A second look at the exclusive claims of Christianity

Last week I discussed something our Christian apologetics group at church met to talk about – the exclusive claims of Christianity. I like to continue that here.

Of course, any time people discuss exclusive claims of religions, the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant comes up. The story involves several blind men who feel different parts of an elephant, trying to decide what sort of beast it is. One describes the trunk as a snake, another feels the tail and says the animal is a rope, while another grabs the leg and says the animal is a pillar. An observer who is cited says they are all describing the same beast, just focusing on different parts of it. The point, of course, is that all religions are actually describing the same God.

But there's something wrong with this analogy as we discovered in our class. If religious humans are the blind men, who is the sighted observer? How did this person get to this position of authority and insight? How is it that he or she can see, but the rest of us cannot? For someone to claim that all religions are the same, here she is actually being arrogant. "You may not be able to see it, but I have a privileged position that allows me to understand the big picture here."

We may feel overwhelmed in trying to look at all the different religions that exist, but it's not as difficult as it appears on the surface. There are, in fact, only three great families of religion. First, there is the Eastern view, in which God is seen as an impersonal being. Secondly, there is the secularist religion, which sees chance as ruler over all. Finally, there is the Jewish/Christian/Islam of a God who is both personal and infinite. So, these three represent the most important worldviews that religions hold. It's less overwhelming to consider these three families than to think of tackling what appears to be a dizzying array of religions.

We discussed much more in the class, but I'd like to save that for another blog. For this blog I'd like us to consider the foolishness of the blind men and the elephant parable as well as the simplified view of the three major worldviews discussed above.