John 14- the offensive claims of Jesus
We live in a world full of so much
diversity- many cultures and many religions- isn’t it arrogant for Christians
to claim the only way to God? It’s offensive to say you know spiritual truth
and imply that others don’t.
We live in a world with an incredible
amount of diversity among human beings. There are many different cultures and
religions. As globalization has its
effect on us we bump into more of the varieties of cultures and religions in a
way we wouldn’t have even 50 years ago.
In the midst of this incredible
diversity of cultures Christians claim to know the exclusive route to God. Paul in Romans 5:19 says, “For just as by the
one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s
obedience the many will be made righteous.” It is Jesus who fixed what was
broken about the world. It is his medicine that was injected into the sick
world that is bringing about a cure. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way,
and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The
Prophet Isaiah is speaking for God and in Isaiah 45:5 he says, “I am
the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.” In Acts
4:12 Paul says about Jesus, “there is no other name under heaven given among
mortals by which we must be saved.” To
the modern North American this all seems pretty intolerant and offensive.
Christianity should change its tune if it doesn’t want to be considered bigoted
and close-minded.
There is a detail that is worth
teasing out in the Christian claim. Christians are saying that Jesus said of
himself that he is “the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through [him]”. We aren’t making the claim about Christianity. We
are saying Jesus made this claim about himself. We aren’t saying only
Christians are saved. We aren’t claiming to know who populates heaven or hell.
We are just saying that Jesus said he is the one who saves. If someone is saved
it is because of Jesus. If an atheist, or a Hindu is saved it is not because of
their atheism or Hinduism- it is because of Jesus. That might still seem offensive to some, but
that is where traditional Christianity takes its stand because of the words of
Jesus.
We shouldn’t see this as unusual for
religion though. I spent 4 years of university getting a bachelor’s degree in
the study of world religions at a secular university. As I grew up at different
times I considered myself a Wiccan, and experimented a lot as a Buddhist. I have spent a lot of time and energy looking at this thing we call
religion. … All religions make claims about spiritual truth. For example, Buddhism
teaches that you will not reach Nirvana without practicing Buddha’s 8-fold path,
and the Buddhist worldview even includes a hell (just in case you thought Christians had the monopoly on that). So it’s not as if this problem
goes away by getting rid of Christianity. All religions make claims about
spiritual truth, not just Christianity.
Some religions try to have a broader
inclusion. So for example, some broad-minded Buddhists will try to see Jesus as
a Boddhisatva (which is sort of a Buddhist saint). So the Zen Buddhist teacher
Thich Nhat Hanh reinterpreted the Eucharist saying, “[Jesus] knew that if his
disciples would eat one piece of bread in mindfulness, they would have real
life”.[1] It seems open-minded, but really they are
changing Jesus and making him into a Buddhist. He stops being the Jesus of the
Bible and starts being a Buddhist. In a similar way Islam seems to embrace
Jesus, but he is not the Son of God and he did not die on a cross and have a
bodily resurrection. They reinterpret Jesus and make him into a Muslim prophet-
he is not the Jesus of the Bible. Other religions might seem to embrace Jesus,
but they won’t accept him on his own terms. All religions claim spiritual
truth, which then implies that other claims are less true or false.
There is a kind of parable that is
sometimes told about the various religions of the world. They symbolically
imagine spiritual truth as an elephant. Then they imagine these blind men
approach the elephant and each attempt to understand and describe the elephant.
One blind man approached the elephant’s leg and he says, “An elephant is like a
tree”. Another blind man approaches the elephant’s trunk and says, “An elephant
is like a snake”. Another blind man approaches the elephant’s side and says,
“An elephant is like a wall”. Another blind man approaches the elephant’s tail
and says, “An elephant is like a rope”. This parable is often told to talk
about how each of the religions mistakenly knows a part of the spiritual truth,
but they don’t know the whole truth. Each of them only has a part of the truth
and it is a mistake to think any one of them really understands an elephant by
only knowing the elephant’s leg.
The story is often told to point out
the foolishness of the blind men- and so the foolishness of the world
religions. They are arrogant to claim they have knowledge that is superior to
the other religions, just as it would be arrogant for each of the blind men to think
they have the full understanding of the elephant. …
The problem is that there is another
person in the parable. The person who is watching the blind men is the only one
who sees the whole elephant. The observer is the only one with superior
knowledge- the observer is the only one that is not blind. The one who thinks
the other religions are arrogant and foolish for claiming knowledge superior to
the other religions are themselves claiming to have superior knowledge over all
the other religions- they hypocritically claim they have knowledge which they
just made fun of the blind men for claiming to have. The observer is in the
position of being right and all the other religions (or blind men) are wrong.
They fall prey to the same arrogant stance they accuse the other religions of
having.
The statement that all religions are basically
the same is a claim to know the truth. It also implies that the Buddhist who
says the 8-fold path is the way to nirvana is wrong- and the Muslim who says
there is only one God and Muhamad is his prophet is wrong- and the Christian
who says Jesus is the only way to the Father is wrong.
You can’t get away from making claims about truth. We all do it. And when we claim something is true, we are
automatically implying something else is false. We all have a way we view the
world that includes a specific kind of belief system.
I heard
a pastor named Timothy Keller once describe a conversation he had on a
university campus with a student. As they were talking the topic moved to
religion, as often happens with pastors. Eventually the student realized what
was happening and said, “Hey! You’re trying to evangelize me. You’re trying to
convert me to Christianity. You are trying to convince me that your way of
looking at the world is better than mine. You are trying to say your belief
system is right and mine is wrong. That is offensive!” … Timothy Keller
responded, “Wait, so you think my way of thinking is wrong (trying to convert
people to Christianity and saying Christianity is true) and that I should
convert to your belief system (that of broad inclusivism where somehow no
religion is more right than any other)? That’s offensive”. …. The student was making claims about the
right way to think and act. You can’t get away from making claims about what is
true. And when you say something is true you automatically exclude other
claims. … When you find someone offended
at these kinds of religious truth claims, if you look just beneath the surface,
you will find they believe in their own truth claims and are just as guilty of
stating others are wrong. It is usually a hypocritical stance, though they
usually don’t see it.
Some people say all religions are
paths that lead up the mountain to God. They are different paths, but they have
the same destination. … Well, what is it that we arrive at when we get to the
top? Is it the Triune God of Christianity? Is it the one (non-Trinitarian) God
of the Koran? Are there thousands of Gods as Hindus believe? Or is the
mountaintop empty because Buddhism doesn’t believe in God? Or is there a new
age idea of the Force?
I’m not saying that we don’t have
similarities. We do. There are tremendous similarities among religions in some
areas. Especially when it comes to morality. Usually the various religions of
the world will agree on most moral cases. There is a lot of overlap when it
comes to morality. Jesus used positive
examples of Samaritans who were considered heretics in his own time (John 4;
Luke 10; Luke 17). Jesus had mercy and healed non-Jews (Gentiles), who were
usually Pagan. He didn’t come to them with condemnation. We read about Paul in Athens and he quotes
some of their pagan authors and praises them for how religious they are (Acts
17). I think we too should follow the
examples of Jesus and Paul and recognize what is true and beautiful in other
religions. We should be willing to applaud the deep insights of other
religions. We should be willing to recognize where we overlap in our moral
convictions and be willing to work together in those areas.
If you think the whole goal of
religion is morality, then you might be led to say things like “all religions
are pretty much the same”. But that is really a surface issue. Most deeply
religious people will see morality as a side effect of what they believe, but
not the end point, or even the central point. Saying all religions are
basically the same shows you haven’t spent much time with the various religions
of the world. We should recognize our similarities, but we should also
recognize our differences. We should also recognize that at times we will think
each other are wrong. To use an extreme
example, I don’t think any of us want to support the beliefs of someone who
would crash a plane into a building killing thousands of people and say it is the work of God; or beliefs
that would require child sacrifice (as some ancient cultures practiced). I hope we would all consider
those beliefs as mistaken, regardless of the sincerity of the practitioners. The desire to be kind and gracious to those
who believe differently than us is a good instinct. That doesn’t mean we have
to give up what we believe to be true.
I think we have a trickier job as
religious people in our age. 100 years ago we didn’t bump into such a variety
of religious people. God gave us a brain and God expects us to use it. In the
mix of beliefs we find ourselves in, we have to work hard to figure out which claims
about God, human nature, and spiritual reality are true and which are false.
What is life all about? What is the most important thing we should spend our
time doing? Is there life after death? What is right and wrong, and why? We have to base our life on some answer to those
questions. We cannot function without some kind of belief structure.
Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to
the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). We have to decide what we are going to
do with that. Are we going to accept what Jesus says about himself? Is he right
or is he wrong? Or are we going to choose some other truth to believe in (like ‘all
religions are true’) and say Jesus is wrong? Either way we are committing ourselves
to some truth, and we are therefore rejecting the alternative. The motivation behind the statement ‘all
religions are equally true’ is good. It is a desire for peace and understanding
between the various cultures of the world. I think Christianity values both peace and a
desire to build relationships with those that are different from us. Jesus
taught us to love even our enemies. Jesus died praying for the forgiveness of
those that were killing him. I believe his teachings are a powerful force for
good in our world. And probably much more helpful than a vague inconsistent
belief about everyone being right. AMEN
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