I said I would post about “The Secret”, Rhonda Byrne’s ridiculous new-agey DVD/book that proposes the not so novel theory that “OUR THOUGHTS … CREATE … THINGS!” … however I’ve decided against wasting my time doing a meticulous refutation, in the hopes that the fad will die off soon. However, I did write an article for The Life recently about The Secret, titled What is “The Secret”?. I invite you to read it as a summary of my views on this subject.

Shouldn’t Christians just leave people alone, letting others believe what they want? After all, if all religions are basically the same, or at least are fulfilling to those that follow them, why try to get people to change their beliefs? The idea goes that there are many roads up the mountain, but they all eventually lead to the same point at the top. Thus, many paths … thus, any religion may/will ultimately lead you to God.

I guess it depends whether religion is like insulin or ice cream. For example, I prefer chocolate ice cream, while you might prefer vanilla, or butter pecan, or strawberry, or … great, now I’m hungry. But regardless of what your favorite flavor is, there’s nothing wrong with choosing one instead of another; it’s a personal preference. If someone told me they liked mint flavor best, I wouldn’t respond by saying “What the heck’s wrong with you?” or “How dare you choose mint instead of chocolate, you miserable heretic!”

But the point is this:

That’s the beauty of ice cream - you can choose what you prefer. When it comes to medicine, however, it doesn’t make sense to choose what you prefer. Rather, it’s essential to choose what heals. It would be silly to choose NyQuil over penicillin simply because it tastes better.” (Alan Shlemon, STR.org)

When choosing ice cream, you choose what you like. But when you choose medicine, you choose what heals you. Religion isn’t like ice cream, where you should choose whatever “tastes best”. You need to choose what’s true. The truth is often tough, but that doesn’t mean we should just ignore it and choose what we like.

Jesus didn’t claim Christianity is true like ice cream. He didn’t say “Come, follow me, it’ll be fun!”. He in fact claimed something very specific, contradicting every single religious (or non-religious) person who lived before him. He claimed that it’s impossible to “earn” our way into heaven, and in fact need to trust in God (who Jesus himself claimed to be in human form) instead of trusting our own failing efforts.

But isn’t that pure arrogance? Isn’t that intolerant? Doesn’t it sound presumptuous for Christians to claim they have “the truth” and all other religions are wrong? Well, only if truth is like ice cream. If someone is dying and needs medicine, you need to give them what will heal them, not what they like best. In the same way, Jesus gives us what we need, and ultimately what is best for us.

There are many different paths, but they don’t all eventually lead to the top of the same mountain. Some veer off to the left and the right; others climb entirely different mountains! And if God is real, truth about God is not like ice cream; it’s like medicine, and only what is true can heal. Christians don’t want to “force” their religious beliefs on anyone; instead, since religion is decidedly not like ice cream, it really does matter what people believe. And people who believe that we have found that truth, that medicine that cures what plagues humankind deep in our hearts, can’t help but want to share it with other people.

(This article was originally written for the From Today On website, although it hasn’t been posted yet.)

Related reading:

• Insulin or Ice Cream? - Greg Koukl’s lectures that are part of the Ambassador Basic Curriculum were the inspiration for this post; unfortunately this short clip from it is the best one I could find on the STR site.
• Jesus and World Religions: How do they compare? - Is it politically correct to “compare” religions? Why not? As long as we know what tolerance is, then there’s no harm.
• Story: I researched all the major religions - In my own story, I researched world faiths before becoming Christian. Here’s someone else who did the same.

I do believe that in the other world there are neither Hindus, nor Christians nor Mussalmans. They all are judged not according to their labels, or professions, but according to their actions, irrespective of their professions. (Mahatma Gandhi, source)

Do Christians believe they have a monopoly on religious truth? They shouldn’t. Truth should be accepted wherever it is found; be it in the Bible, the Qur’an, or in secular writings. That’s why on the About this Site page of WhyFaith.com I state that “I will search for and accept truth wherever it is found”. I think that Mahatma Gandhi was in many ways a wise man, and we could learn much from him.

However, note carefully that I’m not in any way implying that all religions are equally true. Since they teach very different things, the claim that “there are neither Hindus, nor Christians nor Mussalmans” is insulting to Hindus, Christians, and Mussalmans. This view seems tolerant, but actually is quite intolerant to these groups. What if the same rule was applied to political groups? What if we were to say “there are neither Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, or Communists”? The absolute view of religious inclusively necessarily excludes the exclusitivists (that is, the vast majority of people around the world). It may be easier to wave a dismissive hand at religions and say they are all basically the same, but that is, IMHO, lazy and inaccurate.

Note too that Gandhi has, perhaps due to his desire for religious harmony, apparently misunderstood or has mistakenly stated Christian belief. Unlike other faiths, Christians do not believe “They all are judged … according to their actions”, at least not how Gandhi seems to mean it. The Christian concept of grace says that we cannot save ourselves, but rather God has taken the initiative to save us, if only we will accept His offer: “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8) The Four Spiritual Laws do a good job of explaining God’s grace in a very succinct fashion. Gandhi’s quote makes it seem like we are saved by our own actions in a sort of spiritual bank account, which is not the Christian belief.

I don’t know if this one particular quote reflects Gandhi’s beliefs accurately, but this attitude is prevalent in western society nonetheless. And I do know that if you, like millions (billions?) of people around the world are relying on being “good enough”, hoping (but never quite sure, honestly) if you’re meeting your own standard of goodness (let alone God’s!) that perhaps there’s another way … (see the resources below for more on this topic)

Related reading:

• Do Good People Go to Heaven? - The Christian answer might surprise you.
• For students: How “good” do you have to be … ?
• How good is “good enough”?

What can we know, if anything, about God by “natural theology”? That is, how much can we know about God without revelation? To put it another way, what is available to us via general revelation, not special revelation?

I think we can know quite a bit about God via general revelation. I’ll base the following comments on three assumptions:
1) God exists.
2) God is much greater, in all respects, perhaps infinitely greater, than we are.
3) God created the universe.
To clarify point #2, when we describe God we are, as finite, limited creatures, seeing God “imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror”, as Paul says (1 Corinthians 13:12). So I am not claiming to be able to know everything about God, nor even fully comprehending any particular facet perfectly, only that we are able to know certain things about God’s nature, albeit imperfectly. Now strap yourself in; this post will be a little longer than usual, but I think it’ll be worthwhile.

So first, I think we can say that God is creative. This follows from the fact that God created the universe. If God is the Creator, it means God must, in some sense, be creative. Part of being creative is intelligence. (A person might accidentally end up with something we’d call “creative”, without any intelligence, by acting randomly, but we wouldn’t deem it creative because it was not done purposefully.) So God would be intelligent, and it would be reasonable to say God would be (at least) more intelligent than any of us, or even more intelligent than all of us put together. Thus we could say God is omniscient (all-knowing).

Next, I think we can also say that God is omnipotent, that is, all-powerful. Not only was God creative and intelligent enough to conceive of our diverse and vast universe, but God actually acted and made it happen. Thus God has the power to do things, to make stuff happen. There is no limit to what God can do, as long as it does not contradict the other attributes God possesses. Now, God would not be limited by “time”, at least not the chronological progression of events that we consider time. Since God created the universe, God would not be confined by anything within it. In this sense, then, God is outside time … God is eternal.

I’ll also add that God must be, in some sense, personal. “Personal?” you may be thinking. “Why couldn’t God just be an impersonal force of some kind?” One reason goes back to point #3 above. It seems a choice was made to cause our universe to exist. It wasn’t something God was required to do (what would God “need”?) but chose to do. That element of choice (as well as intelligence; how can an impersonal force be intelligent?) suggests that God is, in some sense “personal”, though again, in some way much more awesome than we are. McLaren is helpful here:

When people think of a person, they think of rather quaint but silly images - such as God as a Santa-esque old man … Our problem in this regard is probably a matter of words - perhaps confusing “personal” with “human”. To illustrate, think of the following items: gravity, helium, water, coal, a fern, a frog, a parrot, a golden retriever, a chimpanzee, a human being … I don’t know any frogs very well, but with my limited experience, they seem to have a little, but not much, in the way of personality. Parrots have more, and golden retrievers and chimpanzees more still … with each step up the ladder, we didn’t lose the qualities of the previous steps; rather, we added more capabilities, more depth … while we subtracted previous limitations, going from matter to form to solidity to plant life to animal life … to human life. Let’s imagine we inserted a million rungs in our ladder after human beings, each rung suggesting more developed, less limited beings, with personalities as far beyond our own as ours are beyond a bullfrog’s … we’d be getting some idea of the way in which we can speak of God being personal. (Brian McLaren, Finding Faith, 129-130)

If God is not in some sense personal, in some sense relational, doesn’t have something much greater than but still recognizable as personality, God would be lower than frogs, parrots and golden retrievers. That won’t do. I’d say God must be, in some sense, personal.

Our list so far includes eternal, creative, all-powerful, all-knowing, and personal. What’s still missing? One final thought: God is good. This is may the hardest one to accept. After all, if God is good, why do things sometimes seem so bad? But it certainly seems odd that with the trouble and strife that we see around us, every monotheistic (one-God) religion proposes that God is good. To appropriate one of C S Lewis’ arguments, what would cause “primitive” man from attributing such a world to a good God if none existed?

If God is, in some sense personal, as seems to be the case from the above, how could God not be good? Caring? Loving, even? After all, if God exists, our morality, what we call good and bad, are really just terms for “Godly” and “ungodly”. It’s interesting to note that the Bible goes farther than calling God “good”. It says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8 & 4:16).

Those are just my ideas though. We can only go so far by “general revelation” alone; eventually we must venture father into the trepid waters of “special revelation” to really know God. Why wouldn’t we want to know God? Certainly a personal God could not only be known, but would want to be known, and make it possible to be known. Such a God might even go as far as coming down to our level. We couldn’t comprehend God at God’s own level after all. History’s only person, “God in the flesh”, fully God and fully human in every sense of the words, who’s life (and death, and resurrection) is so compelling that today there are two billion followers around the world, is Jesus Christ. In my opinion, no other “god” compares. Check out the resources linked below, see what you think!

Further reading:

• Deep: Who is Jesus? - A five part study on Jesus’ life. Fairly in-depth and information-packed.
• Shorter: Jesus: Fact or Fiction? - Interactive exploration. Many experts discuss. With videos nstuff.
• Really Short: Jesus? I Want to Know More - A brief Flash-based presentation of the “good news”, the Gospel. With related links.
• As Long as you Want: Contact me