THE CALL:
Echoing its founder’s nonviolence, the Christian faith initially grew as a nonviolent spiritual movement of counter-imperial values. It promoted love, not war. Its primal creed elevated solidarity, not oppression and exclusion:
“For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
-Galatians 3:26–28
The early Christians elevated the equality of friendship rather than the supremacy of hierarchy (John 15:15; 3 John 14, 15).
Because of their counter-imperial posture, including their refusal to be soldiers in the Roman army or to participate in the imperial cult that proclaimed the divinity of the emperor, they were often mocked, distrusted as unpatriotic, and persecuted.
-Brian McClaren
THE RESPONSE:
In the Chandogya Upanishad, a key Hindu text, the sage Uddalaka teaches his son Śvetaketu about the fundamental unity of all existence through a simple yet profound illustration.
He instructs Śvetaketu to break open a fruit from a banyan tree, then to split one of its tiny seeds. When Śvetaketu observes that nothing visible remains inside the seed, Uddalaka explains that from this invisible, finest essence arises the entire massive tree. He then declares,
"Believe, my son: the finest essence here—
that constitutes the self of this whole world;
that is the truth; that is the self (ātman).
And that's how you are, Śvetaketu" (Tat Tvam Asi, or "Thou art that").
This teaching echoes the Christian emphasis on transcendent unity and equality by revealing that the individual self is inseparable from the universal essence (Brahman), dissolving divisions like those of caste, status, or identity—just as Galatians affirms no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but all one in Christ.
It fosters love through recognition that harming another is harming one's own essence, promoting nonviolence, solidarity, and compassion over hierarchy or oppression, much like the early Christians' counter-imperial stance of friendship and refusal of violence.
Blessings and Namaste,
t
