The Missionary Playbook
Some tactics never go out of style. The early Church pulled off one of the greatest marketing pivots in history. They didn't reject Jewish scripture - they claimed it.
"The Old Testament? That was always about us."
"Those prophecies? Always pointing to Jesus."
Then they did it again with the Greeks.
"Plato's philosophy? Just a Greek warmup act for Christianity."
It worked brilliantly. If you can't beat them, subsume them.
Fast forward to today's India, and we're watching the same playbook unfold.
"Your Hindu traditions? Your gods with multiple arms? Your ancient Sanskrit texts? All just preparation for Christ."
It's a pattern. A formula. And it's worked for centuries.
The missionary doesn't say, "Abandon your culture." That's Too direct. Too honest. They say, "Your culture was always secretly ours. You just didn't understand it properly."
It's like watching a company acquire a beloved local brand, keep the packaging, but change the recipe.
Some argue that the christian missionaries are merely honoring native culture. But when you reframe someone else's thousand-year tradition as 'incomplete' or 'preparatory,' you're not honoring it. You're colonizing it.
The Greeks didn't write philosophy as a preamble to Christianity. The Jews didn't develop their traditions as an opening act. And Hindus didn't spend millennia developing their spiritual practices as a cultural placeholder until missionaries arrived.
If your idea can only succeed by rewriting someone else's story, maybe your idea isn't as powerful as you think. Real respect means acknowledging different traditions as complete in themselves - not as chapters in your story.
