Faith and Doubt Apr 26, 09
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Faith and Doubt M2 (Draft) 2009 04 26
Title: Only One Way to God?
Text: Acts 17: 16-31; John 14: 6
Big Idea: Christ is the only way to God.
Samuel Huntington, the late renowned professor of political science at Harvard, in his best-selling book, The Clash of Civilizations, argued back in the mid-1990s that the primary sources of conflict in the new world of the 21st century would not be over economic policy or political ideology, but over cultural and religious issues. This is where the battle lines would be drawn in the future.
Interestingly, in the mid 1990s, Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, in effect, predicted what would happen on 9/11 2001. He, of course, didn’t predict that planes would crash into the World Trade Centers, but he predicted there would be a massive violent attack against the West by a radical Islamic group.
There are many people who intuitively understand with Professor Huntington that culture and religion can pose a real threat to world peace. One of the most common responses to this concern is to affirm that all religions are one and the same. Oprah Winfrey put it like this: “One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to believe there is only one way. There are many diverse paths leading to God.”
Jesus and the apostle Paul lived in the midst of a world where there were many cultures and religions. In fact, in their world, not only did you have Judaism and Greek philosophies, but you also had “mystery religions” and local cults in every major city. Dan Clendenon has pointed out that scholars have documented enough names of the “gods” in human religions in the Roman Empire to fill the size of the phone book in a large urban area.
There were many names for the many “gods” in Jesus’ and Paul’s day.
This morning we are going to look at how Paul responds to this smorgasbord of religions that he encounters in Athens.
Please turn to Acts 17 (and I will set up the context):
While Paul in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. He began to debate with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Paul began telling them the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. They took Paul and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, and said "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?”
In vs. 22 Paul says:
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' [a] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' [b]
29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
How does Paul respond to the smorgasbord of religions that he sees in Athens?
We see here that Paul, who was trained as a Jewish rabbi, honours the spirituality of these people of Athens, “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”
He has taken time to read about them and learn about their traditions.
In verse 28 we see that Paul quotes from their own writers. He quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides: “For in him we live and move and have our being.” He also quotes the Cilician poet Aratus: “We are his offspring.”
Paul is not afraid to read and learn from people who come from faith traditions very different from his own. Paul, in citing these Greek poets, is affirming that what they have said is true and that we can learn from them. Part of the posture of a follower of Christ is to have, like Paul, a spirit of humility and willingness to read and learn from other faith traditions.
As a Japanese person I have benefited from the teachings on mindfulness, particularly as articulated by the Vietnamese Zen master Tich Nat Han, who encourages people to be wholly present by doing just one thing at a time. I have long-admired the discipline, passion for purity, and concern for the poor that many devout Muslims have. And like Paul, we can learn from and affirm the truths that are present in other religious movements.
Paul honours the spirituality of these Greek people. He learns from their teachers.
But he does not say that what he and the people of Athens believe are just different ways of saying the same thing. He demonstrates real humility, but he also clearly distinguishes what he believes is true, and not true, about God.
He says in verses 29-31, Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.
It is fairly common for people to say that all religions are basically the same. But, that is a little bit like saying all cultures are basically the same. I’m Japanese--and if someone says to me oh the Japanese and Chinese and Koreans—all are same… It reveals a very limited understanding. Asian people on the surface may look similar, but there are also significant cultural differences between them and people who from these cultures typically understand the differences.
And people who are part of a religion (and have an understanding of their religion) tend not to say that all religions are basically the same.
There are significant differences between the religions. For example, Judaism, Christianity and Islam say there is one God. But there are forms of Hinduism which say there are over 300,000 different gods. So they are not saying the same thing.
Some religions say God is personal. Others says that the divine is impersonal.
Some religions say there is a God, but Zen Buddhism does not affirm the reality of a God. Some religions believe in the supernatural, but Hinduism does not believe in a supernatural reality beyond the material world, but only a spirituality within the empirical. People who follow a particular religion don’t typically say that all religions are same.
The reason that many people like to say that all religions are saying the same thing is that they are motivated, at least in part, both by a desire to promote tolerance among the religions, but also because people believe that although religions may claim to make truth claims, no one can really know the truth about God.
Sometimes this idea is illustrated with the story of the three blind men and the elephant.
These three blind men are walking along, and they come upon an elephant. The first blind man, holding the elephant’s trunk, says, “This creature is long and flexible like a snake.” The second blind man, feeling the elephant’s leg, says, “This being is thick and is round like a tree’s trunk.” The third blind man, touching the elephant’s side, says, “No, it is large and flat, like a wall.” Each blind man can only see a part of the elephant. None can envision the whole elephant.
And people argue that the religions of the world each have a grasp of part of the truth about spiritual reality, but no one religion can see the “whole elephant,” or claim to have a comprehensive vision of the truth.
But as Leslie Newbigin argues in his book, The Gospel on a Pluralist Society, this illustration backfires. The story is told about 3 blind people, but the story teller is not blind. The story teller can apparently see the whole elephant. There seems to be a certain humility in this because the story claims that no one can really see the whole elephant—the bigger reality, but this story is presumptuous because it assumes that person telling the story has this privileged vantage point from which they can see the whole elephant—the whole of reality.
Paul here on Mars Hill doesn’t say that Jesus only sees part of reality or part of the truth.
Paul, in verses 30-31, says that the God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, commands people everywhere to repent, that is, to turn to God, for he has set a day when he will judge the world through Jesus Christ, and he has given proof of this. How? By raising him from the dead.
Jesus, in John 14: 6, in response to Thomas’s question about Jesus’ identity says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus here makes the astounding claim that he is the way to God. I know this sounds outrageous to some…
He also claimed to reveal God, in way that no other major religious leader had done.
Jesus said, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father (God) as well. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father—God.
In John 10 Jesus said, “I and the Father are one." The Jews picked up stones to stone him, because Jesus as human claimed to be God.
St. Augustine, who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries in a time when there were many religions and many gods, pointed out that in his world he could see that there were parallels to every Christian teaching in the other religions; such as, the idea that God was a God of love; that human beings were sinful; that we are to love others as we would want to be loved; that we are to exercise the so-called golden rule. But Augustine said the Christian faith was unique among all the other faiths, and all the other religions, in that it was the only faith to claim that the Word became flesh, that God became a human being and moved into the neighbourhood.
C. S. Lewis wrote, “There is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, 'Are you the son of Brahma?' he would have said, 'My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, 'Are you Heaven?' I think he would have probably replied, 'Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man... We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects--Hatred--Terror--Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval."
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Buddha never said that. Confucius never said that. Mohammed never said that. Jesus said that. “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
I was talking this week to woman in this community who told me, “I was raised as an atheist. While traveling in Southeast Asia, I spent ten months in a Buddhist monastery. While meditating one day, Jesus Christ came to me in a vision.
I was angry. I wanted to be a good Buddhist and Jesus showed up!”
When she moved back to Vancouver a friend in her apartment building invited her here. She was still an atheist. She said, “I will suspend my belief in atheism for one month. God if you exist, you have a month to show yourself to me.” Then over that month through a series of what you a skeptic might call coincidences, God showed up to her that month in series of unmistakable ways and she went on to not only believe there was a God, but committed her life to Jesus Christ.
What makes Jesus truly unique among all the religious leaders? He alone claimed to be God in the human flesh. Paul says that God validated this claim of Jesus because he raised him from the dead that first Easter.
He is risen from the dead and therefore He is Lord.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then he was simply, as Lewis put it, “a delusionary lunatic or a liar, but if he did rise from the dead, then he is able to make the claim that he is the way, the truth and the life.”
Paul therefore says that God commands people everywhere to repent. That means that we are to change our course and bring it in line with the way of Jesus Christ.
A Navy captain was at the helm of a ship. He sees the light on the horizon, and it’s on a collision course with his ship. He sends it a message.
Change your course 10 degrees to the west.
He gets a reply back:
Change your course 10 degrees to the west!
He sends another message:
I’m a Captain of the U.S. Navy. I suggest you change your course now!
Another message comes back:
I’m a Seaman--Second Class. I suggest you change your course now.
He sends a final message:
I command a battleship. I’m not changing course.
Then, he receives a final message:
I oversee a lighthouse. Your call, Sir.
“Reality…truth is like a lighthouse.”
We steer our lives in alignment with it, and Jesus Christ said, “I am the light of the world. Change your course and aligned it to me.”
But, doesn’t alignment with one person make us narrower?
The paradox is that when we align our lives to Jesus Christ’s, we become the kind of people who don’t exclude others, but embrace people very different from ourselves.
The Emperor Julian in the first century wrote to a pagan priest friend asking why was it that this Christian group was adding to its numbers so quickly when it had no money and no political power. The pagan priest said, with some contempt, “They are growing because Christians help people who are different from themselves.” In the first century Hebrews helped Hebrews, Greeks helped Greeks, Africans helped Africans, but Christians helped everyone.
Vinay Samuel, a respected Indian leader and author and former leader of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, says that Hindus can produce as many miracles as any Christian miracle worker, Islamic saints in India can produce and replicate every miracle that has been produced by Christians, but they cannot duplicate the miracle of black and white together, the miracle of racial injustice being swept away by the power of the Gospel.
I know in my own life given my own natural tendencies to be an elitist snob, Jesus has made me far more inclusive than I would be otherwise.
When we follow the one who says “I am the way, the truth and the life,” and receive the forgiveness of sins that is offered by his sacrificial death on the cross, we become people, who instead of excluding others, we embrace them.
So what about you? What will you do with Christ?
Will you align your life to His?
Will you follow his way?
If you would like to, I would invite you to pray with me:
Lord Jesus, I don’t understand it all, but I commit my way to yours.
I believe you died for my sins and rose again from the dead and you are the way, the truth, and the life.
Forgive me of my sins and make me a new person.
I align my life to you yours.
With your help, I will follow you.
Faith and Doubt M2 (Draft) 2009 04 26
Title: Only One Way to God?
Text: Acts 17: 16-31; John 14: 6
Big Idea: Christ is the only way to God.
Samuel Huntington, the late renowned professor of political science at Harvard, in his best-selling book, The Clash of Civilizations, argued back in the mid-1990s that the primary sources of conflict in the new world of the 21st century would not be over economic policy or political ideology, but over cultural and religious issues. This is where the battle lines would be drawn in the future.
Interestingly, in the mid 1990s, Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, in effect, predicted what would happen on 9/11 2001. He, of course, didn’t predict that planes would crash into the World Trade Centers, but he predicted there would be a massive violent attack against the West by a radical Islamic group.
There are many people who intuitively understand with Professor Huntington that culture and religion can pose a real threat to world peace. One of the most common responses to this concern is to affirm that all religions are one and the same. Oprah Winfrey put it like this: “One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to believe there is only one way. There are many diverse paths leading to God.”
Jesus and the apostle Paul lived in the midst of a world where there were many cultures and religions. In fact, in their world, not only did you have Judaism and Greek philosophies, but you also had “mystery religions” and local cults in every major city. Dan Clendenon has pointed out that scholars have documented enough names of the “gods” in human religions in the Roman Empire to fill the size of the phone book in a large urban area.
There were many names for the many “gods” in Jesus’ and Paul’s day.
This morning we are going to look at how Paul responds to this smorgasbord of religions that he encounters in Athens.
Please turn to Acts 17 (and I will set up the context):
While Paul in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. He began to debate with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Paul began telling them the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. They took Paul and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, and said "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?”
In vs. 22 Paul says:
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' [a] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' [b]
29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
How does Paul respond to the smorgasbord of religions that he sees in Athens?
We see here that Paul, who was trained as a Jewish rabbi, honours the spirituality of these people of Athens, “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”
He has taken time to read about them and learn about their traditions.
In verse 28 we see that Paul quotes from their own writers. He quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides: “For in him we live and move and have our being.” He also quotes the Cilician poet Aratus: “We are his offspring.”
Paul is not afraid to read and learn from people who come from faith traditions very different from his own. Paul, in citing these Greek poets, is affirming that what they have said is true and that we can learn from them. Part of the posture of a follower of Christ is to have, like Paul, a spirit of humility and willingness to read and learn from other faith traditions.
As a Japanese person I have benefited from the teachings on mindfulness, particularly as articulated by the Vietnamese Zen master Tich Nat Han, who encourages people to be wholly present by doing just one thing at a time. I have long-admired the discipline, passion for purity, and concern for the poor that many devout Muslims have. And like Paul, we can learn from and affirm the truths that are present in other religious movements.
Paul honours the spirituality of these Greek people. He learns from their teachers.
But he does not say that what he and the people of Athens believe are just different ways of saying the same thing. He demonstrates real humility, but he also clearly distinguishes what he believes is true, and not true, about God.
He says in verses 29-31, Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.
It is fairly common for people to say that all religions are basically the same. But, that is a little bit like saying all cultures are basically the same. I’m Japanese--and if someone says to me oh the Japanese and Chinese and Koreans—all are same… It reveals a very limited understanding. Asian people on the surface may look similar, but there are also significant cultural differences between them and people who from these cultures typically understand the differences.
And people who are part of a religion (and have an understanding of their religion) tend not to say that all religions are basically the same.
There are significant differences between the religions. For example, Judaism, Christianity and Islam say there is one God. But there are forms of Hinduism which say there are over 300,000 different gods. So they are not saying the same thing.
Some religions say God is personal. Others says that the divine is impersonal.
Some religions say there is a God, but Zen Buddhism does not affirm the reality of a God. Some religions believe in the supernatural, but Hinduism does not believe in a supernatural reality beyond the material world, but only a spirituality within the empirical. People who follow a particular religion don’t typically say that all religions are same.
The reason that many people like to say that all religions are saying the same thing is that they are motivated, at least in part, both by a desire to promote tolerance among the religions, but also because people believe that although religions may claim to make truth claims, no one can really know the truth about God.
Sometimes this idea is illustrated with the story of the three blind men and the elephant.
These three blind men are walking along, and they come upon an elephant. The first blind man, holding the elephant’s trunk, says, “This creature is long and flexible like a snake.” The second blind man, feeling the elephant’s leg, says, “This being is thick and is round like a tree’s trunk.” The third blind man, touching the elephant’s side, says, “No, it is large and flat, like a wall.” Each blind man can only see a part of the elephant. None can envision the whole elephant.
And people argue that the religions of the world each have a grasp of part of the truth about spiritual reality, but no one religion can see the “whole elephant,” or claim to have a comprehensive vision of the truth.
But as Leslie Newbigin argues in his book, The Gospel on a Pluralist Society, this illustration backfires. The story is told about 3 blind people, but the story teller is not blind. The story teller can apparently see the whole elephant. There seems to be a certain humility in this because the story claims that no one can really see the whole elephant—the bigger reality, but this story is presumptuous because it assumes that person telling the story has this privileged vantage point from which they can see the whole elephant—the whole of reality.
Paul here on Mars Hill doesn’t say that Jesus only sees part of reality or part of the truth.
Paul, in verses 30-31, says that the God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, commands people everywhere to repent, that is, to turn to God, for he has set a day when he will judge the world through Jesus Christ, and he has given proof of this. How? By raising him from the dead.
Jesus, in John 14: 6, in response to Thomas’s question about Jesus’ identity says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus here makes the astounding claim that he is the way to God. I know this sounds outrageous to some…
He also claimed to reveal God, in way that no other major religious leader had done.
Jesus said, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father (God) as well. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father—God.
In John 10 Jesus said, “I and the Father are one." The Jews picked up stones to stone him, because Jesus as human claimed to be God.
St. Augustine, who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries in a time when there were many religions and many gods, pointed out that in his world he could see that there were parallels to every Christian teaching in the other religions; such as, the idea that God was a God of love; that human beings were sinful; that we are to love others as we would want to be loved; that we are to exercise the so-called golden rule. But Augustine said the Christian faith was unique among all the other faiths, and all the other religions, in that it was the only faith to claim that the Word became flesh, that God became a human being and moved into the neighbourhood.
C. S. Lewis wrote, “There is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, 'Are you the son of Brahma?' he would have said, 'My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, 'Are you Heaven?' I think he would have probably replied, 'Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man... We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects--Hatred--Terror--Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval."
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Buddha never said that. Confucius never said that. Mohammed never said that. Jesus said that. “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
I was talking this week to woman in this community who told me, “I was raised as an atheist. While traveling in Southeast Asia, I spent ten months in a Buddhist monastery. While meditating one day, Jesus Christ came to me in a vision.
I was angry. I wanted to be a good Buddhist and Jesus showed up!”
When she moved back to Vancouver a friend in her apartment building invited her here. She was still an atheist. She said, “I will suspend my belief in atheism for one month. God if you exist, you have a month to show yourself to me.” Then over that month through a series of what you a skeptic might call coincidences, God showed up to her that month in series of unmistakable ways and she went on to not only believe there was a God, but committed her life to Jesus Christ.
What makes Jesus truly unique among all the religious leaders? He alone claimed to be God in the human flesh. Paul says that God validated this claim of Jesus because he raised him from the dead that first Easter.
He is risen from the dead and therefore He is Lord.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then he was simply, as Lewis put it, “a delusionary lunatic or a liar, but if he did rise from the dead, then he is able to make the claim that he is the way, the truth and the life.”
Paul therefore says that God commands people everywhere to repent. That means that we are to change our course and bring it in line with the way of Jesus Christ.
A Navy captain was at the helm of a ship. He sees the light on the horizon, and it’s on a collision course with his ship. He sends it a message.
Change your course 10 degrees to the west.
He gets a reply back:
Change your course 10 degrees to the west!
He sends another message:
I’m a Captain of the U.S. Navy. I suggest you change your course now!
Another message comes back:
I’m a Seaman--Second Class. I suggest you change your course now.
He sends a final message:
I command a battleship. I’m not changing course.
Then, he receives a final message:
I oversee a lighthouse. Your call, Sir.
“Reality…truth is like a lighthouse.”
We steer our lives in alignment with it, and Jesus Christ said, “I am the light of the world. Change your course and aligned it to me.”
But, doesn’t alignment with one person make us narrower?
The paradox is that when we align our lives to Jesus Christ’s, we become the kind of people who don’t exclude others, but embrace people very different from ourselves.
The Emperor Julian in the first century wrote to a pagan priest friend asking why was it that this Christian group was adding to its numbers so quickly when it had no money and no political power. The pagan priest said, with some contempt, “They are growing because Christians help people who are different from themselves.” In the first century Hebrews helped Hebrews, Greeks helped Greeks, Africans helped Africans, but Christians helped everyone.
Vinay Samuel, a respected Indian leader and author and former leader of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, says that Hindus can produce as many miracles as any Christian miracle worker, Islamic saints in India can produce and replicate every miracle that has been produced by Christians, but they cannot duplicate the miracle of black and white together, the miracle of racial injustice being swept away by the power of the Gospel.
I know in my own life given my own natural tendencies to be an elitist snob, Jesus has made me far more inclusive than I would be otherwise.
When we follow the one who says “I am the way, the truth and the life,” and receive the forgiveness of sins that is offered by his sacrificial death on the cross, we become people, who instead of excluding others, we embrace them.
So what about you? What will you do with Christ?
Will you align your life to His?
Will you follow his way?
If you would like to, I would invite you to pray with me:
Lord Jesus, I don’t understand it all, but I commit my way to yours.
I believe you died for my sins and rose again from the dead and you are the way, the truth, and the life.
Forgive me of my sins and make me a new person.
I align my life to you yours.
With your help, I will follow you.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:06 PM
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