A common accusation flung at Christians is that we’re arrogant. “How can you believe that you’re right and Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims — all the thousands of other religions — are wrong?” Isn’t it the height of arrogance to claim that Jesus is the way to God. A way, possibly. But the only way?
Many Christians struggle with this issue. We don’t want to appear arrogant, bigoted, or intolerant. And so a pluralistic view of religions thrives easily here in Canada. It’s easy to slip from the true claim — “all people have equal value” — to the false claim that “all ideas have equal merit”. Those are two very different claims indeed.
So let’s explore this “all religions are really the same” idea. Suppose I say that I’ve just got into literature in a big way. This last year, I’ve read Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Tolkien, but I’ve also read Harry Potter and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” — and I’ve concluded that every book is identical. Would you think that this claim made me wise or tolerant? I suspect you’d conclude I haven’t read any of them. And the same goes for religion. To say “all religions are the same” simply shows that you haven’t investigated any of them. Because once you do, you quickly discover that most religions are not fundamentally the same with superficial differences but the reverse is true: most religions have superficial similarities but fundamental differences.
You see truth, by its very nature, is exclusive. If it is true, as Christianity claims, that Jesus was crucified, died, and rose again, it is not true, as Islam claims, that Jesus never died in the first place and somebody else was killed in his place. Both claims cannot be true.
There’s another problem, too, and it’s with the common idea that religions are all just human attempts to fumble their way towards God, in a vague, “let’s have our best guess” kind of way. That’s not the Christian claim at all. Christianity doesn’t claim to be a set of vague ideas about God. It’s nothing to do with humans trying to reach up to God, hoping we’ve got it right. Rather, at the very heart of Christianity, stands the idea that humans can’t reach up to God — but that God, in his love, has chosen to reach down us. As the Bible says, in two of the most famous verses in the New Testament:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not die, but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17)
In Jesus, God has reached out to us, offering us the chance of life. Real life. The challenge when it comes to Christianity is not whether we’re clever enough, holy enough, or religious enough. It’s whether we’re humble enough to admit that there’s nothing we can do from our side of things to reach God. We need to accept his offer to reach out to us. As C S Lewis put it:
Jesus offers us something for nothing. He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer.
That’s what’s unique about Christianity when you contrast it with every other religion. Jesus Christ is what’s unique. Take the “Christ” out of “Christian” and you’re left with nothing.
Ultimately, Jesus refuses to fit into the pluralistic box but stands alone. To ask Christians why we think Jesus is the only way misses the point entirely. Jesus competes with nobody. Nobody else in history made the claims he did, claimed to be able to deal with the problems of the human heart like he did, or claimed, as he did, to be God with us. Whether you believe his claims or not, Jesus was utterly unique.
