Some Questions I Asked as a Hindu when an Christian Came

I was going to college by bus, listening to Summertime Sadness on my phone, when a Christian missionary came and sat beside me. Suddenly, she handed me a piece of paper.

I asked, "What is this?"

She replied, "You should join us and learn about the path of Jesus; He will give you peace."

I responded, "I am a Hindu and a follower of Adi Shankaracharya."

She then said, "If you don't follow the path of Jesus, you will go to hell."

I asked her, "Why? Why would I go to hell? If God created me as a Hindu, that is His decision, not mine. Why should I change the identity He gave me? If the Christian God desperately wants all souls saved, why is He so unclear that billions of sincere people miss Him?"

She replied, "God created you with the freedom to seek Him. Just because you were born in a certain place doesn't mean God wants you to stay there. He wants you to use your heart and mind to find the 'One True Path' He revealed through Jesus (John 14:6)."

I replied, "So, according to you, Christ is the only truth? If that is so, then why did God send him so late in human history? And what is the proof that Jesus is the only truth? A vast majority of the world had never even heard of him 500 years ago. What happened to them? Did your God send them to hell simply because of His own incapability to reach them?

As for the question of free will—is the free will granted by God more powerful than the Will of God Himself? If my choice to remain a Hindu can defeat God's desire for me to be Christian, then I am sorry to say, but your God is not almighty."

She looked at me, her voice trembling with a desperate certainty. "God allows us to sin, my son. He doesn't lose control; He simply gives us the freedom to choose wrongly."

"Really?" I replied, a cold smile touching my lips. "If God truly 'allows' an act, then by what standard can you call it 'wrong'? If the Master of the Universe permits a path to exist, then that path is part of His design. In the Bhagavad Gita(9.10), Krishna says:

'Under My supervision, Nature (Prakriti) produces all moving and unmoving beings.'

My God doesn't 'allow' from the sidelines; He supervises. If humans harm nature, they will go extinct—not because they 'defied' God, but because they followed the very laws of cause and effect He authored. You say Hinduism is against 'God's Will'? If anything truly existed against His Will, it wouldn't be here. The very fact that we are here, after thousands of years, proves we are exactly where He intends us to be."

"And this 'Free Will' you speak of," I continued, "it sounds more like a threat than a gift. You describe God like a mother—if I don't listen to her, she will beat me. But there is a flaw in your analogy: my mother is not Almighty. That is why I can act against her wishes; she lacks the power to align my will with hers.

But God? God is the Creator. Tell me, if you are drawing a picture, will you draw a stroke that is 'against your will'? Of course not. Every line, every shade, every 'mistake' is a product of your hand. If God is the ultimate Artist, and we are the canvas, then every 'sin,' every 'evil,' and every 'other' path is a stroke He deliberately placed there."

The missionary sat in silence for a moment, visibly shaken. My rejection wasn't based on anger, but on a cold, structural logic she wasn't prepared for. Seeing her struggle, an elderly man in a sharp linen suit sitting across the aisle—who had been listening intently—intervened.

"You have a sharp mind, young man," the elderly man said. "I am Thomas. I've studied St. Augustine for forty years. You claim that if your free will can 'defeat' God's desire, then God isn't almighty. But Augustine would tell you that God's power is so absolute that He even incorporates your rebellion into His plan. He doesn't stop you because He is a 'Gentleman' who respects the freedom He gave you."

I looked at him and didn't blink. "Respecting freedom is a human trait, Thomas. We are talking about an Almighty Creator. Let us look at the logic of this 'freedom' you claim He gave me."

I laid out my points as if I were writing them on a chalkboard in my mind:

"Thomas, you claim your God is Necessarily All-Good. That is your First Premise. My Second Premise is a law of the universe: A cause cannot give what it does not possess. A fire cannot produce ice. A silent room cannot produce a scream.

Therefore," I continued, "if God is purely and exclusively Good, He possesses no 'Evil' within His nature. If He has no Evil, He has no 'blueprint' or 'capacity' for Evil to give away. How then, did He design a Free Will that is even capable of producing Evil?

Thomas tried to pivot. "Evil isn't a 'thing,' son. It's just the absence of Good. Like a shadow."

"A shadow is passive, Thomas," I countered. "A man killing a street dog while loving his own dog is a dynamic action. It is an active choice of cruelty. If your God is the sole designer of my soul's 'engine,' and that engine has a 'cruelty' gear, then your God is the engineer of that gear. If He is All-Good, He wouldn't know how to build that gear. Since the gear exists, your definition of God as 'All-Good' fails."

Thomas shifted in his seat, sensing the argument slipping. "You forget," he said, his voice regaining confidence, "that Evil has a personal author. Satan. He is the one who corrupts souls, not God."

I looked at him for a long moment. "Thomas," I said quietly, "you just destroyed your own God with that one sentence."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Think carefully," I replied, leaning forward. "Where did Satan come from?"

"He was an angel. He fell through pride."

"So God created a being," I said slowly, "with the capacity, the will, and ultimately the success to rebel against Him, to corrupt His creation, and to steal His souls. The flaw was not in Satan, Thomas. The flaw was in the design. An architect who builds a bridge that collapses is not Almighty—he is incompetent."

Thomas began to speak, but I raised a hand.

"And consider this: you say God permits Satan to operate. Permits him knowingly, with full power to stop him at any moment, while millions of souls are dragged into Hell. Thomas, in your own legal system, a man who watches a crime happen and does nothing is called an accomplice. You are calling your All-Good God an accomplice to the destruction of the very souls He claims to love."

"And here is the deepest wound in your theology," I continued, my voice dropping. "You claim your God is Infinite. Boundless. Absolute. But your Devil is a second principle—an opposing force, a dark counter to the light. If something truly opposes God, then God has a boundary. The point where God ends and Satan begins—that is the edge of your Infinite God. You have quietly, without realizing it, made God finite."

Thomas looked at me, his face a mask of concern. "You risk making God unholy by making Him the author of the shadow," he warned. "How can a Holy God inhabit the mud and the filth?"

I leaned back, the sunlight from the bus window cutting across the seats. "Thomas, 'holy' and 'unholy' are human labels—a limitation of your own thinking. You speak of the shadow as if it is an enemy of the light. But does the shadow not require the Sun to exist? Without the light, there is no shadow. Without the Sun, there is no 'dark' place to hide.

You say your God is Almighty and Infinite. If He is truly Infinite, then tell me: where does He end? If there is a 'Hell' where He is not present, then He is not Infinite. If there is a 'Sinner' whose heart He does not inhabit, then He is not Almighty. To say anything—even 'Evil'—exists outside of God is to put a boundary on the Boundless. You are trying to put the Ocean into a bottle and calling the water that didn't fit 'unholy.'