Thursday, September 21, 2006

Has conversion been successfull in true sense?

I think every religion is beautiful in it's own way and all religions can say only good things.But how a person interprets his own religion changes from individual to individual based on their mindset.
Christianity is also one such good religion. Christianity talks of conversion and says that everyone must try to convert as many people as christians.
Now this specific statement can also be interpreted in many ways.

The way the conversion missionaries interprets this is 'Convert every person on the road to christian'.

But then i personally interpret this in a different way...
If we go back to Jesus times, when Jesus was born it was a time where there was too much of atrocities and dictatorship. And jesus tried to spread love and forgiveness to clean the atrocities . He was responsible for bringing in love to that land of atrocities convert people from bad to good. So in my opinion conversion meant converting people from bad to good (now what's bad and what's good again depends on perceptions) and make them follow jesus's path of love and foregiveness. So converting someone to christian at that time did not mean changing some one's religion. At that time it meant making someone who doesn't have any proper path in life, to follow a good path. .
So i don't think at any time jesus would have asked people to convert from other religions. He only asked people to follow a good path, if they are not already following. So when jesus said 'Be a christian' he only meant to say Be good and be free from Sin'.
He did not mean to say 'Convert all other good religios people'
So then why at all try to convert the good, peace loving Hindus to christians. On what basis is this being done? And why it needs to be done when the person is already good and is peace loving?If they can be successful in converting people terrorists, naxalities and underworld dons' to christians than i would consider conversion and christianity to be a successful religion.
Converting needy, poor, jobless, ill people by giving them some hopes and greed, is not a true conversion.
Whatever the coversion missionaries ae doing is just to increase numbers without any quality of people.This in my opinion is not a symtom of a successful religion , with due applogy to all those who got converted.

More christians..does that mean religion is better than others?
Ok..now let's go by numbers only. Conversion missionaries have been really successful in converting huge number of people. But then have they ever tried to find out why these folks got converted. Christianity is supposed to be a religion that gives people complete freedom to decide before conversion if they want to or they don't want. But then are they really allowed to decide this with free mind? .
'If u become a christian u will get a job, if u become a christian u will get married, if u become a christian....'..These are the things that are directly or indirectly told to the people.
If u give so much of bribe to a person and then ask him 'Do u want to convert or not..' what would he say. Obviously he would give importance to his immediate needs only.
But then this cannot be considered as a successful conversion.

I have seen so many people near my area who follow all religions on need basis. During christmas they come asking for money to light candles in church, and then they also come to collect Ganesh Chaturti donations too.
I do not curse these people, infact i think they are the most practical of the lot who can take best advantage of the situation. They call themselves christians because that gives them monetary advanatge from the church, they go to temples, because that gives them a social advantage. So as a matter of fact they don't belong to any specific religion. They have their own religion.
But i feel bad that the christian missionaries get fooled by these people and consider it to be their own success.

So is conversion being successful in true sense?? A very strong 'No' in my opinion.

Try to convert just one laden, or one just dawood or just one of those budding terrorits and make them follow what jesus said and i would agree that conversion is successful


btw...this is a nice debate by few learned people on conversion. Chk here
http://www.iisc.ernet.in/prasthu/articles/davidfr2.html

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

First Religions are born to educate people and empower them with gyan that they never thought of. Now people have started forgetting the basics of religions and have become the fans of thier own kind, not the kind of thier religion.

I feel, there are lots of bugs in the many of these religions and causing unwanted reactions in people to think thier religion is the only solution for this world and they convert all the people in to thier path.

I strongly believe that the modern world needs a new prophets, new religion that unleases love and better life style in this world.