One True Religion?

16 05 2012

Q: There are lots of religions in the world. So how can a Christian presume that his religion is the only right one?

A: Short answer: A Christian shouldn’t presume that. His religion isn’t the only right one.

Slightly longer answer: If by “the only right one” a Christian is saying that everything his religion says is right and everything every other religion says is wrong, then he’s denying one of the fundamental claims of his own religion, namely, that Christianity is the fulfillment, not the negation, of the religion of Old Testament Israel. Furthermore, it’s just obvious that Christianity has a lot in common with both Judaism and Islam. And, in fact, Christianity has various teachings and practices in common with pretty much every other religion in the world: Christian missionaries have been building on those common features for centuries.

Even longer answer: First, let’s clear the ground a bit. Just because there are lots of opinions about an issue doesn’t mean that one opinion isn’t right and the others are wrong. A math teacher might receive a wide range of responses (= ”opinions”) on an exam, but she knows that only “x + 3” is the correct answer. You ask for directions in a strange town to the museum, and four locals give you four different answers, but the answers usually aren’t all equal in effectively getting you to your destination. So the mere presence of multiple opinions says nothing immediately about whether there is more than one correct answer—or even whether a correct answer is available at all.

Second, we can think of religions as maps and directions on how to best use the maps. They describe reality and tell us how best to negotiate reality. As such, religions that patently fail to describe reality accurately or to tell us how to negotiate it effectively fall out of use in favour of religions that do a better job.

We can also assume that religions that do work, at least somewhat, will make assertions about reality that overlap with assertions made on other maps. If we’re trying to walk from the western edge of Venice to the eastern, any decent map is going to include a description of the Grand Canal and of at least one of the very few bridges that cross it. So even the worst map that actually works—that anyone living in Venice will give you–will share at least some information with the best map possible.

So of course the world’s religions share various claims and practices with others. The world is what it is and living in it is done most effectively this way rather than that, so religions that approximate those realities are going to share a lot of the same claims.

Third, allowing then that more than one religion can be true in important respects doesn’t mean that all religions are equally good, nor that one religion isn’t the best of those available. If you actually had a map and a guidebook furnished by the founder, planner, builder, and ruler of the area–who also demonstrably has taken great pains to communicate with you as truthfully and helpfully as possible–then you’d be very glad to have such instructions and you would have good grounds to consider them the best available. You might even want to share them with people you care about.

That’s what Christians do when they preach the gospel. They say, “We are so thankful to have been given The Directions by The Maker. And they’re free! Come get them!”

Maybe there are better directions available elsewhere. If so, please tell us. We, like any other sensible people, want the best help we can get. But we hope you won’t be angry with us if we’re pretty enthusiastic about what we think is the best map and guidebook we’ve ever seen and we want to share it with you.

In fact, shouldn’t you be angry with us instead if we wouldn’t?

John Stackhouse, from his latest answer at Ask John. 


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Making Our Mark

7 05 2012

“If our life were without end and free from pain, it would possibly not occur to anyone to ask why the world exists.”  So said German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer around a century and a half ago in The World as Will and Representation, and it is a sentiment that would be echoed by many today, no doubt.  The reality and inevitability of death haunts our steps as human beings, regardless of whether we claim to be religious or not.   Every worldview must somehow come to terms with death.

One such attempt is seen in an article by Richard Handler that deals with the subject of death from an atheistic perspective.  The article is focused on atheist author and psychiatrist Irvin Yalom who, while acknowledging the fear and despair that accompany our peculiar ability as a species to foresee our own deaths, argues that the concept of “rippling” is a way of ameliorating these fears:

Rippling refers to the fact that each us creates—often without conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations…. [Y]ou can leave behind “something from your life experience, some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes onto others, known or unknown.” The key here is human connection, which touches other lives in secret and untold ways.

There is obviously a measure of truth to this. The kinds of people we are have lasting influences on those around us. We leave a mark. The problem is, that while we might prefer that those elements of who we are that “ripple” out would be positive, life-affirming things, often the marks we leave can be rather ugly ones. Even the most morally upright among us will leave, at best, a mixed legacy. The ripples that go out from our lives have the ability to affect both for good and for ill.

Handler comes close to noticing the problem:

What about those whose lives don’t noticeably ripple into a loving community? People do die without friends, alone and miserable, in prisons and cyclones. I have known people who will be missed by absolutely nobody. What rippling effect do they have?

His answer? While acknowledging that “the idea of rippling can be abstract,” in the end the best it seems we can hope for is that we “can gain comfort in thinking that one’s atoms can ripple and dissolve into the universe… All of us ripple in ways we are not even aware of.”

Far from addressing the question, this seems to simply be a restatement of the issue.  Yes, all of us do “ripple” in ways we are not even aware of.  That’s the problem! Human history is the story of both tremendous good and radical evil “rippling” down throughout history, one leaving inspiring traces of what we think we are here for, the other poisoning the lives of individuals and communities indefinitely. The problem isn’t just that some individuals and communities don’t leave much of a “ripple” or don’t “ripple” well; the problem is that some “rippling” is downright toxic.

What we need is not some vague sentiment that the best of who we are will somehow trickle down and have some marginal impact on a few people for a brief flicker of cosmic time. What we need is a vision of the future and of what it means to be a human being that can transcend and is not tied to our own inconsistent, fragile, conflicted, and transient identities and moral performances.

The beginnings of one such vision is articulated by Yale theologian Miroslav Volf who, in The End of Memory, eloquently identifies both the problem with “rippling” as a response to death and the Christian alternative:

We are neither made nor unmade by what we do or by what others do to us. The heart of our identity lies not in our hands, but in God’s hands. We are most properly ourselves because God is in us and we are in God. No doubt, what we or others have inscribed onto our souls and bodies marks us and helps shape who we are. Yet it has no power to define us. God’s love for us, indeed God’s presence in us and our being “caught up beyond” ourselves and being placed “into God” most fundamentally defines us as human beings and as individuals.

The Christian hope is that what is good, and worth preserving from human history will be validated, and rendered permanent in God’s new creation. Correspondingly, that which was false and evil, that which “rippled” down through the millennia damaging and defacing God’s good world, destroying relationships, fostering fear and enmity, and barring the way for people to experience the shalom God intended for them will be judged, healed, and forgotten. It will “ripple” no longer.

Ryan Dueck


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Categories : Making a Difference, The Heart of Faith

An Evening of Questions

30 03 2012

Questions were coming from the right and left, thoughtful, poignant questions. What about suffering? The infinitude of religions? The dates established by Josephus? I and the atheist next to me were getting grilled, now by the audience. We had just debated about the existence of God, at a mix of café and literary meeting hub here in Rome, next to the university. I could see in people’s faces that they wanted to engage, that they welcomed a friendly forum where they could express their honest doubts, and honest they were.

I tried my best to answer their questions. One gal wanted to hear how can we believe in the Jesus story when we see similar stories of the sacrifice and resurrection of different gods in so many of the world’s myths, and I was glad that I had just written a Wondering Fair article just on that (thank you Lord!), and could share my thoughts with her. A guy wanted to me to name one example of a powerful person of faith which did not abuse his power for his own selfish gain. I tried going for the easy answer, Jesus, and he laughed with me, but then tried telling him a bit of William Wilbeforce, who used his wealth and influence as a member of the British Parliament to help abolish the slave trade. A student asked why would the Vatican have a subterraneous hidden library if it had nothing to hide – and this one I was glad I could by-pass, and said it would be best left for a Vatican official to respond. (Though he got me thinking, what lurks down there?)

But my favorite question came after the debate, while I was packing my things. A guy approached me with his girlfriend, both in their twenties. He was articulate but seemed afraid to voice his doubts, a bit ashamed even.

“I have a question, kind of. I know it is dumb, but still…”

“No please, go ahead,” I said, looking him in the eye, and his girlfriend nudged him too.

“I’m not into all this philosophy, I like being practical, and just wanted to know: why did Jesus turn water into wine?” I could not help but smile, and his girlfriend went on. “You know, people would get drunk with all that wine, and isn’t Jesus supposed to discourage that?” I kept on smiling, and he concluded. “Not just that, I just thought that, you know, he should be supposed to do important miracles, and this wine think is just, I don’t know, unimportant.”

I told them, “what a great question!”, and I could the see their faces relax, as if thinking, “Oh I’m glad, I thought it was going to sound stupid…” But I really meant it. It is a great question. I liked it not just because I could see the emotions bubbling in their eyes – a bit of fear, shame for asking a stupid-sounding question, courage to come forward and go talk with a stranger – but mostly because the issue behind their question is the most crucial existential question we have,  more pressing that “is there life after death?” or “what is the meaning of life?”, and the question is: Who is Jesus? Who is this man who still haunts us, thousands of years later, who still attracts us like he did back then, who still gets us thinking about wine and water and the large and small stuff of life?

Many people see Jesus as the answer, but I like it even more when they see him as the question. And what a question he is. Scholar John Meier writes, “What is beyond dispute …  is that Jesus of Nazareth is one of those perennial question marks in history with which mankind is never quite done. With a ministry of two or three years he attracted and infuriated his contemporaries, mesmerized and alienated the ancient world, unleashed a movement that has done the same ever since, and thus changed the course of history forever.” Answering who that man was is not small challenge.

I loved when people came to ask about hope and suffering and ethics and the origins of the universe. But those two were on to something. Who is this Jesus? The way we answer this question will change the way we answer every other existential question. Until we come to grips with it, a large piece of the puzzle of life and history will be unresolved, and of our lives too.

Ah, and if you want to know why did Jesus turn water into wine, Madi Simpson just wrote a fabulous article just about that…

René Breuel


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Why I stopped going to Church

21 03 2012

Ah, what power there is in a word. A skilled communicator agonizes over choosing precisely the right word for the occasion—that exact nuance in a verb, a noun, or an adjective, to guide the reader’s eye and the listener’s ear to the intended message. Miscommunication is always a danger. And it’s a danger that grows with passing days, for over time language becomes loose. With use, words morph to take on reduced and alternate meanings. Awesome. Gay. Sick. Wicked. You get the picture.

So, here’s a key word from a Christian’s vocabulary: “Church.” Imagine I’m an outsider to the whole Christianity thing. Let’s see if I can define “Church” by the way most Christians speak. …

“Do you want to go to Church with me, this weekend?” “The wedding will be held at the big Church, corner of Smith and Straight Street.” “I know you’re not really into Church, but why not give it a go?” “Wasn’t worship at Church great this last Sunday?”

Okay, let’s put it together. Church is an event, a building, a hobby, and a religious club?

Now, before you accuse me of nit-picking—“It’s all semantics, Dave.  Ease up!”—realize the power of words. Christians believe it was with words that God spoke the universe into being; words are the means by which we acknowledge or deny Jesus; words convey the Gospel of life to those who haven’t heard; and words reveal the way we feel and think about our world. Maybe we need to dust off the word “Church” and get back to where it began. Until we do, our words may erect an unscalable barrier that blocks engagement with a Church-weary world.

Church: ἐκκλησία, ek-kle-siae, ecclesia. Nearly 500 years before Jesus, the ecclesia was the key assembly for ancient Athens’ democracy. Same with Rome. The ecclesia was the administrative body for the Kingdom. There were multiple Kingdom outposts, helping administer Rome’s Empire in the local regions. The ecclesia were there, like ambassadors for Rome, to make sure the everyday citizen experienced the flavour of the Kingdom. The ecclesia was not so much a place, or a program, but a people called out to represent the Kingdom in word and deed, spreading Greece’s or Rome’s influence wherever they went. The aim wasn’t to get outsiders into the ecclesia. The aim of the ecclesia was to get out and serve the citizens so they might freely align with the Kingdom.

Jesus borrowed this particular word, ekklesiai, from the political language of the day, to make sure his followers understood their call to be a new humanity, rather than forming another clique to replace the Pharisees, Sadduccees, Essenes, and Zealots. Rome was merely a cheap version of the true Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. And Christ called out and commissioned his disciples as a Kingdom outpost, to announce God’s reign and give this world a taste of how things run when God is in control (Mark 1:14-15; Luke 4:18-19). The Church isn’t a place you go. The Church is God’s pilgrim people, a body of believers selected and sent by God to administer the Kingdom and make Christ the King known by word and deed. Each region had its own ecclesia (the Church in Jerusalem, the Church in Corinth, etc.), but these various branch offices of the Kingdom were joined as one “catholic Church” as the Apostle’s Creed describes, united in Kingdom business. (Sounds ecumenical, no? Hmm.)

So, back to the present. We use “Church” with almost the exact opposite of Jesus’ intent. Instead of going to the world, we expect people to come to us. We think that getting our “lost” friends into a building to hear a religious service is the end-game for our witness. And we’ve offered the world the Church now and Heaven later, instead of the Kingdom of God which starts now and only grows in influence until the day Christ the King returns and sets everything right.

My local church knows how to celebrate when we get together on Sunday. But don’t be confused. The gathering of the ecclesia for corporate worship may attract some outsiders to align with Christ’s Kingdom. But the most powerful witness by far is when we serve up for our neighbours a taste of the Kingdom, whether by the way we love, the way we listen, or even the way we cook. 

Yes, words are powerful. The average ‘unchurched’ person has no interest in joining a religious club and tying up their sunny Sunday inside a building. But when the Church is truly the ecclesia of Christ, there is nothing more attractive and no more powerful witness. It’s our love for each other, and radical acts of loving service for those outside our community, that best points people to Jesus. And this will only happen when we stop heaping our salt in a pile, and hiding our light under a building. I mean a bushel.

So, what is the Spirit of God saying to His Church today? In short, “Get Out!” Follow Christ outside the Church building and into the midst of our post-Christendom culture. And let’s stop going to Church, and start being the Church Christ gave His life to establish—the kind of Church against which even the gates of Hell will never prevail.

Dave Benson


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Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

“What if you’re wrong?”

19 03 2012

A girl asked atheist Richard Dawkins one day, “What if you’re wrong?” In typical deprecating  fashion, Dawkins turned the question back to the girl, “But what if you are wrong?” [i]

The argument in Dawkins’ response, if you think about it, is essentially relativism. The reason we believe what we believe – in flying spaghettis, Zeus, or the Christian God – is because we were brought in a particular culture and nurtured in those beliefs. Had we been brought up somewhere else, our religious outlook would be different. As Dawkins has expressed in writing, “No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.”[ii]

The assumption behind this assertion is significant: geographical determination. None of us can pretend to Truth, because our belief is socially determined. If we would believe in Thor had we been born a Viking, how can we pretend that our belief in God could be true? Atheists like Dawkins conclude that the diversity of human belief across history is the definite proof against God. If we see humans inventing objects of worship so creatively and so pervasively – sacred cows, the sun, Mother Earth, or God – surely the monotheistic God is just another invention, maybe more complex and civilized than the others, but a human creation nonetheless.

But let’s turn the table again: “Yes, sure, but what if you are wrong?” By the same logic, the only reason someone like Dawkins believes in relativism is because he was brought up in contemporary Britain. His belief is also socially determined, so how can he assert that his view is right and every other religious view is wrong? How come every other view is relativized but his relativism remains absolute? Relativism is not only arrogant toward others, but thoroughly inconsistent with itself.

Still, the argument of religious diversity is an eloquent one. Humans are intrinsically religious, and will find something to worship no matter how strange the god or goddess may be. On what basis can we assert that one specific belief is true while so many others are wrong? Doesn’t religious diversity lead us to conclude that religion is essentially a human creation?

For me the evidence points precisely in the opposite direction. Humans are intrinsically religious because there is a real God who created us, and who we are searching for. We have this innate hunger because there is true satisfaction for our divine longing out there, just like our physical hunger demonstrates that there is real food that meets our needs. The fact that people eat the most bizarre objects – serpents, leafs, eggs of fish – is not proof that our physical hunger is a projection, but a precise proof of our need for food. Similarly, the diversity of belief across history is not proof that our soul hunger is a projection, but a precise proof that we have a craving for the divine, and will search for God even in the most unlikely of places.

But the skeptic may still rightly ask, “Ok, but on what basis do you claim that people search for God while adoring nature, and not, let’s say, search for the true goddess Aphrodite while worshipping the monotheistic God?” This is a great question, and could be dealt adequately only with another article. Yet atheism gives us a telling hint: if there were no God there would be no God to deny. “If there were no God, there would be no Atheists,” quipped G. K. Chesterton. Has there ever been an articulated, sustained movement like atheism against sacred cows or Aphrodite? Our very denial – of an eternal, omnipotent Father – assumes the form of what exists objectively. Our doubt mirrors our faith: we would not have to deny the existence of God if there was really no God to deny.

Belief in God could still be wrong, of course. But the diversity of human belief does not discredit faith, but rather, shows how forcefully we crave to worship something. If people are ready to adore even built statues at times, this shows us how urgent and true our spiritual hunger is. Religious diversity does not discourage robust faith, but is actually a compelling motivation to lead us to search, and discern, and surrender to, what is it that pulls our spirits so strongly toward worship.

René Breuel

[i] This video clip is actually the most seen Dawkins video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg

[ii] Richard Dawkins, as quoted in his own website, http://richarddawkins.net/quotes/10.


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Categories : Tough Questions

If God Does Not Exist

16 03 2012

I live in Spain, where one in every three people between 18 and 29 years old don’t believe in the existence of God. Many other countries share a similar statistic. You might be an atheist yourself or, if not, surely know someone who is. Possibly we all would agree that some questions serve as arguments against the existence of God for many, if not most, atheists. Some of these questions are: if God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world? If God exists, why doesn’t he speak to humanity more clearly or tangibly? If God exists, why hasn’t anyone been able to prove his existence? And so on.

These are undoubtedly questions that need to be addressed, but that is not my intention in this article. Actually what I want to do is ask more questions, but from another perspective. Let me invite you to briefly look at the other side of the coin and consider four questions in relation to the existence of God.

First, if God does not exist, how can we have any sense of justice in the world? I believe we all agree that trafficking human beings is wrong and providing food for those who are hungry, for instance, is right. But on which basis do we classify something as right or wrong? Who established these moral standards that we all know exist apart from our own opinions? As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

Secondly, if God does not exist then how was everything created from nothing? Why is there something rather than nothing? We might have different opinions on the origins of the universe and its age, but we all agree it’s not eternal and therefore there was a moment it came into existence. But how could it have come into existence if there was absolutely nothing before? Matter and energy do not originate from nothing; everything in the universe has a cause outside of itself. Have you ever taken your imagination back to that moment and honestly pondered on the Cause behind every cause?  Francis Collins, renowned scientist and leader of the Human Genome Project, has written: “And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that that had to be outside of nature.”[2]

Thirdly, if God does not exist, how come human beings exist? The chances of a universe such as ours to be created randomly are virtually non-existent. Dr Collins writes: “When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants: the gravitational constant, (…) nuclear force, etc. that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a billion, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. (…) There would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people.”[3] Stephen Hawking interestingly expresses: “it would be very difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” [4]

And in fourth place, if God does not exist, how come millions upon millions of people have attested to a personal relationship with him throughout human history? People all over the world, from all sorts of social, intellectual and cultural background believe and live by their faith in a real and personal God. They affirm to be reached by his love, touched by his grace, convicted by his holiness and directed by his words. Their lives have been visibly changed and their relationship to others clearly improved after what they describe to be an encounter with Jesus. Have you considered the possibility that these millions and millions of people might be speaking the truth? Have you ever taken some time to sincerely listen to one of these people’s experiences?

As stated before, I have no pretension to convince anyone of God’s existence through the four questions above. My intention is to invite you to a frank and honest reflection as you try to look at your view about God from another perspective. May I invite you to sincerely reflect on your perception of the most important subject any of us could ever consider? May I invite you to search for more? May I invite you to be honestly open?

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.  Let me open a parenthesis and suggest two books that present the Christian case respectfully, logically and solidly: “The Reason for God” by Timothy Keller and “Mere Christianity”, by C.S. Lewis.

[2] Ref. – Interview of Francis Collians at http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/07/collins/index2.html …Ref. in “The Reason for God,” T. Keller, Dutton, 2008

[3] Ibid.

[4] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 127


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Do scientists believe in God?

14 03 2012

One of the common arguments against belief in God is that the majority of scientists in the world do not believe in a higher power. If they don’t believe in a deity then why do we? If scientists are smart, and they don’t believe in God, why do we?

A few years ago, though, a significant major Pew Study revealed that most American scientists (51%) believe in some form of higher power deity. While this percentage is far lower than most average Americans, the study does note some very interesting data points. For instance, this exact study was done with the same questions back in a 1914 survey as well as in 1996. While American culture has become less influenced by Judeo-Christian values, surprisingly American scientists answered almost the same way as their 1914 counterparts. In other words, in the academic scientific world, there has not been an increasing secular drive among America’s scientific community. This is important to highlight because all that has increased in recent years then is the rhetoric of those who would like to create a wedge among the scientific and theistic communities.

However, the Pew Research Poll shows a trend that younger scientists are actually more likely to believe in God than their older brethren. This shows that increasingly the younger generation is able to fuse a belief in the scientific physical world with a transcendent metaphysical worldview. In general, we are watching this movement worldwide where a new emphasis on the “spiritual” is not necessarily at odds with “physical” world.

So instead of increasing secularization within the American scientific community, we are seeing, at the very least a remarkable stabilization of opinion towards God, and perhaps even an increase in compatibility between theistic and scientific communities.

How can this be? Simply put, the scientific world studies and tests the physical world and therefore does a great job of telling us “what is.” What science cannot do is tell us “what ought to be.” The reason for this is that the moment you move from “what is” to “what ought to be” you have moved from “fact” to “value.” This is not a slight on science, just the limitation of observation. The famous philosopher legal scholar Stanley Fish has a great article about this. He says, “While secular discourse, in the form of statistical analyses, controlled experiments and rational decision-trees, can yield banks of data that can then be subdivided and refined in more ways than we can count, it cannot tell us what that data means or what to do with it.” The reason for this is that the world of “ought” is filled with values, assumptions, presuppositions, and, frankly, opinion.

The spiritual world can be defined a lot of different ways, but at the very least it is the realm where we find values and the reasons for what ought things to look like. It strives to give meaning and purpose, all out of assumptions and presuppositions. It is because of this divide that perhaps we are seeing a new coexisting synergy between science and faith that will likely increase in the coming years

Michael Keller


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The Fellowship of Runners

20 02 2012

When Rolling Stones magazine interviewed U2 singer Bono, and asked which kind of music turns him on, Bono answered in a surprising and self-revealing way. “The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.”[1]

Music that runs toward or away from God. I would imagine Bono would choose songs by their rhythm, by their catchy chorus, by their ability to move a stadium with its melody. Maybe he would be attracted to romantic lyrics, peppered with sensuality and longing, or maybe to music that resounds in people’s hearts and influences a generation. Yet Bono goes for our existential core: our gut reaction before ultimate reality, our instinctive surrender to God’s presence or haunted flight from his face.

I, for one, am more of a surrender type of guy, but I’m fascinated by the fellowship of runners. You know, by that anguished avoidance of God, stubborn and defiant, which tries to outrun infinity and outsmart omniscience. I admire this kind of persistence – it feels almost like a little dwarf’s rebellion – and, if I may confess some sadistic impulses, I enjoy seeing people avoid the inevitable and fight until the last breadth against God. It is entertaining. It is like children kicking and struggling against a spoonful of chocolate, only to enjoy it the minute it enters their mouth. I’m not quite sure why I enjoy this final struggle, maybe because I see it s the final tantrum of sin before the flood of grace, but when I see someone running away from God, I smile, and try to stay around long enough to see God catching up.

Can I share some scenes of my sadistic voyeurism? Let’s start with red meat, you know, a good sinner of old, a mighty oak falling down. Augustine narrates in his Confessions how he tried to run from God, and revels in the foolishness of it: “I would only hide thee from myself, not myself from thee.”[2] Augustine’s is a fascinating journey, elaborated by a great soul-physician in the Confessions, until he comes to the decisive moment: “Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open by deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”[3]

Good stuff, eh? I like C. S. Lewis’ final struggles too, and the silent resistance he tried to muster to the last, even against a palpable sense of God’s presence. Lewis narrates in his autobiography:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps the most defected and reluctant convert in all England.”[4]

But let me acknowledge it too. Maybe I enjoy seeing these moments in others not much for the agony’s sake – though that is fun, I admit – but maybe, if I may face my own resistance, because I enjoy the moments when God finally wins me over, and overflows my opposition, and reluctantly I let myself kneel and pray. I like seeing it in others because I see that this reluctance is not only my own, and even a stubborn like myself is within the reach of grace. I see David trying to make his bed in the depths, and feel I’m not down there by myself – there’s God, and there’s David hiding too, who tells me to shush and go hide somewhere else. If these dwarves dared to resist God, my own short arms and legs don’t seem to so foolish either. I can rest, and open myself, and let God arrive, and thank him for seeking such a small-minded fool as I.

René Breuel

[2]     Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2002), X.II.2.

[3]     Ibid., X.XXVII.38.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (Orlando: Harcourt, 1955), 228-229.


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Madonna, World Peace, and Religious Pluralism

15 02 2012

World Peace was center stage during Madonna’s halftime performance at this year’s Super Bowl. For our Wondering Fair readers uninterested in American culture or sports, I will spare you the details of the well-choreographed and highly entertaining spectacle. This essay focuses less on the glitz and glamour of the Super Bowl than on the possibility of world peace in an age of religious pluralism. 2011 as we know was a year rife with protests, so is world peace in the way Madonna envisions possible? Can we all learn to “coexist,” as the trendy bumper stickers encourage us to do? Madonna’s halftime performance seems to suggest that we can achieve global shalom, but it’s hard to imagine such a world when our current economic, political, and religious differences are so severe.

On the religious front, one proposal to help establish world peace is to adopt a position called religious pluralism. Promulgated by academic theologians like Wilfred Cantwell Smith and John Hick, religious pluralism is the idea that all religions are essentially equal paths up the same divine mountain. Each simply recognizes Truth in a different way, though all roads lead to God. In Hick’s own words, “pluralism is the view that the great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real or the Ultimate from within the major variant cultural ways of being human….”[1] Here, in his desire to remain religiously neutral, Hick substitutes the word “Real” for God, a term which has a clear Abrahamic bias. The benefits of religious pluralism, it is thought, are that people may stop trying to convert or coerce others into their way of thinking and thereby live together in harmony.

Despite good intentions, there are several problems with religious pluralism. First, it is methodologically flawed. In an attempt to find what is common to all faiths, the pluralist is forced to ignore seriously important elements of each religion. The things that make religions unique—such as the Trinity for Christians or the prophecy of Muhammad for Muslims—are routinely trivialized and viewed as unnecessary additions. To suggest that Christians or Muslims willingly give up their core doctrines in favor of a far more ambiguous pluralist picture of the divine seems ill-conceived.

Second, pluralism is morally problematic. If the Real does not reveal Itself to people in history, then the religious practices of faithful Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Muslims are based on misunderstandings. Since the Real hides Itself from everyone (except for Hick and other pluralists!) and remains fundamentally mysterious to us, we are in the dark morally and cannot live in a way that pleases the Real. This deep agnosticism which runs through religious pluralism makes it especially difficult to discern right from wrong.

Third, pluralism is logically impossible. As many scholars have pointed out, the idea that all religions are true in their own way flies in the face of common sense.[2] All religions make exclusive truth-claims and prioritize their understanding of reality over against others. Religious pluralism, with its nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the Real, is no different. Ironically, the desire to create a universal religion for everyone only leads to the denial of all other truth-claims made by religious believers. How can Hinduism, with its claim to 330 million gods, be just as true as Theravada Buddhism, which has zero gods, or Judaism, which has only one?

Finally, from a Christian perspective, religious pluralism fails to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. To be sure, this is unproblematic for persons of other faiths, but for Christians who want to be true to their historic beliefs, Jesus must be seen not merely as one manifestation of an unknown higher deity we call the Real. Rather, Jesus made known his identity in history by walking among people and saying things like, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and “I and the Father are one.”[3] His exclusive truth-claims, as we know, not only caused consternation and led to his crucifixion, but they were and continue to be fundamental to the Christian story. Despite its lack of Super Bowl glitz and glamour, it is this story, I would argue, that promises to end all protests and ultimately usher in real world peace.

Paul McClure

[1] John Hick, “Religious Pluralism.” Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. Ed by Michael Peterson, William Hasker, et al. (New York: Oxford UP, 2001), 565.

[2] For more resources, see Harold Netland’s Encountering Religious Pluralism, Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, Vinoth Ramachandra’s Faiths in Conflict, John Stackhouse’s No Other Gods Before Me, and Ravi Zacharias’ Jesus Among Other Gods.

[3] Italics added. John 14:6, 10:30 (NIV)

*Thanks also to Professor Ivan Satyavrata for his helpful lecture on religious pluralism.


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Categories : Tough Questions

Is Doubt the Enemy of Faith?

25 01 2012

Doubt gets a bad rap. We live in a world where we are not supposed to doubt, it is unhealthy—bad. Doubts, though, are like confrontations, which also have a bad rap. However, it is in confrontations that change can happen. Sometimes my wife needs to confront me, and at that point there is a back and forth until eventually one of us realizes our error (or often we both do) and we change. Today—we are so afraid of confrontations—we don’t have them. In a Facebook generation we just unfriend, ignore or avoid—but then we are depriving ourselves and others of possibly growing.

Doubts are the same way. We often are afraid of them—or we don’t deal with them—but then we never grow. In fact they may actually help. How do I know? Look at the famous, but often misunderstood biblical story of Doubting Thomas often used to illustrate how it is wrong to doubt. It can be found at the end of the Book of John.

What does Jesus do when he approaches Thomas here? Two things: First, he calls him out for doubting clear evidence—the other apostles eyewitness accounts. Most people highlight this aspect of the story. However, the second thing Jesus does is actually gives into the demands of Thomas! Thomas demands to see Jesus, his pierced hands and side, and then Jesus—after rebuking Thomas, actually gives him exactly what he demands. Why would he do that?

Jesus is trying to keep Thomas, as well as the listener from falling into one of two camps prevalent in ancient and modern culture. The first camp can be called the blind faith camp.  This group of people thinks doubts are the enemy of faith. That blind faith camp never questions their faith, never ask hard questions, and never seeks answers for when doubts rise up. They say that the definition of faith, is you don’t know, so stop trying to ask questions and just believe. There is almost a fear if that if you do ask questions then you will lose your faith.

The second camp out there is what I call the persistent cynicism camp.  These are individuals who try to poke holes in everything and mock all truth statements, and undermine all claims of purpose. I know these people exist because I was one of them. Whose to say what is true? What is true for you is true for you, but what is true for me is true for me. In some respects these people are committed to the belief that there is no belief—there is nothing else out there.

Through his actions, Jesus wants to avoid both extremes. Notice he rebukes Thomas not for doubting in general—but for doubting clear evidence from his friends. In other words, he was in the
persistent cynicism camp. He was not seeking or trying to find answers, he made a blanket statement and he was not going to budge. However, on the other hand—Jesus actually gives into his demands, and validates and even answers Thomas’ demands. So it seems, from a fresh reading of the passage, doubts are not necessarily the enemy of faith, only if they stay in a persistent state of cynicism.

In fact, they may actually boost a faith/trust paradigm. How does Thomas respond after Jesus shows him the evidence? All the gospels have Jesus trying to show others who he really is, but the one person who confesses Jesus’ full nature is Thomas!  No other human being had a higher view of Jesus than Thomas. In verse 28 he says, “My Lord and My God.” This is a personal expression of intimate relationship that is accomplished through processing doubts. So use them, search them, and build off them.

Michael Keller


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

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