One reason that people object to the claim that Christianity is the one path to God is that it makes it so exclusive. What about the many Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and non-religious? Is it only Christians that have a right to God? Today, more than ever, this objection is greatly amplified in intensity because our culuture so highly values diversity and inclusion.
The first thing to address is what Christians and Christianity is not claiming. First, it is not claiming that Christianity is the one path to God because Christians are inherently better than others. Christians do not make the claim out of a self-inflated image of superiority. Sometimes the perception of Christians by those outside the faith is that of a high school clique where our way is best because we say it is, so that the exclusive claim of the Christian faith is one of overgrown ego. Not to say that Christians, and some more than others, are not subject to the sin of egotism like everyone else.
In the big scope of the Church across ages and culture, the claim is based of Jesus' claim that he is the only way to God and those who come to God must come through him. And Jesus claimed to speak on behalf of God His Father. So that merely moves the pointing of the finger from Christians to God Himself. So is God being exlcusive?
When we think of the basis on which exclusive groups discriminate, things that come to are money, position, fame, gender, age, culture. For the most part, these are features that we have little or no influence over. One's beliefs, on the other hand, is something the person decides to adopt. God says that eternal life is offered open-handed to anyone who will believe on Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The offer is regardless of race, culture, language, gender, age, position, economic status.
But why does not God accept people of other faiths if they believe in him?
The answer is simply that non-biblical religions present a false view of reality--of man, of the world, of right/wrong and most importantly, God. The claim of the Bible is that they distort the dignity of God, teaching what is non-pleasing to him. But it goes beyond this. The claim is that mankind created other religions as a replacement for true religion. They did this because they rejected the true religion that God has revealed. In rejecting God's truth, they are rejecting the true God himself and replacing him with a false god. This breaks the greatest commandments that God has given to man: to love Him, the true God, with all our heart and soul and mind, to have no other god before him, and to not create an idol of worship.
A very common world view of our day is pluralism. It is the view that the various religions are a smorgusboard. They are all basically valid and pretty much teach the same thing. That is why the exclusive claims of Christianity are offensive. This world view presupposes that God has not supernaturally revealed true religion. So mankind is left to himself to come up with various ways to worship through various religions. To hold to pluralism, one must positively deny the history of God revealing himself to man from Abraham, through Moses and the prophets and culminating with the coming of Jesus Christ.
The claim of Christian Scripture is that mankind is in rebellion against God, refusing to honor him as God, avoiding him at all costs, supressing the truth and exchanging it for a lie.
But it gets worse! Humanity's rejection of God comes even in response to his great blessing and goodness upon us. God, being sovereign, is the source of all and everything that is good in our lives. Our ability to make a living, our health, friends, family, abundance, happiness--it all is given by God. Evil is propagated not by God but by man and fallen angelic beings. So God loves us and cares for us and in return we hate, reject and accuse Him of all the evil we are responsible for.
But it gets worse! Give all our injustice toward the true God, instead of destroying us and being done with it, He sent his eternal Son, born of a virgin, into the world to reconcile us to God. And God even allowed Him to give his life as the payment for all our evil and injustice toward Him. Given all that He has forbeared, then humanity still holds a grudge against God for only having one way to him!
Yet he still hold out the offer of forgiveness and eternal life to any who will come to Him through Christ that He may show His great patience and goodness. Each person is given one life to receive this gift. After that comes the judgment for what we end up doing--accepting it or rejecting it.
John
No comments:
Post a Comment