When “The Only Way” is the Wrong Play

If belief was a planet, I have always lived on Exclusivity Island. For as far back as I can imagine, I have understood Jesus as the singular provision of God for people’s salvation—and still do. On Exclusivity Island, Jesus is the “only way.”

But others have a different story than mine. For them, the trip to Exclusivity Island involves crossing ideological and cultural oceans. There are sea monsters and storms along the way. Their journey is long and costly.

Not for me. I have always resided on this unique and meaningful island.

Growing up, I was taught to believe that the exclusivity of Jesus might be the most important of all beliefs.

The energy around the discussions was not only about the unique provision of the gospel of Jesus, nor was it only about the beautiful substitution and healing (personal and creation-wide) that Jesus offers. It was also about the need for everyone else to be wrong. In fact it seemed like the most visceral passion surfaced, not over how Jesus was right, but about how other perspectives were wrong (ideologies, religions, and even other denominations).

It seemed like the most visceral passion surfaced, not over how Jesus was right, but about how other perspectives were wrong.

In early adulthood, in my earliest days as a minister, I was trained to be an evangelist. Even to this day, there are few things I enjoy as much as discussing the gospel with people who live on distant locations around the theological globe.

In those years, I was trained in no uncertain terms that the belief that “Jesus is the only way” was an essential element of any gospel conversation. In fact, the gospel presentation that I have personally shared with hundreds of people, prominently included the verse John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”

Exclusivity. Written clearly in black and white … and red.

I have shared it, with the hope of conversion, on four continents with people with almost innumerable backgrounds: Muslims, Atheists, Buddhists, Jews, as well as with my global spiritual cousins from Orthodox and Catholic backgrounds.

Then I had some life-altering experiences.

Climbing the pyramid

In my early 30s, I returned home to my beloved Oregon and to an unexpected appointment as a volunteer chaplain at Reed College, which at the time was regarded as North America’s most anti-religious institution of higher learning.

After many months of sharing faith with those widely intelligent and ideologically diverse Reed students, I made the most unexpected discovery. The question, “Is Jesus the only way to God?” did not make any sense to most of those students.

I am not saying that they did not understand the words or syntax of the question. They simply could not imagine why anyone would ask it. To them, such a question had no moral or practical relevance.

Do you remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It has been 30 years since freshman biology but I still vaguely remember the concept.

Maslow had five levels of needs stacked on top of one another in a pyramid. A quick Google search reminds me that those levels (from bottom to top) were: Physiological Needs, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem and Self-Actualization. The relevant part of Maslow’s theory was this: No one cares about the higher layers of needs until the lower layers have been fulfilled. In other words, the question “How are you self-actualized?” makes no sense to someone whose stomach is empty and whose life is in danger.

I wonder if there is an ideological equivalence to Maslow’s theory. I wonder if there is a hierarchy of beliefs?

“Jesus is the only way” is a belief that often requires a long list of presuppositions. Each presupposition may be a unique epiphany, one important step toward Jesus. For instance:

For Jesus to be the only way, one may need to conclude that God is both One and/or Triune.
To believe that, one may need to believe that Jesus is divine.
To believe that, one may need to discover that Jesus was supernatural (performing miracles and rising from the dead).
To believe that, one may first need to believe that Jesus is the most astonishing/otherworldly person in human history.
To believe that, one would need to believe that Jesus is the best voice in human history on what it means to live a fulfilled and moral life.
To believe that one must first conclude that Jesus is among the best voices in human history.
To believe that, one must be introduced to Jesus’ moral teachings and example.

Like levels on a pyramid, one epiphany is built upon the others, from bottom to top.

Many of our neighbors do not think that Jesus is particularly interesting. Helping them understand that he is one important voice is, for many, a necessary first step as they move through this symphony of epiphanies.

You see, at Reed College, the question “Is Jesus the only way” made no sense. There were too many layers of presuppositions that, for them, were still unanswered. Our little community at Reed needed to begin the conversations at, “Have you considered Jesus as one of the most powerful and life-giving voices in human history?” and dance together from there.

As a lifelong resident of Exclusivity Island, I wanted every student to discover Jesus as the eternal, unique, and unprecedented provision for our personal and cosmic healing: spiritual, emotional, relational, moral, systemic, and universal.

But often it requires a long and perilous journey, but that journey can’t begin if we don’t ask questions that make sense.

For some of you reading this, you may want to stop there. Maybe God spoke to your soul in some lovely way with the concept that we need to find questions that make sense. I pray that that is true.

For others though, you remain unconvinced. As I travel and talk to my beloved cousins in the faith, there are some who find this sort of teaching as an abandonment of the true gospel. They accuse us of cowardice. They see it as a denial of Jesus as the stumbling stone.

I fully agree that Jesus is the stumbling stone (1 Pet. 2:7-8), but it is the role of mature believers to remove every other point of stumbling by conversing in ways that are thoughtful, loving, intuitive, and considerate of the others’ life, beliefs, and experience (Col. 4:2-6, 1 Cor. 9:19-23.)

In an earlier Leadership Journal article, I discussed the only book of the Bible where Christians communicate with non-Christians, the Book of Acts. In those pages there are 13 presentations of the Jesus-message (evangelism). Of those 13 presentations, there is only one that makes a distinctive and particular point about the exclusivity of Jesus (Acts 4:8-12.) One in 13.

Additionally, most of the passages where we find our core exclusivity claims are in passages where the audience is Jesus-followers (John 14:6, Rom. 10:8-10.) This raises the question: Is the doctrine of the exclusivity of Jesus a particular point for evangelism or is it more often a topic of discipleship?

The journey to Exclusivity Island is diverse and most certainly transcends our understanding of salvation. Evangelism may involve a dramatic series of epiphanies as we, the followers of Jesus, invite our neighbors to take their next step toward him. And if exclusivity is more often than not a topic of discipleship, as the Bible illustrates, then salvation may in fact be an archipelago wherein the belief that Jesus is the only way may only be one island among many.

Tony Kriz is a writer and church leader from Portland, Oregon. This article was based on Kriz’s new book, ALOOF: Figuring Out Life with a God who Hides (Nelson, 2015).