It's Offensive to Claim Jesus is the Only Way to God
When I was teaching Sunday school, I did a series of classes using Lee Strobel's works. The following is from The Case for Faith. While there may be the stray original item from me, I deserve no credit for what is written in this particular article. It is properly attributed to Lee Strobel in its entirety.
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
In today’s religious pluralism and tolerance, this exclusivity claim is politically incorrect, a slap in the face of other belief systems. In 1893, Swami Vivekenanda told the World Parliament of Religions that “we [Hindus] accept all religions to be true. The real sin is to call someone else a sinner.”
First, it is important to understand that Christianity is not the only religion in the world that claims exclusivity. Muslims radically claim exclusivity, not just theologically, but linguistically
Muslims believe the sole, sufficient and consummate miracle of Islam is the Koran. However, they say it is only recognizable in Arabic and any translation desacralizes it. And it’s not just a basic understanding of Arabic that is required, but a sophisticated knowledge of the language.
Buddhism was born when Gautama Buddha rejected two fundamental assertions of Hinduism - the ultimate authority of the Vedas (their scriptures) and the caste system.
Hinduism itself is uncompromising on 2 or 3 issues: the law of karma (moral cause and effect), the authority of the Vedas, and reincarnation. Hindus will say that Hinduism is a very tolerant faith, but what it really means is that Hinduism allows you to practice your religion so long as it buys into their syncretistic notion of truth (syncretism is the attempt to blend together different or even opposing beliefs).
Sikhism came as a challenge to both Hinduism and Buddhism.
Atheists, of course, reject the viewpoints of those who believe in God.
Even Baha’ism, which claims to embrace all religions, ends up excluding the exclusivists!
Here's the thing, all truth is, by definition, exclusive - it will exclude its opposite and label it false. If truth does not exclude, then no assertion of a truth claim is being made; it’s just an opinion that is being stated. To deny the exclusive nature of truth is itself a truth claim!
Anyone can claim to be the only path to God (several crackpots have done just that). Why should we believe Jesus was telling the truth when he said it? On one hand, we could say that the resurrection of Jesus established him as being the son of God, and the historical record concerning the Resurrection is extremely compelling.
If true, then all other faiths cannot be true since they each assert something contrary to his divinity. On the other hand, there are four fundamental questions that every religion seeks to answer: origin, meaning, morality and destiny.
I believe that only the answers of Jesus Christ correspond to reality. There is coherence among his answers unlike those of any other religion.
Buddha’s answers on morality do not cohere with his answers concerning origins. Buddhism is technically nontheistic of not atheistic. But if there is no creator, how does one arrive at a moral law?
And what about the Hindu version of reincarnation. If every birth is a rebirth, and every life pays for a previous life, then what are you paying for in your first birth?
Origins
Contrary to Hinduism, the Bible says we are not identical with God but we are distinct from him. In other words, we didn’t bring ourselves into being, but we are a creation of God. Since we are created in His image, this accounts for human beings having a moral point of reference.
No system is able to explain this except the monotheistic ones. Even naturalists have no explanation for humanity’s moral framework. Yet this moral framework corresponds to the reality of the human experience.
Christianity also says we rejected the divine will, making us the definer of good and evil. Humanism was born right there, making man the measure of all things. This willful rebellion and rejection of God corresponds to reality. As Malcolm Muggeridge said, "human depravity is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but also the most philosophically resistant."
Meaning
Once again, the Christian faith has no parallel. God did not call us to meaning by asking us to be good people or to love one another. Only through the experience of worship does meaning come to be.
Only something greater than pleasure can provide meaning, and that is the perpetual novelty of God himself in worship. The Bible tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind, and only when we’ve done that can we begin to love our neighbors as ourselves. This also corresponds to experience.
Morality
Christianity says morality is not culturally based, but instead is rooted in the very character of God. The only way to explain a transcendent morality is to find it in an eternal, moral, omnipotent, infinite God who is inseparable from his character. Thus, Christianity explains morality in a coherent manner.
Destiny
Destiny is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the historical event that proved his divinity and that opened the door to heaven for everyone who will follow him.
No man spoke like Jesus, no one answered questions the way he answered them, not just propositionally, but in His person.
Existentially we can test it out (does it cohere with human existence?)
Empirically we can test it out - the Bible is not just a book of mysticism or spirituality; it is a book that gives historical and geographical truths.
If you’re an honest skeptic, it’s not just calling you to a feeling; it’s calling you to a real Person. That’s why the apostle Peter said, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). He’s saying, “this is true, this is reality. This can be trusted.” And, yes, this truth excludes that which is contrary.
Perhaps all religions are teaching the same fundamental truths at their core. Some people say that when you strip away everything, all world religions are essentially teaching the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of mankind. That would mean that all the world’s faith systems are equally valid.
What do we mean by the universal fatherhood of God when Buddhism doesn’t even claim there is a God? What do we mean by the fatherhood of God when the Hindu philosopher Shankara said theism is only a child’s way to ultimately get to the top where you find out God is not distinct from you? This fatherhood of God is not a trans-religious doctrine; it’s an illusion.
In sum, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity are not saying the same thing. They are distinct and mutually exclusive religious doctrines. They cannot all be true at the same time.
Maybe the various religions each have a slice of the truth - each religion is a sincere but inadequate way attempt to explain the mystery of God, and so each one is valid in its own way. Does the atheist have a slice of the truth, or is he marginalized here? If so, which piece, since the fundamental tenet of atheism is that there is no God?
There is an old parable of blind men exploring an elephant - one feeling the leg and thinking it’s a tree; one feeling the trunk and thinking it’s a rope, and so on. But it’s not like we are blind people feeling the elephant - the parable has been given away and the fact is that this is, indeed, an elephant! The blind man may tell you it’s a tree, but he’s wrong. The seeing man knows this an elephant, and Jesus Christ has made it clear the eternal truths of God may be known.