Part 6: The Uniqueness of Christ - Other Considerations (2)

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One of the most visceral responses to the exclusivity of Christ is often the question about "other people" - what do we do, how do we think about people know don't know Christ, and especially those who have never heard about Jesus?  Since this is quite a thorny issue, we will address this through several posts.  Today, we will focus on the idea of people choosing to reject the call of Christ.

One of the primary ways we are differentiated from other creatures on our planet is through our ability to choose.  We do not condemn tiger for eating a deer by saying, "He could have made a better choice."  We understand that in the natural order of things, it is not choice as much as instinct that drives an animal to do what it does.  But humans have the ability to choose, to look at options and to even choose one that may be less beneficial because of a greater, moral issue(choosing not to steal even though it might be a financial benefit to the individual).  So to choose is part of the human experience. 

God gives us the ability to choose how we will interact with Him.  C.S. Lewis once wrote that there are only two types of people in the world - those who say to God "Your will be done" and those to whom God says "Fair enough - if you choose to reject me - your will be done".  And to have it be different would be a violation of the ability to be human, to choose, and ultimately, to love.  Love can not be forced, it must be a choice, so to have God force anyone to be a follower of Christ is, by necessity, a contradiction in terms since God desires us to choose love Him (with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength - Luke 10:27).  Thus, we conclude that we can't and God chooses not to force people to follow Him.

The interesting concept here is that oftentimes, people find God guilty for not allowing them into Heaven when they have actively chosen to reject Him.  It is as if we want both worlds - we want to be totally free to choose whatever we choose but at the same time we want God to force us to choose what is best for us.

In Luke 13:34 we read the description of God's heart for His people Israel, and we can easily conclude He feels the same way about us.  Jesus says that He called the people to Himself, but they would not have it.  The rejection of Christ is less often about not knowing and more often about the grandest issue of sin: our desire to be self-saviors.  People reject Christ because they don't want anyone in their lives who can or will hold them to such a high standard.  Thus, when people reject Christ, they most often do it as an active choice to reject Him and His leadership of their lives.

Next, we will address the question of people who never heard the Gospel.

- tC 

Part 6: The Uniqueness of Christ - Other Considerations

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Of course, the arguments for the uniqueness of Christ could go on and on.  One can easily begin to delve into the topic of biblical accuracy, historical documentation of Christ's life, and so on.  But I wanted (over the next few posts) to add a few more facts that I find both convincing and captivating.  Today, we will consider the nature of the Christ's sacrifice.

In John 15:13 Jesus tells His disciples that there is no greater love that a friend can show than to lay down his life for another.  This makes intuitive sense to most of us.  If I were about to be shot and a friend stepped in front of me and took the bullet and then died, I would certainly feel that there is no other action that could have shown me greater love.  I would feel indebted to this person and I would assume that for many of us, that would be marked as the watershed moment in our lives.

Following this logic, if Christ did die for my sins, I should feel a deep sense of awe and thankfulness.  But we must compound this fact with the biblical truth that Christ is God (Phil. 2).  So we re-phrase the sacrifice and note that God the Son gave up His life for me.  Next, we consider that He was perfect, completely sinless.  We have now arrived at the fact that God the Son, while completely perfect and innocent, died for my sins.  While we could add on many additional facts, lets us lastly add on that Christ died a brutal and shameful death through crucifixion.

Christ, God the Son, was completely innocent and completely perfect, and yet He died a brutal and shameful death for me.

It seems quite rational that if this is the case, then to say that there are many ways to God demeans the awesomeness of Christ and the Cross.  To do so essentially says, "While His sacrifice is great, He could have just not done such a thing, because I can work hard at being righteous and pious and, on my own, work my way to God and Heaven."

If the Cross is true, then the sacrifice made there was unimaginable.  It stands alone as the grandest act of love ever expressed.  We should be cautious before we say that such an act was merely one way to be spiritual and to receive salvation.

Tomorrow, we will consider the challenge of the many who choose to reject Christ and what their fate might be.

-tC

Part 5: The Uniqueness of Christ in His Atonement

In Christ we find the One who understands 2 of the most vital aspects of our humanity - our need for acceptance and the issue of our sin.  That deep longing of the human heart to be accepted, to be fully known and to still be accepted - Christ offers this to us.  At the same time, we see His accurate assessment of the plague within our soul: sin.  We see that He is able to identify in us the ability to do, feel, and think so much that is simply wrong.  Christ not only identifies the symptoms of the sin, but He also identifies that unless something within us is transformed by Him, we cannot escape ourselves, and the plague of sin will eventually bring for both physical and spiritual death.

Today, we consider how Christ deals with these issues, and to do this we look to the Cross.  Historically, the cross represents disgrace and shame.  John Stott's book The Cross of Christ is a classic treatment of this topic, and he notes that when early Christians identified a cross as the central symbol of the Christian faith, they were mocked by the surrounding culture.  How could a symbol of humiliation and suffering be the way to draw in new converts?  The mistake they made, however, was that the idea of the Christian faith was not about growing a religion - it was and is about the transformation of the soul.

The simple fact that in Christ, the Son of God - equal with God (Phil. 2) - came to live and die for the sins of humanity makes the Christian faith completely unique when contrasted to the religions of the world.  No other religion offers such a radical idea of redemption, let alone the need for such a radical redemption.  The Cross alone is unique.  Supplement that with the fact that the very Son of God died upon that Cross and we see that the Christian faith approaches the whole notion of what it means to be spiritual in a completely singular way.

First, the Cross shows us that God will not capitulate.  He does not look at our disease of sin and simply turn a blind eye.  He cannot do this, for it would impinge on His very character (for He is completely just).  The example often used to describe this need for justice is a simple one, but the truth rings through.  A man is convicted of a crime.  He stands before the judge and says, "Judge, you are a good man, a kind man, a fair man.  Because of this I think you should let me off with no punishment."  The judge looks at the man and says, "You are right about at least one thing - I am a good man, and because I am good, I cannot let your crimes go unpunished."  This makes sense to us in an earthly way, doesn't it?  If people committed criminal acts, we would likely not look highly upon a judge who let every person off without any punishment.  And so in the Cross, we see the justice of God.

Secondly, we see in the Cross the deep love of God.  Romans 5 reads "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."  God was not fooled into sending Jesus to the Cross.  He did not think that people were righteous and therefore conclude that they deserved the sacrifice of His Son.  In fact, we read again and again in the Scriptures that God realized we were sinners, alienated from Him, at enmity with God - and yet He still offered us the longing of our hearts: acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding.  In the Cross we find the full expression of God's love for humanity.

Consider that in other world religions God is distant, or in some religions there is no God and all that we see is deemed an illusion,  or in other religions we are never sure if we've done enough good or if we have been made right.  The Cross stands in stark contrast to the other religious systems of the world because God showed that He remains faithful to His character while at the same time offering humanity all that it needs to live as He intended.  Upon the Cross, Christ dealt with our need for acceptance and He dealt with our sin.

-tC

Part 4: The Uniqueness of Christ and His Assessment of Humanity - Sin

As we ended our post yesterday, we closed with a passage from Hebrews 4 where we read that Christ can empathize with our humanity because He too experienced that humanity.  The other key portion of verse 15 is our topic for today.  The verse closes by stating, "...yet He did not sin."  An understanding of humanity's sin is the other key element that shows the uniqueness of Christ and His assessment of humanity.

Sin is an antiquated word to many people.  It can be viewed as overly-pious, an attempt to spiritualize everything.  And yet it seems that we cannot escape the usefulness of this word.  Sin is often described as transgression, wrongdoing, making a mistake.  But these terms fail to address to egregious nature of sin.  One can make a mistake (stating that 2+2 = 5 is a mistake) and yet not sin.  It is true that sin is a transgression of God's higher moral law, but it is also more than this.  Biblically, sin is not just an action (sins of commission) or a failure of action (sins of omission).  Sin is a state, often helpfully described as a disease that has infected humanity.  Sin is not just "doing wrong" - sin is the soul-level infection that causes us to do that wrong.

It seems to me that the very word sin brings about in people's minds a grander sense of malfeasance than just "messing up", and thus we are careful to use it, most often simply avoiding it.  It is perhaps the most contentious concept used to describe humanity, but also one that is the most clear to see.  For this reason we cannot eliminate it from our vocabulary.  Just as we find times to use the word 'evil' instead of 'doing wrong' (the tragedy of 9/11 being such a situation - the word 'evil' was used to describe the heart of those who carried out those heinous acts), we find that sin describes a wrong-doing or a state more effectively than other words in our vocabulary.

Christ understood the nature of humanity, both the grandness and its failure.  In His interaction with a Jewish leader named Nicodemus, He stated that to enter the Kingdom of God, one must not merely do good works, but one had to be born-again - given a new internal compass that would guide us toward the good (John 3). As He spoke with the Pharisees in Matthew 23, He warned against the idea of looking righteous on the outside while still be plagued by sin within.  In Matthew 7, Jesus tells His listeners that good fruit (actions) come from a good tree (source), and that if the internal reality of a tree has been corrupted, it cannot bear good fruit.  Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus describes the need of human beings as not a set of more specific rules to follow, but instead He describes the need for a heart-transformation.  And He speaks this way because He saw the power of sin in people's lives.

This aspect of Christianity is not one of the more popular propositions.  But if we are to consider Christ, we have to consider how He described humanity - as both grand and fallen, as in need of acceptance, but also in need to forgiveness and transformation in the soul.  Christ alone, when contrasted with other world religions, give this pin-point precise analysis of the human state, an analysis that aligns with what we have seen in others and what we have experienced in our own lives as well.  He does not write-off sin as an illusion, nor does He say it is deal with by simply working harder at being more.  The serious disease of sin could only be rectified at the atonement on The Cross.    

Tomorrow, we will address the uniqueness of Christ's atonement, a place where we find the collision of His understanding of our need for acceptance, our deep sin nature, and the justice of God.

-tC

Part 3: The Uniqueness of Christ and His Assessment of Humanity

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We've thus far considered the fact that ultimately all world religions are exclusive, and we've also considered a couple of ways we could wrestle with the claims of Christ.  If Christ is the only way, we must see the reasons why this is the case.  What is so unique about Jesus?  Today, we will begin to consider His uniqueness as we examine His understanding and assessment of the human state.

It's been said that human beings are a chimera.  If you are familiar with the mythological creature, you'll know that this beast has the heads and body parts of a various animals.  The concept being communicated is that we are multi-faceted, that there are many realities that play together into what it means to be human.  One of these is the longing to be understood.  This reality may shape us more than any other piece of the human equation.  When we are young, we seek out friends who will let us spend time with them and play with them.  If we are unable to find these kinds of friends, we feel isolated and such childhood traumas have impacted the adult life of many people in significant ways.  When we move on into the teenage years, one of the most anxiety-causing experiences we can have is to be isolated.  Authors Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall once wrote that teenagers don't choose their friends - their friends choose them.  The longing to fit in, the longing to be accepted defines adolescence.  Whether that group is considered cool or not is often of little consequence as long as the person finds a place where he or she can feel accepted - nerd, jock, popular, goth - what matters is that some group says "yes" to a young person.  It is no coincidence that many of the tragic school violence massacres were committed by people who felt alone or shunned.  The most well-known case is probably Columbine High School where the killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, just prior to killing 12 students and 1 teacher, expressed their desire for retribution for all the wrongs committed against them by "others", by the groups into which they were not given entrance.  While yes, this is a dramatic example, the point remains - young people desire to be understood and accepted.

That desire does not change when we become adults.  Consider the number of adults who spend hours in bars and on-line in discussion with others.  Why?  Because we desire to be known and accepted.  Think about why we shy away in conversations when it comes to sharing about finances or income.  I am firmly convinced that a majority of our awkwardness around the topic of money is because we connect money to our worth. Tell someone how little you make and you risk them not accepting you because you are not up to par for their standards.  While I doubt many would share this so boldly or so directly, I believe it is a motivating factor for our unease with the topic of money - we don't want to find out that we are not worthy of acceptance.  We can also consider some of the reasons for divorce.  People often married with the thought that at last they would be understood by at least this one person.  But after years of miscommunication and feeling like a spouse does not understand, the most viable option often seems to be to end the relationship and to look for another relationship where one can be truly understood.  Far on the other end of life, anecdotal evidence has shown the immediate negative impact that losing a spouse has on the elderly.  It is as if a husband who has spent decades with his wife begins to physically and psychologically shut down as soon as she dies - having been known and understood for so long, having shared companionship and acceptance, it is as if the soul begins to wither at the thought of that being lost.  We long to be understood and accepted.

In the person of Christ, we find unconditional love in a way that humans cannot experience from one another.  Almost all love on earth is conditional.  As a new father, I can understand if someone might argue that a parent's love for a child is unconditional, but in the vast majority of cases, there is a breaking point for love, a point where one thinks, "I will not give love or acceptance anymore unless...".  And in the day-to-day experience of life, we so often give love to others with the expectation of receiving love in return. We rarely interact with someone who accepts us with TRULY no strings attached. 

But in Christ, we find this.  A classic passage about this is found in John 4 where Jesus interacts with a woman at a well.  This woman (we discover as we read the story and as we understand the historical context of the situation) has been isolated from her fellow townspeople.  She is drawing water in the heat of the day, most likely because she desires to avoid the jeers and glares of the other women who draw their water in the morning and the evening.  We read that she has had many lovers, and that even the one who she now has is not her husband but the next man in long line of broken relationships.  On top of all this, she is a Samaritan, a people-group that is seen as half-breeds, as being below the Jewish people. 

But when Jesus arrives on the scene, He offers her dignity and acceptance.  While it would have been considered unacceptable for Him to drink from the jar of this woman (and even more so since he was a rabbi), He asks her for a drink.  When she tries to avoid His tender questioning, He gently moves her toward the truth.  But He never says to her, "You must do X to truly interact with God".  His subtle challenge to her is that she acknowledge her broken state and allow God to heal her.  Christ knows that she lives in a world (as we do today) where people are quick to judge and isolate one another, and so He speaks to her with both kindness and conviction.  He offers her true life through Him.  He knows that all humans want to be understood, and through their interaction, she sees that this prophet truly understands her.

And lest we think that it is too much speculation to think she feels accepted, we read that her reaction is as follows in John 4:28-29 - "Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”  Imagine what must have been stirred in her soul to go to the people who also knew everything she did (and did not look kindly on it) and to tell them to come and see this man who might be the Messiah.  Only someone who had experienced a radical form of acceptance would speak to her neighbors with seemingly no care whether they accepted her or not.  She had experienced, perhaps for the first time, acceptance from The One who made her.

Christ stands out in His unique ability and desire to accept those with whom He chose to interact.  I find no other world religion that offers this acceptance and understanding in the one who claims to be God.  Gods of power, of destruction, of mercy - yes.  But the very nature of Christ is to accept and to understand.  Hebrews 4:14-16 reads, "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."
Christ alone has the ability to understand and accept us and our humanity because He Himself experienced it.
-tC

Part 2: The Exclusivity of Chirst and Methods for Consideration

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Many years ago, I was struck by the thought that the Christian faith offered me something that I did not find in other world religions.  In John 14, Jesus spoke of Himself as not a guide to the truth or an aspect of the truth, but as the Truth.  I was struck by this because I felt, as a young philosopher, that one of my greatest commitments had to be to the truth regardless of where it led me, and I was pleased to see that Christ did not only allow for me to ask questions, but He offered Himself as the ultimate solution to the quest for truth.  I am not offering the nicety of "Jesus is the answer to all the questions" - this is a simplification of our struggles with what it means to be human.  What He does offer, however, is that those who seek out truth will eventually find themselves considering and looking at the person of Christ.

That being said, let's consider two approaches to dealing with this question of the exclusive claims of Christ.  The first approach is probably the most obvious which is to look at the reasons why Christ had to be the only way of redemption, why Christ alone stands out in great contrast to other world religions or world religious leaders.  This method is helpful for some people - it is very much taking the claims of exclusivity head-on. 

The other approach is to leave this question behind for a while and to consider the rest of the Christian faith and the life of Christ.  By this I don't mean to ignore the issue, but to see what other evidence we may find in Christ that He is worthy of our allegiance.  To give a non-religious example: let's say that my wife has known me for 10 years and that she believes I am trustworthy.  One day, I say something to her that seems outlandish, too far from reason to possibly be true.  Yes, she could investigate my outlandish claim, but another method would be for her to consider all that she knows about me, all that she has experienced with me, all that she has seen in my life - and to let that be the basis as we move forward with my radical claim.  You see, when we work from the unknown to the known, I believe the workload is more significant.  When we work from the known toward the unknown, we have a building assurance with each step toward the unknown.  To reconnect us to the topic of Christ - if we find Him worthy, beautiful, true, and trustworthy in many other areas of His life and teaching, then it becomes easier to handle the challenging teachings (also known as "the hard sayings of Christ"). 

Tomorrow, we will begin with an investigation via the fist method - looking at the exclusive claims of Christ head-on.  Once we've done so for a handful of posts, we will consider what other factors in the life of Christ make Him worthy of our faith.

-tC

Part 1: The Exclusivity of Christ and The Exclusivity of Religions

 

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One of the challenges that if often leveled at the Christian faith is that many Christians claim that Jesus is the only way to Heaven, or the only way to have a relationship with God in Heaven.  There is something inside of us that reacts when we heard such a claim - we want to say, "That's not fair.  How can there be just one way to God?"  It is a legitimate question, and I believe that the question itself arises from a desire to allow the most people to have a relationship with God.  Part of the thinking process might be described as, "If so many people follow some religious system other than Christianity, and if Christianity is the only way to God, then there are billions of people misled about this vital issue."  Indeed, it can overwhelm the mind - the implications are massive.

But there are two issues that are often overlooked.  First, we must understand that truth, by definition, is exclusive.  While we can say in conversation, "Well, that's true for you, but not for me", we don't actually mean exactly that.  What we usually mean is, "Well, that's your opinion and I won't really argue with you because it seems to work for you, but I have a different way of making it work for me."  This is very different than dealing with the issue of truth.  Truth is exclusive - that is not a religious statement, it is a logical and philosophical one.  When we try to say that there are many truths, what we are often saying is that there are many opinions on things or that there are other assertions/factors that allow for us to nuance the statement.  Here's an example:

Tim claims to be 6 feet 2 inches tall. 
A friend says, "That's not true, he's just over 2 meters tall."
The comment from the friend has added a new factor into the discussion - we are now using a different measurement system.  This, however, does not negate the fact that Tim is still 6 foot 2.  Sometime people use the analogy of an elephant and say that one man is touching the tail, one the trunk, and so on.  But this doesn't change the fact that ultimately, it is an elephant that they are touching.  If A is true, then non-A cannot be true as well.  Again a simple example: If I were to say that I live in New Hampshire to my friend, and then a moment later to that same friend I say I live in Utah, he would not think, "This makes complete sense."  He would realize that there must be some other factor he hasn't considered (am I talking about a summer home for example), or he would conclude that I am not making sense.

Connecting this to the topic of religion - all world religions claim exclusivity at some point.  We might like to think that they all are the same thing deep, down inside, but this is simply not true. On the surface, it may seem that all religions are rooted in love and compassion, but as we probe a little, we can see that there are very different definitions of what love and compassion are.  For example, Heaven in the Christian faith is different than in Buddhism where there is no Heaven. God in the Christian faith is the Triune God - the Trinity.  In Islam, the Trinity is non-existent.  All religions claim to be "the way" at some point.  Some followers may deny this or avoid it, but at the core, all religions (to some degree) claim "we have the way to God/eternal life/spiritual meaning."

Thus we conclude that the exclusive claims of Christ are not so much radical as they are rational, for all religions claim something of the sort.  One can dismiss all religions as false, but one cannot logically claim that all religions are true.  When Jesus says in John 14 the He is The Way, The Truth, and The Life - we can disagree, but we should not do so because it's an irrational claim - it is very rational.

There are many reasons we could discuss as to why the Christian faith is often pegged as THE religion that claims exclusivity, but with a little investigation, it is clear that all religions do the same.

Tomorrow, we will talk about 2 approaches to the exclusive claims of Christ.

-tC

The Exclusivity of Christ - Introduction

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We live in a world that is both becoming more globalized by the moment, and yet it is also a world that is highly divided.  A handful of years ago, author and social researcher Andy Wolfe wrote a book entitled One Nation After All.  In it, he concludes that (based on his research) Americans are more similar than we are different.  While this was true a decade or so ago, my position would be that traumatic events of 9/11 changed that.  Interestingly, I just heard an interview tonight with a congressman who had been in office for over 20 years, and he commented that when he first started serving (just after the Watergate scandal), there was more unity and cordiality than there is now.  It's true in Congress, it's true in the U.S. overall, and it's true in the world.  While the world becomes smaller each day, there is a clear sense that many people groups are at odds with others.  Certainly, the culture wars of years past may be true, but now we find many researchers noting that there is a clash between East and West, between North America and China, or between Islam and Christianity. 

So what are we to do with this?  In a world that is already filled with strife and conflict, division and enmity, can't we just all agree that religions are all an attempt to climb the mountain to God, even if the path is different? 

If only it were so easy.  Over the next few weeks, we will look at some of the challenges we face when considering the exclusive claims of the Christian faith (and other faiths for that matter).  As we do so, my hope is that we work to create more light than heat.  The test of all discussion and presentation is two-fold: the truth of the claims that are made, and the honesty in the hearts of those considering them.  May we have both.

-tC