Religious Relations
The world has people from different religions who are taught by their religious leaders, and for the people to live together without getting into a religious conflict, it is necessary to understand and treat each other’s religion with respect in the day to day interactions. Some of the religions include Buddhism, Christianity. People from a different religion sometimes tend to pass their religion to others, a process that is faced by different challenges.
Steps on how to build a relationship with Buddhist people
Buddhist are people who believe that life is full of endless suffering, which can be changed. Buddhist believe that one has the power to change their suffering by maintaining high moral standards, meditation, and wisdom according to the teachings of Buddha. To get along well with the Buddhist people, it is important to have humility. A lot of people tend to believe that their religion is better than that of others, and this can bring a lot of differences either in the neighborhood or in a working place. In order to avoid conflict, people must learn the religion of the other person to be able to understand each other better. Finding a thing that people have in common with one another is another step of building a relationship with the Buddhist people. By finding out what individuals have in common helps them to be able to know what to do when they are with each other since a common thing that both people share can make them get along well with one another. It is also important not to try to convert the Buddhists from their religion.one should not make any efforts to convert the other person’s religion in any way. People can talk about each other’s religion, but trying to make them change what they believe in is likely to ruin the relationship with one another. Avoiding negativity is important in building a great relationship with others .it is necessary to avoid talking negative things about someone’s religion to avoid getting into conflict with them.it is important to avoid talking judging people according to their religion and have respect for each other (Dunn & Jensen, 2019).
Barriers to presenting the Cristian gospel to Buddhists
In the Buddhist religion, there is no belief in Jesus Christ. The strong Buddhist belief is that one can be saved by the things they do, such as having good morals, and this makes the teachings of a supreme God by Christians to make no sense to them. The Buddhists believe about life and suffering according to their teachings by Buddha make it impossible to understand why Jesus is needed since suffering is brought to oneself by one’s behaviors, and only the person has to change the suffering, not Jesus Christ as believed by Christians. Most Buddhist live in countries in which all their family members and friends are Buddhist and are brought up under strong Buddhist believes taught to them by their religious leaders, and this makes it difficult for them to accept Christianity since they view it as a betrayal to their religion and families. Buddhist view Christians as the people from western culture, and this is because of the immoral behavior, bad politics, and the materialistic people in most Christian countries. According to Mullis (2018), the bad view of Christians portrayed in the eyes of the Buddhists makes it difficult for the Buddhist to accept Christianity since Buddhism teaches a lot of morals and more spiritual than Christianity. Buddhist believers are greatly committed to their religion and those who live in neighborhoods with Christian’s notice that most Christians are not committed to their fieldwork towards Jesus Christ. The laziness and sinful ways of Christians is a barrier to Buddhists acquiring and accepting the gospel. Buddhism does not believe in the relationship between man and man or man and god, and since the Buddhist religion focuses on oneself, therefore, making it difficult for the Buddhist people to believe in god.
Personal barriers when presenting the gospel
Passing the gospel to other people is not as easy as it seems, especially when the audience are non-believers and so I face a lot of challenges when passing the gospel to other people. Getting the audience to listen to me is a challenge I encounter. Some people are not interested in the gospel, and trying to convince them to listen and to accept the gospel in a way that is not forcing them is a difficult task. We live in a world where people do not mind giving negative responses; hence the fear of being given negative responses is also a challenge I face (Nwankwo, 2019). Sometimes I experience a lot of fear during the passing of the gospel, and it is advisable to acquire a lot of confidence when passing the gospel. The fear of my gospel being rejected or the fear of being asked questions that I am unable to answer is something that I should overcome. Not being confident, may be caused by not putting my facts together before passing the gospel and also worrying about how family members and friends will react as I teach the gospel. Not having an opportunity to share my faith with other people is a challenge, and this is brought about by not having an audience to teach the gospel. The failure to have an audience is brought about by not having the courage and skills to start a conversation with people. Sometimes passing the gospel to people of a different culture different from mine is an issue. My little understanding of their culture makes me unable to know what they believe in hence difficult to pass the gospel effectively to them.
References
Dunn, S. L., & Jensen, J. D. (2019). Buddhism and Buddhist Business Practices. International Journal of Business Administration, 10(2), 115-128.
Mullis, E. C. (2018). Contextualizing the Gospel for Southeast Asian Buddhists: Recovering the Critical Themes of Kingdom and Covenant in Evangelism (Doctoral dissertation, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary).
Nwankwo, L. N. (2019). AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF PROSPERITY GOSPEL. Ministerium: A Journal of Contextual Theology, 5.