Only one religion?
You might have heard the quote by the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who said, "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it." At a first glance, religions do seem to be very similar, apparently leading to the same sorts of things in the same sort of way. For instance, most religions have some element of prayer to God or a divine being, and most promote activities that look out for the weaker members of society – the poor, the elderly and so on.
Most religions have Scriptures – Christians have the Bible, Muslims have the Qu’ran, and Hindus the four Vedas. Most religions believe in and have reverence for God, or a series of gods, as creator and governor of the universe, and several – most notably Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Sikhism – base their religions on the idea that we need forgiveness from God.
Given all of these similarities, it can seem that all religions are essentially the same thing. The Buddha told a story in which God is on top of a mountain, and just as one can find several paths to the top of a mountain, so many people can reach the same God in different ways. According to Buddha, all people are heading upwards, on different paths, all of them reaching the top of the mountain eventually. His main point was that all paths lead to God.
In our pluralistic and post-modern society where increasing scepticism is placed on any one claim to truth, this interpretation of religion seems appealing. If Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism all represent different valid paths to the same destination, then there would be no need to argue about which religion is the ‘true’ religion. Such disputes would be pointless and a waste of breath. And we think that perhaps viewing religion in this way would eventually lead to less religious bigotry and greater cooperation amongst people.
However, anyone who has spent any time looking more closely at religions will realise that it is logically impossible to say that all religions are the same. If you let each religion speak for itself, you find religions around the world differ greatly, even on basic concepts - God, truth, reality, the nature of the basic human problem and so on.
In fact, the different world religions teach ideas that are not compatible to the level that they completely contradict each another. For instance, just in what religions say about God varies hugely. Hindus believe that all people are part of the divine and are therefore not guilty before God. Islam says that it conclusively knows that God, Allah, exists because he revealed himself through Muhammad. Buddhism completely denies the idea of there being one God. Christianity speaks of God existing in the form of a Trinity, revealed through the person of Jesus.
There are also differences in what the different religions aim for: Christianity says that the ultimate goal for people is forgiveness and a restored relationship with God, whereas Buddhism aims to break out of the physical world and into 'enlightenment'.
In particular, the different religions have different ways of dealing with the bad things we have done, offences against God and other people, what the Bible calls sin, our rejection of God’s moral order for the world. For instance, Islam says that you can be right before Allah through doing what he likes, but Christianity insists that only Jesus' sacrifice can prevent you from being guilty before God.
It is, therefore, a logical impossibility for all religions to be true. And if they are not all completely true then, consequently, not all of them can lead to God. Sincere people may be, but logically, some of them must be sincerely and tragically wrong.
What makes Christianity different?
It is worth noting that to claim that all beliefs are valid is to say that what is at the heart of each - what makes it different - ultimately does not matter. Rather than accepting all religions as true, saying all religions lead to the same thing is saying that all religions are ultimately the same. This may seem sophisticated and tolerant at first, but actually, when you stop and think about it, it is an arrogant position that does not listen to what the religions actually say.
It is important, in our efforts to be tolerant, to let the religions speak for themselves and to given them to respect they deserve.
So where does this leave us? So religions are different... which one is right? How can we know which is the right religion to follow? We do not want to pick the wrong one! The key with Christianity is the person of Jesus and the claims that he made about himself.
Firstly,
Jesus claimed to be God in human form.
In one account of Jesus’ life, John’s gospel, we read the following:
[Jesus said], “The Father and I are one."
When Jesus says, “The Father and I are one”, he is saying that he is the revelation of God [the Father], in human form. This was an incredible thing to say, and enormously offensive in the monotheistic culture of 1st century Palestine. In this passage, we see it is because of this claim that the people wanted to kill him – and they eventually got their way later on.
The fact that Jesus claimed to be God is the key thing that makes Christianity different to other religions. Muhammad never claimed to be God. Buddha never claimed to be God. But Jesus did.
Postmodernity has rightly woken us up to the fact that our perspective always limits our take on the world. When you are sitting in a traffic jam, you can see about ten cars up ahead and the person behind you in the mirror. Your account of what caused the jam and of how far back the tailback goes is just a guess. You just cannot see far enough. And when it comes to giving an account of reality, every religious teacher, every philosopher – and all of us – are stuck ‘in traffic’. All of us are stuck within the perspective of our moment in history.
When you are in a traffic jam, the one person who can give you the low-down on what caused the jam and how far back it goes is the person in the police helicopter. He can see everything. Similarly, to have authority, to be able to speak truth, we need somebody from outside our system that can see what we are really like to come into our system; to come from outside of the world into the world.
Jesus claims to be this person – one who can speak having a helicopter’s eye view on the universe. Jesus claimed to be God in human form – come from outside our system into our system, telling us what God is like and what we’re really like. And if Jesus really is God, then we can know that he is telling the truth. Our search for the truthful religion is over.
So looking into Christianity does not mean looking into what we often think Christianity is about: going to church and long sermons and being nice. Looking into Christianity means looking at the life of Jesus, as it is recounted in the four biographies of his life in the Bible. It means asking:
What is the evidence that this man, Jesus, is God?
If he is God, then we can know he speaks truth. If not, he is a lunatic or a liar and can be discounted as one who speaks truth. In that case, you can throw your Bible away, as the Christian religion is fundamentally built on a lie.
Since Jesus performed many miracles, raised people from the dead, commanded a storm to be still and it obeyed, healed diseases, and rose from the dead Himself, then we are forced to face the reality of His words. Is what he said true or not? Either Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or he is Lord. No one else in history, except Jesus, has fulfilled detailed prophecies, performed many miracles before eyewitnesses, and risen from the dead. Jesus is unique.
The second thing that makes Christianity different is that
Jesus claimed that his death dealt with sin.
Jesus claimed that his death alone could deal with sin. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” [John 14:6].
This seems harsh to us, but imagine this:
"Doctor, I have these terrible headaches."
"Don’t worry, just take a tablet."
"But which tablet?"
"It doesn't matter, so long as you are sincere about wanting to get rid of the pain."
You probably would not stay with this doctor long, because his relativism is putting your life at risk.
Similarly, when Jesus claims that his death alone is the route to forgiveness with God, he is saying that his death is the only thing that can deal with our problem.
The point is that being ‘sinful’, according to Jesus’ definition, is not what we often understand the term to mean. It means that each of us – along with the rest of humanity, including all Christians – have rejected God’s good and moral way of living in his world, in favour of our own individual way of living in God’s world. And so the Bible can say, “There is no one righteous, not even one; no one understands; no one who seeks God; all have turned away.” [Romans 3:10-12].
Such sinful and selfish behaviour is extremely destructive if each of us is always putting our own needs first. We hurt ourselves and we hurt others in living this way. It is living in this manner, as individuals and as a society, which leaves us with millions of children living in poverty. It is living in this manner that leaves broken families and marginalised people and individuals hurt. And God, a good God, a God of integrity, says that justice must be done. And this means that all sinful people – including all of us – face God’s anger for putting ourselves above God and above others.
We may find being told by Jesus that we fall short of God’s perfect standards incredibly offensive, but it is the claim that Jesus makes. God is angry with us, and we need to be forgiven.
How can a good God justly forgive us? How can he be right to his character – and ensure justice is done – and yet forgive sinful people like us? Amazingly, the Bible claims that Jesus’ death was to be for the benefit of sinners like us. Jesus was presented by God to die for us all. Jesus, himself God in human form, and the only perfect man who did not deserve to die, came into the world to intervene on God’s behalf. He acted as humanity’s representative and substitute; he acted in our place. He alone was untainted by sin so that he could take the full effects of God’s punishment on himself. On the cross, Jesus suffered the spiritual punishment that should have been ours – excruciating to the level that he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Mark 15:34].
All of this was in the place of people like us, so that one of the Bible writers, Paul, could say: “God made him who had no sin to become sin for us, so we might be the righteousness of God.” [2 Corinthians 5:21].
Jesus’ death on the cross proves how seriously God views our sin, our rebellion against God. Sin must be judged, even if it is carried by Jesus – God in human form - himself. It also proves how committed that God is to saving sinners, because it was God the Father that sent him there.
Because of the substitution, the Father looked down on the crucified Jesus and did not see the perfect Son who always loved and obeyed him. Instead, he saw the worst swindler, rapist, liar, thief, murderer – the worst rebel that the world has ever known. And he judged him for it.
And why did Jesus do all this? Why did he take this punishment? Through going to the cross himself, we can see that God’s amazing love means that he would rather take the punishment of death himself than let people like us be punished. Jesus’ death on the cross is God’s initiative and gift to humanity.
And he did it because he loves us: an awesome, breathtaking love that is prepared to pay the highest price for the sake of people like us, who deserve nothing from him. When we see how big a problem sin is for God, that we realise just how much God loves us. Jesus’ supreme motivation for going to the cross was not duty or obligation, but rather it rooted in incomprehensible love for us.
No amount of good works or 'religion' can make us right with God – we are already guilty. Only Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross - where, as God in human form, he willingly took the punishment we deserved - can deal with sin.
Christianity is distinct from most other religions as it not about doing things, but about what God has already done. Whilst other religions are all about humanity somehow striving to reach up to God and earn our way to him, Christianity teaches of a God who reaches down to us. The Bible teaches that as sinful people, there is no way that we can get to God, because no matter what we do we cannot change the fact that we are by nature sinful and guilty.
God recognized this and sent Jesus to take our punishment upon himself so that just is done and we might be forgiven, made possible through Jesus' death, and received in faith.
Christianity does not say that other religions get everything totally wrong. They may have some truth: for instance, we can agree with Islam that there is only one God. However, world religions disagree about central issues: especially who is Jesus? And why did he die? Christianity sees that what we need is forgiveness for sin; otherwise, we rightly face God’s anger. There is nowhere else that God’s love and justice is satisfied except through Jesus’ death on the cross.
And so Christians are those people who have trusted in what Christ has said. We believe in what Jesus said and did. Jesus is the one who said he was the only way – which only his death could deal with sin. Jesus himself said, "I am the way, the truth and the life - no one comes to the Father except through me." [John 14:6].
And so to say that other religions can be true means that Jesus is false. To say that there are other ways to God also means that Jesus is false.
This is what it comes down to: either Jesus is who he said he was and what he said is true, or he is false. This is a choice you must make: will you trust what Jesus has said or will you reject him?
