Śyāmasundara: I think that's the difference between the Christian emphasis and Kṛṣṇa consciousness...
Prabhupāda: Because it's simply mental speculation. There is no basis.
Śyāmasundara: The Christian monks, ascetics, they always thought that the life they were giving up, they were suffering, always that feeling...
Prabhupāda: Poor fund of knowledge, that's all.
Śyāmasundara: Anyway, to go on...
Prabhupāda: And they have developed this philosophy and this Bible, after the demise of Jesus Christ. More or less it is concoction.
Śyāmasundara: He says that the opposite of faith is sin, that sin is the same as despair. Sin and despair are the same.
Prabhupāda: Well, unless you have got complete sense of God, there is no question of sin or piety. Because if you do not know what is the standard of sin and piety... Just like the same example can be given that in this India-Pakistan war, that party killed so many men and this party killed so many men on the other side. When you take killing as sin, but it's piety. From their side it is piety; from our side it is piety. So how these sinful activities or pious activities are considered? To satisfy the higher authorities.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. He means faith in the orders of God; the opposite of that.
Prabhupāda: It is not a question of faith, it is a question of fact. Then it is, the same example, just like Arjuna. He decided to become nonviolent in the beginning, but at the end he decided to fight and kill. Now which is piety and which is sinful? Actually, this decision to kill by the order of Kṛṣṇa is piety, because he satisfies the higher authorities. So in this material world we concoct that "This is sinful, this is piety," but actual sinful and piety is decided on the order of the Supreme God. That is (indistinct). So if you have no connection with God, so our these thoughts of sinful and piety, they are simply mental concoction. It has no value.
Śyāmasundara: He says that faith in the order of God, that is piety.
Prabhupāda: Then you must have order of God. Unless you have no conception of God, where is the question of order? If God is impersonal, He cannot speak, He has no mouth, He has no tongue, He has no eyes, He has..., where is the question of order?
Śyāmasundara: His idea is that Jesus is the standard.
Prabhupāda: But that's all right. Then there is no Christian. Jesus Christ's first order is "Thou shall not kill," and they're killing, simply killing. Then where is Christians? There is no Christian.
Śyāmasundara: So he calls the modern Christianity the "sickness unto death," because he says...
Prabhupāda: In the other words, we say there is no Christian.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. He says that modern Christianity is sick. It is sickness unto death, he calls it.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: If he accepts Jesus as the perfection, why doesn't he, in the beginning when he was looking for a way of making decisions, why doesn't he follow Jesus's path of morality?
Śyāmasundara: Well, he does. He does. He's just describing the philosophers describing...
Prabhupāda: He's coming to the point of religion.
Śyāmasundara: Yeah. He comes to the point. He says that modern Christianity is despairing, and they are becoming sick.
Prabhupāda: Then why not say not Christian? Modern Christianity... Christianity is Christianity. You cannot make it "modern" and "past." You cannot say "God modern" and "God past." That is not good philosophy. You say there is Christianity or no Christianity. So our system is that if we do not follow the tenets of some religious principle, then how you can claim you belong to that religion? That is applicable everywhere. Just like the so-called Hindus, they did not believe anything, and they are passing on as Hindus, as brāhmaṇas, as (indistinct). That is just passing.
Śyāmasundara: At the time he was writing... (break) At the time he was philosophizing, Europe was in a very sad state of affairs, and everyone was trying to commit suicide. It was the..., in vogue. So he said that because Christianity is sinning, they are sinning despite their knowledge of what is right, then they come to the point of despair, and they are trying to kill themselves even though they know that Christianity says that we are immortal, that you cannot kill yourself. So he says that suicide is no answer to...
Prabhupāda: Christianity believes in the immortality of the soul?
Śyāmasundara: Yes. So for Christians, suicide is no answer to escape their sinning or their despair. So he says...
Prabhupāda: You have committed so many sinful activities, and simply by killing you are trying to escape. In that way you are committing another sin. You are committing another sin. Therefore these persons who commit suicide, they become ghosts.