An 11-Day Study On Challenges To Biblical AuthoritySample

IS THE BIBLE ANTI-INTELLECTUAL?

“All religions basically teach the same thing”

Let’s be honest: we don’t like to offend people, and we want people to like us. Because of this, we let some pretty silly ideas go unchallenged in our culture today. One perennial offender is the notion that all religions basically teach the same thing. If anyone is to find the truth about God or ultimate reality, then this myth has to be dispensed with quickly.

The differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them. If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher—including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both— who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?

It is out of a sense of false tolerance that we think we are actually loving one another if we never challenge ideas that we believe to be false. In addition to this liability, we often lack the courage to (respectfully) say what needs to be said.

With that in mind, the first thing to do when encountering this claim is to simply ask a question—“That’s interesting; in what specific ways are all religions basically the same?” And then wait for a response. Fight the temptation to answer for them. Often, this will be enough to expose the superficial slogan so that you can have a more productive spiritual conversation.

Many imagine God to be waiting at the top of a mountain, and eventually, all paths will get to the top. But who’s waiting for you at the top? Which God? The Christian God—the one true God who is a trinity? No God at all? Thousands of gods? Those are very different peaks! Admittedly, you will find similarities in the foothills in terms of basic ethics, but the farther you go up the mountain, the more pronounced the differences become because you are dealing with the nature of God, eternity, redemption, heaven, and hell.

A simple thought experiment makes this clear. Imagine you were at a table about to eat dinner, and you have two bowls of white powder in front of you. Do you put them on your food? After all, they look pretty similar. But what if I told you that one was ordinary table salt and the other was cyanide? The differences matter far more than the similarities! So it is with religion and its path for your eternal future.

Finally, the fact that the religions of the world make exclusive and mutually contradictory claims means they can’t be the same. Take Jesus of Nazareth as an example: either Jesus was not the Messiah (Judaism), was the Messiah (Christianity), or was a great prophet (Islam)—but not all three.