How is Christianity different from world religions?
We live in a world where there is a mixture of cultures, nations, races and religions on an unprecedented scale. In 24 hours it is possible to reach almost anywhere in the world and the advances in modern broadcasting allows us to experience ‘live’ events in other countries. The internet allows real-time conversations with friend and strangers across the globe.
Everyday we come into contact with people from different backgrounds and cultures with different beliefs or value systems. It is important we understand and are able to express why Christianity is unique.
There may be times when you find it difficult to reconcile God’s truth to your own opinion or worldview, God’s truth is eternal, it does not change, our understanding of the truth does change as we allow God to work in our hearts and minds.
These sessions are not about opinion, they are about learning truth, the truth contained in the Bible, together we are going to focus on how we apply God’s truth, black & white in a grey world. To set godly priorities, grow in Christian character and live according to God’s standards so that we are a living witness to others.
John 14:1-7 (New International Version)
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.
From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Is Christianity Unique?
As a Christian you will often be faced with questions from non-Christians about your faith. Many people may be interested in learning about what you, believe, others may be seeking the truth for themselves. You may also be face with people who are antagonistic about Christianity, people who believe that we are at best misguided and at worst stupid in our belief in Jesus Christ.
In the multicultural world that we live in there are many who think that Christianity is only a variation on a basic theme running through all religions.
To put it another way, “Don’t the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or Jew worship the same God as Christians under a different name?.
Many are unwilling to accept that Christianity is the only true way in the ‘enlightened’ 21st Century and many wonder how anyone could accept that Jesus Christ is the only way to God when the atheists so proudly state ‘there is probably no God so enjoy yourself.’
The Bible clearly asserts that Jesus is the only way to God and that apart from Him there is no salvation. Maybe we can appear bigoted, or that we think we are better than everyone else when we state Jesus is the only way. Christians believe this not because we have made it up as a rule, but because the Bible and Jesus Christ himself stated it. This core message is woven through both the Old and New Testaments. Christians are not giving a biased viewpoint but explaining Biblical fact.
When have you faced the question of whether Christ is the only way?
It is impossible for a Christian to be theologically inclusive with world religions. The cornerstone of the Christian message is Jesus Christ - God come to earth. Without this basis, any other parts lack meaning. There are multiple places in the New Testament when this is stated, here are three of them:
Acts 4:12 “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only,who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This is a fixed unchangeable truth. There are some laws or truths that we do have control over, for example the penalty for speeding is determined by human law. It is not inherent to the act itself. The penalty could be set at £50 or £500 pound, or the human law about speeding could be abolished completely.
Other laws, like gravity, are irrevocable truths we cannot change. They are not socially determined no matter what the opinion polls or culture might want. Truth is solid, fixed and certain. The penalty is also not socially determined. We could vote unanimously to suspend the law of gravity for an hour, but would you climb onto the roof and jump off to test it? The penalty for violating gravity is inherent in the act itself.
As there are inherent physical laws, there are inherent spiritual laws. One of them is God’s initiative and revealing himself in Jesus Christ’s coming to earth. Another is Christ’s death as the route to forgiveness of sins and beginning a one-on-one relationship with God. To talk about the exclusiveness of Christ is not assuming a superior posture, there is no room for arrogance. Rather, it is a person whose life has been touched by God’s intervention and grace.
D.T. Niles describes Christians telling their personal stories as: “One beggar sincerely telling another where to find food.”
Is sincerity enough?
Spiritual truth is not arrived at by a majority vote. Sincerely believing something doe not make it true. We said in our first study that faith is no more valid than the object in which it is placed.
Believing something does not make it true in the same way that failing to believe truth makes it false. Facts are facts regardless of people’s attitudes towards them. In matters of faith or religion, the basic question must always be “Are the facts true?”
Ravi Zacharias gives helpful insight on the laws of logic. There is the either-or principle, the law of noncontradiction:
Jesus Christ is God or not God: true or not true. If Jesus Christ is God, Brahma or one of the 330 million gods cannot also be truly God.
If Jesus Christ was the author of creation, as the Bible teaches, it was not Brahma. It was either one or the other.
Imagine we are standing next to each other on the same side of the street and I say “There is no bus coming, I will cross the street.” But you saying, “there is a bus coming. I will not cross.”
One statement must be true and the other not.
Consider the fact of the deity, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ:
- Christianity affirms these facts as the heart of its message
- Islam, denies the deity, death and resurrection of Christ.
These views can not be simultaneously true, no matter how sincerely each is believed by any number of people.
What do you find compelling about the arguments of those who say all religions are the same? What holes do you see in their arguments?
A great deal is said and written about the similarity of world religions. Many Christians naively assume that the other religions are basically the same, making the same claims and essentially doing what Christianity does but in slightly different terms.
Many in the modern world believe that all religions are the same, even leaders in the Anglican church have stated that Islam and Christianity are both true (Muslims strongly disagree with this!).
One of the similarities that does exist in almost every religion is the belief in the Golden Rule.
From the time of Confucius we have the statement in various forms: Do unto others as we would have others do unto us.
Many assume this to be the essence of Christianity.
If all Jesus did was give us the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule, he would have just given us serious frustration - why? because few of us can keep these principles.
Our problem, has been lacking the power, the ability, to do what we know is helpful, moral, good, just, honest and kind. Jesus not only taught us the Golden Rule, He came to help us keep it - this is one of the major distinctions between Christianity and world religions.
Jesus offers us the power to live a we should, He gives us forgiveness as a free gift, He gives us a new life, He gives us His righteousness. He gives us something we cannot do for ourselves He gives us a new start.
What are the basics of Christianity?
We believe in One God in three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. God is our creator. Out of His compassion He made us and desires to have a relationship with us. He continue to patiently extend His love to us. Many people would like to stop here but there is more that we need to understand.
God is Holy. Simply this means that He is absolutely pure and He is separate from everything that is impure.
God is righteous and just. He is like a judge that must uphold justice to the full.
All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. (Romans 3:23) and the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23)
God loves us. The bible tells us that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ to come to earth to rescue us, to be our truth and life. All of our ethical and moral remedies have failed. We have all turned away from God’s way. We need a Saviour.
6 Jesus died in our place and He rose again. In His resurrection He cancels the power of Sin. Because He died in our place our sins are forgiven.
Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
1 Peter 2:24 “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”
Acts 13:31 “and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.”
Jesus Christ will come again: Matthew 16:27 “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS.
Christianity is not us struggling toward God, but God reaching down to us.
He knew that more rules would not help. Instead the Holy and just God came to earth. There is an open offer of forgiveness when we accept Jesus. He gives us new life, He rescues us, saves us from the punishment of our Sins. We are not saved by our works, we are not saved by anything we do.
Mark Mittelberg said “Religion is spelt D O, because it consists of the things people do to try to gain God’s forgiveness and favour. Christianity is spelt differently, it’s spelt D O N E”.
At the cross the wondor of God’s love and Jesus coming as our saviour is found in His death on the cross. The innocent one was slaughtered and took on all of the punishment that sin deserved. He took the punishment that you and I deserved.
Is Jesus Christ the Only way to God?
Read John 14:1-7
1 After Jesus tells the disciples that he will be leaving them (because he will be crucified), Simon Peter asks, “Lord, where are you going?” (John 13:36). How does Jesus respond to him in verses 1-4.
2 What facts in verses 1-4 would have comforted the disciples?
3 What comfort can you draw from these verses in the times of questioning?
4 What seems to be Thomas’s concern in verse 5?
5 Jesus emphasises three things about Himself: That He is the Way, the Truth and the Life (v6). Why is each of these significant and nonnegotiable in true Christian faith?
6 What does the fact that we cannot “come to the Father except through Jesus” tell us about how we should respond to those who say all religions are equal?
7 How does knowing Jesus help us to know God (v7)?
8 What implications does this verse have for talking to those of other religions, especially those whose god is a distant, unknowable being?
What do other religions believe?
Four major world religions are Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Read the description of each below and describe what Christianity has to offer to followers of that religion.
Buddhism: The ultimate goal is to overcome desire by following the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment and achieve Nirvana- total nothingness and a loss of self.
Buddhism began with Gautama Siddhartha, born in 563 BC in northern India, he followed a pilgrimage of inquiry in search o f answers to suffering and the way to peace. He felt he had achieved the great enlightenment and he became known as the Buddha.
Nirvana is likened to blowing out a candle. Buddha’s diagnosis was his four “noble truths”: (1) suffering is universal, (2) the cause of suffering is desire, (3) the cure for suffering is the elimination of desire, (4) desire is eliminated by following the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment. The Eightfold Path includes, right knowledge, right feeling, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right insight and right meditation.
Buddha also accepted an ironclad law of cause and effect known as Karma - all actions have an effect, either good or bad in this life or the next rebirth. Buddhism also teaches that the material world is an illusion.
Hinduism: The ultimate goal is also called Nirvana but it has a different meaning to Buddhism. Here it refers to reunion with Brahma the the all-pervading force of the universe that is the Hindu’s chief god - of the 330 million gods. All individuality is lost, but without the total self-annihilation of Buddhism.
Nirvana is achieved through a continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth, or the law of karma.
If we lead a moral life, then we move up the scale of life with more comfort and less suffering.
If we live a bad life, then we move down the scale in the next life and if someone is bad enough they will return as an animal or insect.
The Hindu Supreme Being or God is the personal form of the Ultimate Reality, is conceived by Hindus as having various aspects.
A Hindu deity (god or goddess) represents only a particular aspect of the Supreme Being. For example, Saraswati represents the learning and knowledge aspect of the Supreme Being. If a Hindu wants to pray for acquiring knowledge and understanding, he prays to Saraswati. Hindu worship of deities is monotheistic polytheism and not simple polytheism.
Hindus declare that there is only one Supreme Being and He is the God of all religions. There is no “other God.” Hindus view cosmic activity of the Supreme Being as comprised of three tasks: creation, preservation, and dissolution and recreation.
Hindus associate these three cosmic tasks with the three deities, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
Brahma brings forth the creation and represents the creative principle of the Supreme Being.
Vishnu maintains the universe and represents the eternal principle of preservation.
Shiva represents the principle of dissolution and recreation. These three deities together form the Hindu Trinity.
According to the Hindu scriptures, living beings are not apart from God, since He lives in each and every one of them and each living being is a unique manifestation of God.
Hindu’s are not supposed to kill insects and the cow is sacred - something which seems incomprehensible to us in the western world.
Hindus believe that God and the universe are identical.
The concept of Maya is central to their thinking. Maya is the dualist perception that the physical world is just an illusion: we think we are personal beings, but we are not; we suffer because we think we are personal when we are not; all thinking an feeling is illusion. Reality is spiritual and invisible.
Islam: Heaven is a paradise of wine, women and song, but is achieved by abstaining from these things in life and following the Five Pillars of Islam: repeating the creed, making a pilgrimage to Mecca, giving alms to the poor, praying five times daily and keeping the one month daytime fast of Ramadan.
There is no possibility of assurance that you will go to paradise.
The teaching is that Allah is an absolute unity, creator and judge of all people. Muhammad rejected the idea that Jesus could be God. Muslims consider Jesus as one of the prophets but not as god incarnate.
Allah is totally removed from people, he is responsible for evil as well as good, he is not depicted as a deity who loves his creation.
The distant concept of god makes the idea of the incarnation of Jesus inconceivable to the Muslim. How could their god, majestic and beyond, ever have contact with mortal humans in sin and misery?
To a Muslim the death of God the Son on the cross is inconceivable, they view this as god being defeated by his creation - not saving it.
What is common in these religions?
The common factor in these religions the the need for a person to do to achieve. With Christianity, when we trust in Jesus we are forgive, we are rescued, we are saved.
We are given an assurance of salvation based on what Jesus has done - not on what we need to do.
Because their salvation depends on an their own individual efforts of working to gain merit, many have no assurance of salvation.
With each of these religions, the fundamental concept of who or what god is, is diverse.
Buddha never claimed to be a deity, in fact he was agnostic in belief and stated that even if god existed he could not help a person achieve enlightenment, he said everyone has to work it out for themselves.
In Islam and Judaism the concept of God is closer to what we believe as Christian’s but still significantly different.
What about Judaism?
The Jewish concept of God is the closest to Christianity. However the majority of Jews do not admit their God is the Father of Jesus Christ. Some may believe that Jesus was a great man, but not their Messiah or Saviour.
In fact it was this very issue that caused bitter controversy in Jesus’ time. God we accept, they said to Jesus Christ, but we do nor accept you because as a man you are claiming yourself to be God. This, in their view, is a clear case of blasphemy.
In a conversation with the jewish religious leaders, Jesus discussed this question. “God is our Father” they said. Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me... He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (John 8:42,47)
It is obvious that the Jewish leaders of the time were not sincere seekers. If people are seeking the true God, their sincerity will be evident and their efforts rewarded.
History has many examples of Jews who have responded when presented with the truth about Jesus as Messiah His message opens their understanding that He is the true God, whom they have been seeking.
What sets Christ apart?
Of the great religious leaders of the world, Christ alone claims deity. It does not matter what you think about Muhammad, Buddha or Confucius as individuals, their followers only emphasise their teachings. Not so with Jesus. He made himself the focal point of His teaching. The central question He put to His listeners was. “Who do you say that I am?” When asked what doing the works of god involved, Jesus replied, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent” (John 6:29).
Why is Christianity different?
On the question of who and what God is, the nature of salvation and how it is obtained, it is clear that Christianity differs radically from world religions.
We live in an age in which tolerance is a key word. Tolerance, however, must be clearly understood. Truth, by its very nature, is intolerant of error.
If two plus two is four, the total at the same time can not be forty-two, no one is regarded as intolerant because they maintain that the correct answer is four.
The same principle applies in matters of religion. We can be tolerant of of other points of view and respect the right to be held and heard.
We cannot, be forced in the name of tolerance to agree that all points of view are equally valid, including those that are mutually contradictory - that would be nonsense.
The only way to God!
The statement “it does not matter what you believe as long as you believe it” is not true.
What we believe must be true in order for it to be real.
Again, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 4:6).
If we are to know the true and living God in personal experience, it will be through Jesus Christ.
The reality is that God loves us with an unmerited and unearned love. True Christianity brings assurance, acceptance, joy and contentment.
The Psalmist said “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). Jesus Christ is the living Son of God, your personal Christian experience assures you of this truth.
A call to action
Take some time this week to think about your reasons for the hope in God you have through Jesus Christ.
Pray for those who have never seen Jesus as the only Truth and are following false religions or living without faith.
Ask God to make you a witness to those you know personally who do not know about the grace Jesus offers freely to those who trust in Him.
