RELIGION: Hinduism
ADHERENTS: 1.1 billion
STORY: Hinduism is the most predominant group of religious beliefs in South Asia. There is no record of a single founder, no single religious or traditional style, and no singular code of beliefs—it is the combination of several ancient religions with strains of beliefs reaching far back into antiquity. They call it the oldest living religion. In fact, Hinduism is not a religion in the traditional sense but more like a way of life. A person doesn’t really convert to Hinduism, he just melds in with the rest.
Belief in Afterlife: The Hindus put a great deal of importance into breaking the cycle of birth and death, which is the main goal of their search for a loftier state of connection with the eternities.
Some believe in gods who occasionally visit the earth to rectify imbalances and to guide humans toward the right way. One method Hindus employ to find the right way is yoga. Yoga is one of any number of rituals performed in temples or anywhere the person desires to seek peace. These rituals include chanting mantras, offering sacrifices, reciting scripture, and meditating.
In several countries, Hindu society is a caste with four divisions. There is debate about this being sanctioned by their sacred tenets, or simply a leftover social custom, but it dates back thousands of years.
The four classes of Varna (meaning order, type or color) are, 1) the Brahmins who are scholars and teachers, 2) the warriors and kings, 3) the agriculturists and merchants, and 4) the artisans and service providers. At the bottom are the untouchables. The untouchables do the dirty work—haul away corpses, execute criminals, dispose of night soil, basically your on-call disaster or stinky mess cleanup crew. In the past they were forbidden to learn from holy books and lived together in their own ghettos outside of the villages.
The caste gave each individual a place in society, and if they behaved well, morally, they would be reborn after death into a higher caste as a reward—or lower caste if they were immoral.
Your Are What You Were: Hindus consider their places in life as the consequence of their own earlier actions in a previous life. A person born rich is rich because of his karma. But if he was born poor and suffering, he has only himself to blame. Getting out of the mess is a chore viewed as his only. Enduring his plight is proof of his worthiness for a higher state of existence in his next life.
The same view is taken toward electing leaders or being invaded by foreigners. Hindus put up with the resulting hardships of corrupt leaders, wars, or conquerors, believing that a bad leader or a conquering army is the result of their own lapses or fault. They believe they are personally responsible, and must endure the suffering for its cleansing effects.
Socialism Won’t Work in Hinduism
Hindu’s beliefs encourage such an independent and personal responsibility that any form of collective or socialist action among them is simply impossible. The individual pursuit for karma makes a group or socialistic society completely incompatible.
These self-interested people wouldn’t want wealth sharing, or their freedom to suffer or improve, impeded by socialism—it is illogical and contradictory to personal perfection. Likewise, free enterprise is very much in harmony with Hinduism. It blends wonderfully well with independent action and personal responsibility.
The Universal Religion
With so many variations in belief and practice among the world’s religions, is there a singular universal religion to which all may adhere? Benjamin Franklin and other Founders thought there was. They identified five basic beliefs common to the major world religions:
1.There is a Creator.
2.We are his creations.
3.He has revealed laws that govern our actions toward one another, and we are responsible to treat one another well.
4.There is life after death.
5.We will be judged for our treatment of others.243
Samuel Adams said these basic beliefs constituted “the religion of America,” which he said was also “the religion of all mankind.”244 In other words, these beliefs belonged to all world faiths—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and the others—and could be taught without being offensive.
John Adams called them the “general principles” on which the American civilization had been founded.245
Thomas Jefferson called them the principles “in which God has united us all.” 246
Careful Not to Mention that “Force” Word
Socialist-thinking planners are careful to avoid the necessity of Ruler’s Law to enforce their utopian schemes, and tend to skip over the negative consequences of force directed against those who will not obey the rulers.
As with medieval Christianity and orthodox Islam, the use of force to impose a religion at any level always violates moral law and personal unalienable rights, and backfires. History shows the downward spiral of coercion ends at the same place: force, torture, burnings, beheadings and war.
Religious Leaders Not Religious Government
Religion changes the man on the inside so that he can change his world on the outside. Extremists try to change the outside world to force change on the man’s inside. It doesn’t work, and that explains the eternal conflict between force and choice. Separate religion from the force of government, and let the choice of religion become a tool of personal refinement, and the best of both worlds is created.
Jesus clarified the importance of keeping religion and government carefully separated when he said “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”247
Moses clarified the power of rational organization and God-centered government among the children of Israel without force.
The Founding Fathers clarified the beneficial powers of religious influence in good government when they founded the United States.
When individuals and their culture freely embrace the positives of religious belief, there is an automatic increase in cooperation, harmony, neighborliness, and prosperity. When any form of religious force is imposed on the people, by one person on another or a regime on its people, the whole society stagnates or explodes in anarchy.
Was Jesus a Socialist?
Some socialists justify forcing others to “be good” and “do good” by misinterpreting Jesus’ teachings. In their attempt to formulate the true heart and spirit of their benevolent socialism, they misinterpret Jesus’ actions in this fashion:
Jesus supposedly wanted all things in common because he asked followers to share, to give to the poor, to sell worldly possessions, to help others, and to dispose of material wealth—no private property.
Jesus said it was okay to tax the rich more than others because “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.”248
Jesus taught taking from the “haves” and giving to the “have-nots” was okay when he said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
And, in the early Christian Church, there was to be no private property because new converts “had all things common, And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”249Force Versus Choice
The above misapplications of Jesus’ teachings avoid the most important difference between the teachings of Jesus and the core doctrine of socialism. That difference is force. Jesus’ acts of compassion and his call for others to do likewise were never to be done by compulsion, but voluntarily, by free-will choice. Socialism doesn’t work that way. Socialism must compel others to obey, and therein boils and churns all of mankind’s eternal clashes, wars and destruction.
Is force bad when it is used to compel people to help the poor and needy? Should people be forced to sell their goods and give to the poor? Should they be forced to have all things in common?
Using Godly Force?
Early in his ministry, Jesus showed that force is not the way to get things done, even if it’s to help the hungry. After he had fasted 40 days, Jesus was tempted by the devil:
“And the de
vil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.”250
If Jesus had used his Godly powers to force a solution, to bypass the normal way of obtaining bread and create it from stone for the positive purpose of feeding the hungry (in this case, himself), his mission would have been an immediate failure.
A hungry man using a shortcut to turn stone to bread proves that he is a slave to the craving for instant self gratification, a slave to human appetites, a slave to the vice of wanting something for nothing. Jesus came to teach us the opposite, to control our appetites.
Such power to turn stone to bread apparently was his to use, but Jesus would reserve those charities for another time—to teach his followers and bolster their faith, not to gratify selfish hunger pains.
On this day, however, the devil tempted Jesus in the shroud and solitude of privacy, with no one else there to witness a little cheating to eat bread—to indulge just a little to the powerful temptations of mortality and the human flaws that Jesus had come to conquer.
Jesus could not be swayed. Later in his ministry he would teach that only by resisting such urges would true peace and happiness ever be found. He would teach his followers to hold fast to the iron rod of true principles that runs along the pathway of provident living as established by his Father in Heaven—and to never let go.
As for the bread, Jesus knew God’s commandment was to work for what you eat.
“In the sweat of thy face,” God commanded in Genesis 3:19, “shalt thou eat bread.” Jesus was obedient to all of his father’s commandments. He refused to set himself above any law his Father gave to everyone else, and forthwith rejected Satan out of hand:
“And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” (Luke 4:4)
Jesus waited until he could procure food himself, a very real and tangible example to everyone else who suffers for want and is tempted to indulge against honesty or principle, and shrink.
Forced Goodness?
When charity for others is imposed by force, people are denied the benefits of carrying the entire responsibility of compassion on their own shoulders. In this they are robbed of one of life’s grandest and most gratifying experiences possible. Forced compassion always short-circuits the human heart and destroys the integrity of true and loving charity.
Sincere and voluntary charity is kind, it doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it endures, and never fails. People enjoy helping when they can, it is part of human nature. But when people are forced to pay heavy taxes to finance entitlement programs, food stamps, and welfare, they hate it. Some will go so far as to skip, cheat, or dodge paying such taxes by any means available. Paying taxes so somebody else can have food stamps and eat for free—or buy cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and lottery tickets from money they saved because of free food—doesn’t ignite feelings of compassion. It ignites feelings of anger and resentment, the antithesis of a helpful attitude. So—which process has the better outcome, the government’s policy of force, or Jesus’ way of voluntary charity? Why isn’t the compassion side of this being emphasized more than it is? Has something died in our culture?
Force will always and inevitably frustrate the simplicity of pure compassion. The positive messages Jesus taught are in no way connected to the seven despotic pillars of socialism. Jesus’ message was precisely the opposite: be free to choose—and choose wisely.
* * *
226 Daniel, chapter 3 .
227 See Adherents, Religions, www.adherents.com.
228 The Catholic Encyclopedia, Priscillianism.
229 See Tony Perrottet, The Besieged and the Beautiful in Languedoc, May 9, 2010.
230 The last name of Jan Hus mans “goose” in Czech. Those who mocked his entrapment and death told other heretics they had “cooked his goose,” a phrase that has come to mean you’ve been caught or ruined.
231 See Adherents, Religions, www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html.
232 Ibid.
233 Discovery of earliest Buddhist shrine sheds new light on life of Buddha, FoxNews November 25, 2013.
234 Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, No Religion, www.abuddhistlibrary.com.
235 Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Dhammic Socialism—Political Thought of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, see www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/.
236 See Adherents, Religions, www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html.
237 Oussani, G. (1911). Mohammed and Mohammedanism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia.
238 Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Medieval and Modern Islam, 1977, p. 3.
239 Sahib Al-Bukhazi, Vol. 1, Bk 8, number 387.
240 See Adherents, Religions, http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html.
241 Encyclopedia Judaica, Kibbutz, 1989.
242 See Abraham Pavin, The Kibbutz Movement, facts and figures, Central Bureau of Statistics, State of Israel, 2006.
243 Benjamin Franklin, “Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.” Smith, Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 10:84.
244 Wells, Life of Samuel Adams, 3:23.
245 John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 13:293.
246 Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 14:198.
247 Matthew 22:21 .
248 Luke 12:48 .
249 Acts 2:44-45 .
250 Luke 4:3 .
Chapter 36: Did the Early Christians Practice Communism?
By W. Cleon Skousen251
A few students have secretly or even openly defended Communism because they considered it to be an important set of principles practiced by the early Christians. Such persons often say that they definitely do not condone the ruthlessness of Communism as presently practiced in Russia, but that they do consider it to be of Christian origin and morally sound when practiced on a “brotherhood basis.”
This was exactly the attitude of the Pilgrim Fathers when they undertook to practice Communism immediately after their arrival in the New World. Not only did the project fail miserably, but it was typical of hundreds of other attempts to make Communism work on a “brotherhood basis.” Without exception, all of them failed. One cannot help wondering why.
“Brotherhood Communism” is Unchristian
Certain scholars feel they have verified what Governor Bradford has said concerning “brotherhood Communism,” namely, that it is un-Christian and immoral because it strikes at the very roots of human liberty. Communism—even on a brotherhood basis—can only be set up under a dictatorship administered within the framework of force or fear. Governor Bradford found this to be true. Leaders in literally hundreds of similar experiments concur. Students are therefore returning to ancient texts with this question: “Did the early Christians really practice Communism?”
Two Bible Passages Create Confusion
The belief that the early Christians may have practiced Communism is based on two passages. Here is the first one:
“And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men as every man had need.” (Acts 2:44-45)
Two things might be noted here. First, the people formed a community effort by coming together; second, they sold their possessions and goods as they appeared to need cash proceeds for the assistance of their fellow members. It does not say that they sold all their possessions and goods although it is granted that at first reading this m
ay be inferred. Neither does it say that they pooled their resources in a common fund although this has been assumed from the statement that they “had all things common.”
Problems in Common, Not Things in Common
What they actually did is more clearly stated in the second passage which is often quoted,
“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.” (Acts 4:32)
Here we have a declaration indicating that the common effort was not a legal pooling of resources in a communal fund but rather a feeling of unity in dealing with common problems so that no man “said” his possessions were his own but developed and used them in such a way that they would fill the needs of the group as well as himself.
That this is a correct reading of this passage may be verified by events which are described in the next chapter of Acts.
Ananias and Sapphira Try to Cheat Peter
There we read of Ananias and Sapphira. They had a piece of property which they decided to sell. They intended to give the proceeds to the Apostle Peter. But the author of Acts says that when they had sold the property they decided to hold back some of the proceeds even though they represented to Peter that their contribution was the entire value of the property received at the sale. For this deceit, Peter severely criticized them, and then, in the process, he explained the legal relationship existing between these two people and their property. Said he, “While it (the property) remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it (the money) not in thine power?” (Acts 5:4)
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