Ours is a world of huge walls. People find themselves in various camps based on their beliefs and traditions. More and more walls arise each day making more and more divisions among us. We pay more attention to what divide us rather than what unite us. The very survival of humanity is in peril due to the walls that separate us.
All people belong to their own specific cultures speaking their own specific languages. However, this diversity of culture and language need not raise walls that divide us. We can accept diversity as an opportunity to learn from one another. We should be willing to see all people in the world as our family regardless of the cultural diversity.
This is the context in which I am contributing this book. Here I present an imaginary meeting of two people representing two civilizations. With a willingness to understand each other, they see how a huge wall that separates their two civilizations collapses. This imaginary inter-religious dialog is set in the first century between a Christian and a Hindu. This exemplifies that such a dialog is possible between the people of any two traditions.
The Christian in the dialog is a historical person—John, the Christian Apostle. However, the John one sees in these pages is the author’s picture of John. Also, what John, the Apostle, expounds in the dialog is an expression of the author’s understanding of the basics of Christianity.
The Hindu in the dialog is an imaginary person. Although he is imaginary, he is a faithful representation of a possible person. He is given the name Ananda, and he is presented as a Vedic Philosopher. What Andanda says about Hinduism represents the author’s understanding of Hinduism.
Writing this dialog was a great learning experience for me. The understanding that evolved in my mind while writing this dialog were powerful enough to set me free from fundamentalism. I am sure that following this dialog will be a liberating experience for any reader caught in the clutches of fundamentalism.
In these pages one can see an exposition of the basics of the origin and development of Christianity as understood by the author while it was written, which was in 1993. My attempt was to understand Jesus and the origin of Christianity the historical context. I continued to learn more and further since then, but the basic understanding hasn’t changed significantly. I hadn’t read Marcus Borg or other similar scholars when I wrote this. Later when I read their work, I was marveled to find many things in common. I have revised it a couple of times since then adding more details.
I do not claim any infallibility to any of the ideas discussed in these pages, and so I wouldn’t advise anyone to accept any of them blindly. My advice would be to follow the dialog, think for oneself, and make one’s own judgments. By participating in the imaginary dialog of these two men from two different traditions, the reader is given the opportunity to develop one’s own understanding. The concepts presented here do not represent the beliefs of any particular Christian church in the world although many of them could be found in all or in most. This book is merely an invitation to think and learn.
This is not a book that teaches the basics of Christian faith although one can see a version of the basics in here. This book is primarily an example of an interreligious dialog. The two people here from their diverse backgrounds speak openly to each other about what they understand and believe. They do not make any attempt to convert the other person to their belief. However, they eagerly attempt to learn from each other. They try to find out how they are similar and different. At the end of a long conversation we find them developing a strong bond of love and understanding toward each other. That is the goal of any interreligious dialog.
What we need is a multicultural and pluralistic world. We don’t want the people of any one religion to dominate others. We want the people of diverse religions living together learning from each other. Let the Hindus remain Hindus, Muslims remain Muslims, and Christians remain Christians. But let them all be willing to learn from each other. We can be brothers and sisters to one another in spite of our religious differences.
I am presenting this book as a contribution to the interreligious dialogs and peace movements in our world to unite humanity. May the humanity become a family!
John Kunnathu
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