Your Right To Say It

I also posted this over at TCRA, but I thought that it would make for a good disscussion over here as well.

I have written on this topic several times, however, I never seem to get tired of discussing it. Religion is a very touchy subject, that’s because everyone believes something. Everyone has a religion; yes, even atheists are part of a religion. Whether you like it or not it takes just much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in God, but that’s a discussion for another time. I have been reading up on different beliefs recently and I came across “The Theosophical Society”, who believes, as far as I understnd, every belief system is correct, They are all just differant paths to take. That’s a great thought, believe whatever you want and do good things every once in a while, and you’ll be okay in the end, but is that possible? Can every religion be true in the end; is it all like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, different paths with the same destination? This is the question I am out to tackle. I have tip toed around this subject a few times, but now I want to settle it once and for all. If at the end of this you have any questions or ideas you would like to add, feel free to do so.

Christians believe that there is only one way to get to heaven and that is through Jesus Christ. We get this from the Bible when Jesus himself says, “no one can come to the father except through me.”

This is what Paul E. Little had to say on the subject in his book “Know Why you Believe”, he is speaking on the fact that Christians believe Christ is the one true way:

“Christians believe this, not because they made it their rule, but because Jesus Christ and the Bible, their source, state it. In fact the core message is woven through both the Old and New Testaments. A Christian is not giving his or her own bias but is explaining the biblical facts.
If we should say we would like to change this truth and vote in something more inclusive, here is our dilemma. We would be changing something that is not humanly changeable. It is fixed and is either completely true or completely false.”

If we changed the fact that Jesus is the only way then that would negate the entire religion of Christianity and thus saying Christianity is wrong. If Christianity were wrong, then, the belief that every religion is right would be wrong as well.

Little goes on to explain that there are certain laws we can change, for instance, the speed limit. If we all decided to change the speed limit that’s okay, we could go faster and there would be no penalty for it. But lets say we all got together and said we didn’t like gravity, lets do away with that. So we all took a vote and said gravity does not exist, no one in his or her right mind would go out and jump off a building to test it, right? Gravity is a law that cannot be changed; the same is true with religion. Just because you don’t believe something does not mean it isn’t true, likewise, if you do believe something that does not make it true. “You are entitled to your own private opinion, but you are not entitled to your own private truth” as put by Erwin W. Lutzer.

All religions claim to be true, how then can all the religions be true if they all contradict each other? Buddhist’s believe in many impersonal gods, and Christians believe in one very personal God, Can these both be true? Either one of these is true or they are both false, they cannot both be true. Lets say I believe with all my heart that I am a pink rabbit, but you, with all your heart, believe I am a red rhino, are we both right just because we believe it with all our heart? Or a person who sees hallucinations, he believes they are there but we all know they are not. Just because you want something to be true that doesn’t make it true.

I am not using this to convert all of you to Christianity, I am just doing this to help you realize there is a truth out there, and it needs to be found. It is not a personal truth but a universal truth. As Erwin W. Lutzer puts it in his book, “Christ Among Other gods: a Defense of Christ in an Age of Tolerance”,

“Mathematics is transcultural; it is foolish to say 2+2=4 is simply a western idea. Science and technology rely on universal principals that apply in every country, in every era.” He goes on to say: “Logic requires that if there is one God then there is not two, three, or ten. If what Christ said was true, then what Baha u llah said was false.”

You know something, I don’t know what to think of this whole thing. I want to say I truly believe his apology, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m just saying it because he is a Christian. I have read and heard his apology several times now and it seems that he truly is sorry. He states everything he did wrong, and states why it was wrong. He knows what he did. My feelings are that he has some problems whatever they are, obviously stemming from his fathers beliefs, but he really wants to change that, I find it hard to believe that he likes being that way. I read a interview with him in reader digest, yes readers digest what of it? It was right around the time passion came out and he was asked about his father and weather or not he believes the Holocaust really happened, His answer was something like, he loves his father, but his father has issues.

Anyway like I said I don’t know what to make of it right now.