instead of taking the boys to court, the Vietnamese Buddhists forgave them. They had a festival of forgiveness and invited the whole neighborhood. They displayed an ethic of love and forgiveness that most Christians would cherish.
One of the vandals was named Angelo. When the president of the temple welcomed him that morning he said, "Your name means angel; we're going to make you and your friends the guardian angels of the temple." Angelo later said to Professor Eck, "If I had known anything about this temple and these people I would never have done this."
Professor Eck believes that people who have a very tidy view of Christianity, as if all the mysteries have been solved, need to open their eyes again to what God is doing in the world. I highly recommend her book, "Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras."