Apologize: How To Evangelize a Buddhist
Michael Ramsden of RZIM shared this strategy with me last week in Thailand, where the Christian population is a whopping 1%.... while gentle Buddhists make up the remainder.
Preliminaries-
1) Approach with great respect for the dignity of this tradition, which is millennia older than ours.
2) Consider whether the orientation of the audience is philosophical, cultural, or mystical- Buddhism is a tradition with a variety of inclinations. Also be careful not to attack a Buddhist’s cultural heritage when addressing her faith. To become a Christian, anyone has to BECOME one… we all left something of our cultural heritage behind when we assented to follow Jesus.
3) Respect that most people are drawn to the Buddhist tradition through desires for peace, tranquility, and self-mastery; but recognize that these desires are oriented entirely around the self, which experience shows us is so unreliable in actually attaining these states consistently.
Ask:
4) Ask: Will this tradition get you where you want to go? How can the peace which Buddhism promises actually be achieved? … point out that in Christianity, there is no mountain to be ascended, since we believe that God comes to us with His peace. We begin where we want to end up in Christianity- with new birth! Christians thus get to begin where the Buddhist hopes to arrive.
5) Ask: Do you have to be a Buddhist? The claims of Buddhism are not dependent on the Buddha, since according to Buddhism, anyone could have revealed the Buddhist wisdom; remove Biddha from the system, and it still stands. This, however, is NOT the case with Christianity, wherein Jesus declared HIMSELF to be the truth. So what are you going to do with the claims of Christianity… that the man Jesus historically lived, died, and appeared to thousands after His resurrection? You can, after all, have most of the wisdom of Buddhism AND Jesus, who is the Truth and the Life and the self-proclaimed and witnessed Lord.
6) Ask: Do the Buddhist claims adequately address reality as we know it? For instance, can Buddhism deal with the evil in the world, and with the fact of human sin? – or does Buddhism only ask us to escape/transcend these facts? Such escape doesn’t seem to work- especially since we all believe that we should be good… but can Buddhism transform what is bad into that which is good? Christianity promises to do just that. (And if the Buddhists insists on transcending reality and evil, how are they going to do this? How does this work itself out in the human heart and in reality?)
7) Ask: Don’t you want to keep your good desires, including the desire to be “a good Buddhist?” Christians are not trying to become something; rather, having been made something by Christ. We are working out and living into the salvation which He has given. Thus Jesus takes us to the point where we want to go, and does so by inflaming our desires- which is so much more fun than transcendence. Christianity says, if you really want life (rather than to suppress it), this is where you get it! All this, the way it was meant to be, and Heaven too.
In sum-
a. Dear Buddhist, do you really want to spend so much time trying to be rid of desires when you could just change your desires to be holy, through Christ?
b. Dear Buddhist, HOW exactly are you going to be rid of the desire not to have desire in the real world?
c. Dear Buddhist, HOW exactly are your going to live this way in the real world? Christianity offers real peace in the midst of strife, while Buddhism seems to offer the surreal atmosphere of a Zen garden. Is this peace or or stagnation? In the midst of the world’s given disorder and the people in it, is the Buddhist “peace” really possible? Christianity instead offers real and ongoing reconciliation, a peace given and not strived for.
...A gentle clencher: Dear Buddhist, you follow a wise man who never claimed to be God, and yet offers a life system. The Christian follows a man who claimed to be God and offered a life system and eternal salvation as God. If Jesus is who He says He is, He is certainly more likely, as God, to be right.
Michael reccommends reading “The Lotus and The Cross: Jesus Talks With Buddha” on point. So do I.
posted by MM at 8:00 AM
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