FAITH IN FAITH
I had an interesting encounter with a couple of people the other
day that set me thinking. You see, they
both believed that any path you found to God was acceptable and you would be in
heaven when you died. Any religion that
led you to your faith was OK.
What made the encounter so interesting was that these people
were both prominent Christians.
I upset them, I suspect, when I pointed out that that was in
direct contradiction to what Jesus himself said when he pointed out that “no
man comes to the Father but by me.”
Believing in the death and resurrection he experienced was why he was
born. No other faith was acceptable,
otherwise, the Jewish belief would have been just fine and in keeping with the
beliefs of these two people I chatted with.
There would have been no need for Jesus to be born.
You see, if you accept the kind of theology that says any
religion is good enough, then you have to accept that Romans who believed in
many Gods was an acceptable path. You
have to believe that ancient civilizations that sacrificed babies and young
virgins to their Gods was acceptable.
You have to believe that those who worship crystals or radishes or
whatever are acceptable. If you don’t,
then you are faced with the dilemma of determining which religion or belief
system is acceptable.
You then have become God.
You then also start deciding what is good enough to get you to God in
any particular religion. That gets
sticky and pretty soon you start throwing out certain ones you find
objectionable. So, the ones that kill
babies and virgins go first. Next maybe
the radical Muslims who advocate killing anyone who doesn’t believe as they do
get tossed. Then you get stuck being
picky, and you realize that if you get to choose what religion is good enough,
you’ve violated your basic belief that any path is good enough to get you to
God and salvation.
I know these people I was talking with were coming from a
viewpoint that was tainted by the fact that they had loved ones who were not
Christian believers. To that I say, I am
not God and that God can decide whatever he wants to. I certainly think that those who have never
heard of Christ may get different treatment from God. If he wants to let non-Christians who have
heard about Jesus into heaven but aren’t Christians, that’s up to him. I figure it’s best if I let God speak for
himself. But for me, I figure it is best
to go with God’s own choice that was foretold in the Old Testament and that was
confirmed by Christ’s miracles, his own words and his death and resurrection. If you knowingly step off that path, you sink
in the mud and murk of salvation by “works” and “goodness,” and then you get
into how good is good enough...and, well, you just don’t want to go there in
that discussion.
Faith in Faith is no faith.
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