Source: Eternity News, November 20, 2023
“My family came to Australia in 1972,” [says Anglican Archbishop Kanishka Raffel]. “My parents were Sri Lankan. My mother’s family was Buddhist, and so my two sisters and I were raised as Buddhists in Australia, which was unusual then.
“In my third year at university, I thought I should devote myself a little to the study of my religion. So, I started privately reading Buddhist literature. I visited the temple. I developed my meditation practice. But in God’s kindness, I’d had Christian friends at high school and at university.
“I said to one of my friends, ‘What’s being a Christian all about?’ And he said being a Christian meant he’d ‘lost control of his life to Jesus Christ.’ Remember, I had devoted the year to serious study of Buddhism and was trying to develop, especially through meditation, control of my emotions and my ambitions and my desires, in order to be released from them. And here was my friend, who I respected, who said he’d lost control of his life to somebody who lived 2,000 years ago!”
Read what happened next in the Archbishop’s journey of faith. Another article from Eternity News reports that Raffel is the first person of non-European background to hold his position. Read his insights on sharing the gospel with South Asian migrants.