I have been
covering for the last couple of blogs a discussion in our Christian apologetics
class that focused on the exclusivity claims of Christianity. Many people in
our pluralistic society today object to the idea that one thing might be true
while other things might be wrong. It's frustrating to deal with such mushy
thinking, but that's the atmosphere in which we live today. So, here is the
conclusion to the key points we covered in our class.
We discussed
another picture that is sometimes used to describe a pluralistic view of
religions today. This is the famous "all paths lead to God" idea in which
God is at the top of the mountain and various roads go up the mountain where
they converge at the top. What's wrong with this picture? It's the same problem
as with the blind men and the elephant story – where is the person who is
telling the story? He or she is above the mountain, looking down at all the
people working their way to the top. But
only God has that view, so the person who tells the story apparently has the
same viewpoint as God. That seems pretty arrogant.
As we closed
the meeting, we discussed the differences between Christianity and other
religions. We decided other belief systems urged their followers to chase after
God through good deeds and appropriate behavior. Only Christianity says God
chases after us, and there is nothing we can do to earn his favor. We agreed
that we all need that special grace that God shows us. So much for the idea
that Christians are arrogant.
One final
thought – we Christians were not the ones who came up with the claim of
exclusivity. It was Jesus himself who said this, so those who are offended by
this belief need to argue with Jesus, who is generally seen as an admirable
person. It makes it tougher to argue with him than argue with individual
Christians.
No comments:
Post a Comment