A significant conversion

The Bible narratives after Jesus include letters written by the early teachers of ‘The Way’ (of life) that had opened the exclusive Jewish understanding of salvation to include all the people of the world. Followers of ‘The Way’ were only later called Christians.

This ‘globalisation’ of the faith followed almost naturally from a ‘humanisation’ of God, that is from an understanding of God’s taking on human form as Jesus Christ. This incarnation is different from merely reimagining invisible God as a visible human or other icons, and may seem like blasphemy or impossibility to most people.

But Christmas is quite simply about God becoming human and little else! As a practical consequence, if God could ‘convert’ Himself to live among humans — specifically, humans in poverty like Joseph and Mary — then no human-human barriers could ever be justifiable, whether horizontally in status or vertically between communities.

A Biblical letter written to a Hebrew audience opens with the words, “In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets many times and in many different ways. But now in these last days, God has spoken to us through his Son.”

Many lovers of Christ in India ponder over whether that passage could refer to their own ancestors since God surely speaks to all his children everywhere in various ways.

While India’s spiritual heritage, including Dalit and tribal oral and other ‘performed’ traditions are diverse and have almost no boundaries, many people study with great interest the similarities between various traditions.

While the Mundaka Upanishad says, ‘Fools are they who think that rituals and good works bring salvation to them’, one of the letters in the Bible says, ‘No one should boast in good works because salvation comes through grace and faith.’ Grace here refers to God’s sending His Son (Jesus) as a sacrifice for each person’s sin.

Christmas, then, is also a time for us to reflect on what other forms of God’s grace, for our release from sin, our ancestors, as well as different faiths, may have explored!