World Religions

In his book, Rick Mattson writes:

I’m not the one making the exclusive claim about salvation—Jesus is. He is the one who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). I’m simply trusting his authority to know these things. It’s like going to my excellent family physician, Dr. Lehman. If he tells me my cholesterol is too high and that I need to cut down on sweets and fatty foods, I believe him. He’s an expert on the matter. Sure, there are plenty of other voices I could listen to about my health, including celebrities, infomercials and tabloid articles. To the extent that these voices disagree with Dr. Lehman, they’re most likely wrong. My physician has made the “exclusive” claim that his patient, me, has a certain malady that requires a certain treatment. I’m just the amateur who believes him.

Editor's Note: This simple illustration can show that proclaiming the exclusive claims of Christ need not be arrogant. Preachers can easily adapt this illustration with details from their own lives. Here’s my adaptation of the illustration (with a twist of humor):

I went to a sleep specialist doctor because apparently, I snore a lot. I told everyone, including the sleep specialist doctor, “Fine, do your study, but I am NOT wearing one of those CPAP machines.” I was convinced the doctor was getting kickbacks from the CPAP machine company. So I spent the night with electrodes stuck on my head and the doctor gave me his diagnosis: you have sleep apnea and you need to wear a CPAP. Now I trusted his expertise even less. I called a doctor friend to investigate this quack with his kickback scam. My friend said, “Your doctor is the real deal. Wear the CPAP machine. You’ll have more time on earth to enjoy your grandchildren.” So, every night I put that silly mask on my face. Why? Because after kicking and screaming, I have come to trust and to surrender to my doctor—his authority, his expertise. Why do followers of Jesus obey him in all things? Because they have surrendered to his authority and expertise.

Possible Preaching Angles: Rick Mattson writes, "This analogy can work with any authority figure you can think of: pilot, air traffic controller, professor, lawyer, scientist, astronaut, boat captain and so on. I prefer the doctor image because it’s so universally revered. I suppose a skeptic could push back on the analogy by pointing out that sometimes doctors are wrong and one should get a second opinion. That’s fine. The point is that somewhere in the process I, the amateur, trust in some authority who makes an exclusive truth claim about my condition.”

In his book, Chuck Bentley writes:

There's a name for God that we seldom ever use. I know I don't use it very often. That name is Jealous. Sounds strange, doesn't it? When we call someone jealous, it’s usually to point out a character flaw. How can something we consider bad be attributed to God, especially one of his names? “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14).

Back in the late 1960s, there was a popular TV western series called The Guns of Will Sonnet. Walter Brennan played the title role, a Scripture-quoting man with a reputation for unparalleled gun fighting skills. As the series progressed, viewers saw the wise old man avoid more gunfights than he got into the simple, truthful statement about his abilities: “No brag, just fact.”

God has the title of Jealous because he’s the only one worthy of all our affection and adoration. No brag, just fact. The complete worthiness of ultimate praise grants him and him alone the right to be the Jealous One. He’s God Almighty. He’s at the top of all Kings, all Lords, all gods, and all things. So jealousy is normative, if you’re God.

Here’s the most common question from visitors to Brooklyn Museum's Egyptian art galleries: Why are the statues’ noses broken?

Edward Bleiberg, who oversees the museum's Egyptian art, was surprised the first few times he heard this question. He had taken for granted that the sculptures were damaged. Certainly, after thousands of years, an ancient artifact should show wear and tear. But the broken noses led Bleiberg to uncover a widespread pattern of deliberate destruction. He noted, “The consistency of the patterns … of damage found in sculpture suggests that it's purposeful.” A protruding nose on a three-dimensional statue is easily broken, he conceded, but the plot thickens when flat reliefs also have smashed noses.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the essence of a deity could inhabit an image of that deity. These campaigns of vandalism were therefore intended to "deactivate an image's strength." "The damaged part of the body is no longer able to do its job." Without a nose, the statue-spirit ceases to breathe, so that the vandal is effectively "killing" it. To hammer the ears off a statue of a god would make it unable to hear a prayer. Pharaohs regularly issued decrees with terrible punishments for anyone who would dare threaten their likeness.

Bleiberg noted the skill evidenced by the iconoclasts. "They were not vandals recklessly and randomly striking out works of art." In fact, the targeted precision of their chisels suggests that they were skilled laborers, trained and hired for this exact purpose.

Possible Preaching Angle: In the same way, our idols are absolutely powerless to help us, even as we keep running to them. God showed his utter contempt for the idol of Dagon in its temple (1 Sam. 5:1-5) when he threw it down and decapitated it. The prophets also spoke of the powerlessness of the idols to see, hear, or defend themselves (Ps. 135:15-18) but in contrast our God made the heavens and earth (Psalm 96:5).

Theologian and missionary to India Leslie Newbigin liked to help Christians see the Bible as one story. He often told the story of a Hindu scholar who once challenged Newbigin:

I can't understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don't need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is meaning of reality as a whole …

Newbigin commented on this story:

There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside [the Bible]. We have fragmented the Bible into bits—moral bits, systematic-theological bits, devotional bits, historical-critical bits, narrative bits, and homiletical bits. When the Bible is broken up in this way, there is no comprehensive grand narrative to withstand the power of the comprehensive humanist narrative that shapes our culture. The Bible bits are accommodated to the more all-embracing cultural story, and it becomes that story—i.e. the humanist story—that shapes our lives.

It's difficult for many people to accept that there can be only one way to rescue us from sin and judgement. But a Christian apologist uses the following analogies to show how the cross of Christ is the one and only solution we need:

Most ailments need particular antidotes. Increasing the air pressure in your tires will not fix a troubled carburetor. Aspirin will not dissolve a tumor. Cutting up credit cards will not wipe out debt that is already owed. If your water pipes are leaking, you call a plumber, not an oncologist, but a plumber will not cure a cancer.

Any adequate solution must solve the problem that needs to be solved, and singular problems need singular solutions. Some antidotes are one-of-a-kind cures for one-of-a-kind ailments. Sometimes only one medicine will do the job, as much as we may like it to be otherwise.

Mankind faces a singular problem. People are broken and the world is broken because our friendship with God has been broken, ruined by human rebellion. Humans, you and I—are guilty, enslaved, lost, dead. All of us. Everyone. Everywhere. The guilt must be punished, the debt must be paid, the slave must be purchased. Promising better conduct in the future will not mend the crimes of the past. No, a rescuer must ransom the slaves, a kindred brother must pay the family debt, a substitute must shoulder the guilt. There is no other way of escape.

In a question and answer period after one of his lectures, C.S. Lewis was asked which of the world's religions gives its followers the greatest happiness. Lewis paused and said, "While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is best."

Possible Preaching Angle: In other words, if you want instant, but very short-term happiness, create a religion that focuses on worshipping you.

The British theologian Leslie Newbigin told the following story to illustrate how different cultures water down the claims of Jesus:

When I was a young missionary I used to spend one evening each week in the monastery of the Ramakrishna Mission in the town where I lived, sitting on the floor with the [Hindu] monks and studying with them the Upanishads and the Gospels. In the great hall of the monastery, as in all the premises of the Ramakrishna Mission, there is a gallery of portraits of the great religious teachers of humankind. Among them, of course, is a portrait of Jesus. Each year on Christmas Day worship was offered before this picture. Jesus was honored, worshipped, as one of the many manifestations of deity in the course of human history.

But this wasn't a step toward leading people to faith in Jesus Christ. It was actually what Newbigin called "the cooption of Jesus into the Hindu worldview." He explains:

Jesus had become just one figure in the endless cycle of karma and samsara, the wheel of being in which we are all caught up. He had been domesticated into the Hindu worldview. That view remained unchallenged. It was only slowly, through many experiences, that I began to see that something of this domestication had taken place in my own Christianity, that I too had been more ready to seek a "reasonable Christianity," a Christianity that could be defended on the terms of my whole intellectual formation as a twentieth-century Englishman, rather than something which placed my whole intellectual formation under a new and critical light. I, too, had been guilty of domesticating the gospel.

Leighton Ford, evangelist and brother-in-law of Billy Graham, once met the former boxing champion Muhammad Ali at a hotel in Sydney, Australia. Ford listened as Ali regaled a group of admiring onlookers before introducing himself as "Billy Graham's brother-in-law." Ali's face lit up as he said, "Oh Billy! Billy! I love Billy! I went up and saw him at the house at Montreat and he signed a book for me." Ford explained what happened next:

We got into a very interesting conversation. He was not only very articulate, he was also a very bright man. Of course earlier in his life Ali had become a Muslim, but he told me and the onlookers, "You know I have travelled all over the world. And I have seen all these different religions. It seems to me that they all have the same thing. It's kind of like you have a river, and you have a lake, and you have a pond, and you have a stream. But they all have water in them, so they are all the same, aren't they?"

I said, "Muhammad that is very interesting. But suppose you have all of them and suppose they are all polluted. Then you would need a purifier, don't you? You see that's who Jesus is. Jesus is the purifier." And he thought about that for a minute and he said, "That's good. I had never thought about it quite like that. Jesus, the purifier."

I know that Muslims don't refer to Jesus as "the Son of God" because they interpret that in some physical way that God had relations with Mary, which of course isn't true. So I told him, "Did you know that in the Bible Jesus is called the Second Adam?" And he said, "I didn't know that." I said, "Yes, you see there was the first Adam that God made in the first creation. Then the second Adam was Jesus, the new creation, in whom everyone can become new." And he said, "I've got to think about that."

Well it was 30 years ago and I haven't seen him since. I know that "The Greatest," as he called himself, has met the One who alone is really the Greatest, because all great ones pass away. But he has come face-to-face with the One great God. I wonder what Muhammad Ali had to say, or maybe he would say, "God what do you have to say?"

The following Buddhist poem, in the form of a "waka," was written in the 12th century by Saigyo Hoshi after he visited a Shinto Grand Temple:

Gods here?
Who can know?
Not I.
Yet I sigh
and tears flow
tear on tear.

Editor's Note: Note the author's honest longing for true knowledge of God. He yearns to experience God and God's presence but he can't know for sure. According to the New Testament, God has revealed himself in the presence and person of Jesus Christ. In Christ, we can know that God is with us.

Buried within Pew's study on the American religious landscape was a startling find. Adults who identified with a specific religion were asked whether they see their religion as "the one, true faith leading to eternal life" or if, in their view, "many religions can lead to eternal life." How you answer such a question will determine whether evangelism is integral or peripheral, a matter of urgency or complacency.

In a stunning revelation, two-thirds of Christians believe that many religions can lead to eternal life and 50 percent of all Christians believe some non-Christian religions can lead to life everlasting.

Possible Preaching Angles: James Emery White concludes, "With such a mindset, one should not be surprised at tepid attempts at evangelism. And when attempted, poor results."

The central assumption of many in the interfaith dialogue business has been that at their core, all religious people—Hindus and Buddhists, Muslims and Jews, Christians and Animists—are striving for the same thing, and are just using different words and concepts to get there ….. But how true is that assumption?

Let's take a closer look at the four world religions that represent about three-quarters of the global population …. And let's start with the most basic belief in each religion: the idea of God. Within the various streams of Hindu thought alone, there are multiple answers to the question, "Who or what is god?" Hindus can believe that there is one god, 330 million gods, or no god at all. The Vedas, the most ancient of Hindu scriptures, which are accepted by most Hindus as normative, teach that atman is Brahman, or "the soul is god," meaning that god is in each of us and each of us is part of god. The common greeting, Namaste, which means, roughly, "The god within me recognizes and greets the god within you," reflects this belief.

In his apologetic for the Buddhist faith, Ven S. Dhammika, the author of several popular books on Buddhism, writes, "Do Buddhists believe in god? No, we do not. There are several reasons for this. The Buddha, like modern sociologists and psychologists, believed that religious ideas and especially the god idea have their origin in fear. The Buddha says, 'Gripped by fear, men go to the sacred mountains, sacred groves, sacred trees and shrines.' " So, for most orthodox Buddhists (in the Theravada tradition), the concept of a personal supreme being is at best unimportant, at worst an oppressive superstition.

What about Islam? In the Qur'an, sura 112 ayat 1-4, we read, "Say: He is Allah, the One and Only. Allah, the Eternal, Absolute. He begets not, nor is he begotten. And there is none like unto him." This passage in a primer for Muslim children puts it simply: "Allah is absolute, and free from all defects and has no partner. He exists from eternity and shall remain eternal. All are dependent on him, but he is independent of all. He is father to none, nor has he any son."

In contrast, Christians believe that there is one God who is creator of the world. He is a personal God, a conscious, free, and righteous being. And he is not only a personal God but a God of providence who is involved in the day-to-day affairs of creation. He is a righteous God who expects ethical behavior from each of us. He expects his followers to live out their belief by loving him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and by loving their neighbors as themselves. God, while one in essence, also reveals himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So according to the four largest world religions, God is one with creation and takes on millions of forms, God may or may not exist, God is one and absolute, and God is one but exists in three persons.

If we cannot agree on even the basic definition of God or his character, how can we say that all the major religions are on the same path toward the truth about God?

Like her television show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," actress Sarah Michelle Gellar's personal spirituality borrows from a hodgepodge of religions. "I consider myself a spiritual person," she told Scotland's Daily Record. "I believe in an idea of God, although it's my own personal ideal. I find most religions interesting, and I've been to every kind of denomination: Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist. I've taken bits from everything and customized it." But Gellar also did her homework, telling Rolling Stone that she read through the Bible in 1999. Two actors reportedly have become Christians while working on the show, but its emphasis on witchcraft has kept it at the top of many Christians' "Must Flee TV" lists.

The Christian way is not the "middle way" between extremes but the "narrow way" between precipices.