We Christians believe that the One God came down from heaven and took on our flesh in order to save us - all - including our flesh. Christ fulfilled all righteousness. In addition, God felt hunger only in Jesus Christ so that hunger could be vanquished. God felt thirst, so that we our thirst would be satiated. God felt sadness so that sadness could find joy. God experienced loneliness so that we might never know it. God felt pain so that pain could be healed. He experienced death so that death would be destroyed and hold no power over our flesh.
God created this universe and many other planes of existence. He gave us the feeling that we feel. To have him manifest to "experience" these feeling is kinda redundant.
We believe in the santification of flesh, for Christ saves ALL of us, and only in Christ is this accomplished. Indeed even the very bones of the saints have become vessels of the Holy Spirit and have perform miracles not unike they did in the times of Elisha.
Your body is made with the same things as the trees and the rocks and everything else in the universe. There is nothing special about the body in terms of the universe. It is the soul and your conscious that make you unique. That is your gift from god. That is what is worth saving.
While all faiths and beliefs share in degrees the ultimate truths of this world, only in Christ do we find salvation. And not in part, but all of us - body soul and spirit. Our entire trinitarian being raising from the tomb just as He did in His glorious Resurrection and just as He did with Lazarus who was four days rotting in the heat of the tomb. We will be raised trinitarian just as we were created trinitarian, and only in the fulness of Christ is this possible, for only the very God and Supreme Lord of Creatican could do this. And this is the teaching of Christ, and what the Church has confessed with their very lives. "and if anyone preach to you a different gospel... ".
Your gospel is not that different from ours, but both have been perverted by man for their benefit as for the rest, that went over my head.
That we worship One God, that is not really the issue at all. I can accept that in good measure. We differ in our understanding in how we are saved and by Whom we are saved, and what salvation really means.
Our differences come from the very issue above. I believe that only in Christ do I or you or anything in all of creation, living or dead, finds true life and paradise and salvation. Not only in Christ, but By Christ.
The beginning of Christ didn't begin when he manifested upon this earth. He has always been here. He has been down here several times even in other forms and other times. You look at Christ as a man who was born, lived and died but he is a god and he has been here since the beginning of time. God has come down whenever man is in peril to aid him and put him on the right track. Do you think that the coming of Christ was a one time show.
“Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth.
For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil,
and for the establishment of righteousness,
I come into being age after age." (Gita:4.7–8)
That is why we do not the burn the bodies of our beloved ones, because even the flesh has Christ saved.
God has no use for your flesh.
And even by the flesh of the dead has God used to perform His miracles, and the lives of the saints are replete with such doings of Divine Providence.
Unless you can convince me that Hinduism saves me as I was created first, then I can never be persuaded that Christ is the Truth of the world. The very Reason of God born of a virgin and fulfilling all prophecies Who has become the Food, the Life, the Truth, the Way, the Gate, the Lord over all of creation and will judge us all on that Final Day.
I am not trying to convince you of anything. You already believe in God which is enough for me. How you choose to worship Him is your path. That is the fundamental of Hinduism. Do not judge mine.
Say whatever you wish, but you cannot claim to love Jesus and understand who he is if you don't take Him for His very words. And that is why I urge to open up the Gospels and read the one according to St. John carefully, every line and every word that comes out of Jesus' mouth. Do not skim over parts or automatically judge what Christ is saying, but rather come with an open mind and allow His words and His actions to make their impression on you. Unless you do this, then you cannot know the God I worship and how much He loves us and nothing I have ever heard from a Hindu or Muslim or anyone else could convince me otherwise. We must then accept that while we seek the same One God and nirvana, the Christian makes the claim that in Jesus Christ the One God has revealed Himself and that through Christ do we find nirvana, not in the mind or the soul sense, or even just the bodily sense - but in the whole self, transfirgured in Christ - in the fullness and stature of Christ - in eternal loving communion with God.
I never claimed to worship Jesus. Personally I go for the direct approach and worship our Trimurti and throw in a couple more gods to suit my needs. (Ganesh for school, Lakshmi for prosperity and what not.) The reason why no hindu has tried to convert you because A. In our eyes you follow a god of your choosing, who are we to say that we are right and you are wrong. B. It's actually against our religion to try and convert people. I don't remember the exact quote but its about casting seeds in barren land.
I will give up my worldly life in order to witness to this truth. And when I do, I find peace and love and humility.
This includes your body.
So you can see why the Christian can easily become a martyr in order to gain the whole world and the Kingdom of Heaven. This is Christ's promise, and I take Him at His word.
But I cannot do this without my own willingness and participation. For Christ gave me hands to hep my neighbor, tongues so that I might tell the truth, feet so that I can search out the ones whom I have abandoned and forgotten and arms to outstretch and embrace them and fill them with the hope of divine life. In this spirit do I post this for you to read, and forgive me if my words have done otherwise.