Hinduism

Based on out trip today and the readings, I would say that Hinduism is closest to Christianity. I think that the gods that the Hindu’s worship can be seen as saints and/or angels in the Christian faith. The main difference is that Christianity does not worship the saints and angles; they ask them to pray for their intentions. The different Hindu gods have other gods who are seen as lesser or worshipped less, and some more of them are just avatars of a more main god who takes different forms here on earth. It seems to me like even though Hinduism has millions of gods, they are more taken by the stories of what the gods did here on earth. That is why they worship the different gods more than others.

Another thing that struck me was comparing all of the Hindu gods to the Christian God Himself. To me, it seemed like the all of the gods we saw at the temple were like all of the different qualities of God. The only difference was that Christianity recognizes that God has all of the qualities within Himself. There is no one greater. He can do all things, so why would Christians need to worship anyone else. The Hindus do not put all of God’s qualities in one being. They give each quality a different name and look to distinguish them into gods according to the different stories in the Vedas. These ancient writings (Vedas) are seen in Hinduism as directly from the gods and written by the “seers.” This is like the Christian Bible writers who were divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit.

I also really liked the story of the Lotus flower that the priest told us today. I thought the picture of the water drop rolling off the flower was such a good lesson. The Hindu reverence and lessons from nature and animals is very interesting and inspiring for a lot of humanity. Of course Christians do not worship nature or animals, but they do recognize the beauty of God’s creation.

I also thought about the wedding rituals of Christianity and Hinduism because it is my group’s project. I thought how these two very different kinds of marriage actually have a good amount in common. The Hindu tradition has a main part of the ceremony surrounding the fire which is given to the god Agni. Without it, the wedding would not be legitimate. This is just like Christianity, or at least Catholicism. They view the need for God’s presence in the ceremony to be a witness to the covenant the man and woman are making to each other. Another thing would be the reverence for the vow of marriage that both faith traditions have. They both see marriage as a life-long commitment between a man and a woman.

I thought that the trip to the temple was very helpful to our studies of Hinduism. It seemed so odd to me that they worship so many gods and the plants and planets, but as we continued to hear the priest talk about the gods, it made me relate each one of them to my God. All of those qualities (forgiver of sins, creator, etc) are in the Catholic God. I feel like Hinduism is polytheistic, but at the same time they worship the universe itself as one. That seems to be the main goal, to live the good life and then reach enlightenment and become part of the one.