Half full Half empty

Half Full or Half Empty?

Half full or half empty?

‘Syncretism’ and ‘Compromise’ are the two weapons that are often used against the Hindu bhaktas of the Lord. According to those who attack them using those weapons, they (Hindu bhaktas) failed to live a ‘textualized and idealised version‘ of their Christianity. According to them, the life of a Hindu bhakta always remains ‘half empty’, though they acknowledge that somehow the Hindu bhakta, though it began with ‘spirit’ ended in ‘flesh’.

Particularly, I use the case study of ‘Naaman’ to encourage those Hindu bhaktas who were forced to stoop down when they have to live with their birth families instead of leaving it and joining ‘Christian community’. One time at Rewa (in M.P. India, back in 1993), when I told the Hindu bhaktas that God knows our situation better than others (Christians). I never allow them to create any guilty conscience in them by saying that we are ‘compromising’ our bhakti and live a life of ‘syncretism’. When they conveyed this message to their Christian well wishers, her response was, ‘those who want to stand with the kings to keep their materialistic status and position have to stoop down before other deities. But we who want to stand for the Lord will give up such materialistic status and position and are ready to take up the Cross and follow him’. And my response to her, through the Hindu bhaktas (I never met her personally) is that ‘she sees only a half empty glass’ and pointed out all the inconsistencies of carrying the cross of the Lord for the sake of taking a stand for the Lord in their personal and church life.

Well, one mistake cannot justify another one. However, I found not only very encouraging but very important exposition on the story of Naaman from N. T. Wright which is worth reading as it is. Though I have already shared about the Naaman story from a different perspective quoting from Kenneth Bailey [Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Illinois, IVP Academic, 2008, p. 164. Also see my article ‘Faith and Festivals’ in the blog], what Wright says helps us to understand how to approach this story. However he also has a message to the Christians who see only a half empty glass in the life of a bhakta:

…Once again, I think Naaman’s glass is half full, not half empty. If Daniel had shrunk back and worshipped the King of Babylon, his would have been half empty….— N T Wright, Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship. (England, SPCK, 1994) New Delhi, ISPCK, Indian edition 2015, Ch 10 The Mind Renewed, p. 66

Before sharing verbatim fromWright, it is worth noting what this word ‘syncretism 1 actually stands for. About this Hatcher says:

While there is something attractive about granting to syncretism the widest possible descriptive applicability, it might almost be argued that in doing so we rob the concept of its meaning. After all, if it is used to describe the process of encounter and synthesis through which all religions grow and change, then to speak of religious syncretism is something of a tautology.4 One is pleased to find that the author of the entry on “Syncretism” in The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion arrives at a similar verdict, concluding, “In view of the fact that no historically known religion has begun in a vacuum but has instead readily drawn on valuable aspects of existent traditions in which its members found meaning, one must conclude that the term at this time has little taxonomic value (Smith, Jonathan Z., ed. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco. 1995: 1043).—Brian A. Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse, New York. Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 7

To return back to Wright:

…Some people think when they become Christians that they are now perfect; that it’s possible to live a pure spiritual life, uncomplicated by the old realities. But that’s not straight thinking: it’s just a new version of crooked thinking. Rather, when (p. 67) someone comes to embrace the love of God in Jesus, or rather to be embraced by that love, they must begin to see that they are regularly and habitually bowing down in the house of Rimmon at several points in their everyday life.

…It’s no good trying to pretend we aren’t compromised; we are. Nor is it any good imagining that we can cut the knot of those compromises all at once. We have to think straight about what we’re doing, and own up to the compromises, which at the moment we can’t seem to avoid….

The good news is that he does. Did Elisha say to Naaman: ‘You’re a half-hearted compromiser, you want your bread buttered on both sides at once, you’re talking out of both corners of your mouth’? No. He said, ‘Go in peace.’ That is the word of God to those who are starting to bring their thinking about God and the world into the straight line that flows from the revelation of the saving love of God in Christ. It is the word of God to those who are starting to follow Jesus, and want to do so more and more. It is the word of God to those whose glass is half full.

That is why we say, as part of the regular Lord’s Prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ If Jesus had expected us never to compromise again, he wouldn’t have put that clause into the prayer. The key thing is, to recognize again and again that we need to pray it, and to pray it from the heart – and to go on working out how to eliminate those compromises bit by bit from our lives….Our minds are to be renewed; we can’t be content with the old patterns any more. We may still have to live with the old (p.68) world, but woe betide us if we are at ease in it, because it is still fatally possible that the glass might be half empty instead of half full. –Wright, op. Cit. pp. 67-69

Of all the religions in the world, considering its history, Christianity (from its origin in Judaism) is the most syncretistic faith, if we take the standard meaning given by the Christians who criticise Hindu bhaktas of the Lord. The way various religious words, symbols and rituals were borrowed from a wider variety of religions which it encountered throughout history proves this. As several scholarly studies are available on this I need not repeat them here.

However, to have more understanding about this term ‘Syncretism’ I am, as usual, quoting from other sources in notes.

Dayanand Bharati
15-03-2019

Notes

1.    …Although “syncretism” in modern English usage refers to the merging of religions or philosophies that are properly separate, the original Greek term synkretismos used by Plutarch meant something different. It referred to a custom of people on the isle of Crete to overcome local feuds and to form a sacred alliance in order to withstand foreign aggression {Jan Assmann, “Translating Gods.” In The Translatability of Cultures, edited by Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, 25-36. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 1996. 34}….— Andrew J. Nicholson. Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, Ranikhet, Permanent Black, (2010), 2011. p. 190

2.    ‘Syncretism’ as a technical term is always arbitrary. In theology and comparative religions it has often been used as a classificatory term for a variety of phenomena. It is used with either negative, neutral, or sometimes (p.90) positive connotation for phenomena otherwise called mixing, assimilation, inculturation, integration, inclusivism, or synthesis. Any meeting of cultures or religions different from each other sets free a dynamic process of assimilation and reassertion of identity. Conversion or explicit assurance of one’s religious identity is embedded into this process; they are aspects of it, but they do not govern and rarely dominate it. Similarly, religious pluralism of any degree sets free processes of syncretism and anti-syncretism as well…— Heinz Werner Wessler, Idolatry, Syncretism, and Anti-syncretism in Hindu Reform Movements of the Nineteenth Century, pp. 76-97, in Gwilym Bece, (ed.) Colonialism Modernity and Religious Identities: Religious Reforms Movements in South Asia, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 90-91

Detecting syncretism in the South Asian context of intellectual theology cannot mean simply an application of a classificatory scheme that was developed in another context, namely the ancient near east and in relation to the historic epoch of Hellenism. South Asian syncretism, if it exists, cannot be without repercussions on the theoretical model itself. The term syncretism, which was often used to categorize developments in the history of Hinduism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, may ultimately turn out to be misleading….—ibid. Heinz Werner Wessler, Idolatry, Syncretism, and Anti-syncretism in Hindu Reform Movements of the Nineteenth Century, pp. 76-97, in p. 91

…it is already difficult to translate the term ‘syncretism’ into an Indian language,32 and equally difficult to explain the Western conceptualization in Hindi, Gujarati, or Bengali, avoiding superficial communalist misunderstandings.—ibid. Heinz Werner Wessler, Idolatry, Syncretism, and Anti-syncretism in Hindu Reform Movements of the Nineteenth Century, pp. 76-97, in p. 92
32 Syncretism is difficult to translate into a Sanskrit neologism. My informants with Hindi-speaking background suggest dharmamishran or panthmishran, both far from being easily intelligible. Raghu Veer’s famous dictionary (Raghu Vira, A Comprehensive English-Hindi Dictionary of Governmental and Educational Words and Phrase, New Delhi, 1960, 2nd ed. 1960) of technical terms does not contain ‘syncretism’, neither do the common dictionaries from European language into Hindi.—p. 95###