Living in a ‘tolerant’ western culture, absolute statements about religious faith can go off like dog farts (and right now we know all about those). You make the call and realise that the room has gone quiet. People are wondering – has anyone else picked it… or is it just me? (And I put ‘tolerant’ in quotation marks because we actually aren’t tolerant of everything)

Anyway let’s get dirty like our pup above and throw around some difficult ideas…

One of the challenges the Christian story brings is it’s abundance of absolutes – claims made by Jesus or the biblical writers that are bold, strong and at times even offensive to those reading them. Case in point would be Acts 4:12 ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to humankind by which we must be saved.’ 

There isn’t much room for negotiation on that one. Jesus himself makes this exact claim in John 14:6, ‘I am the Way,Truth and life – no one comes to the father except through me.’ It’s places like these that we get the language of ‘Jesus being the only way to God.’

A more popular view would be that we are all climbing the same mountain just from different aspects.  Ultimately we will all – Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Sikh etc – reach the ‘top’ using our own guides. I feel like that is a more likeable and digestible approach in a pluralistic western world. Let’s just hope that whatever we are doing takes us up the mountain.

Some angles on this that I find challenging:

1. Each religion makes different claims – it is a nothing more than a matter of simple logic to say they cannot all be true. Christians see Jesus as the saviour of the world, through his death on the cross. Without this act of love and forgiveness we would spend this life and the next separated from God. Jesus is our ‘point of difference’ and we cannot frame it any other way. When Muslims claim Jesus is a prophet, but not divine they make a statement directly contrary to what Christians believe. We simply can’t both be correct. If we accept that both are equally true, then we have to accept that some people will be able to call black ‘white’ and vice versa without contradiction. Doesn’t make sense does it?

1. The Bible – The scriptures I use as my means of discerning faith decisions and making sense of the world are not open to the possibility of all other faiths being equally able to save. For Buddhists who do not believe in the existence of a God we can’t even have the same conversation because there is no God to discuss. I appreciate that accepting the Bible as having genuine clout on these issues is an under-lying assumption that not all would bode well with. Perhaps its because I have spent my life immersed in this book that I come to these conclusions. Or – and I hope this is true –  my experience and interactions with this book have proven credible and trustworthy.

1. The conclusion matters – given we are essentially discussing the meaning of our existence and our purpose both on this planet and beyond, it matters that we think carefully about our conclusions. It just doesn’t work to say ‘it will all work out in the end.’ Because it might… but then again it might not… And I realise there is a lot to process, but these questions are often left to lurk in the backs of our minds until something jars us into serious thought.

1. Jesus – the life of Jesus and the claims he makes are either true or outrageously ridiculous. I am assuming the gospels are accurate historical records of what took place in that time and they portray him as the saviour of the world / the Messiah / the king whose kingdom is not of this world. He calls people to follow him, to place their faith in him and to trust him for an understanding of how to live both now and into the eternal realm. So if what he says isn’t truth then he is a con-man / deceiver (who also died for that lie)…

One of the inevitable questions we face in asserting Jesus as the ‘only way’ is that of ‘so does that mean that every person who ever lived and who didn’t hear about Jesus is consigned to eternity in hell? That would seem very unfair I agree. If you were lucky enough to be born in a country with Judea Christian heritage then you have all of that as your back-story whereas if you were born in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Anywhereistan then you are at a significant disadvantage.

And then, given we are in a secular age and the Christian story has diminished in our consciousness most people not raised in a church-going Christian family will need someone to guide them to a point of belief and faith in Jesus. What if the person who has been explaining faith to you does such a terrible job of it that you conclude it is a load of nonsense?… If you ‘heard the message’ but couldn’t make sense of it are you lost for eternity? (Surely an all powerful God could have sent you a smarter evangelist to present the message?…)

And of course there’s the question of those with significant cognitive disabilities – how do they come to a point of faith? Can they even?…

I could go on, but you get the point. This stuff gets messy fast.

It’s where I come back to assumption number 1 – my primary theological building block = God is good. 

If God is good then he won’t treat anyone unfairly when it comes to a time of judgement. If you lived in a place where you never got to hear anyone speak of Jesus then a good God is unlikely to say ‘ah… sorry – sucks to be you…’ If God is good then we will be treated justly. In Romans 2, Paul writes of those who have never heard and says:

14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 

There is an innate sense of right and wrong that has been hardwired into our being and in the absence of any experience of faith, it seems this will be our guiding light – of course it doesn’t mean it will always get listened to.

When we are talking about the eternal destiny of every person who has ever lived then we are discussing a massive subject and one with plenty of conundrums… 

What can we be sure of?

God is good – I know – I keep banging that drum, but it’s gotta be a starting point.

Jesus is the only way to God. 

I keep hoping like CS Lewis did that there may be a second chance to reassess the evidence post-mortem, and some universalist theologians would suggest that for God to achieve his purposes (his desire that all be saved) then this would be essential. But there is also plenty of scripture to suggest that there will be a cut off and some will not be ‘saved’ or welcomed into the new creation.

Jesus as the only way is one of those ‘lines in the sand’, that I hold to, but how God accomplishes this may be more mysterious than I am able to imagine.