Learning from Bede Griffiths

The death and resurrection of Christ is a unique event.  In one sense it is a mythological event, an event of supreme symbolism... But it is a sign which is rooted in history... This is very difficult for the Hindu to understand.  The Hindu ideal is to be above all suffering... When one looks at the Buddha, one sees that he is completely calm.  He has passed beyond this world.  But when we contemplate Jesus' suffering on the cross, we see how God has entered into humanity, into our human state, into human suffering and pain, into death.  This is something quite different...
  

The Hindu always tends to think that when you reach the Beyond all your differences, the body and soul, disappear, and you experience only the Divine Bliss... But in the Christian view the whole meaning and purpose of creation was that God should reflect Himself in you, in me, in others, and in everything.  The whole creation is not to disappear, but to be re-created and transformed, to participate in the Divine Life, fulfilling itself in the Divine Bliss, the Divine Glory...  
  
The danger [of Christianity today] is that it over-emphasises the importance of matter and science and history and human progress in this world striving for a better world... And so the modern Christian view needs to be complemented with the constant awareness which the Hindu has of the eternal dimension of being... of the sacramentality of the whole of creation and of the transcendent world beyond time, beyond space, beyond this world altogether.  
  
~ Bede Griffiths, The Cosmic Revelation, pp 125-129
     
TALK ABOUT IT  What does our body matter?  (Is it merely a discardable "vessel" of our spiritual reality.  Is it a sacramental reality that is changed rather than destroyed by death?) 
  
DO IT (INNER PRACTICE)  How does the way you treat your body reflect your understanding of it?  What could God be calling you to do, or be, or change? 
   
DO IT (OUTER PRACTICE)  How does the way you treat creation reflect your understanding of it?  What could God be calling you to do, or be, or change? 


LEARNING FROM BEDE GRIFFITHS: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION