The Easternization of Christianity

Hinduism Meets the Global Order: The “Easternization” of the West points out that the Easternization of the West has been going on since the 1960s:  “Since the 1960s the general Western reception of Indic philosophies and religions has been best portrayed not as a phobia, but as a philia. Colin Campbell notes that it is not unreasonable to characterize this fundamental shift in worldview as the “Easternization” of the West. The breakdown of the West’s “old traditions” opened up an ideological space for a range of alternatives where the Eastern traditions figure prominently, especially those of a Hindu or Buddhist orientation whose fundamentals strongly resonate with the growing Western interest in health, well-being and self-realization.” 

In its rush to look more like culture, segments of the church have also embraced and incorporated Eastern mysticism in its beliefs and practices with "spiritual disciplines" like Yoga, Contemplative Prayer, and the Enneagram. In Christianity over Buddhism, Objectively Alexander Riley takes a narrower focus on Christianity and Buddhism: “A good deal of the appeal of Buddhism in America has to do with its embrace of a laissez-faire subjectivism that is quite amenable to American individualism. In a conversation with Stephen Colbert, Gere described leaving the Christian faith of his family—despite his father’s highly compassionate Christian example—because the Buddhist “science of the mind” was superior. What the “superior” science of the mind reveals, in Gere’s account, is that there is no objective reality. We are living in The Matrix, where nothing is real beyond the mental activity of any individual’s mind.”

Christianity and Buddhism (and Hinduism as well) are not compatible. Buddhism is to end in nothingness, but Christianity is to overcome death and enjoy eternal life:   

Christianity accepts the death of these mortal bodies, but it cannot accept that this death be permanent. Perfection of the spirit permits the overcoming of death. In fact, it demands it.

Christianity is at its core the defeat of death. It cannot accept death. It loves life too much.

Even when Christianity seems to be concentrating on the fact of death, it is affirming life. Critics never tire of insinuating, for example, that the cross as a symbol necessarily signifies a celebration of the destruction of life. The comedian Bill Hicks ridiculed Christian beliefs with a bit in which Jesus is depicted as deferring his return because Christians had “missed the point” in their use of the symbol of the cross. But Hicks and others who take this perspective do little more than prove that they have misunderstood the most basic elements of the faith. It is the overcoming of the cross that Christians celebrate by invoking it. The symbol of the cross recalls Christ’s death, certainly. But it also, and much more importantly, points to the resurrection that came after it.

It is unfortunate that so many Christians do not recognize the false teaching and Easternization that is entering their churches.  

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