You're saying that Jesus is the only way to God. But don't all religions teach
basically the same things?
Only Christianity, of course,
teaches that Jesus is the only way to God-and that is one very important
difference between it and all other religions.
Others, you see, are
basically philosophies of life. They consist of moral teachings and views of the
world around us that their adherents believe are right and true. Christianity
also gives us a philosophy of life, but it says something more: it says that man
is sinful and separated from God, that so long as he remains that way he cannot
enjoy God's friendship, and that the only way that friendship can be restored is
for the sin to be erased and man to be made righteous. It also tells us that the
only way sin can be erased is by believing in Jesus. No other religion
recognizes these things about Jesus.
How do you know Christianity is true but all other religions are false?
One way to find that out would be to examine the teachings of all religions to
see if they are logically consistent and describe reality accurately. But that
endeavor would take years to complete. There's a much faster way.
Christianity offers evidences for its truth. If those evidences show
Christianity to be true, and if you find the teachings of Christianity to be
internally consistent with each other, then you can know that Christianity is
true. Then it's quite simple: whatever contradicts what is true is false. That's
a simple application of what Aristotle called the law of contradiction in logic:
two statements cannot both be true if one contradicts the other.
That sounds awfully intolerant to me. Why can't you tolerate other religions?
It's not a question of toleration. We believe all are free to worship God, or
not to worship Him. as they believe is right. Christianity does not claim that
people should be forced to believe in Christianity.
But you insist that
only Christianity is true! That's intolerant!
It's no more intolerant than insisting that whoever says two plus two equals
anything but four is wrong. Toleration isn't a matter of what's true, it's a
matter of what's permitted. Christians permit people to believe as they wish.
They just say that some beliefs are false, others true.
Isn't Islam compatible with Christianity? I've heard that Muhammed, who
founded Islam believed he was simply teaching pure Christianity.
Jesus taught that He was God, and His followers repeated that teaching; Muhammed
denies that. The New Testament teaches the doctrine of the Trinity-that the
Father, the Son and Holy Spirit are all the same God, though they are distinct
Persons-Islam denies that. Christianity teaches that Jesus came to die for our
sins, and that salvation comes through faith in Jesus, but Islam denies all
these things. For Islam, “Jesus
Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle of God”
(sura 19:92. part of the Quran, the holy book of Islam).
Why shouldn't we believe Muhammed's words about Jesus instead of
Christianity's?
What Christianity believes about Jesus comes from His own words about Himself
and from the words of His closest followers. Muhammed's words about Jesus came
some 600 years later. Which would you be more confident in?
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Fair
enough. But what was this thing you talked about, the "Trinity?" Does this mean
you believe in three Gods?
No. The Bible
tells us in many places that there is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah
43:10; 1 Timothy 2:5; 1 Corinthians 8:6). But it also tells us that three
Persons are this same God‑the Father (John 17:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6; 1 Peter
1:2), the Son Jesus Christ ( John 1:20:28; Philippians 2:6,7, compared with John
5:18, Titus 2: 13; 2 Peter 1:1), and the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3,4, Hebrews
9:14).
But that sounds
crazy! How can three Persons be one God?
I'll admit it sounds unusual. We aren't used to seeing any humans who are more
than one person, but that doesn't make it impossible. The key is for us to
remember that being and personhood are different kinds of things.
What do you mean?
Look around you. You see lots of different beings‑a rock here, a tree there, a
building over there, a cow out in the field. All of these are beings, but they
aren't persons at all‑they don't have the three attributes of personhood,
intellect, emotions, and moral free will. On the other hand, you see some beings
that are persons‑every man, woman, and child you see is both a being and
a person.
So we know that some beings are not persons at all. and some are one person. But
there's nothing that tells us no being could be more than one person.
So long as you remember the difference between being and person, while it may be
strange to think of a single being being three persons, it isn't illogical and
should not be impossible to believe.
This is why Jesus instructed His followers about initiating people into
Christianity and told them to baptize "in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).
Maybe it's not illogical, but
it's pretty hard to understand.
Shouldn't we expect many things about God to be hard to understand? After all,
God has more power and more intelligence than all the universe, and we are only
beginning to understand our tiny corner of the universe. RETURN TO QUESTION PAGE
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