There Can’t Be Only One Way to God, Can There?

(This is the third in a weekly series called “Apologetics 101,” where we examine some of the key questions skeptics ask about the Christian faith.)

An old Buddhist parable describes several blind men who are touching an elephant and trying to figure out what it is. The first touches the tail and says it is a rope. The second touches the trunk and says it is a snake. The third touches the body and says it is a wall. The fourth touches the tusks and says it is a sword. The fifth touches a leg and says it is a tree. The moral of that parable – when it comes to religion, everyone has a little truth, but no one has it all.

That’s pretty much the standard belief among a large number of people in our culture today. You have your truth. I have mine. But we’re all eventually headed to the same place. Except Hitler. Hitler is headed somewhere else. So, when Christians come along and repeat the words of Jesus – “No one comes to the Father except through me,” (John 14:6, ESV) this is the height of offense. Christianity makes an audacious claim – that the only way a person can have right relationship to God is through Jesus, that faith in him is his/her only chance for eternal life.

Now, let’s not pretend this is not an offensive claim – the idea that there is only one way to God. It is offensive. This is an uncomfortable truth, and we shouldn’t be surprised when people react negatively toward this. Christians say that the only chance anyone has of right relationship with God is through Jesus – and that means all who reject or ignore Jesus and Jesus alone as their hope for salvation are without hope. That is offensive. And that is the point. The reason we say this is not because we think we are smarter than anyone else or holier than anyone else. We say it because to reject that truth is to reject the gospel itself.

But part of the reason that this truth is offensive is because we have misunderstood what truth actually is. Certain truth claims are either universally right or universally wrong. And other truth claims are right or wrong depending on the person. When I say, “George Washington was the first President of the United States,” I’m making an objective truth claim. It is true, no matter what anyone believes. And if I say, “Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter by night,” I’m also making an objective truth claim. It is false, no matter what anyone says. Now, if I say, “Krispy Kreme Donuts are delicious,” I’m making a subjective truth claim. In other words, it may be true, or it may be false – depending on the person. Whether or not they are delicious is a matter of personal preference. (They are, by the way.)

The problem is that we have moved religious claims from the realm of objective truth to the realm of subjective truth – a place they were never meant to be. When I say, “Jesus is the only way to God,” I’m making a statement that is either true or false. But it cannot be both. Christianity is based on historical claims that are either true or not, but it is not simply a matter of opinion.

Now, very often when people try to move religious claims to the subjective truth category, they will say something along the lines of, “There is no such thing as truth.” But that doesn’t make sense, because it is a truth claim, an objective truth claim, itself. When a person says that, they are saying, “The truth is, there is no truth.” That is simply absurdity. What I think many people are often trying to say in a situation like this one is your religion is true if “it works for you.” So if Christianity works for you, that’s great. If Buddhism works for someone else, that is great also. But Christianity doesn’t claim to be therapy. It claims to be truth – the truth about the way the world works, and has worked from the beginning. There’s simply no getting around that.

So back to the original story of the Blind Men and the Elephant. Here’s the problem with this parable – all of the blind men were wrong! It was not a rope or a snake or a sword or a tree or a wall. It was an elephant! They didn’t each have a piece of the truth – none of them had any of the truth. And this is where we all are, unless the elephant reveals himself to us. But Christianity says he is screaming, “I am an elephant!” God has revealed himself to us – through his creation and his Word. He is trying to tell us how the world actually is – what the truth actually is. And it is incumbent on us to listen.