[Vision2020] Krishna and Christ: Hindu and Christian Saviors

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Good Morning Visionaries:

Thursday is Krishna's 3,000th birthday (educated guess), so I thought I would dedicate my radio commentary to him with a plea for harmony among the world's religions.

Nick Gier

KRISHNA AND CHRIST: HINDU AND CHRISTIAN SAVIORS

On August 28 millions of Hindus will celebrate the birthday of Lord Krishna, who, if one scholar's rough calculations are correct, was born about 3,000 years ago.  The main celebration begins at midnight and activities include singing, praying, and fasting.

Anti-Christian polemicists have been carried away in their attempts to argue that early Christians borrowed Krishna's stories and attributes and applied them to Jesus.  The claim that "Christ" comes from Krishna is completely baseless, because Christ is Greek for "anointed one" and Krishna is an unrelated personal name. 

Christian apologists, on the other hand, have rejected Krishna as an imposter and a perversion of the savior ideal. Some writers have made much of the fact that many of the stories about Krishna were not written down until hundreds of years after Christ. Christians had immigrated to southwest India by AD 300, so Hindu writers could have known about the stories about Jesus.

We now know that basic legends surrounding Krishna are pre-Christian. For example, the depiction of the Hindu equivalent of the slaughter of the infants--Prince Kansa's attempt to kill the baby Krishna--is found in a bas relief from the 3rd Century BC.  

There are many striking and instructive similarities between Krishna and Christ. Both were miraculously conceived; both had royal genealogies; and both were threatened in infancy by a wicked ruler.

Krishna and Christ were human incarnations of a triune God; both were tempted by demons; both worked miracles; both transfigured themselves; and both predicted their own deaths. For more see "The Savior Archetype" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/archetype.htm.

It is said that Krishna and Christ rose from death and ascended into heaven.  Christ died a gruesome death on a cross, while Krishna died, Achilles-like, by an arrow in his heel. The main difference is that Christ's death is redemptive, while Krishna's entire life is what redeems the world.  

Both Christianity and the religion of Krishna are theologies of grace, but  Krishna's favor, however, appears to go further than Christ's.  In his battle with demons, Krishna dispatches them to heaven after killing them. The hunter who accidentally kills Krishna is forgiven all his karmic debt.

Krishna is the eighth incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, who, according to Hindu belief, has come in every cosmic age to save humankind from its sin and folly.  Perhaps in an attempt to gain favor with India's Buddhists, Hindus decided that Vishnu's ninth incarnation was the Buddha, whom the Hindu Gandhi called the greatest teacher of non-violence.

In stark contrast, Vishnu's tenth and final incarnation has striking similarities with Christ's second coming.  Hindus believe that our age is particularly violent and sinful, and this means that a great warrior savior Kalki will come astride a white horse slaying all unbelievers with his mighty sword. 

It was Rama, the seventh Vishnu incarnation, who has been at the center of recent conflict in India.  Hindu fundamentalists have always been disturbed by the fact that 17th Century Muslim armies destroyed a temple at Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya and erected the Babri Mosque in its place.  

On December 8, 1992, about 3,000 Hindu fanatics dismantled the three domes of this huge monument with pick axes and sledge hammers.  They declared that the Taj Mahal was next. This action unleashed a wave of violence between Hindus and Muslims that resulted in over 2,000 deaths.

During the attack on the Babri Mosque, I was on a field trip with a group of students from Panjab University.  For one afternoon each week their task was to teach English or Hindi to poor Muslim students in a village outside of Chandigarh.  A curry kitchen at the Hindu temple fed all those who were hungry, and four Hindu and two Sikh students sat down with their Muslim children for their language lessons.  

As I was experiencing Gandhi's India, where six major religions usually live in harmony and celebrate each other's holidays, the evening news all over the world was focused on the violent exception rather than the peaceful rule.

My hope is that on Krishna's birthday we take to heart the teachings of non-violence in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity and put aside all ideas of vengeance and retribution.

Gandhi once said that "an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind," and Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that "hate cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that."