College students have an innate sense of fairness. They may not always practice it, but they usually have it lurking around somewhere. And so they often ask ministers questions like, “Why should Christianity claim to be the one true religion? What is God going to do with all those millions of people who are not Christians, and who never heard of Jesus Christ? Aren’t they as sincere as we are? Aren’t all religions, after all, basically alike?”
Those questions usually arise after they have had their first course in Comparative Religion. And, when they ask such questions, they are in good company. Some years ago, the renowned historian Arnold Toynbee wrote a little book titled “Christianity Among the Religions of the World” in which he called upon Christians to expunge Christianity of its alleged uniqueness. He asked Christians to give up the absurd notion that Christianity is unique because, said he, it is our persistent emphasis on the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ that stands in the way of unity with the other religions of the world. We ought instead, he said, to be united with them in our common opposition to atheism and godlessness. This insistence on the uniqueness of Christ and Christianity was, he said, a subtle form of pride and the sooner we rid ourselves of it, the better. After all, he reasoned, “Aren’t all religions basically alike?”
That’s a popular point of view, and in my view, a false one. One of the most prevalent myths of our age is the notion that all religions are alike. We hear people say, “All religions are basically the same; they just look different on the surface.” The actual truth of the matter, I believe, is precisely the opposite. All religions may look alike on the surface, but they are basically different. For instance, there is a vast difference between what religions mean when they use the word “God”—if they use the word at all. For discussion purposes I often divide up the religions of the world into two parts: those which are historical and those which are philosophical. Philosophical religions are those which are based on ideas; historical religions are those which are based on events, things which actually happened in human history. Of the latter, there appear to be but three: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But even among the three great historical religions which share the same roots, there are some very basic differences. Their conceptions of God, the ultimate nature of reality, are different. Reduced to its simplest terms: for the Jew God is Justice; for the Muslim, God is Power; for the Christian, God is Love. Now, I have an idea that ultimately God is all three: Love, Power, and Justice; but because of the event of Christ having come into our world, I am willing to compromise on any of the three except love. I do not believe that God can ever be anything or do anything but love. I know that Christians do not often practice that love, and that Christians can sometimes be as fanatical and bloodthirsty as any member of any other religion, but when they do so, they depart from Christ who said that “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)
Another popular question that some people ask is, “Aren’t all religions merely different roads up the mountain?” The answer to that one is simple. The answer is, “Yes, but they are going up different mountains.” The question is: What does any religion believe to be the ultimate goal and purpose of life? To put it another way, what is “Salvation” for any particular religion? And here there are many divergent views. In Evanston, Illinois there is a famous structure called the Baha’i Temple. It is a fantastic piece of oriental-looking architecture, with, as I recall, nine sides, with nine windows. The theory behind it is that while there is but one sun, that sun can shine through nine different windows, and just so each of the nine great world religions point to the One God. That sound nice, until you begin to compare the views of the great religious teachers honored in that temple and you find that they contradict one another. Some of the great religious teachers were actually atheists, believing in no personal God at all, while others had widely divergent views of what God, the Ultimate Reality beyond all reality, is really like, and what kind of conduct that “god” requires. How can one ever reconcile the Hindu belief in a caste system which says that some people are born “untouchables” with the Christian belief that every human being is a person of sacred and infinite worth? How can we reconcile the Buddhist notion that the human self has no real identity or individual significance with the Christian insistence that becoming one’s true self before God is of primary importance? How can we reconcile the Muslim view that everything that happens, be it good, bad, or indifferent, is “the will of Allah,” with the Christian belief that our lives are not in the hands of a blind Fate, but rather in the hands of a loving God? How can one reconcile the Hindu notion that the soul is reincarnated again and again until at last it is purified and breaks from the law of karma with the Christian teaching about the resurrection of the individual unto life everlasting? And we also must consider the fact that the Bible doesn’t really believe in “souls” in that sense at all, as discrete entities separated from bodies. As I said, all religions may look alike on the surface, but when you dig deep down into their roots you find that they are very different. And, as a seminary professor of mine used to say, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” All of them simply cannot be correct. I know, most of us do not like to make choices in life. We would rather try to play both ends against the middle, and straddle our theological fences in the forlorn hope that if we do so long enough, the contradictions will go away. But they won’t.
Some years ago the late Dr. D.T. Niles of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) visited the United States and made the observation that he believed that the U.S. was “the last Hindu nation on earth.” What on earth did he mean? He meant that we were living in a time when Hinduism was beginning to abandon much of its Hindu tradition in order to win new converts, while America was beginning to pick it up. One Hindu scholar expressed that tradition in these words: “God is one, but the paths to him are many... God welcomes us in whatever way we approach him, and for each man that religious tradition is best in which he is born and bred.” Well, what’s wrong with that? A lot of Americans think that there is nothing wrong with that. A popular American president a few years back said that “Everybody should have a religion, and it doesn’t matter which one.” I wonder what he would think of the churches of Satan which have begun asking for tax deductions as legitimate churches? It doesn’t matter which one? Hardly! It matters very much! This view is called “syncretism” by the philosophers. It means a blending together of all religions, and it founders on the rocks at one important point: All religions are not basically the same. They teach very different things about God, about salvation, about the meaning and purpose of human life, of the value of human life. Nothing can be true if its exact opposite is also true. Truth is singular and therefore intolerant. Some things are not settled by majority vote. There is an old story of a school teacher who brought a baby rabbit to show the students at school. They asked, “Is it a boy rabbit or a girl rabbit?” The teacher was hesitant to reply, when suddenly a hand shot up in the back of the classroom, “We could vote on it!” Well, some things are either one thing or another; they cannot be both, and the truth is not settled by a show of hands.
But why can there not be many ways to God? That sounds wonderfully tolerant and open-minded and, well, downright democratic. The best answer to that question I ever heard was given by the sainted Dr. John Baillie of Edinburgh. Speaking of the words of Jesus: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Dr. Baillie said, “God made possible only one door to Himself, and so designed our salvation that none could come to the him without at the same time coming to one another.” In other words, it is God’s will that all of God’s children should come to God together, not separately. God’s will for the world is community, and not disunity. Whatever paths we may take getting there, they all meet at the door. And Christians believe that Christ is that door. The closer we come to Him, the closer we come to one another. Heaven, contrary to the hopes of some and the fears of others, is not segregated.
It seems to me that all attempts at syncretism, the blending of all religions into one, founder on the rock of Jesus’ words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Whatever we may think of those words philosophically and theologically, we must admit that they seem to be historically true. Here is what I mean. Again I am indebted to D.T. Niles for an exciting insight which opened up these words for me in a fresh way. I, too, thought them to be terribly narrow and intolerant. But D.T. Niles, after spending a lifetime among non-Christian religions gave the words a new twist. He placed the emphasis on the word “Father” in Jesus’ saying. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” We may come to some ideas of God apart from Jesus, but it is through him specifically that we have come to the notion of God as the divine Parent of us all. Before Jesus, most people thought of God as King, Ruler, Majesty, or even perhaps Parent of a certain segment of the human race. But Jesus taught us to pray “Our Father...” That was, and is, a revolutionary prayer. During the First World War someone in India suggested that all of the world’s religions get together in a common worship service to pray for peace. That sounds like a noble idea. But they had to abandon the project because they could not agree on how to address God! The Christians made the naive suggestion that at least all could pray the Lord’s Prayer, but that suggestion was indignantly rejected. The idea of God as “Father,” a personally concerned divine Parent of us all was simply not acceptable to many of the non-Christian religions who considered it blasphemous to address God in such a personal way. Now can you see the fallacy of saying that “All religions are basically alike, they just look different on the surface”? The opposite is more nearly true: All religions may look the same on the surface, but they are basically different!
My concluding point may be equally surprising, and that is: No religion, including Christianity, is of any real significance. Religion has sometimes been referred to as “humanity’s search for God.” There was even a television program about religion some years ago titled “The Long Search,” which pictured different religions of the world “searching” for God, as though God were playing some cosmic game of hide-and-seek. But the Gospel proclaims that God is not lost. Religion may be a record of the human search for God, but the Bible describes a God who is out searching for us! The opening chapters of the Bible tell us about humanity’s rebellion against God, and God’s going searching for God’s wayward children in the Garden. “Adam, where are you?” is the question with which the Bible begins, and we must remember that “Adam” is a generic term for humankind. (Gen. 3:9 - in the NRSV “Adam” is simply called “the man.”) I would suggest that the rest of the whole Bible is but a commentary on that question. Christians believe that long search culminated in Jesus Christ, who said that “...the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) So, it is not God who is lost; we are, and, in Christ, God has come to seek and to save us. In the Lyman Beecher lectures on preaching at Yale in 1957, D. T. Niles said, “Professor Toynbee misunderstands the Gospel when he says that we believe that our religion is the way and the truth. That is just what we should not believe. The way and the truth is Jesus Christ. Christianity needs to learn not only the lesson of neighborliness with respect to non-Christian religions, it also needs to maintain at the center of its own life the gospel of grace which is the judgment on all religions.”
“I am the way,” said Jesus. I think that is something quite different than saying, “Our religion is the way.” The first Christians were called Followers of the Way. It is our faith that in Jesus Christ something has happened to the world which is of cosmic consequence. “And the word became flesh and lived among us.” Our human desire to achieve a connection with God through religion failed. But God took the initiative and established the connection from the other side. Some years back there was a popular fad for some Christians to sport bumper stickers on their cars with the slogan, “I found it.” Outside of the fact that God is not an “it,” the words seem misplaced. We do not have to find God. God is not lost. We are. And, in Jesus Christ, God has come to seek and to save us. You see, a “Way” is a bridge between two places, a road connecting two disparate points. Its function is to heal divisions, to bridge the gulf of separation between peoples. According to the Bible, human sin caused a separation between ourselves and God. Indeed, the late theologian Paul Tillich defined sin as “separation”: from God, the Ground of our being, from our neighbors, and from our own true selves—the selves that God created us to be. And Jesus Christ is the One who bridged the gap. One of the titles given to the Pope is “pontiff”—a word which literally means “bridge-builder.” Sometimes he is called the “Supreme Pontiff.” But it seems to me that Christ is the Supreme Pontiff, for He has bridged the gulf of separation between God and the world. There is a sense in which we might say that Jesus Christ is the “end” of religion. He is the “end” in two senses: first, that He is the end result for which all religions strive, and, second, since His coming into the world there is no longer any need for “religion” (in the sense of our searching for God). In the coming of Christ something has happened which has forever split the world in two: B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini - the year of our Lord). His coming into the world is so significant that even those who do not believe in Him must date their denials from His birth!
When I am not in the Holy Land, my wife and I live in the great State of Michigan. Once in a while we like to visit the Upper Peninsula. I can remember the time some years ago when, in order to do so, we had to make the trip from Mackinaw City to St. Ignace by ferry boat over a rather storm-tossed body of water separating the two peninsulas. But then the State of Michigan came along and built a bridge from one side to the other. Michiganians call it “Big Mac”—not to be confused with the hamburger of the same name! It is quite a feat of engineering, and most difficult to ignore. Since that bridge was built it is much easier to visit the Upper Peninsula. I suppose, if one tried to do so, one could swim the distance, but why would one want to do so? Now that the bridge is here, it is hard to ignore. Something like that has occurred in our world. Now that Christ has come into it, He is pretty hard to ignore. The gulf between God and the world has been bridged by Him. He is “the Way.” In Christ we have a bridge to cross, and a cross to bridge the gap between ourselves and God. To this glad good news of the Fourth gospel one can only say, “Thank God!”