Is There One or Many Ways to God?
With so many different religions in the world, how can there be only one way to God?
This question has its roots in religious relativism. Let me define religious relativism as the belief that all religions are simply different perceptions of the same ultimate reality. To explain this view, some people offer the argument: There are several different mountain roads, but all of them lead to the top of the mountain. While this argument may sound all warm and fuzzy, it is wrong. If the argument is wrong, why do so many people believe it? This is because the majority of people are being misled by issues of diversity.
At one time the United States was the melting pot of the world. When people immigrated to America, they learned our language and embraced our customs. This is no longer true. Because they want to maintain their ancestral traditions, they no longer blend into our culture. Due to the rapid expansion of technology, instant worldwide communication, and the availability to quickly and easily travel around the world, the world has changed. We no longer live our lives with people who look, live, and believe as we do.
Appropriate diversity requires us to accept people of different ethnic backgrounds. Prejudice should not be the response to a difference in culture (clothing, language, food, music). In attempting to do what is right, an open-minded society can unwittingly do that which is wrong. Just because we accept a person’s culture, does not mean that we translate that acceptance into areas of truth.
From the very beginning of our nation’s history, there has been the concept of religious tolerance: A person is free to practice the religion of his choice even if those beliefs are inconsistent with the majority’s worldview. In recent years, however, the distinction between a person and his beliefs has been blurred. In an attempt to embrace cultural diversity and religious tolerance, the church has made the politically correct error of considering all truth to be relative.
To assert that truth is relative, and not based on absolutes, is a self-defeating argument because it is an absolute claim. For this statement to be true there must be at least one absolute truth. Instead of trying to create our own truth, we need to discover the principles of God’s absolute truth. It is these absolutes that give meaning to life. Because we know what an apple is, most of us know what red delicious means. Apple is the absolute that gives meaning to red delicious, golden, granny smith, etc. It is the absolute truth of God’s Word and the application of the principles contained therein, that gives meaning to our lives.
How then, do we answer the question contained in the title of this article? Our desire to be tolerant of another person’s religious beliefs and our desire to accept that person’s culture cannot be the criteria by which we answer the question. Our answer is to be principle-based.
A non-emotional approach that is unbiased is the Law of non-contradiction, and it states:
- If A is true then B is false
- If B is true then A is false
- A and B can not be equally true
Based on the above law, the truth claims of all the world religions cannot be equally true. If the truth claims of RELIGION A are true, then the truth claims of RELIGION B are false.