In tackling John 10:7-18 today, we spent time discussing in length about our experiences in facing those with the opinion that all religions bring you to heaven. But to us Christians, Jesus is the only way, which does not sit well with a lot of people. But if they would study the religions deeper, their ways are so different from each other. Not all religions are going the same way and so there is really just one right way, but which one? And if you would care to listen, Jesus is the door, the only door.
For Christians, the door also bid us to consider how we enter into the fold. If our way into the faith is not through Christ, i.e. not through denying ourselves, not through suffering and showing grace, we are like the thieves and robbers (v.1) and we'll be teaching falsehood (v.5). Christians, go through the door, through Jesus, and live in Christ.
pearlie
ppl who say that are just ignorant and opportunists... they so lazy to find each religion talks different thing..
ReplyDeleteEG: Buddhists dont know what is heaven, go back to God...that is not their ultimate concern...perhaps many buddhists themselves also dont know..
He is the ONLY way. One day, EVERY knee shall bow and EVERY tongue confess that He is Lord!!!!
ReplyDeleteSusan
In such a delicate scenario, the Malaysian church needs to carefully consider how to relate with other religious communities and consequently, her task of mission. While we are obviously living in a world with diverse religious perspectives, religious pluralism is a particular view that these religions are equally valid in terms of access to truth and effectiveness in salvation.
ReplyDeleteThis view is illustrated beautifully by the ancient story of ten blind men trying to describe an elephant after touching different parts of its body for the first time. As they announced their conflicting discoveries, a heated argument ensued. Awakened by the quarrel, the king corrected all of them by saying, “The elephant is a huge animal and each of you touched a part. In order to know the whole truth about what the elephant looks like, you must put together all the parts!” The moral of the story is that no religion has privileged access to the whole truth. Each religious view is a partial experience of the same Reality from its own culturally-conditioned perspective.
This view is popular because tolerance towards all religions is needed to ward off violent fundamentalism in the wake of post-911 ‘war on terror’. However, pluralism is not as religiously ‘neutral’ as it may appear to be. At face-value, it has been historically the view of particular religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Bahai faith. In contrast, Islam and Christianity historically held to the finality of divine revelation in Koran and Jesus respectively.
More recently, though, John Hick is a prominent Christian theologian who called for a Copernican revolution in which the universe of faiths are seen as centered on God, instead of Christ, whose Light is reflected in all major world religions. He unpacked the pluralistic hypothesis that “the great world faiths embody different perceptions and concepts of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human, and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centredness is taking place. These traditions are accordingly to be regarded as alternative soteriological ‘spaces’ within, or ‘ways’ along which, men and women can find salvation/liberation /ultimate fulfillment.”
http://hedonese1.blogspot.com/2005/05/blind-men-elephant.html
Amen, Susan, Amen!
ReplyDelete不肖生 Sceptics,
ReplyDeleteTrue, and it is generally the situation. And we too must know more about the others before we even talk about them.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts and view on the matter. Like what Carson brought up in one of his talk -- the word "tolerance" has already lost its meaning these days.