Krishna consciousness is summum bonum of God consciousness

Satsvarupa Dasa: One of the main thrusts of Prabhupada's teachings in Christian countries, was to challenge whether anyone was actually following the teachings of Jesus Christ. On this point, he was similar to the Christian philosopher, Kierkegaard, who said that throughout Christendom, one could hardly find a genuine follower of Christ. Prabhupada offered a twofold friendly suggestion to Christians: (1) they should follow the commandment, Thou shalt not kill, and (2) they should chant the holy names of God, using the name Christ or Kristos. When Prabhupada was in Paris he called me into his room with another idea that was stimulated by his meeting with Christian culture. He said that he was thinking that a Krishna conscious commentary might be written on the Bible. At first, I thought he meant he was going to write it. I said, "That could be done, Prabhupada, because as you say, Christianity is also God consciousness. And Krishna consciousness is the summum bonum of God consciousness, so, therefore, Krishna consciousness should be able to give a good commentary on the Bible. Are you going to do that?" Prabhupada said, "I thought you could do it. You can write something and bring it to me and I'll give you some guidelines." This was an exciting offer for me in several ways. At that time, I hardly thought much of Christianity in a serious way, and neither did I think of myself as a former Christian. But my main hankering, even if I wasn't aware of it always, was to do some writing. So this was a most juicy writing assignment. A Krishna conscious commentary on the Bible. Wow! It seemed like just the thing to pick up unenthusiastic spirits. New life for the boy in the outer office. "Sure, Prabhupada," I said, "I'll get to work on it right away. What portion of the Bible should I take?" Prabhupada left the details up to me. First I had to obtain a Bible, which wasn't difficult. I managed to find time alone in my little cubbyhole and began making a commentary from one of the Gospels. I treated it just as I would a section of the Bhagavatam for an essay in Back to Godhead magazine. I started with the description of the angel announcing to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that she was to become the sanctified mother of the Son of God. I quoted from the Gospel and then made commentary on the assumption that Jesus Christ's birth was spiritual. He was not born like an ordinary soul forced from karma, and produced by the sexual combination of a conditioned mother and father. He was sent by God, and therefore he only appeared to be the child of Mary and Joseph. I made reference to the appearance of Lord Krishna as described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam: Krishna appeared in the heart of Vasudeva and then was transferred to Devaki. I simply repeated what Prabhupada said about Krishna or Lord Caitanya, and applied it to Jesus Christ as a pure devotee. When I had typed up about three pages I took it in to Srila Prabhupada. He didn't read it immediately but looked at it later along with some of his mail. He made a few notes in the margins and then we sat and discussed it. Prabhupada's written comments did not contain any criticism of what I had done, but they were further comments about the nature of divine birth. Prabhupada seemed satisfied with the initial installment and he asked me to continue. I was really getting into a big writing project. I saw the whole Bible as material for an exciting Krishna conscious treatise. I started writing a second installment and had it mostly done and ready to bring in to Prabhupada. But then he called me in to talk more about it. Prabhupada said, "Do you think that this kind of commentary will actually convince anyone?" "I don't know, Prabhupada," I said. He said, "I don't think the Christians will accept what we say. Whatever we say, they will argue against it. Therefore I don't think there's any use in continuing this. What do you think?" "All right, Prabhupada. I agree with whatever you say." And that was it, finished. I felt a bit disappointed that the project was dropped but relieved that we didn't get too far into something which Prabhupada thought wasn't going to be worthwhile. And I saw his point, that although it was fun to do, and it was a bona fide application of the Bhaktivedanta philosophy, yet the Christians for whom it was intended would not accept it. For me, the enduring and interesting point of this episode, is that Prabhupada didn't question the validity of treating Jesus as a spiritual person. He mostly turned it down because he didn't think it would be accepted.