Something To Think About - 06

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 1

When Pope John Paul II visited India in November 1999, he kicked up a big storm by giving a call to his missionary army to embark on an aggressive evangelisation programme in India and other Asian countries. He aggravated this further by again commenting about “Hindu fundamentalists” creating obstacles to this programme with the support of State Governments, claiming it as the inalienable God-given right of the Christians to railroad other religionists into conversion, as if the others do not have any rights of their own. It is interesting to see what their own scriptures say about this. As one scholar says, “If anything is still widely considered sacred today, presumably it is the Ten Commandments”. So that seems to be a good place to look for guidance.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery”.
“Thou shalt not steal”.
‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s”.

These are the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth of the Ten Commandments of Moses, said to have been given to him by God as a Covenant which his people are supposed to follow as a grateful thanksgiving to God for bringing them out of their bondage in Egypt in search of their Promised Land. Even though these Commandments were given to the Jews through Moses much before Jesus Christ was born, they are still said to set the standards for the Christians’ own moral and ethical behaviour.

It is worth recalling an after-dinner story which is pertinent in this context. A person knocks on the door of a house, which has a name plate carrying the names of two brothers, Dr. Doe M.D. and Dr. Doe D.D. The medical doctor opens the door and asks the caller, “Which one do you want? My brother is the one who preaches and I am the one who practises”. Doesn’t it show up the problem for what it is? What is the worth of a Church which only preaches what it says Jesus Christ and their Books taught, but does not value them enough to follow those teachings in its own conduct?

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

A simple enough injunction. The dictionary meaning of the word ‘Adultery’ reads as, “voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and a woman not his wife, or between a married woman and a man not her husband”. One can with reasonable assurance say that a person’s relationship with one’s religion is just as close, as personal, as valuable, as sacrosanct as that between the person and his/her spouse. If a person voluntarily gives up one’s religion and gets converted to another, he/she may be accused of committing adultery. But if the Pope and his men and the missionaries of any other Christian denomination convert somebody through whatever means, won’t they be open to the charge of acting as procurers or pimps? Of course this commandment only says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, and does not say, “Thou shalt not induce or force somebody to commit adultery”. That sure makes a fine distinction.

In any case this commandment itself seems to be a great joke. The western world was, in the recent past, rocking with the scandal of Bill Clinton’s infidelity. Ex-President Jimmy Carter is said to have pointed out that some people think the seventh commandment is, “Thou shalt not admit adultery”. After all, when the Bible itself is a treasure-house of adultery, incest and rape, and Popes themselves have shown the way in this direction, what else can one expect!

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”

In his book “Don’t Know Much About the Bible” (Avon Books, Inc, New York) Kenneth C. Davis points out: “Even if taken in the widest sense of ‘lying’, the false-witness commandment still has some gray areas. Certainly the people who concealed Anne Frank and her family in their attic to protect them from the Nazis ‘lied’ to the Gestapo. But most would agree that in breaking the commandment, they had done nothing wrong. On the contrary, to have told the truth would have been the real crime against God.” More than just uttering a falsehood, the moral and ethical aspects of the issue come into question.

Spreading falsehoods about Hinduism and other religions, just to recruit people into Christianity through conversion, also falls into this same category of crime against God, does it not? The Pope’s complaint against the Governments of the various Indian States for “withdrawing state support for those in the Scheduled Castes who have chosen Christianity” puts it in perspective. Did the Christian missionaries not lie to the Scheduled Castes, in the first place, that after conversion, they will all be just like any other Christian, like, say, George W. Bush and Tony Blair and Bill Gates, and that they will not face any type of discrimination - social or economical or any other? When Christianity has promised them Heaven on Earth in this lifetime, why should they ask for any preferential treatment? Why don’t the Churches live up to their promise?

Apart from breaking the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”, they break many other injunctions too. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make will you be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you behold the mote that is in your brother’s eye, and not consider the beam in your own? You hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then you will see clearly to cast out the mote from your brother’s eye”.(Matthew 7:1-5) “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 7:12)

“Thou shalt not steal”.

Very simple indeed! And one that places the late Pope, John Paul II, in a very comical position too! The Pope, who is so full of concern for human dignity and religious freedom where conversion of Hindus and other religionists to Christianity is concerned, is reported to have used rather undignified, intolerant, unparliamentary words against the Protestants, his own fellow-Christians, in the Latin American countries, describing them as “wolves” poaching on his flock of Roman Catholics. What a simple soul this Pope was; innocent and childlike! He does not like the Protestants, who are also Christians, “stealing” members from his club of Catholics to the Protestant club, but wants the absolute and unfettered right and freedom to steal, without any interference, any person from Hinduism or any other eastern religion.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s”.

What a comprehensive set of commands! God left out items like TV, fridge, air conditioner, dish washer, music systems, computers, laptops, VCD, DVD, motor cars and so on, as He was sure Moses would not understand what they meant at that time a few millennia ago.

It is not just that “Thou shalt not steal”. You shall not ever even think of, or aspire to, grabbing or possessing something, anything, that belongs to someone else. Kenneth C. Davis, in his book “Don’t Know Much About the Bible” (Avon Books, Inc), puts across a fine interpretation.

"The American Heritage Dictionary says that to covet is 'to feel blameworthy desire for that which is another’s' or 'to wish for longingly'. This commandment is somewhat unique in that it sees sin in thought as opposed to a specific action.

"The problem with the tenth commandment is that most modern consumer economies and the entire advertising industry are built on ‘coveting’. The whole purpose of TV and magazine commercials or billboards is to get us to “wish for longingly” - to covet that Mercedes or that cigarette. So does that make us all sinners? Rabbi Telushkin offers this wisdom: “It is not wrong to want more than you have. What is wrong is to want it at your neighbour’s expense. There is no evil in desiring a Jaguar, only in wanting the one belonging to the person next door”.

Does it not apply with equal force against inducing your neighbour to give up one of his/her valued possessions, his/her religion, and get converted to Christianity or Islam or whatever? In fact this commandment opposes the very thought of your wanting to convert your neighbour. If the Pope, the Vatican establishment, the various Christian denominations, are really “Christian”, how can they ever think of invading the privacy of the Hindus or any other religionists and try to convert them?

Of course this applies with equal vigour in the Intellectual Properties domain too, where Western “Christian” commercial interests vandalise the Eastern Traditional Knowledge Systems by patenting them for their own pecuniary benefits. Does the Born Again Christian George W. Bush know anything about this sort of piracy and terrorism?

This set of four commandments is dealt with beautifully in a short passage in the very first verse of the Isaavaasya Upanishad. It says, “Maa Grdhaha Kasyasvit Dhanam”. Do not grab, with vulture-like greed, anybody else’s wealth. Short, sweet, crisp, pithy.

Dhanam or wealth does not refer only to material possessions but includes concepts and intangibles like honour, dignity, self-worth, self-respect and anything else of value to a person. While stealing may primarily deal with material possessions, adultery (and rape and any sexual assault), bearing false witness and coveting one’s neighbour’s possessions are assaults in the conceptual and intangible areas, and are equally, or even more, traumatic to any person. The sense of values one has acquired, through the religious concepts he/she has imbibed since birth, also fall into this category of wealth, and these commandments oppose any assault on this too and specifically prohibit any conversion activity being carried out by the Christians.

Are the Pope and the Bishops and their foot-soldiers aware that these Vedas and Upanishads, carrying all these glorious concepts, have been around for a few millennia before Jesus Christ was even conceived? And that whatever Moses and Jesus Christ have given out by way of their teachings are only a restatement of whatever was already floating around elsewhere? It is a pity that these people who are ignorant of these simple truths are trying to evangelise, which is a euphemism for conversion of the Hindus and other Asians.
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