This program references Part One. Oh, and like yesterday, today’s program is even more of an example of why you should listen instead of read.
Yesterday we answered the question, Does the Bible claim Jesus is the only way to God/heaven? And there’s no ambiguity in that, obviously. Right? You might be surprised how some people respond.
Today we’re going to look at answering objections, but I’m going to do some of it in the form of us asking questions.
As we get rolling, however, I have a confession. One of thing quirks about a daily conversation with you is that it’s just that…I don’t always get to research what I do down to the Nth degree. Today is one of those days. The truth is that time has gotten away from me, and in the interest of getting this to you as close to on schedule as I can, here we go. We’ll just pick off various aspects of what we talked about yesterday one by one. It won’t be terribly systematic, but it will be conversational.
Picking up where we left off yesterday, what would you do if someone says, “All roads lead to the top of the mountain?”
The first thing to do is to pause, give them the love of listening, and ask them a clarifying question.
What do mean by that? Tell me more. How did you arrive at that perspective?
That’s a general skill. Let’s make it more specific.
“If there was a mountain with roads running up and down, where would you have to be to see all those roads?”
The answer, I’d hope, would be obvious. You’d have to be high above the mountain. Assuming they recognize that, here’s the follow up:
“And who is it that has the perspective of being high above the mountain? If every one of those roads is a religion, in this analogy, who is it that has that master, all-encompassing view?”
“So, when you make a claim that all roads lead to the top of the mountain, where are you presuming to be to make such a statement?”
Now we can’t be reminded often enough that our charge in 1 Peter 3:15 is to give an answer or defense with gentleness and respect. What we just pointed out is that this person has usurped the role of God.
Notice that the way I phrased that last question is “Where are you presuming to be to make such a statement?” I could have said, “Who?” That would have been more directly saying, “You’re calling yourself God” (so to speak). There’s a time for direct…I’m just drawing out the distinction.
The same is true with the story of the blind dudes and dudettes who are each experiencing a different part of the elephant. Where would you have to be to see that they all have only part of the truth?
Let’s take that a bit further and look at the logic – or rather failure thereof.
The claim that is being made is that all religions or truth is relative. Each religion only has part of the truth. Moreover, what this person is saying is, in effect, “You – you as a Christian – only have part of the truth. YOU are like one of those blind folk.”
At the same time, however, they’re saying that all perspectives only have part of the truth.
Except… whose?
Their own. It’s again like needing to be above the mountain to see and make a truth claim.
As I mentioned yesterday, this often comes with the implication (or sometimes outright accusation) that it is Christianity is arrogant for making an exclusive truth claim, that Jesus is the only path to God and salvation.
But what has this person done?
For one, they’ve presumed the role of God, and then called you the arrogant one in the process. Just smile and love on them.
They also established a standard of truth and have not applied the same standard to their own statement.
“All perspectives only have part of the truth…except mine.”
And what do we call a statement that fails to meet it’s own standard of truth?
Contradiction. False.
Saying that “All truth is relative” is an absolute claim of truth. It cannot be true.
Let’s tackle one other potential issue.
As we saw yesterday, various writers in the Bible claim that Jesus is the only way and quote Jesus saying that. And while we didn’t tackle it explicitly yesterday, these claims are joined at the hip with the claim that Jesus is God, including His own claims to be so. The Jews knew that’s what He was claiming…that’s why they wanted Him gone.
So IF someone claims to be God, as CS Lewis pointed out, he’s either Lord, a liar, or a complete nutbag lunatic.
Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re talking to a Christian and they even accept, or think they do, that Jesus is Lord. He’s God. But that, even as they use language like “Jesus” and “Holy Spirit” and Christiany terms what they don’t mean what you mean. They still are in the “all roads lead to the top of the mountain” camp and Christianity just happens to be “my choice of religious expression.”
What are they saying?
One or two things are true.
One is that they don’t really believe that Jesus and the other New Testament writers said what they said. In other words, they question the trustworthiness of the Bible.
The other is that they say they trust the Bible, but that those writers and Jesus were limited in their perspective. “Now we have more understanding. Now we know better.”
Put another way, they don’t really believe that Jesus meant what He plainly said, the Bible as the record of that, or both.
Put another way, like the perspective of being above the mountain, they are making a truth claim from the same position as above the mountain.
So how do we respond?
I don’t have time to do the whole thing justice, so let me just share with you a way that I responded to someone this week.
If there is a God that could create the entirety of the cosmos out of nothing, such a being could certainly cause a virgin birth or a person to rise from the dead. And such a being could choose to communicate clearly and understandably with that which He created, too.
So if there is such a God, do you think He might have something to say? And if so, do you think He could make sure we have what we need to understand? In our language? Preserved through the centuries in text that is His very word to us and bears all the authority that would be deserved by such an all-powerful, all-intelligent, all-loving author?
Yes, He could.
So the question we end up with is, “Who gets to be God?”
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
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