Swami Ranganathananda on Christianity

Posted May 17, 2005
By M.S.N. Menon
Organiser

Below are his thoughts on Jesus Christ and the role of the Church given in a special lecture at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Calcutta at the Christmas Eve meeting in 1954. So profound were his views that the lecture has already gone through nine editions.

“To teach the world faster than it can learn is to court disaster, as Bertrand Russell has put it. The teachings of Jesus relating to the kingdom of God and resurrection were just incomprehensible to most of his hearers. There is the typical instance of the Pharisees demanding Jesus to state when the kingdom of God should come. Jesus answered: ‘The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, lo here! Or lo there! for, behold the kingdom of God is within you’. (Luke XVII. 20-21) This statement that the kingdom of God is within us can hardly be squared with the dogma of the innate vileness of human nature (projected by the Genesis.)...”

“The crucifixion was a tragedy of the first magnitude; but a greater tragedy was the way it was handled. Woven into the prevailing dogmas, it slowly became central to the new movement. The man of joy, which Jesus undoubtedly was in real life, became transformed into a man of sorrow, in dogma. We may find a forbidding austerity in John the Baptist; but the Son of Man, as he himself has said, came eating and drinking, trailing clouds of humour and laughter. By transforming him into a man of sorrow, dogma has helped to turn his religion into grim and cheerless aspects, with serious consequences for the emotional life of its followers. Only a few great saints have been able to penetrate through this spiritual heaviness. ‘A sad nun is a bad nun’, wrote St. Theresa; and she exclaimed: ‘O Lord, save us from sullen saints!’”

“The dogma of one man's sin affecting all humanity gave rise to its logical corollary of the dogma of one man's blood washing away the sins of all... The theory that the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church developed out of this dogma; and, in place of calm reason and generous love, frenzy, fanaticism, intolerance and bigotry gripped the propagation of the life-giving message of Jesus down the centuries, destroying as many lives as it undoubtedly helped to build.”

“It is interesting to speculate how the message would have spread... if the divine life and sublime teachings of Jesus had found the central place, instead of the popular and striking dogmas of ‘the scapegoat’ and ‘the atonement’, physical resurrection and the second advent, earthly kingdom, and the imminence of the Day of Judgement. These dogmas were purely tribal in their scope... They were the nurseries of contemporary Jewish patriotism and national cohesion, sectarian intolerance and political frenzy”...

“The history of Christianity in its twin records of persecution, violence and war, on the one side, and lofty mysticism, moral passion and humanitarianism on the other, bears the impress of this inner division which also explains its recurrent conflicts with science. A successful synthesis needs the guidance of an adequate Weltanschauung, which was not available at the time.”

“The successful synthesis of thought elements, each one of which is vital and powerful, flowing as they do from human experience at various levels—the ethical passion of Judaism, the mystical and humanitarian fervour of Christianity, and the rational temper of science—calls for the guidance of a philosophy of world-view such as that of the Vedanta, which is not afraid of any aspect of experience, but seeks truth in all of them, with zestful detachment and devotion.”

“It is against this background that we view with hope the future of Indian Christianity. Under the guidance of the philosophy of Vedanta, the Christian message in India can achieve that synthesis by which it will flow as an entirely constructive force... It is our earnest hope that the Christian message passing through Indian experience will bear in its look a new charm and force of tolerance and gentleness, peace and fellowship, capturing thus the Master's spirit in full.”