A Statutory Warning: For Those who want to join a New Faith

If you ever want to join a new faith community, examine how they treat their new believers. How are the lives of new people better after following this faith or God? If you see all the difficult paths and assignments that require sacrifice, they allot it to the new believers, saying, "God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers." It is a red light. Simultaneously , you will also see that they will never give anything that demands struggle or sacrifice to their own children, but crucify the new believer who is struggling to survive in the faith. Their children are natural leaders. :)

Many times, people who believe in the New faith are separated from their families and are victimized by the new community. No laws exist in any country to protect such people's rights. The believing community will say, "Well, it was your choice (to believe). You may leave if you wish. Don't expect any better treatment from other Christians or us. Trust only God." When they preach they argue that God has entrusted them *with the responsibility to lead* people to him and in his path like *Good Shepherds*. However, in practice, they don't even move a finger to help the new followers in their sufferings. It is entirely God's responsibility.

Therefore, be wise like serpents and discern their ulterior motives. I write this after 24 years of faithful commitment to Christ amid persecution from my family and rejection from churches. Sometimes, their attitude is like: if you believe in our God and are persecuted by your families, we will persecute you more. They behave like this, particularly if they know you have no backup and that no one in your family will support you in a crisis of faith or a life crisis, such as loss of work, reputation, or marriage. To follow Jesus faithfully, you do not need to “convert” to Christianity. If a change of heart is not happening, you are not a true believer anyway. There are many Christians who live worse lives than pagans.

So, examine everything carefully before you join a new community that says they have a vision to ‘serve God and serve his people.’ Test whether they are doing it or not, because if you do not test them, they will test you. There is no need to leave your vegetarian lifestyle to follow Jesus faithfully if you come from a vegetarian family. Christ does not command women, anywhere in the Bible, to avoid jewelry or wear only white clothes. They will tell innocent villagers to avoid putting vermilion on their heads, without realizing that, in village culture, it denotes fidelity in marriage. None of these “external observances/rituals” is required to know Jesus or to have a heart-to-heart relationship with God.

If someone asks me, why did you change your religion or why did you convert to a new religion, I tell them plainly that I believed in a different God not a different religion. You may wonder what difference it makes.  Aren't following a different God and converting to a new religion synonymous? They are not. In Hinduism, people believe in many different Gods, yet they consider their religion the same. The traits and rituals of every God are unique. Otherwise, we will not need a separate Kali and Shiva Temple. Similarly, just because someone chooses to follow Jesus Christ personally *does not* by default imply that they are following a different or foreign religion. Therefore, the wise and accurate way of answering such a question of conversion is, "I follow a different God, not a different religion."

 

The above description is accurate also because the term religion entails many more aspects that people tend to overlook. Unlike today, in ancient times, religion, culture, and politics were not well-defined, sharply demarcated, separate categories. That is why, even today, many Hindu women struggle to differentiate between a religious belief and a cultural practice. Every cultural practice had supporting religious myths. For instance, though the festival of Raksha Bandhan denotes brotherly affection, the supporting stories make it a religious festival. The same applies to all our festivals: Holi, Diwali, Vishu, or Onam. Religion is, thus, intricately connected to one's way of thinking about right and wrong (morals and values), way of life (food, clothes, and customary norms), and cultural customs.

Hence, we do not have to discard everything in our culture or civilization to follow Jesus Christ. For instance, Apostle Paul argued convincingly that Greek Christians, who had different cultural ways of life, need not become Jewish to follow Jesus faithfully. The first followers of Jesus were Jewish because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah (God-King). The first Jewish followers of Jesus followed Circumcision, Sabbath rules, Temple regulations, and avoided certain animal foods, which they considered as unclean. In contrast, the Greeks had no such regulations. 

When many Greeks believed in Jesus' way to obtain immortality and eternal life in the coming age, the Jewish believers of Jesus wanted all the Greeks to undergo circumcision and follow Sabbath rules. Apostle Paul observed that since both Jews and Greeks are sinners in God's sight and receive salvation only by God's grace through faith, the Jewish way of life is not superior to the Greek. Eventually, all the apostles, including Peter and James (Jesus' real brother) supported Paul's understanding. Therefore, Greeks are equal citizens and heirs in God's kingdom as Jews and they could continue their civilizational way of life. 

Our God loves variety. He doesn't want all tribes and people to give up their cultural way of life. In John's vision of eternal life in the renewed cosmic paradise, he sees people of all tribes and languages worshipping God, the father, and Lord Jesus in their own way. Therefore, Christ-following does not demand a cultural conversion. We believe in a different God, not in a different religion. The term religion, in this context, implies a cultural way of life. We may avoid a few things from our cultural way such as avoiding idol worship. 

For instance, many Hindus do not worship idols. They worship God as the formless Brahman, so they prefer to avoid idols. Still, they are as Hindu as an idol worshipping Hindu. Classifying all Hindus as idol worshippers itself is problematic and wrong. Not all the faiths related to Hindu (Bharatiya) way of life endorse idol worship. Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists, in reality, consider idols as icons and do not worship human saints. They consider the saints as role models or examples to follow. Therefore, even if we avoid idols, as Christ-followers, we do not need to change our broader religious or cultural way of life, and convert to Greek or Jewish way of life.