One might ask what I find objectionable in Christianity. It’s an easy question to answer. What I find objectionable is that they canonize people like Theresa of Calcutta, that they sanctify groveling before God, that they sanctify humility and vilify power. Essentially, Jesus is what Hinduism and Buddhism would aspire to produce as the end-result of their teachings, but Christianity would be aghast at the very thought, because He is God, and they are worms. That’s what I find objectionable about Christianity, that it is shocked and aghast at all the things that I find to be the greatest parts of my personal spiritual practice.
Sure, there are versions of Hinduism, like the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, who are basically the Hindu version of Islam, who would find nothing objectionable about the Abrahamic approach to God, but that’s because they took their theology from Islam and their theological understanding of Krishna is indistinguishable from the Islamic understanding of Allah, if you ignore their extensive use of visual aids like statues and images. Their concept is that God is one, he is a person who lives in some very physical description of heaven surrounded by his worshipers, he’s the ultimate lawmaker and judge and if someone has a problem with that, there’s reincarnation in lower forms, instead of hell, but the basic principles are all similar. That is so because their cult was born under Islamic rule, and as someone who has Bosnia in his neighborhood I know what a country looks like after centuries of Islamic rule.
Their worst crime, in my mind, is that they stole Krishna, and turned him into something contemptible, into a faggot deity with the vile character of Allah.
Krishna is an example used by Vyasa, probably the smartest man of all times, in order to carve pathways into a human mind that will make it possible to understand God – what God is like, what would God do, what would God say, how would God react to something, how would certain people react to Him. It’s a masterpiece of the highest order, there are very few things like it in the history of literature. Tolkien, for instance, used similar literary means to illustrate his views on spirituality, in a very subtle but profound way. Krishna is something of a blend between Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and those two silly Hobbits, Merry and Pippin, who are always planning some fuckery and getting themselves into trouble. He’s the super-sage who impromptu pulls Bhagavad-gita out of his sleeve just because his friend needed some advice on the battlefield. He’s the exiled heir to the throne who was forced to live with foster parents in some village while his parents were imprisoned in a dungeon by his demon uncle; growing up, he killed the bastard and restored order. He’s the super-warrior who kicked so much ass he became a legend, and was best friends with another super ass-kicker, Arjuna, and they both combine incredible power with incredible poise and grace; they are relaxed and funny yet deep, gentle yet horribly powerful, illustrating both similarities and differences between the aspects of Vishnu and Shiva, allowing each other the opportunity to show a subtle relationship between two major Gods that are not revealed in interactions with mere humans. What you can see, for instance, is God’s distress and anguish when his friend vows to do something that is almost certain to get him killed, and he walks in circles, distressed, talking to himself about how he, too, will then choose to die because a third of his being is in Arjuna and what draw is there in this world without him? You have Arjuna, who had to make a choice between Krishna (who vowed not to fight) and his vast army, to fight alongside him in a war, and he immediately chose Krishna. When Krishna later asked what the hell that was about, Arjuna smiled and answered that it’s a great opportunity for him to catch up to Krishna’s high score because he won’t be able to do anything but watch him kick an enormous amount of ass from the best seat in town.
God is funny. There’s an explosive, bright spark of humor and joy in His smile that can light up the whole world, that can dry all tears, because it shows that light, consciousness, bliss, reality that is beyond this videogame of an illusion that we take so seriously here. It is true that heaven is full of souls who worship God, but that’s not because he’s a narcissistic asshole who wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s because he’s so incredibly fucking cool there’s nothing better in the whole world than just looking at him do things his way, showing what God is all about, what absolute reality is all about, what it looks like, what it feels like, and when you look at it, you don’t just look at it, because a light in your own being reacts to him and grows brighter, and as you glow worshiping Him His light grows within you and at one point you lose the difference, you no longer see it as you worshiping His light and beauty and love and power and reality and greatness, because as you worship the highest reality you become realized, as in, turned into that which is real. You become enlightened, as in, filled with light, becoming of light. You understand that that brahman, that factor of all that is cool and great about the Gods, that brahman am I, I am That, and that is the moment where I both fall to my knees before God and I am God, because in God everything is first-person, everything is I, and everything is now, it is the eternity beyond space and time and limitation of any kind.
That’s what I find objectionable in Christianity, that it finds enlightenment to be something sinful.
