Jesus Among Other Gods
I have covered thousands of miles during this writing, not
only for the book, but also through invitations to speak in various parts of
the world. I have walked through
temples, mosques, and predominant religion is not Christian. In the course of this, I have met some very
fine and gracious people. By nature, I
am a people person. I enjoy
conversations, especially around a meal with newfound friends. One such person was the room attendant at a
hotel where I was staying. He is a
Muslim man. Every day when he came in
to make my room, he would also make me a cup of tea, and we would talk. On his off day, he took me sightseeing in
his city and we visited many places of worship. I will never forget him.
I wish more people showed the kindness that he did and the courtesies he
always offered.
And that is the point I wish to make. We can be world-views apart, without anger
and offense. What I believe, I believe
very seriously. And it is because of
this that I write the book. By equal
measure, anything to the contrary, I must question. My earnest prayer is that when you read this, you will make your
judgment based on truth and not the mood of our times. Moods change. Truth does not.
You hear it a thousand times and more growing up in the
East—“We all come through different routes and end up in the same place.” But I say to you, God is not a place or an
experience or a feeling. Pluralistic
cultures are beguiled by the cosmetically courteous idea that sincerity or
privilege of birth is all that counts and that truth is subject to the
beholder. In no other discipline of
life can one be so naïve as to claim inherited belief or insistent belief as
the sole determiner of truth. Why,
then, do we make the catastrophic error of thinking that all religions are
right and that it does not matter whether the claims are objectively true or
not?
All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is an
uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not
and accordingly, of defining life’s purpose.
Anyone who claims that all religions are the same not only betrays an
ignorance of all religions but has a caricatured view of even the best-known
ones. Every religion at its core is
exclusive.
Every other person who is at the heart of any major religion
has had his or her beginning either in fancy or in fact. But nevertheless, there is a beginning. Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was a moment
preceded by eternity. His being neither
originated in time nor came about by the will of humanity. The author of time, who lived in the
eternal, was made incarnate in time that we might live with the eternal view.
In that sense, the message of Christ was not the introduction of a religion but
an introduction to truth about reality, as God alone knows it. To deny Jesus’ message while pursuing
spirituality is to conjure an imaginary religion in attempt to see heaven while
sight is confined to earth. That is
precisely what Jesus challenged when He said, “I come that you might have life.”
(John 10:10) His Life spells living. Your life or my life, apart from Him, spells
death.
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Excerpts, Jesus Among Other Gods, page two
At the heart of every major religion is a leading
exponent. As the exposition is studied
something very significant emerges.
There comes a bifurcation, or a distinction, between the person and the
teaching. Mohammed, to the Koran. Buddha, to the Noble Path. Krishna, to his philosophizing. Zoroaster, to his ethics.
Whatever we may make of their claims, one reality is inescapable. They are teachers who point to their
teaching or show some particular way.
It is not Zoroaster to whom you turn.
It is Zoroaster to whom you listen. It is not Buddha who delivers you, it is his “Noble Truths” that
instruct you. It is not Mohammed who
transforms you, it is the beauty of the Koran that woos you. By contrast, Jesus
did not only teach or expound His message.
He was identical with His message.
We must be clear that in a non-theistic system, which
Buddhism is, ethics become central and the rules are added ad infinitum. Buddha and his followers are the originators
of these rules…Teaching at best beckons us to morality, but is not in itself
efficacious. Teaching is like a
mirror. It can show you if your face is
dirty, but the mirror will not wash your face…By contrast, in a very simple way
Jesus drew the real need of His audience to that hunger which is spiritual in
nature, a hunger that is shared by every human, so that we are not human livings
or human doings but human beings.
We are not in need merely of a superior ethic, we are in need of a
transformed heart and will that seeks to do the will of God.
This double-pronged search for an answer—“Is God the author
of pain?” “Is my pain because of my sin?”—has disturbed both skeptic and
believer alike. Every thinking person
attempting to make sense of a world enriched with good but convulsing with evil
tried to think this through, yet, finds no easy solution…I am convinced that
there is no more comprehensive answer to the problem of suffering and evil than
the one that the Christian faith affords.
…But here, Christianity provides a counter challenge to
remind them that they have not escaped the problem of contradiction. If evil exists, then one must assume that
good exists in order to know the difference.
If good exists, one must assume that a moral law exists by which to
measure good and evil. But if a moral
law exists, must not one posit a moral law Giver, or at least an objective
basis for a moral law? By an objective
basis, I mean something that is transcendently true at all time, regardless of
whether I believe it or not.
A deadly mistake that I believe our cultures make in the
pursuit of meaning is this illusion that love devoid of the sacred, a naked
love, is all we need to carry us through life’s test and passions. Such a love cannot sustain us. Millions of lives are hurt every day in the
name of such love. Millions of betrayals
have been made every day because of love.
Love may make the world go round, but it does not keep life
straight. In fact, love by itself will
make evil more painful. Love can only
be what it was meant to be when it is wedded first to the sacred. Sacredness means separateness. Holiness beckons not just to love but moves
in increments till it is climaxed in worship.
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Excerpts, Jesus Among Other Gods, page three
It is with good reason that some of the finest novelists and
playwrights have dug their narrative spades into the soil of injustice. Philosophers from the time of Socrates and
Plato have placed supreme value in the virtue of justice in any civilized
society. Aristotle went as far to say
that justice was the cornerstone of all ethics. Why? Because justice is
the handmaiden of truth, and when truth dies, justice is buried with it. The silence that attends such a tragedy may
well be the silence according the perpetrators, a haunting moment of truth.
I am convinced that there are tens of thousands of students
turned out of our universities whose minds have been trained to disbelieve God,
any contrary argument or evidence notwithstanding. The father of modern Rationalism is the French philosopher Rene
Descartes. His dictum—“I think
therefore I am”—resonates in the halls of philosophy. From that fundamentally rational approach to existence, skeptics
have extrapolated their own dictum—“I doubt, therefore I am an intellectual.”
The teaching of Jesus is clear. No one ought to be compelled to become a Christian. This sets the Christian faith drastically
apart from Islam. In no country where
the Christian faith is the faith of the majority is it illegal to propagate
another faith. There is not a country
in the world that I know of where renunciation of one’s Christian faith puts
one in danger of being hunted down by the powers of state. Yet, there are numerous Islamic countries
where it is against the law to publicly proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
and where a Muslim who renounces his or her belief in Islam to believe anything
else risks death. Freedom to critique
the text of the Koran and the person of Mohammed are prohibited by the laws of
blasphemy and the result is tortuous punishment. One must respect the concern of a culture to protect what it
deems sacred, but to compel a belief in Jesus Christ is foreign to the Gospel,
and that is a vital difference.
What better way to apply an economic theory of supply and
demand than to manufacture a religion that is in limitless supply and can be
tailored to fit one’s personal demand?
A personalized religion with an impersonal God—that’s what it is. This kind of religion by its nature has an
immense capacity to reflect the pragmatic, a chameleon’s dream. In the desert, the temptation was not to
invent a naturalistic explanation as much as it was to reinterpret the
revelation by massaging the context. No
religions have done more to prove the reality of this temptation than Hinduism
and Buddhism. With repeated effort,
noted scholars and practitioners have tried to shade the truths of Christianity
and make them resemble their own worldview.
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May 2000