Tough Questions Christians Shouldn’t Dodge - Part 4
How Can There Be Just One True Religion?

1 John 4:1–10 - 20 April 2008
Andrew Lim

Many people accuse Christians of being arrogant
when they insist that Christianity is right while others are wrong
only through Jesus that one can reach God

The claim certainly has the appearance of being arrogant
In a multi-cultural society such a claim seems embarrassing
The Christian seems to be saying to those of other religions
‘My religion is better than yours’
‘Mine is right, yours is wrong’

Furthermore the world today has shrunk into a global village
- your neighbour across the fence could well be a Buddhist
- the one sitting across you at work could be a Hindu
or a New Ager / or Taoist

And people consider the Christian claim to be the only way to God
as narrow-minded / arrogant / and bigoted

They say Christianity promotes exclusivism
and has got to be replaced by inclusivism / or pluralism

The pluralist holds that there are many ways to God
that all the different religions are just different paths
up the same mountain

And yet as Christians / we hold to what Jesus teaches us
He says “I am the way the truth and the life
No one goes to the Father / except through me” Jn 14:6
The Bible insists that there is no salvation except through Jesus:
“And there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name
under heaven given among men by which we must be saved”
- Ac 4:12

This puts us on collision course / with the thinking of most people today
because the pluralist says that all the different religions
are really simply different ways to reach the same God

So what are to make of this? / How are we to respond?
Let me approach this way.

You’ve probably all heard of the story of the blind men and the elephant

It tells us that one day about four blind men / came across an elephant
One blind man who touches the elephant's tail and concludes it's a rope
Another who touches the elephant's leg and thinks it's a pillar
A third who touches its side and thinks it's a wall
The fourth who touches the trunk and thinks it's a snake

This story often used to explain
how various world religions are reaching out to the one God
but each one / only seeing part of the picture

People usually tell this story to point out
that we need to be tolerant / to people of other religious faiths
that we only know in part
and need to be humble that we don’t have the whole truth
we’ve only got part of the truth

But the pluralist makes a huge mistake / when he gives this example
It was finally Leslie Newbigin / that brilliant scholar / thinker
and missionary to South India / later became bishop of Madras
who reveal to us the real point of the story?
- The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
He says / the real point of the story is exactly the opposite
of what the pluralist claims

Because this story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers
who are not blind / but can see that the blind men
are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant
each is only able to get hold of part of the truth


If the king himself and the courtiers were also blind
there would be no story

Now / the crucial point is this / the person who tells us
that each religion is seeing only a part of God
is making a supreme arrogant claim that he has seen the full truth
He is telling us that he has seen the full truth
and that’s how he knows that each of us is seeing only a part

People tell us all the time
You cannot claim Christianity is the true religion
because each religions is but a small aspect of the whole truth

But how does he know that?
How does he know that each religions is a small part of the whole truth

The only way you can know that these blind men are wrong
the only way you can know that / is if you are not blind
and you can see that its really an elephant they are touching

In the same way / the only way the pluralist can tell that no religion is right
but that each sees only a part / the only way you can see that
is if he has got a full grasp of the entire universal picture of the truth
and is able to tell us
that we are each only seeing a small part of the whole thing

The only way you can say that every religion only sees part of the truth
the only way you can say that
is for you to assume that you’ve come to see ALL of the truth

That’s the only way you can pronounce such a judgment
The only way you can say each religion is only seeing part of the truth
is for you to assume you have seen the whole truth
that’s the only way you can say that

But the moment you say that / you’re assuming
that you have the whole truth / which you say nobody’s got

When you say “No one has a superior take on spiritual reality”
that / is a take on spiritual reality / which you say nobody has
In fact you’re saying that yours is superior to everybody else’s

When you say “No one should convert anyone else
to your view of religious reality
that is a view of spiritual reality that you want people to convert to

In short / the pluralist is saying that the Christian is wrong and he is right
He is insisting that his view ought to be accepted
and the Christian’s view ought to be rejected
He’s saying the very thing that he says Christians shouldn’t be saying

The view that say “Nobody can make an exclusive claim of religion
is itself / an exclusive claim of religion”

We should not let him get away with it
when he says that no one can know Ultimate Reality

Because that implies / that he knows sufficiently enough
about Ultimate Reality / to conclude that it cannot be known

To say that the Ultimate Reality can’t be known
is itself / a statement of knowledge

The pluralist says that the Christian is arrogant
when the Christian says that Jesus is the only way to God
But the view of the pluralist could just as well be seen
as narrow-minded / arrogant / and bigoted

Because what he is really saying is that no other view can be right
except his view / that no one single religion is right

In short what he’s really saying
is that there is only one right view to think about religion
- and that’s the pluralists’ view
Now that / is arrogant!
He’s being as arrogant as he accuses Christians of being
He is every inch an exclusivist as the Christian

The argument fails / it is imperialistic / it looks humble but it is not
Newbegin concludes how arrogant / how imperialistic intellectually
it is to say “All religion are equal”

Newbegin says there is an appearance of humility in saying
that the truth is greater than anyone of us can grasp
but it may be a kind of an arrogant claim to knowledge
which is superior to all others

The question is this / Where's the pluralist in all of this?
Is he another blind man / touching his own part of the elephant
if that’s the case / why should we listen to him?

Or is he sitting back like the king and saying / “They don't see the big picture like I do”
Now if he said that / then there’s nothing wrong his statement
Because that’s after all / what Christians are saying

We’re saying that Jesus walked into human history and He has given us the big picture

So his argument fails.

The pluralist has a second argument
He tells us that we’re all culturally conditioned to some degree
They say if you were born in India / you'd probably be a Hindu
If you grew up in Saudi Arabia / you’d probably be a Muslim
You’re only a Christian because you’re born in a Christian country

Of course that’s true
but where does he want to go with an argument like this

He can’t go very far with a reasoning like that

The point is this / there are many political alternatives in the world
fascism / communism / authoritarianism / collectivism
totalitarianism / socialism / republicanism / nationalism
constitutionalism

Then / there’s democracy / monarchy / patriarchy / matriarchy
oligarchy / tyranny / aristocracy / theocracy

Its just like saying to a person if you were born in a communist country
you’d more likely be a communist
Now while that may be so it doesn’t make communism
the either the right way of the preferred way of governance

The point is this
If you lived in Nazi Germany
- chances are / you would have been part of the Hitler Youth
- but does that make Nazism right?
Or if you had lived in Russia / in Stalin day / or Lenin’s day
- chances are / you would have been a Communist

But does that make Nazism or Communism right

When you tell a communist / you’re born in China
you’re probably a communist / you know as well as I do
that you’re not necessarily wanting her to remain a communist

There are other forms of government she’s not exposed to
which are better than the one her country practices

Now / the point is this
Just because there is a great diversity of political systems
doesn’t mean that someone growing up in the midst of them
cannot see that some forms of government are better than theirs

There are good reasons for preferring one political system over another
There are good reasons for preferring democracy over Communism

So why can’t it be the same / with regard to religious beliefs?
Personally speaking
I was born in a Buddhist family
I was a Buddhist before I came to see the light of Christ

So when we say if a man is born in India / he’s probably a Hindu
all you’re making is perhaps an interesting biographical note
it says nothing about the truth or falsehood of Hinduism

The truth of falsehood of Hinduism has got to be determined
on other evidential grounds

The geography argument is a weak argument / it cannot hold water
What you believe / because of your geographical heritage
says absolutely nothing
about the rightness or wrongness of your belief

But that’s exactly what the pluralist is saying
He’s saying / since most people in the world today are pluralist
no longer can anyone say that Christianity is the true religion

You see the same fallacy
If just because most people in India are Hindus
doesn’t necessarily make Hinduism right’

So it is that just because most people in the world today are pluralists
doesn’t make pluralism right

This is a huge hole in the pluralist’s argument
When the pluralist tells us that our beliefs in God
are the results of our cultural or religious conditioning
why can’t the same thing / be said of his pluralist viewpoint

The pluralist is just as conditioned as he says we are

Alvin Plantinga puts it very well:
“ . . . if the pluralist had been born in Madagascar
or medieval France / he probably wouldn’t have been a pluralist

And that would effectively put him in a spot!

It is simply the case that the truth of falsehood of a religion
is a far far larger question than one based on biography or geography

So my conclusion - Jjust because there are many different religions
doesn’t automatically mean / that pluralism is correct

If Christians need to justify Christianity’s claims
the pluralist’s claim of pluralism need just as much justification

He cannot simply beg the question
and assert that pluralism is the right answer
He has to furnish coherent and logical reasons
for saying that pluralism is right

Why? Because / bottom line / he too
is making some claims about God / truth / the nature of reality

We need to ask the pluralist “How do you know you are right?
especially when you believe
that all human attempts to know ultimate reality is futile
you need to give evidence
that your own attempt to know ultimate reality / is not as futile

There is another reason why it is wrong
to say that all religions lead to the same God

It has to do with the law of non-contradiction
This law / is foundational for clear logical thinking
It says a statement cannot be true and not true
at the same time and in the same respect

Today is either Sunday or not Sunday
It cannot be both Sunday and not Sunday

If I said “It’s Friday” / you say “it’s Sunday”
Either you are right or I am right
We both can’t be right.
Of course we both could be wrong, for it could well have been Saturday!

In the same way
Christianity teaches that when a person dies he goes to heaven or hell
Buddhism teaches that those who die will be reincarnated
Now a person could go to heaven or hell or be reincarnated
But he cannot go to heaven or hell and be reincarnated
at the same time in the same sense

Both views cannot be right -  One must be wrong
or both wrong but they both can’t be right

Islam and Christianity too are poles apart
The lives and teachings of Jesus and Mohammed are poles apart too

Jesus' birth, life and death were foretold by numerous prophecies
Whether it was felt that Mohammed's birth needed no prophecies
no prophecy foretold the birth of Mohammed
Whereas Jesus claimed to be the incarnated Son of God and was conceived of the Holy Spirit
and born of a virgin, Muhammad's birth was the result of the union of a human father and mother
Jesus did not ask for forgiveness whilst Muhammad was someone who needed forgiveness
for his shortcomings (sura 40:55, 41:19)
Jesus performed signs and wonders to substantiate His claims of deity
Nowhere in the Quran does Mohammed claim to be God
neither did he perform any miracles
No one was able to accuse Jesus of any sin
The Quran affirms that Mohammed took his son Zaid's wife for himself
though the latter gave her up for him (sura 33:36-38)
Finally Muhammad's grave can be found in Medina
Jesus rose from the dead and is alive forever

Even if we said nothing more
on this score alone  it would hugely stretch our logic and intellect
to conclude that the teachings of these two men will lead us to the same God

As for the Gautama Buddha
He fulfilled no prophecies
He was born of the natural union of a human father and mother
The Buddha says whether God exists or not is an irrelevant question
The Buddha believed in reincarnation
He believed in a cycle of births and rebirths
He teaches that you can only escape the cycle of reincarnation
and arrive at nirvana
only if you follow the “Noble Eight-fold Path”
And when nirvana is attained / ones goes totally out of existence
like a candle snuffed out / or a drop of water returning to the open sea

Buddhism looks upon God’s existence and an irrelevant idea
It teaches nothing about getting right with God through repentance
It says nothing about the ultimate meaning of human existence

Now again it will stretch anyone’s intellect to say
that both Christianity and Buddhism will ultimately lead
to the same God

When the Bible talks about God / many people can accept it
When the Bible speaks of God / as the Maker of heaven and earth
Hindus and people of Eastern faiths / found it made no sense
But when the Bible speaks of Jesus Christ / as God’s only Son
Jews and Muslims begin to take up arms

Again it will take a great stretch of logic and imagination
to believe that the teachings of the different religions
will eventually lead to the same God

The fact of the matter is this
there are countless number of religions in the world
Some are pantheistic / polytheistic / monotheistic
Some teach a personal God / others teach an impersonal one

If there is only one God / if monotheism is true
then all religions that teach polytheism and pantheism
must then be necessarily false

If it is true that God is a personal God
then all religions that teach an impersonal God must be false

So the popular view that
ALL religions are simply different ROADS to the SAME God
is totally wrong
It is logically fallacious / logically flawed

So back to the question again:
“Are there good reasons
for believing one religious viewpoint over another?

I believe there are

There are religions and there are religions
No two religions are on par one with another
Let’s be rational in our approach
Let’s stack all these religions up next to one another
Let’s examine each of their truth claims
Let’s apply the three tests
of coherence / consistency / experiential relevance
on each one of them and come to some conclusion

Just to give you an example
Hindus believe that the highest of all truths
is the truth of the truth of all religions

But this runs against all logic
and so Hinduism runs into internal inconsistency

Further Hinduism believes that our entire existence is Maya
that even our individual selves / our individual identities
are part of a divine illusion called Maya

This means that you and I don’t really exist as individuals
We are part of an illusion
But if so how is it that we appear so very real and tangible
And if everyone single one of us is a dream
what gives someone the added advantage
to be able to step into an vantage point to tell us al that
If everyone is an illusion
then so is the person propounding that view

If they were part of a dream / how would they know
that they are part of a dream?
I mean does Charlie Brown know / that he is a cartoon character?
Of course not
This an incoherent concept

The crucial question is this / How can we be saved? / Who is our Savior?
Who is speaking the truth? / How can we ever know?

Now right here / the divinity of Jesus Christ
grounded in the resurrection / becomes centrally important

In Jesus / God became a human person
walked the shores of Galilee / healed the sick / raised the dead
preached the good news of the Kingdom of God
and ultimately rose from death / to conquer it

In no other religion are we offered a savior
who decisively conquered death / by rising again from his death
In no other religion / are we offered a savior
who is God Himself become human / the incarnation

Gautama / Confucius / Muhammad and all the other religious founders
made no claim to being anything more
than human people with religious insight

In no other religion does the founder claim to be God Himself

The Incarnation is the vital key
Human people are incapable of redeeming themselves
P. T. Forsyth puts it well when he said
“A half-god cannot redeem what it took a whole God to make”

Every other religion would have humanity try to reach up to God,
Christianity says God reaching down to humanity

In no other living religions of the world / does the founder claim
that he was God come in human flesh

Jesus alone made this claim

He claimed to be without sin / He challenged the people by asking them
“Which one of you convicts me of sin?” / No one answered

He claimed to have lived a perfect life before God’s watching eyes
“I always do what is pleasing to the Father” / He says

We read that He was tempted
but we read nothing of His falling into sin
He had no sins to be washed away
He never showed any consciousness of having morally failed
We do not see Him carrying any tinge of guilt in His heart
He called the eternal God / His father
He even referred to God's kingdom as "My kingdom"
He said: “Those who have seen me / have seen God”
He forgave people their sins
He claimed that one day / He is going return to judge the world

There is no a question / that right here we have a person /
an incarnation of God / who is fully human / and fully God
An ancient creed puts it this way:
“He was God of God / Light of Light / Very God of Very God
Begotten not made / being of one substance with the Father”

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit / born of the Virgin Mary
Theologians call it the incarnation
- to be “incarnated” means to “be clothed in flesh”

But the Scripture tells us that God has revealed himself
Hebrews 1:1: "Long ago in many ways and at many times
God's prophets spoke his message to our ancestors
But now at last God has sent His Son to bring His message to us"

He said He had come down from heaven to do the Father's will
He claimed to be "the living bread" John 6:51
"the light of the world" Jn 8:12 "the Good Shepherd" Jn 10:14
"the resurrection and the life" Jn 11:25

But the uniqueness of Jesus is not in what he said but in what He did

And what did He did He did to validate His claim of deity

He rose from the dead / we’re talking about His resurrection

All those claims Jesus made would be nothing
if He didn’t rise from the dead
He would be a charlatan / a conman
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pivotal cornerstone
of the Christian faith
The truth or falsity of Christianity hinges on Christ’s resurrection

Paul said / “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain
and your faith is also vain”

No other religious figures throughout history / have ever justified
their respective claims with such power and authority

All the founders of the world religions / came to teach us ways
to self-deliverance / self-sanctification / and self-realization

Jesus Christ alone did for human people
what they could not do for themselves

He rose from the dead to put a death to death

Christianity alone
gives the most satisfying answer to the plight of human people
We want to live
We don’t want to have to die
Ultimately it is life we want / not some kind of an enlightenment

So are there good reasons to believe that Christianity is the only way to God?
I believe there are. But does that make us narrow?
Yes! it does. But that’s not the same as narrow-mindedness.

Sometimes people say / “Why are Christians so narrow
to assert that only one religion leads to God”

First let me say that Christianity is narrow
but it is not narrow-minded / intolerant or bigoted

People can be narrow-minded / but not ideas
In the same way
Christians can be narrow-minded / but not Christianity
Christianity is either true or false
and this must be determined only on the basis of the evidence

But if people ask Why are Christians so narrow? / not narrow-mindedness
Because truth is narrow
Have you never notice / how narrow truth is
Have you never noticed / that there is only one answer to the question
What is 4+4? / It is not 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10 / It is 8

Is that narrow? / Of course it is / its extremely narrow
But that’s the nature of truth! / Truth is necessarily narrow!

But the crux is this
Christians do not claim that Christ is the supreme savior
out of a sense of superiority and disrespect for other cultures

The Christian when he talks about Jesus
is sharing what he is convicted to be a best news for people

If my wife and I discovered a great restaurant
Then when we tell people about it / we're not saying
“I'm better than you because I know about the Macaroni Grill
and you don't”

No / we're merely happy to pass on the news about the place

Now that’s the spirit of evangelism
As D. T. Niles puts it / “Evangelism is simply one beggar
telling another beggar where to find food”

Christians humbly make the claim
that in Jesus Christ we have found the Living Bread / Living Water