Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers – in some ways less so – but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds – at the very moment of passing into the new – that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it – would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Pretty incredible to read something like that from an avowed atheist.  Please feel free to share your comments below.

That’s one loaded goat.

So once a year, this goat will be release into the desert with all of the sins of God’s people on its head.  Often, according to the Hebrew writings, the goat would even be pushed off a cliff, to guarantee that the goat would not return to the camp with all of the people’s sins (there’s a horror/comedy movie in there somewhere).  There were also a couple of traditions associated with this occasion.  One is that often it was a Gentile who would lead the goat into the wilderness; after all, what Hebrew would want to be that close to the entire sinfulness of the Hebrew people?  Another tradition was that a red cord would be put around its head, to symbolize the sin of the people.  Part of the red cord was tied to the door of the Temple, and apparently when the goat met its demise, the red cord would miraculously turn white, and the High Priest would proclaim to the people that God had accepted their sacrifice and forgiven their sins.

And so, year after year, the Israelites enacted this ritual, sending their sins into the desert on the head of a goat.  Every year the priest would get up, put on his sacred underwear, sacrifice the necessary animals, and wait for the red cord to turn white so that the sins of the people might be forgiven. 

But get this – apparently something happened to this ritual forty years before the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70.  The Talmud (the collection of rabbinic reflections on the Scriptures) in Tractate Yoma 39:b records what I mentioned earlier, that on Yom Kippur it was customary to tie some red wool to the temple gate, and that miraculously, after the goat died to take away or atone for sin, the red wool always turned white as a sign to the people that they had been forgiven.  But during the forty years before the destruction of the temple and the altar in 70 AD, the red wool tied to the temple gate remained red – it never turned white again! In the Talumd, the rabbis concluded that God was saying, “I will not forgive, I will not forgive.”

Now think about those dates. We know the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, so 40 years before that would be about the year 30 AD.  Can anyone think of something significant that happened about the year 30 AD?

Around the year 30 AD, a man named Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross.  Was this event just a tragic death of a great man, or was there something more going on that the Day of Atonement and the story of the red and white cord can shed light on?  Listen to what the writer of Hebrews has to say about it:

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming– not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins… we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. (Hebrews 10:1-4; 10-12)

If the writer of Hebrews is correct, when Jesus died on the cross, it was more than just a tragic death of a great man.  It was a once for all reenactment of the Day of Atonement.  The great high priest Jesus has offered for all time one sacrifice for sins – Himself – and has sat down at the right hand of God, NEVER TO PERFORM THE SACRIFICE AGAIN!  As central as the Day of Atonement was to the people of God, after 30 AD it became unnecessary thanks to the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The red cord no longer turns white.  The goat can no longer take away the sins of the people.  The ultimate sacrifice has been offered, and the high priest has sat down. 

What does this mean?  It means that because of Jesus, those who put their faith in Him have their sins forgiven once for all.  All you’ve ever done, are doing now, and will ever do is covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.  As verse 10 says, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”  We still confess and repent in order to be right with God, but our sin does not invalidate our standing before God – we have been made holy, and the high priest has SAT DOWN.  Our identity is now secure – we are forgiven, holy, beloved children of God.  There is no need for repetitive rituals that have no power to forgive sins.  We have been forgiven once and for all time.

Praise God for His mercy towards us, that Jesus Christ was sacrificed to take away the sins of the world, so that we might have eternal life and become a new creation in Him.

(Intolerance Alert!!!  Intolerance Alert!!!)

There are approximately one billion Hindus in the world today.
I believe that there are many good and beautiful things in the religion of Hinduism.
I believe that there are a lot of good people who are Hindus.
I also believe that Hindus are wrong in their belief that there are many gods and that we will be reincarnated when we die.

(Intolerance Alert!!!  Intolerance Alert!!!)

Let’s be honest – you can believe just about anything in the philosophical and religious marketplace that is America today.  You can believe that God is a male or a female, that everyone is God, that this rock is God, or that there is no God.  You can believe in heaven and hell, or annihilation, or reincarnation when we die.

Just don’t say that someone else’s belief is wrong.

Intolerant.  Is there any question that this is one of the most negative labels that can be given to a person or a religious group in America today?  Woe to you if you fail to bow before the Idol of Tolerance that has been erected in contemporary America.  Woe to you if you do not believe its Gospel, that “all beliefs are equally valid,” or disregard its cardinal teaching – “Who are you to say that someone else’s belief is wrong?”

Ladies and gentleman, I give you American Idol #3:  The Idol of Tolerance.

Now, did anyone else squirm a little when I said that Muslims, while they may be good and sincere (and numerous), are ultimately wrong?  Or when I proclaimed the same about Hindus?  Did anyone fear that I was being a little too arrogant, a little judgmental, a little too sure about my own beliefs and narrow-minded concerning how things REALLY are?  To be honest, I know that I squirmed a little, because as I wrote it I knew I was breaking the cardinal teaching of the Gospel of Tolerance, outing myself as a non-believer in the American Idol of Tolerance.  It would certainly be much safer to just play along and proclaim that all beliefs are equally valid and true in their own way (and God forbid if I ever committed the unforgivable sin of trying to convert a Muslim or Hindu into a Christian).

Of course, nobody is tolerant about everything.  No matter how sincerely someone believes that 3+3=5, any respectable math teacher is going to say “your belief is wrong.”  No matter how badly I want to believe that John Kerry won the last election, sincerity of belief isn’t going to kick Dubya out of the White House.  And no matter how sincerely I believe that there is no such thing as the Law of Gravity, if I step out of my office window, I’m going to fall to the pavement.  Some things are just true, and sincerity of belief isn’t going to change anything.  Sometimes you have to be intolerant.

Listen – you have every right to believe that 3+3=5, and I will not stop you from believing that there is no such thing as the Law of Gravity.  But I’m also not going to pretend you are right when I believe you are wrong.  In fact, because I want you to get an A in math and not break your leg, I may even try to convince you that my belief is actually right, even if that seems intolerant.  In the same way, I am tolerant in that I believe a Muslim or Hindu has every right to their belief, and I have no right to stop them from practicing their faith.  But I’m not going to pretend their belief is correct when I believe it is wrong (nor would I expect them to pretend my belief is correct when they believe it is wrong), nor will I pretend that all religions say essentially the same thing when they don’t.  In fact, I may even try to convince them that my belief is actually right, even if that seems intolerant (and I would not be offended if they tried to convince me that their belief is right).

So what is really behind the Idol of Tolerance?  On the surface, it seems to be a desire to be educated and respectful, to not offend anyone or come across as narrow-minded and arrogant.  But I think there is something deeper going on.  I believe the Idol of Tolerance is in reality a very close relative to the first Idol, the Idol of Consumerism.  Could it be that the American aversion to absolutes (this is right, that is wrong) when it comes to religion is little more than a resistance to anything that might limit our consumer choice in the marketplace of ideas, beliefs, and worldviews?  We are a nation that celebrates freedom of choice, from the democratic process to our capitalist economy.  Might it be that the Idol of Tolerance is just the Idol of Consumerism in disguise, that we want everyone to be able to shop at the Mall of Religious Worldviews and choose the god of his or her own liking, without anyone saying that what someone else believes or practices is wrong?  Can’t you just see it now:

“Hmm… I like all that Christian stuff about love your neighbors, doing good, but I can’t stand all that talk about sin and hell and judgment, so let’s leave that part out and replace it with a God who does not punish anyone.  And while we’re at it, there are a few things I really like in Buddhism and some Muslim practices I think are cool, so let’s mix those in.  Ooh – and I really like that karma thing from My Name is Earl, so let’s add that too.”

Congratulations:  here is your god!

“Oh, I’m sorry – I was looking for the Build-a-God workshop”

Here’s the result of the consumer approach to religion – the god you construct becomes just another product, a god made in your image, bowing to the Idol of Consumerism.  In your desire to have a god who you’re comfortable with, you end up creating a god who will never confront you in a voice that is radically other than your own voice, will never really challenge you in a way that makes you made, will never call you to account.  The consumer approach means you don’t have to fear a God who might tell you to sell all you have and give to the poor, or stop sleeping with your girlfriend, or forgive your enemies, and might hold you accountable if you disobey.  You end up not with a living God, but an Idol of your own creation. 

 To smash the Idol of Tolerance is to dare to pursue Truth, wherever it may lead.  It is to talk with people of different faiths not just for the sake of understanding but for the goal of pursuing the truth.  It is to recognize that every religion can not be equally valid – either they are all manmade attempts to answer the big questions of life, or one of them accurately reflects the truth.  And it means taking seriously the words of Jesus when he said “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), and deciding whether he is as true as 3+3=6 and the Law of Gravity or just severely misguided. 

For the Christian, smashing the Idol of Tolerance means allowing the God revealed in the Bible to be Himself, whether or not you like it or understand it.  It means resisting the urge to be a religious consumer, to build a comfortable god in your own image.  Ultimately, it means allowing the Truth to confront you, no matter where it may lead.

Let me answer with one word – No.

Honestly, I would love to see a group of people actually try this experiment, just out of pure voyeuristic fascination, but I have serious doubts that such a movement would ever even get off the ground, let alone succeed in bringing heaven to earth.  Why am I so cynical?  For three reasons:

(1) It’s been tried before – really, this is nothing new.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes put it, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:8-9).  The whole Open Source name may be new, but the idea of Open Source religion or philosophy sounds a lot like a rehashing of the so-called modern experiment – if we get rid of superstition and blind faith in some pretend God and embrace reason, then humanity can evolve, achieve enlightenment, and create a better world.  I think the past two centuries have shown conclusively that often when people have an idea apart from God of what utopia should be, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with the Holocaust or Communist China and Russia.  The “progress” of humanity has shown that although we have evolved to the point where we can build an atomic bomb that can destroy a nation, we don’t quite have the wisdom to know what to do with it.  Humankind has been trying to create a perfect society apart from God for a long time, and I for one am still waiting to see the progress.

(2) Humans have a huge tendency towards selfishness, fearfulness, laziness, addiction to the things of this world… need I go on? – in a word, we are sinful.  Like that word or not, it’s an accurate description of human reality.  The Hebrew language, which the Old Testament was written in, has a few different words for sin (kind of like how the Eskimos have lots of words for snow).  For example, peshah, traditionally translated as transgression, is rebellion against God – you know what is right but you do the wrong thing anyways.  Chattach, translated as sin, is falling short of a mark.  It’s not necessarily willful rebellion, just not measuring up to a standard like “Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.”  And thirdly, hawon, translated as iniquity, means that we are corrupt, twisted, and crooked in our very nature, at the core of who we are.  Even if you reject the Bible and disagree with the first two definitions of sin, the reality of hawon is hard to argue.  As the Apostle Paul classically put it in Romans 7:15:  “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  If we’re honest, as long as we have real ideals and values, we can relate to that statement - the reality is that we often act hypocritically, contradicting our values with our actions every day.  As John put it, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10).

All of that is to say two things – first of all, good luck in getting any group of people to put aside their selfishness, fearfulness, laziness, and addictions to work together towards the betterment of the world without the help of God.  I’ll believe it when I see it.  After all, it’s one thing to have values; it’s another thing to live them out.  It’s hard enough to get a group of Christians working together for the betterment of the world, even with the help of God, because of our tendency towards sinfulness. 

Secondly, as Donald Miller put it so well in Blue Like Jazz:  “I am the problem… this is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with.  The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest…”  This is huge – as long as humans work together believing that the issues are all external ones like war, poverty, and injustice, without recognizing that the bigger problems, like self-centeredness, greed, laziness, fear, and imprisonment to things of the world, lie on the inside, there will be no real progress.

(3) It is very easy to criticize and find fault with the way others do things; it is significantly harder to actually do something positive - one of the most disappointing things about the Yoism website, for example, is that it is mostly a combination of lofty theory and videos and articles that can be summed up as “let’s laugh at Christianity and other religions.”  Now, as I have mentioned before, I do not take offense easily and am open to reading criticisms of my faith in order that I might better understand why people reject Jesus.  I believe in the importance of listening for the truth in any critique.  However, as an observer, I have a hard time seeing how bashing and laughing at a religion or philosophy will help bring heaven to earth.  It seems more likely that Open Source religion will turn into a “let’s put down other beliefs so that ours looks more enlightened” website than an actual movement making any progress towards their lofty goals.

As Teddy Roosevelt famously put it, “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”  Our attempts at bringing heaven to earth may be imperfect, but at least we are striving in the arena.

For these three reasons, I do not see much hope for Open Source religion or any other God-less attempt to “bring heaven to earth.”  I do believe that those who reject belief in God can do good and meaningful things in this world, but that in the end the only true hope for bringing heaven to earth lies in the way of Jesus.  I believe that Open Source religion is right in reminding us that in the end, true Christianity is just as much about “bringing heaven to earth” as it is about where you go when you die.  Jesus taught us to pray “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), and Jesus’ message and ministry were largely about the kingdom of heaven – teaching and showing what it looks like when people are living under the reign of God.  We would be wise to remember this emphasis of Jesus. 

Lastly, if you consider Open Source religion to be the answer, or any human attempt at solving the problems of the world, I commend you for your desire to see heaven established on earth, and challenge you to listen carefully one more time to the way of Jesus.  I think you may be surprised at how right He is.

If you are familiar at all with computer programming, then you may have recognized the philosophy or principle of “Open Source” behind the above question.  I am not an expert on open source or any other computer programming, but my understanding is that open source computer software allows for anyone to contribute to the content of that software with the goal that such a collaborative effort would create the best possible software.  For example, Wikipedia is a free on-line encyclopedia, whose design allows for anyone in the world to contribute to the definition of a word or term and to link to websites which help explain that term.  As of today, there have been over 2 million Wikipedia articles in English written by over 75,000 contributors, and over 9 million articles in over 250 languages worldwide.  Of course, there are checks and balances in place, so that if I decided to edit the article on “God” by writing “God is a thirty-one year-old man living in Connecticut named Eric Stillman,” it would be rejected because such an assertion is not verifiable by any other reliable sources, nor is it a neutral point of view.  But the beauty of open source is that worldwide collaboration can give you a huge amount of (usually) reliable information at your fingertips at an inexpensive cost.

A second example of open source, from the world of cell phones, is Google’s new Android cell phone platform.  Whereas most cell phones come to you as a finished product with limited capabilities, the Android platform is open source, allowing for creative computer programming types to develop applications that will eventually allow for your cell phone to drive your car and do your job for you (okay, maybe not that advanced, but you get the point).  And, since Google plans to distribute $10 million to developers who come up with the best applications, chances are this open source experiment will succeed.

Open source principles are now being applied by people over the last few years to fields other than computer programming.  On Wikipedia, government, politics, ethics, journalism, education, and even fitness are all mentioned as avenues where the principles of open collaboration are being explored. 

Which brings us back to our initial question – If everyone were to put their heads together and contribute their ideas, perceptions, and experiences, could humankind come up with a vision of reality and answers to the big questions that are better than any of the existing religions?  There are groups of people who are trying to answer this question, exploring the possibility of open source religion.  They are attempting to use a process of dialogue and refinement in hopes of creating an evolving system of beliefs and practices that they hope will ultimately lead to a better world.   One example of such an open source “religion” is Yoism.  As the Yoism website puts it,

“I am absolutely against any religion that says that one faith is superior to another. I don ‘t see how that is anything different than spiritual racism. It ’s a way of saying that we are closer to God than you, and that ’s what leads to hatred.”

According to Rabbi Boteach and many others, it is okay to believe whatever you want, as long as you don ‘t claim that it ’s true or better than any other belief system. If you do that, it is on par with racism, a prejudiced, superior view that will inevitably lead to hatred and violence. These are definitely strong assertions. Last week I dealt with his last line, that believing your religion is true necessarily leads to hatred. I disagreed, because Jesus and the Bible teach that his followers are his followers completely by grace, not because they are wiser, superior, more moral, or anything else of their own doing. And since faith in Jesus is a gift freely given, like finding a winning lottery ticket on your front doorstep, it would be wrong and stupid to look down on someone else who has not been given such a gift. The true follower of Jesus will never look down on anyone else. It is possible to believe Jesus is the truth and not hate others.

What about the first part of the Rabbi ’s assertion? Is it wrong for one faith or belief system to declare itself superior to another? The problem with the Rabbi ’s assertion as I see it is that he is guilty of the very thing he is railing against. Listen closely to what he is saying:

“I am absolutely against any religion that says that one faith is superior to another. ��

In other words, the Rabbi is saying that to believe that all religions are of equal value and equal truth is superior to holding to any belief system that declares itself to be true. Again �the Rabbi is saying that you can believe anything you want �as long as you don ‘t believe it to be true. By making this value statement, of course, Rabbi Boteach is declaring that there is a belief system that is better than another; namely, the belief that all religions are of equal value and truth is superior to the belief system that there is one true way and that the others, while they may have elements of truth and beauty, are ultimately wrong.

As you can see, it may be impossible to be completely tolerant. At some level, even the most tolerant person has to draw a line somewhere of what they will not tolerate. For Rabbi Boteach, he is intolerant of religions that believe themselves to be superior to other religions. I would argue that most people in the world are intolerant at some point, no matter how loudly they declare themselves to be tolerant. Take Hitler, for example. As I listened to the other world religion panelists at Manchester High, one test by which I judged their belief systems was what I would call “the Hitler test.” Would the speaker ’s belief system say that Hitler was wrong for the mass genocide he visited on the world? And if so, on what ground are they making that moral claim? Who are they to say that his belief system �Aryan supremacy �is inferior to theirs? If they truly want to be tolerant, how can they say Hitler was wrong? If someone ’s belief system teaches them that it is right to kill those who are holding back your race from reaching its pinnacle, then what moral authority do you have to tell him he ’s wrong?

Who are you, O tolerant one,
to say that Hitler was wrong?

Obviously, most Americans would say unequivocally that Hitler was wrong. Furthermore, most would declare that just about any religion or belief system is superior to that of Hitler. The point is that as tolerant as people claim to be, most people have a limit to tolerance. It ’s not “tolerant vs. intolerant, �� but a question of degree of tolerance �at what point are you willing to say “this is right and this is wrong. �� While it may be culturally offensive to suggest that some religions and belief systems, even with all their rich history, important contributions to the world, and millions of adherents, are ultimately wrong, I would suggest that to declare all religions as being of equal value and truth is naïve and a product of careless thinking. Reincarnation and heaven and hell can ‘t both be right; monotheism and pantheism can ‘t both be right. Someone (if not both parties) has to be wrong. Either all religions are ultimately wrong �misguided human attempts to explain the unknown �or one is right and the rest are wrong. Although truth has become in many ways a dirty word in our postmodern world, I would say that the pursuit of truth matters. The ability to declare some things “right �� and other things “wrong �� is crucial, because lives are depending on it. Read the following examples and decide whether you would rather be tolerant (let people believe whatever they wish to believe without making value judgments on their belief) or intolerant (declaring some things right and other things wrong):

So said Rabbi Schmuley Boteach on Larry King Live a few years back.  And so believe many others today, as I learned from the Manchester High panel on world religions that I was privileged to participate in a couple of weeks ago.  As I listened to each panelist present about his or her religion and answer questions that the students raised, I couldn’t help but detect the value placed on pluralism and tolerance.  It seemed that speakers who promoted the concept of the equality of all religions, or the right of anyone to find their own path to God – be it Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or otherwise – came across as enlightened, while anyone who dared to speak of conversion to his or her own faith as a value was seen as a contributor to the violence and hatred of the world.  For example, the representative of Baha’ism spoke of recognizing the founders or prophets of each of the world’s religions as equal voices in the pursuit of God, with none superior to any other.  The woman representing Hinduism spoke of her faith’s openness to all religions and the ways that they interpret the divine.  Even the Jewish man spoke of all religions being equally valid, with Jews being held to a higher standard by God.  While I recognize that these representatives do not necessarily speak for all adherents of those religions, nor were the panelists necessarily experts on their faith, I think it’s instructive to note the high value placed on tolerance and equality among world religions.

Enter Jesus.

“Jesus, do you believe that all religions are equally valid?”

Now, I’m not a fan of putting words into Jesus’ mouth, and he was never asked that question, so I’m not going to dare answer it as if it were his words.  But, as I mentioned last week, it would have made for a deeper discussion at Manchester High to point out that with all of the commonalities, there are some significant differences among the world religions that were represented.  For example, some believe in one God, others believe in a divine energy that can be interpreted as many different gods, and some believe in no god at all.  Some religions teach reincarnation, others believe that we live once and then go to heaven or hell, while others believe that there is nothing after death.  Since we can’t all be right, what are the options?

Option 1 – we’re all wrong.  There is no meaning in this world, and all religions are an attempt by different cultures to explain our origin, destination, the meaning of life, and to give a basis for moral behavior. 
Option 2 – there is something out there, but no one has a corner on the truth.  Each religion is man’s attempt to explain whatever “it” is, and each has some portion of the truth
Option 3 – one religion is the truth, and the others, while perhaps possessing some of the truth, are ultimately wrong at their core

Given today’s culture of tolerance, option 2 probably sounds the most enlightened and preferable to many people.  We can picture some benign being or cosmic energy that is out there but ultimately unknowable, and all religious people try to get in touch with that energy/being through their beliefs and rituals.  Option 1, while a bit scary, would also allow our culture to hold onto its valued tolerance.  Option 3 is of course the scariest in our culture, since it leaves you with the potential for a lot of people who think that their faith is superior to the others. 

So, Jesus, do you believe that all religions are equally valid?

When I read Jesus’ words, I find that his teaching comes closest to Option 3.  Certainly Jesus taught that there is meaning in this world, that God is real and knowable, and that heaven and hell are realities, so I can rule out Option 1.  Similarly, I find nothing in his teaching that treats truth as something unknowable, beyond our comprehension.  Instead, Jesus tends to hold especially the religious leaders of his day accountable for not correctly understanding what was written in the Hebrew Scriptures (see Matthew 22:29, among other).

However, Option 3 is not technically correct either, if you want to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus.  Jesus didn’t come to start a religion known as Christianity that would be “the truth.”  Instead, he pointed people to himself, saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father (God) except through me” (John 14:6).  Therefore, it’s not really about which religion is right or true (because let’s face it, Christianity comes in many shapes and sizes).  Jesus taught that truth was found in Him, that if we want to understand what is true and right, we need to look at Him and follow Him.  Only then would we find God.  If Jesus really is the truth (and not Christianity), and all that he taught is truth, this certainly contradicts the tolerance (all faiths are equally valid) that our culture teaches.  However, I also think it means three things for the follower of Jesus:

1) Contrary to Rabbi Schmuley’s assertion, a follower of Jesus should never consider himself superior to someone who does not follow Jesus.  This is because Jesus and the rest of the Bible are clear that no one has come to be called his follower by their own righteousness, morality, or wisdom.  It is all grace; Jesus has chosen his followers (John 15:16), and has given us the grace to say yes to him.  None of us deserve to be called his followers, but by his undeserved grace some of us are.
2) Those who follow Jesus are not necessarily more moral than anyone else.  Rabbi Schmuley may be a kinder, more loving man than I am.  Again, following Jesus does not mean that I see myself as morally superior to anyone else.
3) Just because someone is not called a “Christian” does not mean that Jesus can not call them his follower.  I am not trying to convert people to “Christianity.”  I want people to follow Jesus.  I would not dare to speak on the eternal fate of anyone who calls themselves Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim, except to say that my understanding of Jesus is that no one becomes his follower by being a good person.  Instead, it is by recognizing one can never be good enough for God and is in need of His forgiveness and grace, which is offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

If I am going to be faithful to the words of Jesus, then I must say that not all religions are equally valid.  Jesus is the truth, and there is some truth in all faiths insofar as they reflect that truth.  But to answer Rabbi Schmuley, just because Jesus is the truth does not mean that I see myself as superior or hate those who do not agree.  To act in such a way would also be contrary to the truth, contrary to Jesus.

Next week I’ll continue to discuss Jesus among other gods and how to reconcile the exclusive claims of Jesus with the age of tolerance in which we live.  If you have any questions, thoughts or comments to add, please post your comments so that we might correctly speak of Jesus in our tolerant culture.

This past Wednesday I had a rare opportunity to address two separate sessions of 50 kids each about the Christian faith at Manchester High School.  I had been invited to participate in a panel representing the living religions of the world, and was given five minutes to explain my faith.  After all the presentations, we had the opportunity to respond to any questions posed by the students or teachers to the members of the panel.  The teacher had done an excellent job of bringing together a diverse group; besides me (representing Protestant Christianity), there was someone representing Catholicism, Mormonism, Baha’i, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Rastafarianism.

As I prepared to speak, there were a few questions I had to consider:

   • What is the Christian story and how do I sum it up in 5 minutes?
   • How do I explain the Christian concept of God (especially the Trinity part) in a way that ninth graders would understand?
   • What place does my personal story play in illustrating the truth and beauty of Christianity?
   • How do I accurately portray the historical impact, both positive and negative, that Christianity has had on the world?

I opened my five minutes by explaining that I was representing Protestant Christianity.  I said that if there is one thing that Christians have been historically good at, it is dividing over all sorts of issues, to the point where there are hundreds of different denominations under the umbrella of “Protestant Christianity.”  I explained that my church calls itself “non-denominational”, which means that we don’t play that game.  We basically would call ourselves “Christians,” not choosing to identify ourselves as “Lutheran” or “Baptist” or “Methodist.” 

I decided to present Christianity as a love story, the greatest love story ever.  I explained that God is by nature a community of three, known as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that this is a community of perfect love, joy, and peace.  I explained that we were created to experience that love, joy, and peace, invited to be a part of that community, where God would be our God and give us all the love, joy, and peace we would ever need.  Unfortunately, people have always chosen to reject God and do their own thing, bringing hatred, pain, and suffering into the world.  I said that after humanity’s initial rejection of God, God tried to use a man named Abraham and his family to bring people back to Him and bring His love and joy and peace to the world, but they failed to do it.  So finally God the Son came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ in order to show us just how much God loves us and to save us from the disaster we were causing by rejecting him.  Jesus was not like the religious people expected; even though he was a perfect man, he chose to spend time with those who were rejected in his day, like the prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers, and saved his harshest words for religious hypocrites who were more concerned with appearing religious then loving others.  Jesus went through everything we might have to go through on earth, including rejection by his friends, intense suffering, and finally death on a cross.  But the Bible says that He rose again from the dead, making it possible for people to enter back into the relationship with God that was originally intended.  By dying for us, he showed just how deeply God loves us.

Of course, Jesus left the future of the faith in the hands of people like you and me, who became known as the church, with the mission of bringing God’s love, joy, and peace to the world.  Over time, the church has done some amazing things, like caring for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed, but has also done some terrible things, like the Crusades and displaying some of the same hypocritical judgmental behavior that the religious people of Jesus’ time did.  I also explained that this same story has been true in my life, that God has been the initiator, the lover, in my life.  I said that when I was their age, I would never have expected to be a pastor, but after high school, God revealed Himself to me in an amazing way, and ever since then my greatest desire is to know God more and enjoy His love and joy and peace and to help others experience it as well.

I felt that presenting the Christian story as a love story was an accurate way of bringing out the truth and beauty of our God.  There is a danger in reducing Christianity to principles, steps, or other mechanistic approaches that de-personalize the faith and how central love and relationship are to following God.  The next two Sundays, I will speaking on marriage and how the Biblical view of marriage is that it is meant to be a window through which people should see God and His love for us.  I think you’ll be surprised just how often the Bible uses wedding imagery to illustrate God’s love for us.  I think that is a clear indication that God intends for us to understand the depth of love and commitment that is involved in knowing Him.

The question and answer time was great, although I wish there could have been a longer time with more interaction between the panelists.  The prevailing mood, of course, was tolerance, that everyone should be allowed to practice whatever they choose, and that no religion is better than any other.  If there had been more time, it would have been interesting to say something like this: 

“Certainly there are many things that these different faiths have in common, but there are also irreconcilable differences.  For example, one faith believes in reincarnation, while another believes that after death some go to heaven and some to hell.  Some believe in one God, other is one God made up three persons, others in a divine energy that can be interpreted as many different gods, and some in no god at all.  Logically, we can’t all be right.  Either we’re all wrong, and have all just made up religions in order to help us cope with the uncertainties of life and death, or one of us is right and the rest are wrong.  How do we reconcile that?”  

I believe in tolerance to the extent that people should be allowed to practice other religions freely.  I also believe that there is truth and beauty in every religion, that I can learn a lot from other religions, and that being a Christian doesn’t mean I’m a “better person” than someone who is a Hindu or Muslim (or atheist for that matter).  But I also think it’s intellectually naïve to live as if all beliefs are equally valid when they say irreconcilably different things.  Either a single God exists or He doesn’t; either we are reincarnated or we’re not.  You can’t have it both ways.

The best question I was asked brought this to light.  A young man asked the panel whether any of us wished that the others practiced our religion instead of their own.  After a couple of people shared their tolerant beliefs that all religions are equally valid, I spoke up and said that as a Christian I try to follow Jesus, and although He was an amazing man and teacher, he also said some pretty exclusive things.  For example, one of the last things he told his disciples was to go into the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything he had commanded.  Part of what it means to follow Jesus, therefore, is to help people follow Him.  As much as I believe that people should be allowed to practice whatever they want, in the end if I’m going to answer his questions honestly, then yes, as a follower of Jesus I want everyone to follow Him.  As I reflect on the whole experience, that was probably the only “intolerant” thing said all morning.

I thought this experience would be a good catalyst for a discussion of Jesus among other gods and how to reconcile the exclusive claims of Jesus with the age of tolerance in which we live.  To help me deal with this topic, it would help to know what questions you have regarding religions, pluralism, tolerance, truth, and exclusivity.  If you have any questions, thoughts or comments to add, please post your comments so that we might accurately discuss Jesus in our tolerant culture.