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Christian Scouting Material for Converting Sikhs


ms514
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The Sikhs have nothing to fear.  You want to freak these missionaries out?  Show them the pics of Chardi kala 3HO Sikhs and other non-Punjabi Sikhs, I'm sure their jaws will drop and someone please take a picture for the sangat :doh:

It is amazing how non-Punjabis come to Sikhi because of love, not coercion, these missionaries devote all their time and effort to conquer others while they forget to conquer their own minds as Sikhi preaches.  Christians and Muslims really need to hook up, they are so similar that I think they could be really good buddies and end all the non-sense in the middle-east, because from their view-point it's all about conquering the people who don't believe what they believe.

peace.

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I'm speaking as an ex-Christian here, maybe give a bit of perspective...

Now I'm not trying to trash either of these faiths, but I do believe that human beings really warped a lot of the teachings. It is written in the Bible that Jesus said "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel..." and many Christian believers fail to realize that, in those days, "all the world" was Rome and a bunch of surrounding colonies, and bits of Europe and North Africa. And the Gospel was NOT "Worship Jesus." Nowhere does Jesus say in the Bible that he should be worshiped. The gospel he referred to was repent, come to God, and you'll be saved. He didn't teach Naam Simran as such, but he did teach his people to come back and remember God. The Bible is not the problem, nor Jesus, a holy man. The problem is what I call the Political Church that ruled most of Europe with an iron-fisted dictatorship, ruining a simple movement by a simple carpenter. The Church could legally take the property of heretics, and got fat on the Inquisition. When the witch-burning craze died out, the expansion began: colonization of the "new world," enslavement of Blacks and Native Americans, and such sins that continued into the twentieth century as the United States rounded up Japanese Americans into concentration camps for God and Country.

You're speaking of a form of Christianity known as Evangelical, where they teach that for a believer's salvation they must go out and get more believers. I do not trash them for their beliefs. I do take offense to their own sense of self-importance, for many believe that they are the only right ones. I find this especially among American believers. There is a teaching in some Evangelical circles that certain parts of the Bible were written two and a half thousand years ago solely and specifically for the USA and the American people, and this is dangerous. We are having the problems with AlQaeda now because this form of Christianity teaches that the forming of Israel was the first step to the end times, and that the "true believers" will be carried up in a "rapture" and will not experience destruction (Armageddon.) In other words, they will not reap the fruits of their arrogance.

Yes, there are parallels with Christianity and Islam. They come from the same source, the MidEast. Shariah has a lot in common with the Books of the Law in the Old Testament. Both have missionary zeal, the legacy of the prophets of that part of the world in the days the Bible is said to have been written. But maybe you've heard it said that some people can't get along because they are too much alike, and I think this is the case, going all the way back to the Crusades: each wanted Jerusalem for itself, and to this day they fight like two little kids over a toy. Myself, I think that Jerusalem should be made an independent city-state like the Vatican, and governed by a United Nations delegation so that Christians, Jews and Muslims (and everyone else) can have free access, and the fighting can stop. The importance of Jerusalem to the history of our world is enormous. And just as the Golden Temple has four walls to be open to all the world, so should this city. But it won't be in our lifetimes, not until people get over their self-importance, their egos, this "My faith's better than yours" garbage.

We'll never have any peace until we all realize that our neighbor has a right to his or her own conscience, and we can all sit side by side in full trust and love of the ones who don't believe as we do. Because there are many paths up the mountain, and all should reach the top.

Blessed be,

BahaPolska

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....It is written in the Bible that Jesus said "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel..." and many Christian believers fail to realize that, in those days, "all the world" was Rome and a bunch of surrounding colonies, and bits of Europe and North Africa. And the Gospel was NOT "Worship Jesus." Nowhere does Jesus say in the Bible that he should be worshiped. The gospel he referred to was repent, come to God, and you'll be saved. He didn't teach Naam Simran as such, but he did teach his people to come back and remember God. The Bible is not the problem, nor Jesus, a holy man. The problem is what I call the Political Church that ruled most of Europe with an iron-fisted dictatorship, ruining a simple movement by a simple carpenter.

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Interesting what you say here. I recall as a young child when i started being preached to I went home and asked my mom if we beleive in Jesus. My mom said Jesus was a very good man, however we are sikhs. This was so powerful. Christians would tell me that I was wrong, and my mom was telling me that Jesus was good. This was long before the largely modern day interfaith harmony, so much of which is a farce.

I have little doubt that you are much more worthy of sikhi as someone who has challenged themselves, than myself who grew up with it. But I am very interested in your comments above and why you did not stay with christianity given those comments. Amongst "sikhs" there is also a political church and huge problems with those who think they are sikhs. Would there be christian groups who follow something closer to the teachings of Jesus as you describe here?

I hope you don't mind the question, I think we can learn much more about sikhi from someone who has the courage to give their head and come to sikhi from outside sikhi.

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Its not very hard to silence them. One Filipino dude on my bus started preaching (he has guts preaching to me and a Hindu friend bout Jesus in the Islamic middle east LOL.gif ). He said how Jesus sacrificed himself for all of mankind, and that he is the only way. With reference to Guru Tegh Bahadur's Jee's shaheedi, I asked him a few things : What if you came across a prophet, who sacrifices His life for a community not His own, a community being hunted left and right, and He gives His life up for them, and in return, He doesn't ask for anything, no acknowledgement, no thank you, and doesn't even whisper a word about asking them to convert to His faith. He gives up His life just for His love for humanity, for His belief in freedom of religion. Jesus did sacrifice his life but asked the people to follow his path, or else! This prophet didn't!

Now I didn't mention that my religion (Sikhi) followed this prophet (Guru Tegh Bahadur Jee), because I didn't want him to feel that I was putting his faith down, and trying to prove my religion superior to his. But he got my point and became silent immediately. Few days later he asked my name, and many days later asked me if I was Hindu or Sikh (don't worry, i said Sikh :T: ). My sincere request to everyone, please remember : if you have to engage in a religious debate, make sure not to use offensive terms. It only makes things worse. We already have enough inter-religious hatred in this world. Too much blood has been spilt, and an alarming amount of unpleasantness exists between various religious communities already. If we can't make it any better, lets not make it any worse.

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Its not very hard to silence them. One Filipino dude on my bus started preaching (he has guts preaching to me and a Hindu friend bout Jesus in the Islamic middle east  LOL.gif ). He said how Jesus sacrificed himself for all of mankind, and that he is the only way. With reference to Guru Tegh Bahadur's Jee's shaheedi, I asked him a few things : What if you came across a prophet, who sacrifices His life for a community not His own, a community being hunted left and right, and He gives His life up for them, and in return, He doesn't ask for anything, no acknowledgement, no thank you, and doesn't even whisper a word about asking them to convert to His faith. He gives up His life just for His love for humanity, for His belief in freedom of religion. Jesus did sacrifice his life but asked the people to follow his path, or else! This prophet didn't!

Now I didn't mention that my religion (Sikhi) followed this prophet (Guru Tegh Bahadur Jee), because I didn't want him to feel that I was putting his faith down, and trying to prove my religion superior to his. But he got my point and became silent immediately. Few days later he asked my name, and many days later asked me if I was Hindu or Sikh (don't worry, i said Sikh  :T: ). My sincere request to everyone, please remember : if you have to engage in a religious debate, make sure not to use offensive terms. It only makes things worse. We already have enough inter-religious hatred in this world. Too much blood has been spilt, and an alarming amount of unpleasantness exists between various religious communities already. If we can't make it any better, lets not make it any worse.

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:doh: :doh:

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Interesting what you say here. I recall as a young child when i started being preached to I went home and asked my mom if we beleive in Jesus. My mom said Jesus was a very good man, however we are sikhs. This was so powerful. Christians would tell me that I was wrong, and my mom was telling me that Jesus was good. This was long before the largely modern day interfaith harmony, so much of which is a farce.

I have little doubt that you are much more worthy of sikhi as someone who has challenged themselves, than myself who grew up with it. But I am very interested in your comments above and why you did not stay with christianity given those comments. Amongst "sikhs" there is also a political church and huge problems with those who think they are sikhs. Would there be christian groups who follow something closer to the teachings of Jesus as you describe here?

I hope you don't mind the question, I think we can learn much more about sikhi from someone who has the courage to give their head and come to sikhi from outside sikhi.

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Thank you friend, although I sometimes don't feel worthy...I remember days when I was so poor I stole to make sure my cat was better fed than I, and my decision to leave Catholicism literally tore my family apart to the point that my one surviving relative, my foster-brother, still won't speak to me. I have a lot of nasty karma to clean up, with God's grace.

I am not offended by your question; in fact, I'm a freak for religion talk and I could sit for days over coffee and talk about it! The fact is, I didn't stay with Christianity because I came to believe that Jesus is not divine, not the "Son of God" the way Christianity teaches. I'm like your mom. I think Jesus was a good and great man, chosen by God to deliver a message to his people and give them hope and liberation in their troubled times. He was the Guru Nanak of the Roman-occupied Jews; the message was similar. Jesus was also against showy, superficial worship. There's a Bible story about how a rich man came to the temple in fine clothing and made a big stink about giving a boatload of money, followed by a poor woman in rags who gave one little coin in humble silence. He said that the poor widow actually gave the greater gift, because all she had was the one coin. Jesus was against the outward forms of ritual worship, which by the time of Roman occupation had become corrupted, and taught a simple message, The Truth Shall Set You Free. No, I don't have a problem with Jesus. He never said he was God. That came later: the dying and rising god thing is far more ancient than Jesus and can be found in Roman, Egyptian, Celtic and Norse mythology. Odin, like Jesus, is also said to have been hung on a tree.

The nature of Christian doctrine won't allow for many groups like you're taliking about to come up. The Unitarian/Universalists come closest, in my opinion. You can find discussion clubs anywhere, but people who have come to believe that Jesus is not a divine being are generally either atheists or secular humanists, or go into non-Christian, alternative faiths like Wicca. I know one girl who became Muslim, two guys who became Jews, looking for their spiritual home. Christian dogma comes less from the Gospels (the life and acts of Jesus) and more from Paul (an early Roman Jew who first said Jesus was divine.) One can't separate the belief in the Trinity (God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same, and all divine) from worship and practice; if you don't believe that Jesus is God and died on the cross to take away sin, you can't call yourself Christian. And that's my answer to your question, after so much gabbing on my part: I left the Christians because I believe God is one, and to believe in a divine Jesus would be hypocrisy. God is perfect. Why then come down to earth and go through the cross business? God can forgive my sins and give me life under His own power. He needs no help. If he needed help, he wouldn't be God. Christianity was not my home, and I didn't feel at home spiritually until coming to Sikhi.

The interfaith movement is a growing baby in thousands of years of human spirituality, a baby that's learning to talk and walk yet. I prefer to look at it that way...we all have a lot to learn from one another, but many of us need to open our minds, whether Christian, Sikh or Muslim or any other path under the sun. And the baby has to fall on its butt a few times while learning. Sooner or later, it'll be running like the wind.

Blessed be,

BahaPolska

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Thanks for the reply and education. Although I was born into sikhi, I have also passed my own tests which make it a choice...I think.

However, I am always in awe of people who walk to sikhi from another path, or from a family that has not followed thier own sikhi. Apart from many other challenges, sikhs of 'punjabi culture' can inadvertently can make it very difficult.

You are an inspiration.

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