i wrote this to a friend once, i hope it helps, it is very long though.
is there but one way?
Is there only one way to succed? i mean on in a spiritual sense? Is Christianity the ONLY way to reach God? or is it just one of many ways?
For alot of people this would be called a no brainer. but lets seriously look at this. Today its pretty much a religious and spiritual buffet, pick what you want and mix and match alittle. There are so many different faiths out there. There are so many different religious texts which seem to hold the same authenticness, such as the Bible, Torah, Qu'ran, Bhagavad, Gita, the book of Mormon and more! Want a religious leader aswell? then there is the pope, the Dalai Lama, Hare Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed and more. Theres groups with in Christians: Catholic, pentecostal, United, SDA, Mormon an so many more, I read some where that is like a few hundred different christian groups, but ok if not a christian group there is Islam, Buddhist, the new age movement, Jewish, sciencetology type beliefs and again so many more.
Along with this there is a belief that all roads lead to the same place, all paths lead to God. For a person to say that there is a ONE way is seen as arrogant, narrow-minded, bigoted and prejudicial. What is true for me is just that and which is true for you and is true for you. Searching for God can be seen as climbing a mountain, there is more then one way to climb a mountian right? mountains are too big for there to be just one way. Same goes for God if he is soooooo big then as if there is just one way to worship, all different beliefs are just different ways to the same peak. One step further, all the different names for God refer to the same one right?
If this is true then do we really need to worry about what road we are on in live if they all lead home? Does that mean that all we really need to do is seek the spiritual preference and not spiritual truth? The HUGE number of faith can make it seem as though there is more then one to God. As more and more religions surface the notion of ONE being right lessens. The fact there are so many options does not have much to do with whether ultimate spiritual truth actually exists. A questions can be multi-choice but that dont mean it is multi-answer (Which i am likely to find out with my hsc hehe)
The idea that all paths are legitimate comes from the feeling of all religions are pretty much the same. Most religions believe in the following: a higher power(God/s of some kind), some kind of afterlife, and the need for spiritual growth. This can make us think that choseing what we believe is secondary to actual spiritual development in one form or an other. While looking at a quick overview of all major religions it can be seen so many similarities between them all. Its also true that there are some major condridictons in some rather important areas. Example? Ok Christians, Muslims and Jew(plus a few others) believe in ONE mighty God, Buddhist dont believe in any God, but Hinduists believe in many God. Christians believe Jesus was right in his claim to be God, while a Muslim does not believe he was God. A Daoist believes Jesus reached the 'Dao' but messed up for teaching it and allowed it to go to his head by believeing he could die for the salvation of others. Many religions believe in right wrong, moral and immoral, while much of the new age movemtent says there is no absolute and its all relative. Even the relationship with God differs from faith to faith. Look at the 'prodical son' the story told by Jesus ends with the boy being shown a undeseved kindness, while a similar story in Buddha's teachings ends with the boy working for 20 odd years to pay for his past behaviour (read this to find more
http://www.comparativereligion.com/prodigal.html)
With all things it comes down to one is wrong and one is right we are all wrong, I dont think it can be said that we all believe in the same thing just with a different name. If God exist, unless he is a senile, confused, muddled, schizophrenic unbalanced, lieing and trickster of a being who is unsure on what he stands for, then there IS religious and spiritual truth aswell as religious and spiritual falseness. The areas in which the contridictions are found are not trivial in their nature. The nature of God, the identity of Jesus Christ, and how we enter into a real and loving relationship with God are the mega important factors.
Another idea which leads to the notion of all paths going to the same place is the feeling thay all that matters is sincerity. Its not so much what a person believes but more how they believe it. We should full respect and value sincerity, we should be more sincer in what we believe. But it can not be the only factor for spiritual truth. The way you believe is hugely important but so is what you believe. If its all about the sincerity of it then is it possible to be sincerly wrong maybe? Say you have a headache at like 3 in the morning, u get up in half asleepness and reach for what you sincerly believe to be panadol tablets but is fact those toliet tablets which will kill you. No amount of sincerity in belief of those tablets being panadol will stop that. Hilter sincerly believed that killing thousands of jewish people was justified, again he was sincerly wrong. Sincerity matters but it cant be all that matters, sincerity cannot alter reality. Its not the sincerity of our faith that matters but the object of our faith, think of it as a rope, it matters what u tie it too.
Its often seen as offencive for a person to openly state their religion holds the truth. See because God is so big and our understanding so small it is nothingless then arrogance, narrow-mindedness and nastyness to believe that one group to believe that they hold the truth alone. So to maintain tolerance we cant use the words right or wrong or even consider the notion of right and wrong even exists. This does not fit in with anyother part of life. There is a right and wrong way to get home, there is a right and wrong answer to 2+2 there is a right and wrong way to eat, there is a right and wrong way to breathe(if we stop taking in breath we die) there is a right and wrong way to drive and such. If a blind dude is standing near the edge of a building and askes u which way he should walk, would ur response be " i really shouldnt say that one direction is better than another". Everyone must avoid a spirit that rips down others for their believes and denies them their religious freedom. But this spirit of tolerance is not the same as believeing that all paths lead home. Just because you find a place to put ur spiritual trust in does not mean you are intolerant to other beliefs. It does not even deny the existance of some truth in other beliefs. The rad dude C.S Lewis wrote "If you are a christian you do not have to think that the other religions are simply wrong...... if you are a christian you are free to think that all religions even the queerest ones hold some hint of truth"
A big question is whether or not people believe in truth, and it seems that many dont. By truth i mean the existance of truth. This lady i meet this year said "I believe in God. Im not a crazyly religious person, actually i dont remember the last time i went to church. My faith has carried me along way. It's my own religion, its ashleeism, just my own little voice." The most accpeted definition of truth is correspondence between our ideas or perceptions and reality. So if i say "WOW its snowing" it becomes truth when i go outside and it is snowing, but seeing its spring and its like 27 degrees today that was a bad example but you get the idea right? That which is true is that which actually is. The belief in more then one way to God is really a belief that truth does not exist or rather that it dont matter. This way of thinking does not fit in anywhere else in life. Such as if i want a coke from a vending machine me pressing the diet coke button will not get me a coke or if i want to call home me calling any random number will not get me on the phone to home. Or if i want to get to church riding my bike toward jesmond will not get me there as it is the opposite direction. There is no other area in life which chosing any path will get you to the same destionation. So if it fails for the other areas of life why does it would it work for the spiritual realm? that Freud dude said "it were really a matter of indifference what we believed, then we may as well build our bridges of cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of gramme of morphia into a patient instead of a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a narcotic rather then ether"
Now on to something important, The BIGGEST claim ever in anysense was made by Jesus Christ. He said: "I AM the way the truth and the life, no one come to the father but by me" He didnt say "I am a way and Im a truth and I am a life you can live" In Acts peter often says "It is by the name of Jesus Christ..." Also in Acts 4:10-12 "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other nane under heaven given to men by which we can be saved." At first this is a shocking claim, but dont dismiss it just because there are so many different religions and spiritual ideas out there. See there are tons of other ideas out there but as covered way up earlier in this piece of writting they differ SOOOOOO much, and choosing where to rest your spiritual trust is not a narrow-minded or intorlerant thing to do. Truth exists, and it matters lots. Say all roads dont lead to God then hopefully your spiritual searchfullness will lead you to a radical reality of one way. I believe that way is through Jesus Christ.
Now you maybe thinking "far out what a narrow-minded bigoted losery christian loser" but wait up. I havent covered what is a possiblity for those who do not believe in JC as the way the truth and the life. Ok so lets say that Jesus is the only way, does that mean that anyone not believeing in him is going to hell? God does not want anyone to be seperated from him, NO ONE. God wants us to take the free gift of grace and of enternal life which is given through Christ. But seeing God did not make these mindless creations who are all like robots, rather he gave us the ability to make a choice. We can accept the gift of grace or we can reject it. With the freedom comes the consequences. If it didnt work this way then what is the point of the choice? zippo. God does not send anybody to hell we pick our own destination. John puts it like so " 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." (john 3:18-19) So a person who embraces Jesus is F-R-E-E. Now lets go better then peter, check out how Jesus puts it "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." John 5:24
But something that always got me was what about the way rad people who do such good things but dont believe in Jesus for what ever reason? First what is good? The bible tells us the no one is truely good, our best is worse then Gods worst, even our brigthest lights of goodness would agree with that, Gandhi and Teresa and such. No one is in a less of a broken state of relation with Jesus/God and no person needs the way to God more then anyone else, we all equal. For those who have either never ever heard of Jesus or have been taught about him in a dodgey unGodly manner then what about them? The bible tell us that God's character is perfect, meaning he is justice, he is love. We are all judged on the knowledge we have and how we used that knowledge, plus how we respond to it, so say a mentally challenged person, they cant respond in the same why i can to the message does that mean they are condemded? OF COURSE NOT! God is love and wants all of his creations to be with him. C.S Lewis is a rad guy, he said "We do know that no man can be saved except by Jesus Christ; we do not know that only those who know him can be saved through him" This dont mean that people will be saved by Jesus through another form from another religion but rather we will all be judged fairly by God on the basis of knowledge and experience with Christ and how they can respond to that. So while there is a choice and there are consquences and some believe hell is real no one actually has to go there as the way the truth and the life is available to us all.
