What Makes Jesus Different than Sai Baba?

One of my favorite things to do here is to get outside of the hospital grounds around 5:30 or 6 in the afternoon and walk around the town in as the sun is going down and any semblance of “cool” is setting in. (It has been over 100 F every day here) The other night I went walking and met a boy that speaks English. He told me he was a Hindu, and I asked him what it meant to be a good Hindu. He didn’t really get what I was asking and he said “ I am a good Hindu because my father is Hindu.” “Well, OK” I thought as we walked past a cow. I pointed to the cow and asked “So this cow, you worship it?” “Oh yes” he replied “we pray to it, put flowers around its neck, put a dot on its head.” “Wow” I thought, “I better not tell him about my last trip to Outback or how cool Only Burger is in Durham.”

We kept talking, and I noticed a necklace his brother was wearing that had the image of an old man on it that I had seen a lot around India. He said the man’s name was Sai Baba and “he died for our sins like Jesus.” “Whoa whoa whoa,” I thought,  “This is crazy talk.” Delving more into what he said, what they mean by that is “Sai Baba lived a good life and when he died he left us a good example of how to avoid sin.”

The lovely man pictured above is known as Sai Baba (“saintly father”) of Shirdi, and he was an Indian guru, yogi, and fakir (Sufi Muslim leader) who lived around the turn of the 20^th century. He went to great lengths to meld Hinduism and Islam and practiced both religions faithfully. He lived in a mosque and dressed in the garb of a Muslim fakir, but he taught using traditions from both faiths. One of his well known epigrams is “Sabka Malik Ek Hai “One God governs all.” He taught a general moral code of love, forgiveness, charity, and inner peace while living his own live engrossed in the effort of self-realization. If you consider Jesus to be just another moral teacher it would be easy to see a lot of similarities between Jesus the Christ of Nazareth and Sai Baba of Shirdi.

You see, this is one of the largest barriers to reaching Hindus. For them, they have thousands, some say millions, of gods. Most of these gods have drifted in and out of humanity and been reincarnated in various forms throughout the centuries. So you say, “No Jesus is different than Sai Baba, he’s God.” They say, “Right Sai Baba is god too.” “No, you see, the Bible says Jesus existed from before the earth was made and that he created all things.” “Right, Sai Baba is the ___th reincarnation of so and so.” “No, you see Jesus rose from the dead and he’s alive today.” “Right, Sai Baba reached perfection and he ascended into becoming one with the Ultimate Reality, and some guy in India claims to be the reincarnation of Sai Baba.” You can see where this is going.

While I am India, I am taking the time to read through the Gospels to remind myself more about who Jesus was and is today. What I find so amazing is that, apart from other faiths, our faith is not based entirely on the sayings and quotations of Jesus as much as they are on the person of Jesus. If you read through the Gospels you will find several frustrating passages where Jesus purposely cloaks his intentions and true identify, and it is hard to understand why. Then towards the middle of the Gospels the writers say that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem and there was no turning back. Jesus was not a guru with something to say. He was a unique representation of God to mankind that had existed before the foundation of the world and had been prophesied for thousands of years. Jesus was the culmination, in his flesh, of the Jewish temple sacrifice system. Jesus’ significance had less to do with what he said than with what he did.  Our faith is a faith in a God who created thousands of years of history that climaxed with him emptying himself and delivering to us the eternal aspect of his self that we see evident in Jesus, like Hebrews says, “He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” (Ch 1 vv 3)

One of the verses that I have studied lately that always really convicts me is 1 Peter 1:8. Speaking of Jesus, Peter says, “Though you have never seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” If we are honest with ourselves, there are times where it is tough believing in Jesus, for a whole host of reasons depending on your culture. Over the weekend I listened to Ben Stuart, one of my favorite Bible teachers, teach at Texas A&M. He gave a wonderful talk about the impressive validity of the manuscript evidence we have in the New Testament scriptures. He referenced UNC’s own Bart Ehrman which is another subject for another time. Essentially what we find in our New Testament is overwhelmingly convincing evidence that the record we have of Jesus has been passed down historically from the time of the first generation after his death.

I would ask that you pray for the people of Bihar. Despite the impressive efforts of this hospital and community health teams there is still only a rudimentary  church that exists in the region apart from unorganized prayer cells of disconnected believers. From talking with the doctors, they say that much of south India is Christian because it had an animistic heritage that was easier to penetrate. In contrast, northern India has an idol-based worship that creates a firmer control over the human mind thanks to our desire for the physical fixation as well as direct demonic influence present in the temple acts. Pray that strongholds would be broken for this region that is 0.5% Christian.

I would pray that you would ask yourself the same question for yourself- “What makes Jesus different than a guru from a distant time and place?”