Transcendental Meditation is an Eastern meditative practice popularized in the West by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Beatles made it famous in the west after attending Maharishi’s lectures in the 60s. Once dismissed as the hippie mysticism the meditative practice had influenced Mike Love of the Beach Boys to Clint Eastwood and Deepak Chopra. Today TM is a billion-dollar new age philosophy industry that has followers from the boardroom to the beaches. The practice has anchored deep in much of the western world posing an immense challenge to traditional Christianity’s approach to solving social and spiritual problems.

In many ways, Lynch feels that America’s at-risk youths best bet to get out of their cycle of stress is to simply meditate. Somehow, the eastern Hindu practice seems to beat the stress much more effectively than Christian alternatives. Something seriously is going wrong with the way the western world is shifting to eastern solutions to deal with moral issues. Either Christianity is failing to address the subject or westerners have abandoned Christian foundations and are seeking new age ideas to deal with the pervasive moral decadence, and in particularly Lynch’s case, America’s at-risk youths have a better chance with Hinduism than Christianity. That’s where the issue boils down to finally.

It is critical to understand why an eastern practice, exclusively an Hindu practice, seems to better address western ills, when Hinduism and its celebrated teaching of TM has not significantly addressed India’s social and spiritual illness. Put more simply. How come not many Hindus in India do not believe in TM and only the westerners are finding something unique in it. We must apply the test of empirical evidence to see whether a philosophy or teaching has addressed its own progenitors.

Think of Yoga, another eastern, Hindu practice now a multi-billion dollar industry so famous and apparently people seem to be benefiting out of it. An honest examiner has to ask, why yoga has not done anything significant in the Hindu India. Why has it not addressed the mental and social ills in India? Why is it popular in the west but not in the east?

It’s the same deal with TM. It is more famous in the west than in its homeland.

Lynch, who established the David Lynch Foundation to “create peace and harmony between people of all ages and backgrounds,” is a devotee of TM. According to his Web site, Lynch believes every child should be given the opportunity to have one class period per day in which to “dive into himself and experience the field of silence.” He also believes TM is “the path by which people can reach the enormous reservoir of intelligence energy that is within all people.”

Paul McCartney, the Beatles star has been practicing TM for 40 years and so were many other high-profile rock stars.

I am of eastern origin and have lived to see Hinduism at its core. An average Indian has no clue of what TM is and neither has he benefited out of it.

TM may sound appealing and may even appear to be the pill that cures all our ill but the truth of the matter is, this meditative practice comes with serious concerns. Westerner’s and Christians in particular would be better off if they only knew what TM is and what it does.

So what is TM? What does it entail?

A surface definition of Transcendental Meditation pictures it as a natural practice of relaxation for two 20-minute periods each day. During the process one repeats a word, known as a mantra, in such a way that its rhythmic repetition aids the relaxation effort

Joe Kellett, a former TM teacher puts it more deeply in his website suggestibilitydotorg, “TM is just trance combined with suggestion. You are told that your mental activity will become reduced and that you will experience deep relaxation. Then the TM teacher induces a trance in you, in which you merely act out those suggestions. The TM teacher also teaches you how to induce trance in yourself and thus attain trance-induced relaxation on your own.”

The promoters of TM present it as a “scientific” practice based on biological and psychological laws. They repeatedly declare that it is a nonreligious activity in which men of all faiths may participate with great benefit.

The fact that TM is portrayed in scientific terms seems to give it credibility. This is TM’s major public relation stunt. It’s the belief that TMers produce powerful “good vibrations” from their meditations and yogic flying. And a powerful but small percentage of humans are enough to mediate and solve global problems through the sheer power of “good vibrations”.

Again this sounds purely as mumbo-jumbo. Kellett refutes this idea in his website. He writes, “For example, in 1993 four thousand TMers moved to Washington DC and did their meditating and flying there for two months. TM propaganda asks us to swallow the idea that it has been “scientifically validated” that this created a “field effect of consciousness” that directly caused a 23% reduction in crime!” He explains that there is a difference between “correlation” and “cause and effect. “In other words, just because two things happen in succession it doesn’t mean that one caused the other. But TMers really believe that the ME has been “scientifically proven”, and that it can give us “Heaven on Earth.””

To imagine a small band of meditating people emanating good vibrations attempting to solve global problems is preposterous.

I strongly believe that from the cultural and historical viewpoint TM has not drastically changed India’s struggle with numerous social evils. It’s a total fallacy that TM has mental and spiritual benefits when it has failed to spread the same goodies to its native citizens. For Christians in particular TM represents a paranormal and cultic experience. It stems from pantheistic eastern religion of Hinduism which does not address the fundamental questions of humankind.

TM is an old Hindu hat with some post-modern feathers to it. It’s appeal is in its exotic mysticism and it’s dangers far outweigh its good.

Reuben David

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The literature of Hinduism, the Vedas, are believed to have been composed over a period of 800 years (from 400 BC to AD 400). Hinduism’s supreme being is the indefinable and impersonal Brahma. In a sense, Brahma is all — the all-embracing ultimate reality. Brahma is the central fact of Hindu cosmology, its Godhead, and an abstract entity that constitutes the irreducible essence of all. For Hindu devout, Brahma, the one mind or life, is the one essential reality. Brahma expresses himself through the world, like a flame taking many shapes, diverse and changeable. Everything we see and experience, Hindu’s believe, is one reality, and life in all its forms is ultimately indistinguishable from Brahma.

Unlike Christianity, where the attributes of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, are known in considerable historical detail, there are no personal attributes for the god of the Hindu religion. The Christian godhead is identified as the Trinity. The three Persons of the Trinity –Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — act in unity yet independently. As expressed by the Councils of Nicea, they are One God in three Persons, consubstantial and coeternal.

The Bible of Jews and Christians portray God as a personal being — as one who is actively involved with the affairs of mankind. He is the one eternal, self-existent reality. God is Spirit, personal, loving, and morally perfect. God is separated from the natural order, yet all living things derive their existence from him. He is all-powerful, yet He is approachable, compassionate, and intimately involved in the affairs of those who put their trust in Him. This engagement with man is, in particular, the ministry of the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity.

Hinduism, by contrast, teaches monism. It says, in effect, that God, the ultimate reality, is all. It is beyond distinction. The Atman — the soul living in all living things — is also part of Brahma. There are many variations of Hinduism, but all are pantheistic in nature. There are as many as 330 million gods and goddesses in the Hindu pantheon.

The philosophical definition of God in Hinduism is best expressed in the concept of the nebulous Brahma, which cannot be expressed in language. To know the essence of Brahma, one has to realize it, by becoming it. This is why Hindus are willing to reject logic. For the Hindu, logic and reality are independent of each other. This is not an easy concept for most Westerners. The laws of thought demand distinction; therefore, to know reality is to distinguish one from another. In Hinduism, to know reality is to pass beyond all distinctions. It is to merge with the universal consciousness of Brahma.

James Sire, in his important book, The Universe Next Door, explains that The Upanishads, the other Hindu scriptures, abound in attempts to express the inexpressible, indirectly, in parables. He cites the following example:

“Bring me a fruit from this banyan tree.”

“Here it is, father.”

“Break it.”

“It is broken, Sir.”

“What do you see in it?”

“Very small seeds, Sir.”

“Break one of them, my son.”

“It is broken, Sir.”

“What do you see in it?”

“Nothing at all, Sir.”

Then the father says: “My son, from the very essence in the seed which you cannot see comes, in truth, this vast banyan tree. Believe me, my son, an invisible and subtle essence is the spirit of the whole universe.That is Reality. That is Atman. Thou art that.” In effect, the father, as the master, teaches his son, the student, that each person, great or small, is the ultimate reality.

The Svetasvatara Upanishad teaches that, “God is, in truth, the whole universe: what was, what is, and what beyond shall ever be.”

The Chandogya Upanishad says, “There is a Spirit which is pure and which is beyond old age and death and beyond hunger and thirst and sorrow. This is Atman, the Spirit in man. All the desires of this Spirit are Truth. It is this Spirit that we must find and know: man must find his own Soul. He who has found and knows his Soul has found all the worlds, has achieved all his desires.”

The cosmic proportions of such teachings inevitably raise some important questions. If God is in everything, as Hindus believe, then he is both good and evil, and if this is the case, there can be no reliable standard of absolute morality, no divine law. Morality, for Hindus, is practical. Its end is to purify the soul, to attain a higher mystical consciousness, wherein death and pain, good and evil, life and death merge into one synonymous and indistinguishable whole.

For Christian and Jewish doctrine, this view is unthinkable. The Bible makes it clear that there is, indeed, an objective reality. Scripture identifies morality with the moral Lawgiver: for God, Himself, is Truth. He alone is absolutely righteous; yet, through the counsel of divine revelation — by both the special revelation of Scripture and the general revelation of the dynamic Spirit of God — mankind may participate in the righteousness of God. Jesus says, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me” (Matt. 11:29). He invites us to experience and practice dailly his own righteousness, vicariously.

Clearly, the Christian understanding of the relationship between man and God is far from the abstract teachings of Hinduism. The Christian Bible teaches that man is a created being, distinct from God; yet man is created in the image and likeness of God. The problem with the Hindu model is, precisely, its inability to transcend the divide between the temporal and the divine. On one hand, God is everything. On the other, God is merely illusion and enigma. This most basic view violates the law of non-contradiction, which raises an important question. Can a religion that does not stand up to the test of rational certainty be true?

Hindus believe in Maya, or illusion. It is the doctrine that everything is unreal. Even our individuality is an illusion. We speak, yet we say nothing, because the speaker is unreal. How can nothing say something? This is perhaps the greatest difference between these two great religions. If all is illusion, then we must presume that sin, too, is merely an illusion. In which case, there is no acountability. To the contrary, the Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In the first man, sin entered the world, separating man from God. But in Jesus Christ — God’s propitiation for man’s sin — makind was restored to communion with God.

In The Dust of Death, Os Guinness describes the epistemological chaos created by this Hindu’s tolerance for this doctrine of Maya. He writes:

“Monism does not see man’s dilemma as moral, in terms of what he has done, but as metaphysical, in terms of who he is. Monism thus leads to the notion that a man cannot be helped as an individual because his individuality is the essential problem. He must be helped from his individuality. He must merge with the absolute. Myer Baba says, ‘A real merging of the limited in the ocean of universal life involves complete surrender of separate existence in all its forms.’ Now this cannot but lead to a radical negation of any positive aspiration toward individuality in this life.”

What we, in fact, experience is our own individuality. As humans, we are each painfully aware of our predicament as solitary and quite unique individuals in the world. Yet, as Guinness points out, Hinduism would have us believe that this is not the case and that we are somehow submerged in a sea of illusion, indistinguishable sameness, and chaos. This is a concept that defies not only logic but the reality we naturally perceive.

Hinduism also teaches that there are many avatars (or incarnations), and many descents in life. Traditionally, ten avatars are mentioned. God is said to have appeared in the form of swan, tortoise, fish, boar, man-lion, and dwarf, and in the persons of Bhargava Rama, Dasaratha Rama, Krishna, and Kalki, according to the Mahabharatha. One of these avatars, Lord Krishna, is described as a “violent and erotic figure.” In the Bhagvad Gita, Krishna is said to have had amorous adventures with milkmaids. This is, to say the least, a difficult and embarrassing matter for the Hindu scholars to explain. How can a god worthy of devotion be involved in immoral activities?

Yet, Krishna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita, remains the most celebratd figure in the most revered text of Hinduism. Christianity, on the other hand, proclaims the unique incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. It was a historical event. Jesus, the God-man, was born 2,000 years ago, in a particular place in Israel. He willingly left His divine glory, taking on human flesh, and descending into the world by the virgin Mary.

The Bible, in John 3:16, says: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” The unique and divine Son of God lived a holy life, and none could raise accusations against him. He came to seek and save the lost, and not to kill and destroy, as some would have no doubt preferred. The apostle Peter, an eye-witness to the life of Christ, reports that, “He Himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” Because mankind is by nature impure and unredeemed, God’s Son bore our pain and punishment, requiring only that we believe and commit our heart to Him to reap the reward of eternal life.

The doctrine of karma in Hinduism offers no such hope for man. The word karma, which has entered the Western vocabulary, means that we must relive our lives and endure punishment and sorrow as the price of our sins, presumably forever. Simply put, karma is the belief that what happens to a person in this life is the result of something that happened in a previous existence. It’s the Eastern version of “You reap what you sow.” Of this teaching, author James Sire writes:

“Karma is the notion that one’s present fate, one’s pleasure or pain, one’s being a king or slave or a gnat, is the result of past action, especially in a former existence. It is then tied to the notion of reincarnation which follows from the general principle that nothing that is real (that is, no soul) ever passes out of existence. It may take centuries upon centuries to find its way back to the One, but no soul will ever not be. All soul is eternal, for all soul is essentially Soul and thus forever the One. One it way back to the One, however, it goes through whatever form of illusory forms its past action requires. If you have sinned there is no God to cancel the debt and forgive. Confession is to no avail. The sin must be worked out and will be worked out.”

Karma is averse to any idea of hope. But the grand truth of Christianity is totally different. Jesus Christ was and is our hope. His resurrection, a historical event in space and time, offers the ultimate hope for mankind. For He has paid for our sin.

The birth of Jesus Christ is recorded by history. His coming into the world was prophesied by prophets of old, down to the minutest details, including His lineage, nature, place and manner of birth, His career, His purpose, His cruel death, His victory over the grave, and His glorious Resurrection. His life is unparalleled in beauty, character, and holiness. The Jews of Palestine were amazed: No one ever spoke like Him or did the things He did. Jesus made claims no Hindu gods ever made. He claimed to be the very Son of God. Further, He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9) He was God Himself. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Krishna never made such a claim.

By contrast, however, Jesus lived a humble and sacrificial life, as an anonymous composition, titled “One Solitary Life,” recounts:

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness.

He had no credentials but Himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to the cross between two thieves.

While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His garments, the only property he had on earth. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race.

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as one solitary life.

In the slight volume called Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis, an athiest who became a Christian, put the claims of Christ into appropriate context, in a most memorable way. He says:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shout Him for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

As we consider the very real implications for our lives, both now and for eternity, the truth claims of the world’s great religions are vitally important. By nature, we recognize the eternal dimension of our existence. Many ideas, isms, ideologies, and belief systems make daily claim upon our lives, hopes, and aspirations, and in the end, we each must choose how we shall decide.

Having grown up in the East, exposed continually to the claims of Hinduism, and only later having encountered the truth claims of Jesus Christ, the options for me are now clear. With Joshua, the great conqueror and leader of the Jews, I must declare that, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). For, ultimately, only the truth claims of Christ can survive both rigorous standards of judgment and the evidence of history.

Among other gods, only Jesus Christ is Lord.

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Barker, who is also the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), tried his best to persuade the audience to consider the bankruptcy of religion and God. There was the preacher in him coming out when he held the Bible and read a few verses pointing out the absurdities, inconsistencies and violence. Now, this is fascinating. Not many atheists of the old were enthusiastic let alone passionate in spreading a passion for atheism. But today’s atheists—fierce, passionate and driven by missionary zeal—are proclaiming a new way of living: A life without God. A society without religion. A world without faith. But is this possible?

While everybody is entitled to opinion, not everybody is entitled to facts. Barker’s idea may be appealing to the Western world where only a fraction of the world’s population resides. Believers in God are plenty and the majority of them live outside the West (although God is still popular in the West). For the millions of people who share this earth, no amount of scientific evidence or reason is capable enough to shake the deeply entrenched and lively belief in God that marks their everyday life.

One of the key arguments the new evangelical atheists—men like Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris and others—have been raising is that religion is dangerous and poisonous to society. They are echoing the utopian world that John Lennon sang about in “Imagine.” This is a complete misunderstanding of religions across the world. Except for a small number of religious fanatics, the rest of the religious people in the world are to a greater degree living in relative calm. The technological sophistications of the 21st digital century have not dampened religious revivals across the world. Religion is growing like wildfire today as never before. Religion thrives in underground churches of China, particularly Christianity as former Time journalist David Aikman recounts in his book, Jesus in Beijing. Aikman predicts, “Within the next 30 years, one-third of China’s population could be Christian, making China one of the largest Christian nations in the world. These Christians could also be China’s leaders, guiding the largest economy in the world.” In Nigeria, both Islam and Christianity are growing rapidly. India has never witnessed a decline in religion, and it’s doubtful it ever will because religion and God are part and parcel of Indian life.

This does not mean people outside the West are intellectually lacking or simply indulgent in blind faith. Or at worst delusional, as Oxford biologist and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins notes in his best-selling book, The God Delusion. But rather believers in God worldwide have integrated God seamlessly into their lives without caving into atheism even though life is not fair, questions abound aplenty and God never seems to grant His appearance at every whim and fancy. The reason is simple: Every human being breathes air to live and yet nobody gets to see it. It is invisible. Yet they believe the air exists. We might say, well, we can feel the air. But so is God, many feel Him though they don’t see Him.

Belief in God or theism enjoys the world’s highest converts. Billions believe in God without anybody convincing them of God’s existence. Why is this so strange and yet so real and prevalent? The subject of God, contrary to what the atheists have come to believe, is refreshingly alive in the minds of millions.

This article was published in RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM

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In The Third Jesus, Chopra writes there is not one Jesus, but three. First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, priesthood and devout believers. And finally, there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the Church built in His name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.

Chopra is arguing for a syncretistic Christianity, a mix and match, a pot-luck faith where we all feast on different foods. The question is: how sure are we that we are not feasting on contaminated food, even worse food that can poison our soul?

This is classic postmodern inclusivism, a kind of Hegelian dialectic, which argues there is no right or wrong thesis but a synthesis of two opposing ideologies.

It’s the tragedy of western Christianity that in many churches and institutions Jesus has been deconstructed to become a laconic teacher, a pagan Christ, a Gnostic revealer, a de-enlightened male, a magician, a cynic philosopher. Put simply, He has been transmogrified. It’s a fascinating word that American Heritage dictionary says, “To change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre”.

Chopra is reducing Jesus to be another eastern mystic and not as the incarnation of God. Jesus is certainly eastern, precisely middle-eastern, but the geographical origin of His birth doesn’t reduce His deity. Jesus still remains who He is: the only incarnate God who lived on earth. The world’s calendar divides on His birth, AD and BC.

Chopra is teaching nothing more than pagan Eastern Mysticism which says that we are all “God”. “God” in Eastern Religions is all creation. It says that everything in creation, the rocks, the stars, the planets, bugs, fish, animals, human beings all inclusively make up this single holistic “God consciousness”. Eastern philosophies make no distinction between holiness and sinfulness. The idea that man is a fallen human being is considered to be an affront to human dignity. It accepts that mankind is inherently good and that we all can experience God within without ever having to place faith in Christ as our redeemer.

The essence of Chopra’s argument is that Christianity needs to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth. In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he truly is–someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance, and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.

Reuben David

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There is also the cosmetic industry—an industry that has long since promising the fount of eternal youth. It’s another 10 billion dollar industry with an endless array of pills, creams, powders, liquids, gels, Botox and plastic surgery. We use these products and services to enhance our physical life. According to a CNN report2, even the recession has not seemed to stop people from making themselves feel good. Again, the instinctual desire to beautify life drives the insatiable spending on cosmetic goods.

There’s a hidden longing that runs deep in our hearts and minds. The longing to preserve our youth hood and somehow resist the tell tale signs of aging. In 1993 Indian medical doctor turned philosopher Deepak Chopra wrote a book titled, “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind”. It instantly became a bestseller as it tugged at the heart of the common man for immortality. Dubbed by TIME magazine as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine.” Chopra wrote, “We are not victims of aging, sickness, and death. These are part of the scenery, not of the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.” Although I don’t agree with Chopra’s idea about God, his book underscored the pervasive desire for immortality among people.

This longing for the eternal fount of youth hood has haunted mankind from ancient of time. Interestingly, the longing does not just stop with just enhancing the physical life and the cosmetic life but is expanding to even resist death.

It’s hard to imagine that life would cease at death. Is that all there is to life? Is that all there is to all our deep seated immortal longings. What happens to our dreams, thoughts, memories, do they just cease to exist? From what we see, read and hear people are always interested in surmounting every challenge that threatens their desire for a better life.

We long to live on. Socrates said long ago, “I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence.”

One of the mighty challenges that loom large in the face of all odds is death. We can lose our weight to look slim. We can cosmetically reshape our nose, alter our hair, change our complexion but we are challenged by death that seems to rob us of everything that makes us who we are.

Death is a big blow for the seeker of eternal youth but interestingly enough science is advancing to reverse this trend. The pursuit to extend life to immortality has profoundly interested scientists to come up with newer research. One of such research is the science of cryonics. It’s the deep-freezing of human bodies immediately after death for preservation and possible revival in the future.

Believers call themselves cryonicists and they pay big money. It costs $150,000 for the whole body and about half that for just the brain and head. There are discounts for entire families and pets. The Arizona based Alcor Life Extension Foundation has established itself as a place where legally dead human bodies can be preserved in liquid nitrogen in the hope that someday science would advance to jump start them back to life. This is a revolutionary idea and a farfetched one at that. It’s built on the hope of science.

Some scientists believe it may take decades for science to advance to reverse death. Imagine, your dead body being brought back to life by scientific technology. All this is to say that human beings are deeply passionate about living forever. Some critics are of the opinion that science may never catch up to make dead people alive thus disappointing all those frozen chosen.

However, the longing for the hereafter is deeply real. It’s as real as watching the grass bloom and fade and spring again. Contemporary Israeli rabbi, the late Y. M. Tuckachinsky explains this concept of afterlife in a fascinating parable:3

“Imagine twins growing peacefully in the warmth of the womb. Their mouths are closed, and they are being fed via the navel. Their lives are serene. The whole world, to these brothers, is the interior of the womb. Who could conceive anything larger, better, more comfortable? They begin to wonder: “We are getting lower and lower. Surely if it continues, we will exit one day. What will happen after we exit?”

Now the first infant is a believer. He is heir to a religious tradition which tells him that there will be a “new life” after this wet and warm existence of the womb. A strange belief, seemingly without foundation, but one to which he holds fast. The second infant is a thorough-going skeptic. Mere stories do not deceive him. He believes only in that which can be demonstrated.

He is enlightened, and tolerates no idle conjecture. What is not within one’s experience can have no basis in one’s imagination.

Says the faithful brother: “After our ‘death’ here, there will be a new great world. We will eat through the mouth! We will see great distances, and we will hear through the ears on the sides of our heads. Why, our feet will be straightened! And our heads-up and free, rather than down and boxed in.”

Replies the skeptic: “Nonsense. You’re straining your imagination again. There is no foundation for this belief. It is only your survival instinct, an elaborate defense mechanism, a historically-conditioned subterfuge. You are looking for something to calm your fear of ‘death.’ There is only this world. There is no world-to-come!”

“Well then,” asks the first, “what do you say it will be like?”
The second brother snappily replies with all the assurance of the slightly knowledgeable: “We will go with a bang. Our world will collapse and we will sink into oblivion. No more. Nothing. Black void. An end to consciousness. Forgotten. This may not be a comforting thought, but it is a logical one.”

Suddenly the water inside the womb bursts. The womb convulses. Upheaval. Turmoil. Writhing. Everything lets loose. Then a mysterious pounding—a crushing, staccato pounding. Faster, faster, lower, lower.

The believing brother exits. Tearing himself from the womb, he falls outward. The second brother shrieks, startled by the “accident” befallen his brother. He bewails and bemoans the tragedy–the death of a perfectly fine fellow. Why? Why? Why didn’t he take better care? Why did he fall into that terrible abyss? As he thus laments, he hears a head-splitting cry, and a great tumult from the black abyss, and he trembles: “Oh my! What a horrible end! As I predicted!”

Meanwhile as the skeptic brother mourns, his “dead” brother has been born into the “new” world. The headsplitting cry is a sign of health and vigor, and the tumult is really a chorus of mazel tons sounded by the waiting family thanking God for the birth of a healthy son. Indeed, in the words of a contemporary thinker, man comes from the darkness of the “not yet,” and proceeds to the darkness of the “no more.” While it is difficult to imagine the “not yet” it is more difficult to picture the “no more.”

As we separate and “die” from the womb, only to be born to life, so we separate and die from our world, only to be re-born to life eternal. The exit from the womb is the birth of the body. The exit from the body is the birth of the soul. As the womb requires a gestation period of nine months, the world requires a residence of 70 or 80 years. As the womb is prozdor, an anteroom preparatory to life, so our present existence is a prozdor to the world beyond.”

Yes, our present life is temporal. Apostle Paul says I Corinthians 15 verses 54-55, “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’”

Science can go only so far and no further. Life and death are in the hands of God. Christians around the world will celebrate Easter, an event that marks the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the glorious truth of Christianity: Jesus defeated death. Jesus rose back from the grave, appeared to his disciples and is alive today. According to Luke 24: 1-12, it says, “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.”

Jesus had risen. He was alive. Thousands of years ago, Job, the Old Testament saint raised a powerful question in Job 14 verse 14 “If a man dies, will he live again?” To that question, Christ offers the answer in John 11 verses 25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” To one who believes in Jesus death is no more the enemy. Its sting is removed. Jesus has vanquished death. Being preserved in liquid nitrogen and hoping for science to defeat death will never ever happen. But faith in Christ will offer you the hope of eternal life. It’s better to believe and accept Jesus as your savior and look forward to the glorious eternal life rather than spending thousands of dollar and looking up to science to reverse death.

The core of Christian faith revolves around the resurrection of Jesus. Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 15 verses 17-19, “…if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men…” He avowed, “…if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor. 14:15)

If you are a believer in Christ you have a great hope of eternal life, one that science cannot deliver. If you are a non-believer you have the invitation to accept Christ into your heart and receive the gift of eternal life.

1http://www.medicinenet.com/caffeine/page5.htm

2http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/07/news/companies/vanity/index.htm

3http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/281641/jewish/Life-After-Death-A-Parable.htm

This article appeared online at Leadership U, a part of the Telling the Truth Project

http://www.leaderu.com/articles/longing.html

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My school bag, wet and dripping, hung heavy on my shoulders. My shoes were waterlogged and wading in the knee-deep rainwater seemed ethereal. It’s a fleeting thrill that any young boy or girl would experience when it rains. At least in my hometown, you could see kids playing around merrily in the muddied rainwaters. Ah, that was not the end of my happy moments, the smell of the red-wet earth wafted in the air kindling in me a strange sense of pleasure. It was de ja vu. It was nostalgic. I didn’t know when I had experienced that feeling in the past. But it was nostalgia unknown.

The smell of the wet earth was to me far more aromatic than any perfume. Did you ever get to smell a rain sodden earth? Nature’s smell sometimes stirs deep longings in the heart. It seems to suddenly unfold a dream that was waiting to happen really. Inhaling the entrancing earth smell provided me a wondrous backdrop to reminisce the many joyous moments of my life. I thought of the friend who smiled at me in the school. It gladdened my heart. At school I wanted everyone to love me whether they liked me or not. I dreaded being ignored. My heart couldn’t take it. However, today, my mind was recapturing the smile of a friend at school. Then, I thought of my mother who tended to my drenched body. She would hurriedly fix me a steaming cup of hot Indian tea. I thought of my father’s kind eyes. Although my mom would berate me for getting soaked in the water, my dad would just find towels to get me dry. They were little acts of kindness but they added to my happiness.

I thought of all that was good and glorious. It made me happy. The smell of the soil had worked wonders in my whacked out life. The pouring monsoon showers rejuvenated my imaginations. The more my mind dwelt on what made me happy, the more I wanted those moments to linger on. I felt inconsolable when images of immortal happy moments seemed to get washed away in the driving waters. Why was I so happy? What was I dreaming about when the waters drenched my body? What was the thrill that wouldn’t let me go? I was made from earth, and I knew, to earth my body would return. The earth seemed to me my familiar friend from, which I was made and to which my body was destined to return.

But the nostalgia, the longing for the unknown joy was too much to bear. And I would cry that I might have it again. But when the summer came it seemed brutal, the red-wet earth would turn into burning cakes of sand. It flashed my mind that my nostalgia, the longing for joy, the incessant craving for the happy moments, arose from the depth of my heart. It arose from my spirit. It had to do from my innermost being. The pleasure had to be from somewhere, better yet from someone who had created this longing in me. This longing is real, ineffable and intangible. It calls us. It wakes us up. It surprises us. You never go too far in life where you never long too much. The seasons of life only augment the intensity of the longing.

Talking about death, Victor Hugo writes, “The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies which invite me.” It’s a familiar symphony that haunts us unaware. While the fleeting experience of monsoon would vanish the incessant desire of finding my life’s joy would ever haunt. It had to be only God who could satisfy my yearning than anyone. Absence of God only makes the longing painful. Nothing else fills. Only God was big enough to fill my longing. Apart from Him I am always inconsolable. I cry without God. I am lost without God. I love Him. I desire His consolation. When was the last time you desired God? Haven’t you experienced those moments of dryness in your life? You think you are full but you are empty. You think you are flourishing but you are actually drying up. You realize you are drained, alone and unhappy. Even though you pray, fast, sing, attend church, read Bible, go to mission fields and do the right thing, yet there is a haunting loneliness and dryness that pervades your life. Even when the sensual enjoyments reach their peak, they secede soon. They vaporize like mists in high noon. And the heart cries again. Does this portray your life?

Have you ever felt like this before? Maybe you are going through these moments right now as you are holding this book in your hands? You are not sure you want to read this book? Yet another book on spirituality! Will I ever find the life I am dreaming about? The life that haunts me, and yet eludes me. The life that Jesus talked about—the abundant life! Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

We all have our own life, our own little life that we live everyday. Some live a quarter life, some a half-life, and many others live like they are really dead. The most miserable life is to simply exist not knowing why one is living for. Many are lost for real life and are in search of a life beyond their everyday existence. Only a few have discovered the abundant life. The life that swells with joy, the life that is beyond existence. One of the most devastating experiences of a Christian is to be a Christian and still not experience Jesus to be ‘the delight of his or her life’. Christian thinker C.S.Lewis describes the situation very aptly, “We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory) We are far too easily pleased with what we are doing in the now. We have no clue of the infinite joy that is offered to us in Jesus.

We have been looking for joy elsewhere and finding it nowhere. We have heard sermon after sermons on how to mature in our Christian walk. We feed on tapes, CDs and TVs for more of our Christian enrichment and yet still the longing for authentic intimacy with Jesus haunts us and we don’t know how to experience it. Very few of us have experienced the abundant life that Jesus promised us in the scriptures. King David, a busy man, ruler of a nation, with all of his wealth, pomp and glory, still finds himself empty and bewails, “…My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (Psalms 84:2.) King David was a chosen man of God. He met God early on in his life; he encountered a bear and a lion and prevailed over them in the power of God. He even took on the big giant Goliath. So many miraculous experiences, so many encounters, and yet he felt that life wasn’t satisfying without diving deep into intimacy with God. He was panting after God.

He was crying out for more of God. He wanted nothing else but more of God. His heart was restless. His body ached. It was the inner ache of the human spirit that cried out for its Creator. St Augustine too cried that way, “Oh, God our hearts are restless until we find our rest in thee.”

When were the last time you cried wanting God more? I mean not some long, fancy, flowery prayer but deep, passionate, heart rending cry for more of God? A child when lost cries out to her mother. For it knows nothing can substitute the feel of her mother’s lap, nothing can equal the comfort of being cradled by her mother. And so should we, like a child, cry out to God for that’s where our real comfort is. Without the touch and comfort of the presence of Jesus we are but cosmic orphans, waifs of the universe, left alone and abandoned. We all have gone through many religious experiences, done many things for God, been there in that mission field, explored those mission courses, taught Sunday schools, preached in churches, poured over Bible. And yet still the heart feels an inconsolable longing to enter into intimacy with God. Without intimacy with Jesus we will only be religious Christians, professional Christians, more adept in defining Christianity than experiencing Christ.

We all have gone through rough moments. We all go through seasons of search and hunger wanting to know what makes life enjoyable, meaningful and authentic. I remember my seasons, when as a teenager I hungered after love, someone to make me feel complete, someone to whisper in my ears, “I love you”. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to love. As a child I enjoyed the attention of my family members, my aunts, my uncles, my sisters. There was a sense of naivety that made me forget life. I reveled in the feeling that I was the center of everyone’s attention. I wanted to be loved always and never hated. But those years didn’t stay longer. I had to grow up even though I didn’t like. And when you grow up people’s affections are not the same anymore, the younger siblings grab the attention and worse, you might even fade out from other’s minds. People might like you but you never feel loved. You never get to feel that you are wanted. You dread the fact that you are no longer cherished by the ones who once flocked around you. No one gives you a kiss or a hug or a pat on the back.

The seasons of life change but the hungers of the heart grow deep. And my heart hungered for more. Nothing would make me happy except God. For some reasons I spent more time thinking about God than my own school courses. God fascinated me. He drew my attention. My years in school and college flew by like a season of the past. I ran to every Christian meeting to find more of God, was the first to be in outreach programs to revel in the joy of sharing Christ with others. My heart was panting to know more of Jesus and experience His fullness. It was a longing that was inconsolable. Nothing was able to console my longing for my Creator. Just as a child would cry inconsolably to reach her mother’s lap, so are we creatures inconsolable until we climb onto the lap of our heavenly father. The longing for the immortal union with God is real, deep and is never satisfied in earthly pursuits. CS Lewis captures the moment brilliantly when he says, “In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, . . . I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency.

I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both . . . Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. . . .Here, then, is the desire, still wandering and uncertain of its object and still largely unable to see that object in the direction where it really lies . . . Heaven is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience. The scriptural picture of heaven is therefore just as symbolical as the picture, which our desire, unaided, invents for itself . . . (The Weight of Glory).

When I was an undergrad student in India, I was part of a group that met every Thursday on the college campus for prayer. So many guys and gals would come around and ask us, “What are you all doing instead of having fun?” I wanted to say; sure, we are having fun. But how do I explain to them that believing in God and experiencing God was fun, too? What do you answer to a group of college students whose whole worldview revolves around the most bandied word ‘fun’? How do you explain fun? What is funny to you may not be funny to me. Worse still, what is funny to the other may be hurting to me. Or you. “Have fun?” they chorus, not realizing what fun really means. We few Christians were actually having fun with God. Yes, we were having a jolly good time with God. I happened to meet one of the curious onlookers and began to talk to him during free time. He was in my class studying psychology and literature. I guess he really wanted to know why I was chasing after religious experiences (that’s what he termed our Christian fellowship) instead of reveling in the enjoyments that youth hood brings.

It seemed to him that religion, God and Christianity in particular were a waste of time and that, and they stole away the joys of a human being. I asked him, “Do you know that to enjoy anything in life you first need to have the capacity to enjoy? What if your eyes were blind and that you couldn’t see a sunset to enjoy. What if you were deaf and you couldn’t hear a lovely music? What if you couldn’t speak and you couldn’t enjoy conversations. What do you enjoy in life when the very capacity to enjoy isn’t there anymore? He paused at me, looker around, scratched his head and with a forlorn look walked away. I guess he was pondering over his own observations. As followers of Christ we were all in communion with our Creator who had fashioned the very ‘capacity for enjoyments’ in our body and He the creator was far more enjoyable to us than just the object he created. It’s like talking to Henry Ford who created the Ford cars.

It’s like talking to Isaac Newton who founded the laws of gravity. It’s like chatting up with the poet William Blake who wrote so many poems. And, here we were lost in the awe of one who even created this very feeling of ‘awe’ in us. God was to us the author of all pure pleasure. He was far more fun to us than anything else. What can the world offer in return to the hungers of our human heart? How sad many of us nominal Christians, namesake followers of Christ, church attending Christians, cultural Christians, political Christians have lost in the bargain for a deeper experience of true joy in life. There is an inconsolable longing in all of us. The woman at the well of Samaria had no clue when she came to draw the water what awaited her. She came to the well to satiate a physical longing in the body but upon finding Christ she returned back finding rivers of living water able to satisfy the hungers of body and soul. She went about proclaiming to everyone that Christ the messiah had filled her heart. Her heart was overflowing and she couldn’t contain it. The Bible says in John 4:26, “The woman then left her water pot, and went her way into the city and said to the men: Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?” An overflowing heart affects others. A joyful Christian affects others. We are known by the level of joy we possess. What is filling your heart? Like the Samaritan woman we have to come to the end of our life, we have to find ourselves in a state of thirst, having exhausted all, we come away to the well to satiate our thirst and there when we have hit rock bottom, Christ finds us and offers us rivers of living water. He fills our longing.

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Caught in the festive mood of Darwin’s birthday, it may come as a surprise to the scientific world that Darwin is not as popular as they portray him. Despite the technological revolution and advances in science, and regardless of learning the theory of evolution in their high school biology classes, a majority of the Western world are still creationists who believe God made man.

One should not forget the force of religion is extremely strong in society, and the common man is weary of believing he has evolved from the ape. Man is not a social animal—he is a unique creature endowed with an insatiable curiosity to discover his own roots. It is we who wonder who we are—not the animals. It was not an animal that wrote the book The Origin of Species. It was a man, driven by a transcendental desire to discover himself, who set out to explore the species.

In Darwin’s homeland of the United Kingdom, the respected polling firm ComRes has reported that the public doubts Darwin’s theory. According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, poll results showed that, “In the survey, 51 percent of those questioned agreed with the statement that ‘evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages.’”

The Gallup Poll in the United States reports that fewer than four in 10 people believe in evolution. The survey shows only 14 percent of people believe in evolutionary theory, while the Pew Research Center puts it at 26 percent.

Both Gallup and Pew reveal that 43 percent of Americans favor the creationist theory. These results are not good news to evolutionists and secularists.

In an attempt to rescue Darwin from dissolution into history, secularists are on a busy campaign of placing billboards that read “Praise Darwin” and “Evolve Beyond Belief.”

In the great enterprise of science and evolution, this type of “God language” is freely used to lend credibility to the Darwinian movement. In the U.K., prayers were offered at the tomb of Darwin as a sign of respect. The West is so Christianized in its culture and ethos, it’s simply impossible to rid religious language and substitute it with scientific language. We may even argue that in the great battle of the survival of the fittest, religion has overwhelmingly evolved as the dominant belief of humankind, where the idea of God has deeply entrenched itself into the human heart.

In a sense, we can agree that Darwin’s idea of evolution did turn into a revolution. However, today it risks the danger of dissolution. It’s not that his ideas are construed as completely false, but there may not be any serious takers for the following reasons:

1. Belief in God as the Creator of man provides man with intrinsic dignity. The Christian doctrine that man was created in God’s image grants man a profound honor that evolutionary theory cannot. We may like animals, even have them as pets, but if we were to decide between a human baby and a cat, many would favor the human baby. I wonder how many parents would spend their money treating their dogs for depression if they had a child suffering from a terminal illness.

2. During Darwin’s day, the discovery of DNA was unheard of. Today, the miracle and mystery of DNA reveals incredible sophistication and engineering that is hard to believe could have evolved by mutation without supernatural intervention.

3. In Darwin’s Black Box, renowned biochemist Michael Behe writes about “irreducible complexity” at the molecular level. Cells in the human body are complex and arranged in an intricate design, arguing for a designer.

4. Leading Nazis and early-1900s influential German biologists revealed in their writings that Darwin’s theory and publications had a major influence on Nazi race policies. Darwinism at its root deems the value of life to be nothing beyond survival, thus placing adaptation of the species beyond individual human life. A belief system that, when distilled, leaves no value on an individual’s existence does not settle well with most people.

5. Darwin’s theory of evolution offers no hope for a dying man because it proclaims a universe without ultimate meaning. People are not satisfied to know only of their origin—they long for answers to their condition, salvation and destination. As such, very few are wholly content in Darwinism but feel compelled to search outside of it.

There are many books that attempt to explain Darwin in purely atheistic terms. However, newer research on Darwin reveals he was an agnostic—he doubted the existence of God. He was a churchgoing man, but later rejected traditional Christianity. In many ways, Darwin was out to discover the meaning of life and ended up settling on the origin of it. But we are not creatures with mere physical bodies. We have a soul and a spirit that is transcendental. How can a soul and a spirit mutate through natural selection?

This article appeared in RELEVANT MAGAZINE

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/features-reviews/god/16086-reuben-david

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