Confessions of an Ex-Christian: Esther Dhanraj

namaste i have a very unusual guest this is a one-of-a-kind interview so please pay attention you are in for a real treat namaste esther is an ex-christian that's her definition of let's do how she defines her identity uh i will ask her to tell you her story how she converted to christianity her life as a christian both in india and u.s uh what happened that caused her to want to get out of christianity how she got out of it where she's now what she's doing and her goal in the future it's a it's a very interesting story and she's a very unusual person because she's very clear thinking she's very intelligent well educated logical person and fearless person so welcome to this show thank you very much that was a very very kind and generous introduction this is uh i'm very impressed by you so tell me how your journey starts uh your in terms of your faith and what happened that led your you to convert so i was born in a telugu hindu brahmin family very conservative brahmin upbringing father was a devout gayatri bhakt mother a housewife whose universe revolved around her five children and her husband and she was also a very devout god loving hindu culture loving woman and loved her bindi her all her jewelry and a typical hindu uh woman and and in their family any christians nobody no christians so there's no there were proper solid hindus yes there was no exposure to christianity also and what was the particular hindu practice of your father or parents i would always see my father i mean we had this beautiful mandir at home and we would do our the kids exposure to hinduism was in the form of ganesha ganesh chaturthi which used to be done in a grand manner every year so that was the that was celebrated diwali yes and you did all the hindu rituals yes yeah so and what was your father's your father's educated yeah highly well-educated very very well-educated and well exposed and had a very good place in the society and good job travel good job so a well-to-do uh highly educated upper middle class upper middle class yes conservative conservative hindu family yes okay then what happened i should say a brahmana family too why i'm saying ramen is because we as growing up we were never allowed to uh mingle much with christians and muslims okay even if we went out in the neighborhood and played with some of them coming back into the house we would have to change our clothes and then get into the house okay so it was that strict upbringing totally vegetarian okay and um so we were living at this point in orissa so my father had a transferable job and government not government it was a private job okay uh he had uh he had some difficulties in his job okay in his workplace around which my mother also had some minor health issues i wouldn't call it anything major but just minor health issues at this time our we had a neighbor uh who was living all by himself with his family back in tamil nadu he was a christian person working in telco as an engineer so there is this tendency in every christian when they see a vulnerable person in their neighborhood in their vicinity schools colleges workplace their first their first reaction to human vulnerability is to go out and talk about jesus or or the miracles that jesus can do so this person comes to us sees our difficulties our large family five siblings our grandmother used to live with us so he thought he had an opportunity here he comes in he introduces jesus to us and then we walked right into it so how long was the time between him introducing jesus and your father converting i would give about the transition time was about under one year okay one one and a half years and during that time was it just one man coming or a whole lot of christians coming okay one so yeah then then our life takes us from orissa and plants us in bhuvaneshwar so the journey that we made from orissa to bhuvaneshwar was the transition sorry bhuvaneshwar in orissa to hyderabad okay was the transition so my parents were moving away from their hindu ancestral hindu faith into uh christianity as they moved to hyderabad as they moved to hyderabad in hyderabad also my mother before the entire family relocated to hyderabad uh my father and mother had come here come to hyderabad to get a surgery for my mother so that was when they lived at my aunt's place and my aunt's neighbors were christians so this is the second group christian this is the second group of christians okay and this was the real deal okay not that that was just an introduction he kind of prepared repaired the ground yeah okay so uh was the attraction towards christianity when they sold christianity was it all positive positive about christianity or also knocking down hinduism or were you too young to know i'm i wouldn't say i'm too young to know but back then there was no um hindu bashing no here okay so so you were how old when this happened the introduction i was about 12 13. okay and then was this discussion about the greatness of jesus and he healed you and all that was it being done to the whole family or just your parents the whole family you were also sitting yes because whenever a pastor comes to the uh family the whole family has to participate in the prayer meeting that's what they call it the home prayer meeting so the pastor comes he conducts a prayer meeting which typically is like singing a song then preaching the sermon and then talking about miracles and is that in english or telugu that was intelligent so he was a telugu christian priest yes okay that's very very fascinating so you know this is a brahmin family so you can't say that in some lower caste people poor people and they're induced because they have need money and they're oppressed and all that this family is not like that at all uh so would you say that it was vulnerability period that your father was going through one hundred percent so the an important thing that hindus remember is you know hindu hindu priest didn't come to the family for one year and keep helping them a christian priest did yes so so you have to give them credit for even though it's a tiny minority they are working very hard yes uh to bring another person in to convert one person they invest a lot of time and the hindu you know you could go to the hindu and he will worship but he didn't come knocking and saying okay now you're in trouble i'll help you and stay with you for a year through your problems right that is yeah would you say that was an important factor yes uh i would also like to add here that this happens on this day i mean this was back then some 20 25 years ago but to this day this is what happens but now since they have evolved into this more persistent converters what they are doing is they connect to the human being at a human level the person that is vulnerable at a human level but let's say a hindu priest does visit a vulnerable person all he is teaching them is from the scripture which they don't understand yeah he's teaching them some philosophy philosophy they are not teaching some metaphysics christians are not teaching metaphysics he is your emotions don't worry i'm here for you i'm here you know i i so it is more the emotional connection psychological connection that you are safe with me and i'll be there for you and like hey you have a physical problem here is a physical solution like take this money pouch right you know things like that or let me take you to this doctor or here is a massage oil just rub it on your problem so they'll keep helping you yes very helpful yeah very very helpful but yeah with an agenda though but they are helpful they are very helpful so these are the things we have to understand so then did your parents both convert together uh yes and your mother was also interested in this or did she resist or anything she did not she did not no because there was a healing that happened a miraculous healing okay which by no means was a miracle when i look back at it now right yeah so now your father had many siblings there are hindus did they convert no they did not but did they put any what did they ask tell him why what's going on ostracized you were ostracized by the hindu relatives and still your parents both said we have to do it okay and after doing it no regrets your father continued being a christian yes till he passed away yes okay uh how many years later how many years was he a christian before he passed away about 20 years okay so he lived a christian life he was committed yes um again now when i look back he was a skeptic he was a skeptic yeah caught between you know the what he was taught his ancestor ancestral faith and this newly introduced faith so did he fake it in front of hindu saying oh i'm hindu also no like some hindus do that you know i mean also i'm christian also it's all the same he was no-nonsense christian he would go to church yes and he would wear christian symbols across all that no no no no he would not be that kind of christian but yeah i mean he he was a very great uh he had a great philosophy too he said uh he remained a vegetarian both my parents remained a vegetarian my siblings are still vegetarians so they are brahmin christians so to say yeah so my father said uh if somebody eats meat they're not adorning their body with the bones so i don't have to show what i'm doing i'm a christian by my lifestyle by by my belief belief faith but by my lifestyle i'm still a brahmin right i'm still around so so this is a very important point i have done a lot of research separating culture from faith saying you keep your culture and your faith changes this is this is a very important strategy they've developed so a lot of people say i'm i'm a hindu christian because i'm hindu by culture i'm gonna tell you by culture whatever you know this business but that's not valid you know but we know that now uh was he a church-going type of career christian huh bible believing really reading christ he would read bible and he would do all that so he was really into it okay and uh his uh siblings his siblings who remain hindu orthodox hindus ostracized him and he didn't have much to do with them yeah okay this is very interesting yeah now then what happened to you well you were not converted right away no my parents um gave us a very liberal liberal upbringing very independent upbringing so they let us decide uh get convinced about it personally and then uh they let us change whenever we wanted to if we wanted to and then you took a few years yes and how old were you when you grew up about 17 18. okay so then you became christian and your siblings at different times i have four four so they are they they're all converted to christianity yes and they remain christians they did not ex-christianize they did not okay well i lost one sibling when he was 22. okay when he was a christian okay so then uh then you are married yes what was their faith they were a third generation christian i'm a first generation christian so my husband is a third generation christian and what's your christian denomination when you book um i got baptized i became a christian as a in a hebron church okay hebron church and then been a pentecostal for most of my for the rest of my uh christian life okay and your your parents also same church yes well they did not understand the denominations that well okay to them uh the central figure of the faith mattered which is jesus and the bible they didn't know too much details more than that they did not bother themselves with much detail okay so then you married and then what happened where you how did you end up in the u.s uh my in-laws are uh citizens of the united states okay so they filed for our immigration uh when my daughter was born in 2000 the year 2000 and then our immigration came through in 2008. and then you went to the u.s yes and then so now telugu brahmin becomes telugu brahmin christian yes and then becomes a telugu brahmin christian american yes okay now in america like the titles that you give so then then uh what happens as an american christian um so i always um i liked education i liked i had been an educator for 10 years before i went to the us i used to work as a education consultant and also operated a school so loved education and like to educate myself so i wanted to do uh in fact i wanted to study for the rest of my life get as many degrees as i can so it was very you're a studious type i kind of knew that when i first saw your video and we may have some work with you that is so awesome good scholarship we need good scholars like you but we'll talk about it later sure sure so it was natural for me to uh do uh get a degree from a us university so i had two choices one was uh one was a deep desire to know what the bible was all about because here is one faith of mine the ancestral faith which was so contradictory to the faith that i embraced which is christianity so the one i know is uh talking about the universe being so old the old earth model the other is a young earth model teaching me that the universe is just 6 000 years old but everything around you is old uh not just six thousand years old so six thousand is like just yesterday so i i needed to know you had you have an intellectual mind and you wanted to go deep and study it study the thought process the logic the scientific approach you wanted to not just be in blind faith and emotionally but you wanted to understand it yes so what did you do about it so every time i read the bible i was looking for my raise in the bible in the old testament so where is my race where are the hindus where is india so i was looking at i was trying to find my ethnicity in the ethnicities mentioned in the bible right but i didn't find them but here we are we are real we are true right so i thought maybe i was missing something i didn't go to the sunday school maybe they teach all this in sunday school maybe i have to go to a seminary and learn all these things so you went to seminary i went to a center which town was it us um georgia atlanta you live in atlanta yeah so you went to a seminary and you enrolled uh you signed up yeah i signed up for what kind of course uh this is masters in divinity good so she went into a masters in divinity now this is something very interesting you know we don't have this masters in hinduism kind of a idea you know so this is a very formal discipline they teach you to think read write how to do citations how to be a scholar they give you uh the rigor of writing yes and research writing research and writing they teach you that yes which is very very important that you know i wish we had scholars like that for us you know good so so you how long is that course uh that's a four-year course and you did four years yes you finished four years i finished you got a degree yes so you are a master of divinity very good yeah okay so i have to talk a little bit about how this research degrees work in the u.s so there are two kinds of masters in the us uh research based masters which is usually four or five years it takes and regular masters which is which takes about one one and a half years so divinity masters in divinity is a research based masters so here they just prescribe you text books and then you have to do your own research and the other master would be if you want to be a pastor if you just want to preach uh yeah most of them are preaching ministry tracks and all that right so what i undertook was an apologetic track apologetic is those who want to defend christianity yes so you will be the kind of person i would argue with yes as a hindu i would argue with christian apologists don't you feel lucky i am very lucky okay good okay so i mean lucky because we are on the same side of the table yeah no no but if you were on the other side i would enjoy a lot too i have i have a lot of videos i've had a lot of fun with the christian theologians top name people and and i i enjoy that but we'll come to my side later but i want to complete your side so then you got this degree and you're still a christian at that time and then what happened so there's another thing i would like to talk about so i knew i needed a degree i knew i needed to know i wanted to know the bible and religion and all that but i also had a passion of education so education leadership a master's in education leadership was another thing that i wanted to do so i go ahead and apply for scholarship and all that and i got a partial scholarship for university of southern california to do my master's in education leadership usc usc that's a good university that's a great university yes so and i put these two applications both these uh application the congratulation letters acceptance letters in my prayer and i pray to jesus like i need to choose between these two what is it that i need to do and of course i had to take divinity okay so i went in for a federal loan and i completed my divinity i enrolled in divinity and i completed it so if i had taken up education leadership probably i would have still been a christian because you would not have gone deep to study christianity you would have just assumed christianity and not bothered to investigate it yes but the divinity made you investigate christianity so you're a very intelligent person because they're feeding you in divinity school but uh apologist particularly the teaching brainwashing you how to defend this but you are thinking for yourself yes yes good that's very unusual for because i'll come to it later but i find that indian christians tend to be more blind faith yeah they're not really questioning even like the american christians at least question and you know get you can get into you can get deep into the uh issue and they'll tell you okay i agree with this history i agree that that has happened this happened but here is still my logic they will do that the indication will deny it so they'll get very emotional and angry at you even for raising issues that are very obvious in the bible also yes so now you are into an investigative mode in the divinity and you finish your divinity and you're still a christian so what happens i did not finish my divinity as a christian okay it just took me one semester okay to know that christianity is a conspiracy a political conspiracy so we'll come to the details but even after you while you're in the divinity you decide there's some issues here problems yes but you did still finish it yes okay so you begin your four year program as a christian learning apologetics to defend christianity but right away you begin to find issues and problems and you are no longer that gun go about christianity but you continue the course yes so now tell us what doubts came uh my very first course that i took is called the survey old testament okay introduction to old testament this is a textbook okay so nice heavy book yeah two kilos okay yeah and we wrote about six papers i think from this book and most of them one of the papers was justifying god's atrocities the canaanite genocide justifying god's command to kill the canaanites so and i did justify and i got an a on that so i was reading this book and for the very first time and this is written by our by an apologist so for the very first time i'm reading uh something like the bible has contradictions so contradictions and bible in the same sentence kind of shocked me because uh 25 years of christianity and never once did i see a contradiction and i used to read the bible cover to cover every single year and so there cannot be contradictions in the bible why because it was divinely inspired and here i am reading by written by a theologian written by an eminent apologist in the united states saying that the bible has contradictions but but i had to stop where he said the bible has contradictions i would go to the but later it's like wait a minute how can there be contradictions in the bible how can there be errors in a text that was written by god himself or the holy spirit himself so i go to the defense arguments later but i went through all the contradictions and he lists those contradictions one by one his but would be that there are contradictions but i'm here to sell you i'm here to convince you how to argue against them that is apology yeah yeah apologize so so you should know there are contradictions but your job is still to sell the product yes yes so basically basically this is a flawed product but you got to sell it yes that's really what he said correct i mean the reason i took apologetics i had a choice between the ministry track and apologetics picked up apologetics for the very simple reason that i had to come back to india i mean god took me to the united states for a reason right to learn his um to to learn about him so i had to go back to india and save the poor there's a lot of criticism there's a lot of competition in india there are other world views being practiced some of them millennia old so i had to counter that criticism so i needed to be equipped properly which is why apologetics was a natural choice yes so then to continue so you found these doubts these contradictions and it bothered you yes so i went to went on to read the art defense arguments and you know better than me that they don't make any sense yes they fail at so many different levels logically scientifically historically archaeologically and you name any field of study any discipline they fail at every single level so this you're you're an unusual person because you wanted to be really honest with yourself a lot of people would say listen i made a choice i'll cover up i'll deceive myself and keep continuing with this because i don't want to face it but you wanted to face it it's a very courageous thing to face it so when you went through this what was your inner emotional turmoil state going on were you privately having these moments were you sharing them with your christian family what was happening there uh i was devastated because even though the course was this it was very natural for me to go and look up what criticism was there against jesus because jesus was my personal savior i used to live walk breathe sleep eat jesus so uh for every small and big thing i would go to jesus in prayer and i had to know the reality behind jesus so i i still didn't get to that course in my uh divinity uh in my masters but i looked up there were plenty of count criticisms interesting right i was devastated totally devastated so the first person that i talked to was my husband so he he didn't seem shocked because he's like one of those he's like millions of those hindus who are born and raised in a hindu family but never really subscribed to any of those in in any of those things that hinduism teaches them so my husband was just like that he was born and raised in a christian family and he said just because i'm born in a christian family doesn't make me a christian so i knew all along and nothing made sense to me he felt that way too he he said that to me he said that so he didn't oppose you so you are having doubts you're expressing them openly you're not hiding them your husband has no problem that you have doubts and even he has some doubts yes but he's not going to go become ex-christian you're going to stay you are your doubts are more honest clear you want to deal with them so do you also share with other people like the people in the seminary or other christians because you're really part of the whole christian community so what do they think of this young person who's come from india to become a christian evangelist and now she's having doubts so what do they think so i did not explicitly place my doubts in front of them but it was showing in my papers okay that the transition they were able to feel it in my papers did they comment on that they failed me failing the course oh wow we take a course wow yes they failed you on the course so much for intellectual freedom so much for intellectual freedom yes so um now did they say things like these doubts are because the devil is kind of playing tricks on you some people say like that yeah but again they have this tag of intelligent christians right so and these are also people in the u.s right so then this went on this went on for a few years this process that you are in the seminary but you're not buying their story yes yes yeah and then what happened um so i i have to go back to this my husband thing okay yeah so i expressed my doubts to him and he he was always a nominal christian he got these doubts but it didn't bother him too much because he was not as devout as me okay he did not blindly believe like me the reason i was devastated was you're more invested i was more interested if you are invested and the thing is a sham it really devastates you if you're not invested you're taking it as okay who cares then it doesn't bother you yes it was always like that yeah so but for some part uh we were raising our child our uh daughter and she was in fourth grade around that time when i was transitioning so we were having my husband and i we were having these discussions and my husband did not want me to have the discussions around her it would confuse her and she was baptized she was baptized okay so she was not baptized by the way by that okay yeah by then she was not that tight okay she was christened right yeah in the church but not baptism by conviction did not happen yet so he did not want us to have the discussions around her he also said um church going is a discipline get up on sunday morning which otherwise you would not do so you get up on sunday morning you wear clean clothes you you get you get dressed you go out meet people fellowship with them socialize with them and come back home he said that's the discipline so let's continue going to church uh i did not want to dishearten him you know how in families we just do things for each other even though we don't you know subscribe to the idea we don't agree this will do it to just make them happy so i did go to church but that was barely for i think two weeks i said i cannot i cannot sit through the sermon anymore i mean i'm i'm so angered inside they stand there for about 45 minutes one hour all they're saying is lies and this was very early on i was still in in the transition period but that was my state of mind i said i cannot say the hypocrisy bothered you yeah greatly yes and i was feeling like a hypocrite right you stand when they stand you they're saying a prayer you're not even you don't want to say it but you cannot keep quiet so so that was like living a double life which i could not do anymore i said you want the child to be raised in discipline i can raise her without christianity so i'll do that okay then we decided not to go to church so that was the end of christianity in our life okay and then what happened to your courses what are the courses what other courses influenced you um you studied history of christianity yes that was uh um i think uh a year or one and a half years later uh i took um i mean you if you know you you know how masters works in the u.s you have you have a list of courses that you can take so this is the this is the history of the church yes so this is uh this is uh three kilos okay so this was the old testament was the beginning where my doubts happened so this is the final name yeah in christianity's coffin yeah they don't teach this in india they're scared to teach all this yeah yes history of christianity history of bloodshed so tell us what you what bothered you about all this history so uh all my christian life i was um [Music] i mean for 10 years before i moved to the us i went to this english christian church english church that was started by an american couple so they were talking about they went into code doctrines systematic theology that's what they call in our uh in the end dev parlance so we were always taught that the church was established by jesus christ himself his apostle peter established the church but here i am reading the history of the church and i'm looking for god in these 700 pages tone so i find everybody but god in this there's bloodshed there's blasphemy there is incest one king fighting another king yeah for succession into the throne and his mother marrying um heard what i mean the mother marrying the son just on for all in the name of power right so there is i mean name every evil uh [Music] trait of a human being you find it in the history of church the church yes so this is something i want to say she's very brave i find a big difference between indian christians and american christians american christians are you know they will rationalize but they will not deny these facts they will rationalize them like apologetics and they will say okay i know this know that but but but uh indian christians are not even taught the stuff that they'll be too gory and they don't want to it's all religion of love yeah it's all love love and peace and all now religion of peace is islam so we've been invaded by the religion of love and the religion of peace yeah both have invaded us yes yeah one came to love us and they invaded conquered set up all their stuff in portugal in the portuguese came goa and uh inquisition positions destroyed our civilization all of that uh lovers love region of love and and then came the religion of peace islam and they did more of that so we've had two of these happen to us two abrahamic religions so you figured it out yeah but might be yeah i did i did so the biggest problem i was facing was well if jesus is love jesus is the prince of peace that's what he's called so if jesus is the prince of peace uh they did not have to spread jesus by the sword yeah and they themselves are not peaceful they are not peaceful so you go out and murder these people by i mean you destroy villages you put them to sword just because they don't embrace your prince of peace uh so the crusades the inquisitions the witch huntings everything is in this book and what i like about this book is this author is a theologian he's christian you can find it in his writing in his style in his stone but he gives you an unbiased report of what happened and how the church came into existence how was the reaction of other students taking the same courses the first course where uh you know there's contradictions built in the belief and doctrine a second course there is total contradiction in the moral ethics of the way they're living they're living a violent life and immoral life uh and it all bothers you but then you're not the only student there all the other students and it's not bothering them there are quite a few that come out of the seminary as ex-christians losing their faith so which is why i say uh you want somebody to you want to bring somebody out of christianity send them to a seminary in the world so uh here i'll tell you a little bit uh princeton theological summary is one of the largest big ones in the world and so i have sometimes recruited as research assistants people who are there students in divinity and various high level programs and one of the finest most brilliant research assistants who helped me a lot in writings uh was one of those guys who as a result are working for me he got out of the seminary and decided he didn't want to practice any of this anymore so it does affect them and some of them are very they're very sincere and genuine and naive and getting in and they haven't had the opportunity to introspect so you know he had a chance to just sort of i didn't convert him i didn't want to do anything i just gave him answers you know and he had to go keep reading more and more then he started arguing with his professors then he just decided to get out of there so there are such people yes honestly yeah so this is good so this is your story of how how you got out yes one very prominent person who went to a seminary and came out of christianity and this person is very very important to indian christianity because the person is none other than billy graham's close associate who was a key member in billy graham's uh missionary organization who converted fifty percent of india and most of eighty percent of africa what is it in the eighties charles templeton charles temple and you must have heard of billy graham of course everybody knows that everybody knows him so he was the close associate of billy graham billy graham and him started the organization together and somewhere along the way charles templeton thought that he did not have the he he was having difficulties with reconciling what he was reading in the bible like the creation story and the young earth model original sin redemption so he had an argument with billy graham and billy graham said you should not be bothering about all those things so here i see hypocrisy in one of the biggest uh icon of christianity right more so indian christianity yes so he's such a hypocrite he goes ahead and says charles you should not be questioning all these things i may have doubts but that's not that's besides the point but here i am i'm a christian i will live like a christian and die like a christian i may have questions but i'm not going to bring so what happened to templeton templeton said okay maybe i do not have i'm missing something that billy is saying so he takes himself to a seminary he enrolls himself in a seminary and he says he comes out and uh quitting christianity when was that sixties okay sixties okay so that's an interesting person to study yes so charles templeton is an interesting person hindus to study and tell his story yes uh you know so did you read about him yes and that also confirmed your own journey yes yes and there are several other ex-christians eminent ex-christians if you search if you search ex-christian you'll get a huge number of yeah but most eminent like 20 years preacher dan barker john loftus so these are preachers who wrote most of these songs dan market wrote most of the songs that christians in india sing today yeah in their worship places so he's an ex-christian openly declared ex-christian fighting very hard now against conversions so okay we'll come to this when we say talk about your goals and what you can do because you can do a lot of good uh organizing this and bringing this to the attention of indian people because indian people are not they're denied this they're given this complete bs and the church won't let this same knowledge that americans are christians have access they won't let this come into india so this is this is your story in essence yes so now your identity your faith identity is ex-christian you're not in any other faith but you are ex-christian for now yes and that's that is fine this is a very this is a very interesting story of esther very honest and you know she's so clear she's so transparent confident i think there's a brilliant leader here to sort of take this kind of a message to the indian christians not that all of them should get out of christianity but they should at least be given the chance to think they should be given the data and then they should make an honest decision and it's never too late to say you know i've been wrong i fooled myself for 25 years but i don't want to keep living a life of hypocrisy so thank you very much for your story and for being so courageous pleasure thank you for watching you can subscribe here and also hit the bell icon to make sure you get notified to donate please click this button

Channel: Rajiv Malhotra Official

Views: 840,720

Rating: 4.3266616 out of 5

Keywords: Esther Dhanraj, Rajiv Malhotra, Infinity Foundation, Ex Christian, Christianity, Christians In India, India And USA, Christianity Vs Hindusim, Telugu Hindu Brahmin, Brahmin Family, Hinduism And Churches, Hindu Journey, Christian Conversion, What Is Christianity, New Infinity Foundation Videos, Esther Dhanraj And Rajiv Malhotra, Converting From Christianity, Traditional Brahmin Family

Id: NNdgGttyvyA

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020