16
Dec
2018
Surrendering to God
My girlfriend owns a massage studio and she told me that with some clients, they refuse to relax and stay tense, making it impossible for her to help them as much as she could, if they would only let down their defenses and trust her.
It occurred to me that this is what we do with God. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
Surrendering to God is an important concept in Hinduism as well. There are basically two ways to get Moksha, I.e. freedom from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. First there is Bhakti Yoga, which involves (among other things) lifelong meditation on God until you achieve a state of knowledge of God. It’s almost impossible to do successfully. Then there is Sharanagati, which involves disclaiming all attempts to obtain Moksha on your own, surrendering to God, and asking him to just free you from all sins and give you Moksha.
By the way, the destruction of sins in Sharanagati has similarities to the Christian concept of atonement, in fact when Europeans first came to India they thought that Sharanagati was stolen from Christianity. Then they realized that it was present in Hindu scripture long before the time of Jesus.
There is no Christian concept of atonement – that’s OldTestament. In the New Testament we have propitiation. And Satan has been doing his best to counterfeit God’s truths since the beginning whether it’s with false religions like Hinduism or Islam, or cults like the Mormons and the JWs.
Mark, I’m talking about the Christian notion of Jesus dying for the sins of humanity.
I know that. It’s a common error even among Christians to refer to His death as atonement. But it was not. Atonement was a temporary covering, but Jesus’ death took away our sins and satisfied God’s wrath, which the book of Hebrews tells us the blood of bulls and goats could never do. The word atonement is never used in the NT – it’s propitiation.
This may be based on a fine semantic difference. The online dictionary has:
“Propitiation
the action of propitiating or appeasing a god, spirit, or person.
“he lifted his hands in propitiation”
atonement, especially that of Jesus Christ.”
Websters has
“1 : the act of propitiating
2 : something that propitiates
specifically : an atoning sacrifice.
It is not surprising that these concepts get mixed up if dictionaries make then equivalent, although they are clearly distinct.
wikipedia has
“Propitiation, also called expiation, is the act of appeasing or making well-disposed a deity, thus incurring divine favor or avoiding divine retribution.”
This sounds exactly what Keshav was describing, so probably “atonement” is not quite the right word, but the concept is the same.