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How is that important? Hindus reject a God who wants to be worshiped, who creates a universe so that humans can worship him (what a narcissist God!), who treats people differently according to whether one who worships him and others who do not (such bias to his own creations!); has an eternal hell for those who do not worship him (the cruel one!); and needs to send sons, manifestations, messengers to convey his message! Our Gods would just announce their message with 'Akash-vani' (voice from the sky).
How is that important? Hindus reject a God who wants to be worshiped, who creates a universe so that humans can worship him (what a narcissist God!), who treats people differently according to whether one who worships him and others who do not (such bias to his own creations!); has an eternal hell for those who do not worship him (the cruel one!); and needs to send sons, manifestations, messengers to convey his message! Our Gods would just announce their message with 'Akash-vani' (voice from the sky).
How is that important? Hindus reject a God who wants to be worshiped, who creates a universe so that humans can worship him (what a narcissist God!), who treats people differently according to whether one who worships him and others who do not (such bias to his own creations!); has an eternal hell for those who do not worship him (the cruel one!); and needs to send sons, manifestations, messengers to convey his message! Our Gods would just announce their message with 'Akash-vani' (voice from the sky).
How is that important? Hindus reject a God who wants to be worshiped, who creates a universe so that humans can worship him (what a narcissist God!), who treats people differently according to whether one who worships him and others who do not (such bias to his own creations!); has an eternal hell for those who do not worship him (the cruel one!); and needs to send sons, manifestations, messengers to convey his message! Our Gods would just announce their message with 'Akash-vani' (voice from the sky).
Alright, I'll dive in and respond to a few points here. The ones I skip you can just assume I agree, or that whatever quibbles I might have are not important enough to mention
Agreed.
Re: intervention - While of course Christian and Jewish tradition involves the idea of Divine intervention via prophets at various times, or even the incarnation, the implication that, in Christianity, God can only be known through those interventions, i.e in some historical way, is wrong in my opinion. Nor is it necessary to understand (for example) the Hebrew prophetic literature as a message imposed from the outside entirely, with no initiation or influence of the human authors. In fact I would say that there is no other reasonable hermeneutic possible but to see sacred scriptures as (also) human works. I don't believe that the christian scriptures are the dictated word of God with no involvement from the human beings who composed them, or that God "speaks" in human language rather than in "silence". The simplistic view of revelation is associated with fundamentalism but throughout Christian history a great many Christians have understood "inspiration" in a more nuanced way. It also does seem to me that Hinduism, in the epics especially, contains sacred writings that bear some similarity to the narratives of Hebrew and Christian scripture, if they were taken literally. But of course part of my point is that I don't read even the Christian scriptures literally.
Re: the "whole" - There are definite differences here but especially as you move from the Hebrew understanding of God to later Christian theology, there are also some similarities. God, Paul writes, will be "all in all". The scholastic tradition associates God with Being itself, or as the Ground of Being.
Just to be clear, no Christian sect considers the devil or antichrist to be equal to God.
I've been reading the Isha closer lately and I'm not thrilled with my quote. Well, I like it and it's meaningful to me in the way I used it, but it's certainly not a perfect representation of the text, and might better be translated as "knowledge" and "action". The contemplative life versus the active life. And I agree with it that fulness of life includes both. It's a wonderful text. I'm sorry I didn't do it proper justice.
Are there no hindu texts which emphasize the nature of the divine in a way that might inspire fear or overwhelming awe? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm interested. I would say that in Christian thought it is complex because there is at once this idea that God is this awe-inspiring reality that "normal" human consciousness may respond to with fear, but at the same time Jesus in all his appearances post-resurrection says "do not be afraid", and the author of John's epistle says that perfect love casts out all fear. My opinion, backed up by long tradition in Christianity, is that "fear" represents a lower stage of spiritual development, and love a higher one. "Fear of God" is not an ultimately important trait in the way that the experience of the fullness of love is.
Even within Christianity there are disagreements. My worship involves an abundance of icons and sacred objects. I perform bows to them, perfume them with incense, make prostrations, and etc. Some Christians believe this is idolatry, but many others do not. It is possible to read the texts about idolatry, which are derived from the older Hebrew tradition, as emphasizing the need to understand that the idol in itself is nothing (as Paul wrote), nor is the icon, but if what is worshipped in the image is beyond the image (and in Christian theology, as with Brahman(?) beyond all images...) that is not idolatry. I believe that many Hindus would have similar understandings of what Murti Puja is? The Murti is a manifestation, a representation.
The Christian understanding of ethical law is certainly less legalistic than Judaism. The whole of the law is to love God and your neighbor as your very own self, and those are not really two laws, but one and the same. The "letter" of the law kills, but the Spirit of God gives life. I don't think Christianity should be reduced to a set of moral laws.
Seems like more of a cultural thing than a theological thing. And certainly while it may be possible to conceive of Brahman in a way that is scientifically unfalsified, it's also true that most naturalists would consider the conception to still be unjustified or superfluous, just as they would any other concept of divinity. There are certainly also Christian conceptions of the Divine about which I could say the same. I attempt to understand God in a way that is at least not immediately irrational or falsified by scientific evidence. And certainly also both religious traditions, widely construed, contain elements of which science will be skeptical.
Once a certain theological mindset is reached, this is true also for Christians. Paul writes about Christian freedom, whether in terms of eating food sacrificed to idols, or with regard to "holy days" and certain religious observation. But, as I presume is also true in Hinduism, while everything is sacred, nevertheless both Hindus and Christians practice religion in certain ritualized ways. The temple is not really more "sacred" than anywhere else, but it is useful to humans to set aside spaces and times in which to call the divine into remembrance. This is a human thing. Ideally, we would be always perfectly in that presence, but rituals and sacred spaces help us.
"The kingdom of heaven is within you." St Symeon the New Theologian that if we did not enjoy "heaven" now, if we did not experience the real presence of God, than we would not experience it later either. I would suggest that, functionally, the purpose of Heaven and Hell as symbols in Christian thought is somewhat equivalent to the functional meaning of Karma. Not to say that some Christians both now and always have taken them more literally, just as some Hindus probably take reincarnation and karma more literally. But again, much Christian theology suggests a more nuanced approach.