This semester I decided to enroll in a philosophy class titled "Introduction to World Religion." Now, I can't quite say why I chose this class over others to fill my humanities requirement, but God did allow it to work in my class schedule and got me a slot despite how quickly the class was filling up. It would be an understatement to say that so far this class has made me do some deep thinking.
My professor is a quirky, good natured bald guy with a great sense of humor. I'll be honest, I really like this guy. He's really down to earth and does his best to present religion from an academic standpoint. However, there's really no way to teach religion without teaching your religion. So, every Friday night for the last couple of months, I've been attending a three-hour sermon preaching a very complex and confusing gospel. My professor was raised in an ultra-conservative Christian family and once even considered becoming a pastor. When he went off to college, he confessed, he discovered that he "liked other religions too" and his views shifted to a more liberal, "open-minded" opinion of God. Basically, he believes in God...but that there are many paths to him, not just Jesus Christ. He'd be the type to have a "Coexist" bumper sticker. He takes the bits and pieces of religions that agree with his own philosophy and creates for himself a sort of patchwork quilt of beliefs. He claims to pray to the Hebrew God, but also practices Buddhist meditation and has Hindu idols in his home.
I've found that these sorts of philisophical mushpot religions are actually becoming really popular in today's culture, especially within my generation. The idea of Buddhist zen is appealing to overwhelmed folks trapped in a world busy with work, school, hobbies, and the constant buzz of digital media. The Hindu Karma Sutra appeals to the sick human obsession with things that are (or rather, should be) X-rated. The Rastafarianism sacrament of ganja is appealing today because...well...people like to smoke weed. And of course, people like it when Jesus talks about love and acceptence. Why not take the best of all religions and make one super-religion? Rather than picking one belief system, they pick out the beliefs they like and omit the pieces they don't like (unpopular beliefs usually include those concerning sin, Hell, chasitity, and not eating bacon.) In an effort to choose all religions, they choose none.
Truth is, religions can't "coexist" because their core teachings contridict each other. Jesus taught "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father EXCEPT through me" while Islam teaches "There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet." To make things more complicated, atheism comes along and says that there are no gods at all. How can all of those teachings be true in the same plane of reality? As an incredibly brilliant old friend of mine once said regarding this kind of belief, "Two plus two can't equal four and five."
Yes, there are true elements in many religions. Those true elements don't automatically make the rest of the religion true, however. Buddhists teach kindness to others, but that doesn't mean we should start meditating and spending hours in front of a golden statue. I know that it sounds like I'm stating the obvious, but some people (even Christians!) actually fall into that line of thinking. Satan is sneaky. He's not going to feed people lies straight up; he's going to water them down, sweeten them up, and make them look appealing.
I'll be honest, there are a lot of topics that I've been struggling with lately (the class is partially to blame.) Despite my professor's beliefs, however, his class has absolutely confirmed one thing: the whole "coexist" thing is the stupidest concept ever. Besides, when that word is spelled out in religious symbols, the cross comes last. See?
Jesus doesn't belong at the end of that list. In many religions men sacrafice themselves for their gods. In Christianity, God sacraficed himself for men. In other religions, man earns Heaven. In Christianity, man can never earn Heaven, but gets to go anyway. Other religions give a long list of complicated to-do's, but Christianity takes anyone exactly the way they are regardless of what they've done in the past. The culture teaches that Christianity is an intolerent religion because we say that Jesus is only way. In reality, Christianity is the single most tolerent religion because Jesus takes in anybody and everybody. What could possibly be more tolerent than that?
