This is for everyone, even if you don’t go to church. But if you do, be forewarned. This Blog could disturb you, though that is not my intention. But the issue is too important not to take the risk.
Here’s what I want to say. I think it is time for churches to give up the claim that Jesus is the only way to salvation. It is based on the flimsiest of scriptural claims and is undergirded by a theology of sacrificial atonement that when examined falls under its own weight. Now before you quit reading because you are already angry or bored with the subject, at least hear my explanation of what I am saying as well as why I am bringing this up in the first place.
Let me begin with the church, and the fact that it has made a living out of insisting Christianity is the only true religion and the only pathway to God. It is the cornerstone claim for justifying church authority that is in the end self-serving. It works like this. If Jesus is the only way, and the church is the rightful representative of Christ on earth, then what the church says carries the power of Jesus himself. This means you had better listen to the church and listen good or God will send you straight to hell. Once the church managed to convince the Western world that it alone spoke for God because it was commissioned by Jesus to be his representative on earth, the die was cast. Crossing the church was crossing the Almighty, and we all know where that will get you. And for the last sixteen centuries what the church has said and done has been for one primary purpose – to preserve the enormous power it had given itself.
But modern scholarship has let the cat out of the bag. It has shown that out of the entire body of biblical material, only two passages say anything about Jesus being the only way. More than that, it has offered several interpretations of these two verses that suggest neither mean what the church says they mean. On top of that, many scholars who are just as Christian as the next person have good reason to argue that Jesus didn’t actually say the one verse attributed to him (John 14:6) and the Apostle Peter didn’t actually say the one verse attributed to him (Acts 4:12). I may expand on this in a future Blog.
Beyond the dubious support of scripture for claiming Jesus is the only way to God, Christians themselves prove how outrageous saying this really is. In essence the claim comes down to this: The worst kind of Christian who believes in Jesus has a better chance of being welcomed by God when he or she dies than the best kind of person who happens to be of another religion or none at all. Now is that ridiculous or what? It’s on par with what a Catholic Nun told me years ago when she lamented the all male priesthood by saying, “The church won’t ordain the best woman, but any old man will do.”
Two things have led me to raise this subject. One is the fact that I believe the church has promoted a fear of the judgment of God that is unworthy of God. God is better than what the church says about God. God is not to be feared. God is to be loved. Moreover, here is what I have taught for years: The validity of Christianity does not depend upon the invalidity of all other religions. Those who insist it does apparently don’t trust in the power of love and get a strange kind of satisfaction out of “being saved” while others “burn in hell.” That’s an old time religion I can do without.
The second reason I bring up this subject is because there are only two religions that have followers who preach their way is the only way: Christianity and Islam. I don’t think it is an accident of history that both of these religions have caused more conflict and war than all other religions combined. Unless and until both Christianity and Islam can teach more humility and less triumphalism, both will continue to fuel conflict instead of promoting peace, justice, and reconciliation.
I cannot speak for Muslims, but I can say as a Christian that I believe it is time for the church to come clean and admit that God is bigger than any and all religions, and that while Christianity is the way for those of us who follow Jesus, we are not at all threatened by or afraid of there being different paths to God for others.
linnposts.com 
This is great, Jan. Thanks.
We need to organize a Stone Church session or two around this. Maybe next summer?
Jeffrey C. Slade
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Jan, I am so glad you wrote this! It is the way I have felt but have never been able to articulate. Thank you.
I have a friend who posted this on Facebook last week: “Very thankful for our home, our family and HOPE in the One True God. With God nothing is impossible. Happy Thanksgiving.” That struck me the wrong way. Totally. I believe in Christianity, Jesus Christ and God, and I read the bible, but who am I to say that all other religious beliefs are thereby wrong or untrue? I can’t fathom taking the stance that because I believe in something it is right to the exclusion of all others who don’t agree with me AND which sends all of them to “hell.”
Incredibly well said, Jan! I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for expressing my thoughts about organized religion so clearly. Why haven’t the various religions made the world a kinder, more magnanimous environment for all God’s creatures? Religion has certainly been around long enough to do that. What will it take for us to learn to live in harmony with people who hold different views? As a child I sang the song that proclaims “God is Love…God is Love” and felt secure in that thought. As I look around at what’s going on all over the world today I don’t see very much love widely expressed via actions. “My way or the highway” is a more acted upon idea it seems. Was it Pogo who said “Onward Thru the Fog”? Ei Yi Yi! Keep smiling…and promoting discussion of important ideas.
There was nothing “Jackleg” about that post 🙂 I wish this blog post would go viral. The future of Christianity, and organized religion in general, needs to heed this message. Triumphalism will render Christianity and Islam irrelevant if not curtailed. Well said Linn!
Jan, I love your intestinal fortitude to say what needs to be said. Thank you for not being afraid to rattle a few Christian cages.
How does one help a person with a tremendous need for certainty come to know the God of love? In the context of sectarian pandering to that need for certainty, many close themselves off to any other truth, against all logic.
I wonder if Jesus overturning tables in the temple was related to his outrage at a religion that demanded the last two mites of a widow who lovingly gave them at the expense of her next meal.
Are we the church that demand “Commitment” above all else? Or, are we a church that seeks the God of love and justice and mercy?
I am reminded of the couple charged with criminal neglect in Ohio in the 1980s, because their 14 year old starved to death after they had to pay their church’s tithe and they chose to cut back on food. At the time, I dismissed them as foolish. I have come to wonder what pressure their church had put on them.
In a film entitled “Korczac” directed by Andrej Wajda (pronounced “Vie-der”), I saw a story that put a challenge to me some years ago. Dr. Leon Korczac, a consultant Paedeatrician and a practising Jew, worked in a hospital in Warsaw before the Second World War. When the Germans invaded, Korczac was pushed, with the children in his care, into the Ghetto with the entire Jewish population of Warsaw. Eventually in the spring of !943, he and the children were told to report to the appointed place for “resettlement” – in Treblinka.
Korczac had three chances to save himself from certain death, at the price of deserting the children, but each time he declined. He could do no other than to go into the Gas Chamber with them. What he did, to me, was a profoundly sacred thing.
The point is this – would God be so unjust as to condemn a man like Korczac for his not being a Christian? Somehow, I don’t think so. If you get the chance to see this film (in black & white), do see it – it’s got one of the most lyrical endings I’ve ever seen.
Some good replies to this one! I have had this same core belief, that Christian churches teaching Jesus is the only way is an over reach and a far too narrow view of creation and the God who bestowed Him, since my high school years. Your artful expression of this idea and the “Un-Godly” consequences of triumphalist religion helped draw me to your pastoral teaching. We on this planet are profoundly blessed to have been offered the guidance of Jesus messages from His Father and to see “the best we can be” in His mortal life. For those who think outside the box, consider that His life in the flesh was also a teaching moment for those spirit beings of His realm of origin! Myriads of spirit types, and God Himself, know our potential through His one life! Jesus most significant teaching might well have been, “The Kingdom of God is within”. If, in maturity, we would but listen to the quiet urgings of our spirit, the piece of God we all carry, we all could live fearlessly as brothers who elevate truth, beauty and goodness in everything we do, no prophet necessary! This is the very thing Jesus did to “do God’s will” and we have the same gift! We ALL, Jesus included, have and need God. Perhaps in time we will see this.
I visited an isolated desert monastary in New Mexico in 2010. While meditating in their humble, circular sanctuary I had a vision. My heart, or spirit, was invited by and guided by an Eagle who freed me to soar to the heights above all that is sacred where Jesus appeared to me with a message. ” I come to you in Love and Light. As your spirit awakens it’s time to see a world of beauty and love, and feel Divine love. I am the Medicine Man, I am the Teacher, I am the Healer, I am the Messenger. I am. Therefore, open your heart and receive.”
The message was clear and I soaked it all in. Accepting Jesus message was to become part of a movement to receive Love in Light into my heart as a gift to share in service to others in developing their spirits. I was guided to see this as not the “only way” but a “new way”!
I am not trying to persuade you to a particular line of thought, but, to ask that in Light you elevate yourself to your higher mind. This is how I understood the message. Focus on Love and Light, not the Messenger or His title.
JAN…what a refreshing and candid approach to shining the light on the divisiveness that exists as a result of Christian/religious triumphalism! Years ago the late Dr. Howard Wilson, an ordained Lutheran minister and a scholar working in the field of comparative religions, delivered a series of lectures in the adult education program of the congregation I was serving as the Teaching Minister. He replied to an indignant questioner after a lecture in which he had extolled the values that he found in Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. The questioner scolded him as a Christian minister for celebrating what he had found and valued in these other belief systems. Howard was a diminutive man of small stature but towering in intellect and faith…he replied with quiet dignity and conviction, “Jesus may be the lens through which I see God most clearly but I have come to understand that Jesus is not the ONLY lens that gives us a glimpse into the great mystery of the divine.” (or words to that affect) The indignant questioner walked out in a huff, clearly unwilling to accept your core point, “The validity of Christianity does not depend upon the invalidity of all other religions.” Thanks for your very thoughtful and well developed position…PTL!!!
Erratum: i found out that Dr. Korczac’s first name was Janusz, not Leon, and that he and his children were deported to Treblinka in August 1942 – eight months before the Ghetto uprising. In any event, his refusal to desert the children in his care in the face of certain death is a profoundly sacred thing.
I am graterful for all of these very thoughtful comments. I think they show that this basic teaching of the church is deeply troublesome for many of us who stand within the Christian tradition. The next step is to deal with the church’s primary motivaton for insisting Jesus is the only way. That will be the focus of my next Blog.
If a person of a non Christian faith (Islam, Hindu, etc) came to you and asked you to lead them to faith in Christ, would you turn them down as you believe that they already can find God through there own religion? Also why did Peter and Paul work so hard to make converts to Christ in the first century? Paul was so strong is his belief in Christ as the only way that he said that he would be wiliing to be lost if it would cause his fellow Jews to be converted.
To answer Paul Diehl briefly here, and then more entensively in a Blog, if anyone asked me to help them come to know Jesus I would help in every way I could. He is the way to God I know best. I would, of course, ask why their own tradition is not enough, but if it is their choice to become a Christian, I would aid in their quest. The validity of other traditions does not prohibit me from sharing in the way I know as a Christian.
Answering your second question is more involved. The first Christians had an urgency about others following Jesus because they were convinced the end of the world was near. Moreover, I do not believe Paul believed Jesus was the only way in the way that you are suggesting. I think he believed Jesus was the fulfillment of Torah hopes, thus, to follow Jesus was to be a faithful Jew, perhaps in his mind a Jew who was right where others were wrong, but a Jew nonetheless (Romans). How could a faithful Jew not follow Jesus is a question he may have asked. This is why I also think he did not believe Gentiles needed to follow Torah Law. Jesus was the fulfillment of the law for Paul. But the world did not end, and his winning the argument about Gentiles led to the split between Christians and Jews that exists to this day, something for which there is no evidence Jesus ever envisioned.
These are good questions, but those who believe Jesus is the only way also face serious ones themselves about such issues as salvation, grace, works, and faithfulness. I hope to discuss them in future Blogs. Thanks, Paul.
And, again, to everyone for engaging this issue as you are doing.
Something I have always believed, as who are we to know the only way to God. I believe it is simple as loving unconditionally .