Fighting words are words that arouse a visceral response in people, making their gut churn and their hands ball into fists. As the election draws near, fighting words have been flying all over Twitter and Facebook in the political clash over our nation’s future. This episode looks beneath this political fight to a deeper, even more significant war, the battle by which Christians are to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5). Christian men as leaders of their homes and churches are to lead the way in this fight. That is the reason for this current series, “Surrounding Our Loved Ones With the Belt of Truth.” Today’s culture is marinated in the idea that tolerance is the highest virtue in the land. Therefore, Christ’s words, I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me (John 14:6) are FIGHTING WORDS for many. Saying your religion is right and all the others are wrong is the epitome of intolerance. So, how do we help our loved ones survive this assault on their faith and winsomely challenge others to investigate the claims of Christ? That is today’s topic.
A twenty-something man said to the speaker, Religious exclusivity is not just narrow—it’s dangerous. Religion has led to untold strife, division, and conflict. It may be the biggest enemy of peace in the world. If Christians continue to insist that they have “the truth”—and if other religions do as well—the world will never know peace. The argument, “It is arrogant to insist your religion is right and to convert others to it,” is frequently directed at the Christian faith. Other’s argue, similarly, “Religious faith is ethno-centric—too culturally and historically conditioned for it to be true. Besides, all major religions are equally valid and teach the same thing.”
ANSWERING THE CLAIM-TO-EXCLUSIVITY OBJECTION
A. Consider this objection's cultural bias. Most people in the world, including many who are just as educated and intelligent as the 20-something above do NOT hold his view that all religions are equally valid. Most humans believe their religious views are right and other views wrong. In fact, trying to invalidate a religion for having exclusiveness claims doesn’t work in Non-Western cultures. Keller points out.
Most non-Western cultures have no problem saying that their culture and religion is best. The idea that it is wrong to do so is deeply rooted in Western traditions of self-criticism and individualism. To charge others with the “sin” of ethnocentrism is really a way of saying, “Our culture’s approach to other cultures is superior to yours.” We are then doing the very thing we forbid others to do. (Reason for God).
The exclusivity argument is fatally flawed. Sceptics reflect the subjective values of their own culture when they assume that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true. But this objection, itself, reflects Western culture’s bias; it is an unproved assumption, an article of their belief.
B. The second flaw in the exclusivity attack on Christianity is that all religions don’t at all teach the same things:
1. Different Views of God
The Christian is a trinitarian. He believes in only one true God, but that in the unity of the Godhead there are three eternal and coequal Persons. The Jew and the Muslim are strong unitarians. They believe in only one true God and only one Person in the Godhead. The philosophical Hindu is a monist (all is one) or pantheist whose God is an eternal, nonpersonal abstract being without knowable attributes. God is an IT rather than a Person. The popular sects of Hindu are polytheistic, worshippers of many Gods. Various sects of Buddhism hold a variety of views on God. These sects are either polytheistic, pantheistic, or atheistic. As we can see there is a great diversity of views just on the identity of God. (I’m, Glad You Asked, by Boa and Moody).
2. Different Views of Reaching Heaven
According to Christianity one enters heaven by his acceptance of Christ’s payment on the cross for his sin. Christianity’s solution is based on faith in Jesus Christ, not on man’s good works. The Jew believes he gains salvation by turning back to God and living a moral life. There is no assurance of salvation since it will be determined by man’s own efforts. The Muslim tries to earn his salvation by believing in the five doctrines of Islam and by performing the duties of the Five Pillars. But it all depends on his behavior so he cannot be sure. The Hindu believes he achieves his desired state of oneness with Brahman through a series of incarnations. The law of Karma says a Hindu reaps in the next life the rewards or the punishments of the present life. The Buddhist believes he earns his own release from the endless chain of reincarnations by following the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. (Ibid).
Four of these five religions seek salvation through human effort, but the effort is different for each. Christianity alone teaches that the human effort of good works can never enable sinful man to enter the presence of a holy God. Man’s only recourse is to humble himself, confess this sinfulness and inability, and trust in Christ’s atoning death, alone, as the sacrifice for his sin. From the standpoint of logic alone, this categorical difference between Christianity (God reaching to man) and other religions (man trying to reach God) makes sense. The biblical teaching also explains why other religions exist: We are created with a God-shaped vacuum. Sinful, human hearts that don’t want to submit to the true God try to fill that vacuum with a God they have fashioned themselves.
THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRISTIANITY
Jesus’ claimed to be God. Christ was unique among the founders of world religions. Some promoted their teachings as the only way to God, but Christ promoted Himself as the only way to God. Christ claimed not only exclusivity but deity. Here are some of the ways, Jesus claimed divinity:
1. By his identification with the Father. Jesus said, If you knew me, you would know my Father also (John 8:19), and Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9).
2. By his use of the phrase, I AM. Jesus said, “Truly truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM” (John 8:58). This was equivalent to claiming that He Himself was Yahweh. Exodus 3:14 reads, And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM; and He said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.” By calling himself the I AM, Christ was at the same time claiming to be Jehovah God.
3. By calling himself the Son of Man. This was the title Jesus most often used of himself, (used 81 times in the gospels). Though on the surface, this term connotes the humanity of the Messiah, the term goes back to Daniel 7, where we read, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man (vs 13). This is a clear reference to the Messiah who establishes his kingdom of righteousness. What was missed by many Jews was that coming with the clouds of heaven is only ever used in the OT to refer to God. The Messiah would be God himself.
4. Christ further supported His case for deity by ascribing to Himself various attributes of God. He claimed eternality (John 17:5) and omnipresence (Matt 18:20 and 28:20). He also spoke of his sinlessness (John 8:46). His indirect claims included (1) his acceptance of worship by men (Matt 14:33; John 9:35-39; 20:27-29; (2) his ability to forgive sins (Mark 2:5-11 and Luke 7:48-50); and (3) his claim that all men would face him in judgement (John 5:24-28).
5. Christ’s claims could not have been changed by revisionist disciples who deified him because his claim to exclusivity and to deity were heard by the critics of his day. Frequently, when He made these dramatic claims, the Jews accused him of blasphemy. They correctly understood the implications of what he was saying realizing he was making himself to be equal with God. Consider:
- Mark 2:6-7. Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
- John 5:18. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
- John 10:30-33 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
The evidence is overwhelming that Jesus, unlike any other religious leader of the world, claimed to be God in the flesh. This fact presents us with a logical choice.
JESUS MUST BE EITHER A LIAR, A LUNATIC OR LORD
Years ago, a Cru speaker named, Josh McDowell, popularized the cogent logical thinking of C. S. Lewis, the great professor at Cambridge University and once an agnostic. In Mere Christianity, Lewis wrote:
I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about (Christ): I’M READY TO ACCEPT JESUS AS A GREAT MORAL TEACHER, BUT I DON’T ACCEPT HIS CLAIM TO BE GOD. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.
If Jesus claimed to be God, but didn’t know he wasn’t, Jesus was a LUNATIC. If Jesus claimed to be God and knew he wasn’t, Jesus was a LIAR. Lewis continues, You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit on Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not cone up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
We must help our kids see this compelling case that many of us have heard before. Thousands of our rising generation go off to school or the workplace thinking that their Christian faith is not substantiated by reason but is an irrational leap of “Sunday school” belief. They begin to doubt it and becoming fearful of identifying themselves with Christ. The TRUTH is that logic and reason could not be more on their side. We must surround our loved ones with the Belt of God’s Truth.
DOES BELIEVING CHRIST’S CLAIMS LEAD TO INTOLERANCE?
Let’s return to the accusation that believing Jesus’ claim, No one comes to the Father but by me leads to intolerance. One rabbi articulated this view, saying: 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. This is a great summary of the dominant morality of the time—truth divides so we must leap into irrationalism (truth doesn’t matter) and subjectivism (you have your truth, I have mine). With Christ’s help, we must wage spiritual war and tear down these strongholds in our loved one’s thinking. Let’s analyze the rabbi’s statement:
a) He objects to a religion that says one faith is superior to another. But everyone knows that believing something that is TRUE is superior to believing a MYTH. Whether the content of what you believe is true or false MATTERS. If a driver sees a train approaching the railroad crossing on his road and guns it because he BELIEVES he can cross it before the train gets there, whether his belief is right or wrong matters. If his belief is wrong, he will end up dead. In real life we laugh at that naïve and gullible who believe the snake oil salesman’s claims his cure will work. The rabbi’s argument is out of touch with the way real people live their real lives. The truth of what you believe matters. We all know that.
b) Second, in the twentieth century some of those who share the rabbi’s view that world peace is thwarted primarily by religion have established secular states that have outlawed religion. These societies include Soviet Russia, Communist China, the Khmer Rouge and Nazi Germany (who tried to control religion rather than exterminate it).The tragic irony of these efforts is brought out by Alister McGrath in his history of atheism: The twentieth Century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence (The Twilight of Atheism) These twentieth century experiments prove that violence among human beings is not caused by religion but human sin.
c) Although some Christians have been intolerant, Biblical Christianity, which makes exclusive truth claims, provides within itself key additional truths that are the basis for overcoming intolerance.
1. First, Christians believe all human beings (including those of other faiths) are made in the image of God and have inherent value, whose dignity is to be protected.
2. Second, we believe in common grace. Therefore, some non-Christians live more moral lives than Christians. Therefore even those who don’t hold a biblical world view can be allies in developing culture and building a morally upright society.
3. Third Christians believe in their own severe depravity. At the core of Christianity is conviction of our own sin, which is the most potent cure for judgementalism.
4. Unlike Muhammad, Jesus repudiated the use of force to spread his kingdom, calling his followers to influence the culture as salt, and light, and leaven spreading through the culture.
5. Fifth, Christians believe the best summary of our moral obligation is to love God and love our neighbor. Devotion to God can therefore, never require harming our neighbor.
6. We believe Jesus left us his example of forgiving his enemies, saying from the cross, “Father forgive them. For they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34)
We must acknowledge that Christians have, at times been intolerant. But that is not caused by the beliefs of Christianity, which provide life changing power to overcome intolerance. It is caused by the failure of Christians to live out those beliefs.
For Your Further Prayerful Thought
1. Can you think of an instance when you heard the “Christianity is too narrow and intolerant argument?” What do you think are the hidden assumptions of those who say that?
2. Which argument for Jesus claim to deity stood out most to you?
3. Many in the culture believe Jesus was just a great moral teacher, even though a primary tenet of his teaching was his claim to be God. Why do you think Christians have not challenged them with Liar, Lunatic, Lord argument, when it is so logical?
CHILDREN’S LESSON
Introduction
1. How would you define the word, intolerance?
2. If someone says to you that 2+2=5, and you say, “You are wrong,” are you being intolerant?
3. What do think about this definition of intolerance? Intolerance is not disagreeing with someone; it is an attitude of hostility towards someone you disagree with.
4. Christians are accused of being intolerant because we believe Jesus’s claim, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me (John 14:6). It is NOT INTOLERANT to believe Jesus is the only way to God. But it is intolerant to mistreat anyone who doesn’t believe that.
Jesus Is the Only Leader of a World Religion to Have Claimed to Be God
Read back over the five reasons we know that Jesus claimed to be God. What are the most compelling to you?
Since Jesus claimed to be God, there are only 3 possible explanations for who he was:
- If he was NOT God and knew it but said he was, Jesus was a LIAR.
- If he was NOT God but thought he was, he was mentally disturbed, insane, what could be called a LUNATIC.
- He was God, He is LORD.
Parent: Why do you believe the evidence about the life of Jesus does not support that he was a LIAR, or a LUNATIC, but rather that he is LORD?
Does Believing Christ Is the Ony Way to Heaven Make Christians Intolerant?
Even though Christians believe Jesus is the only way to heaven, they should be the most loving of all people towards those who disagree with them. Look back over the six beliefs of Christians that should cause them to be very tolerant of those who disagree with them. Which of these stand out most to you?
Resources Used
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Timothy Keller.
I’m Glad You Asked: In Depth Answers to Difficult Questions About Christianity, Kenneth Boa and Larry Moody
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell
