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December 1, 2004
Hello everyone,
This past April, Angela sent me an e-mail with the subject title “Anger Management and the Koran” expressing the utter frustration she felt in reading the Koran (or Qur’an as it is sometimes spelled), the sacred scripture of the Muslim. In particular, she was troubled by the creation stories and other accounts that parallel—but also significantly differ from—those of the bible. At that time, I had not read the Koran myself though I should hasten to add that (a) I still have not read the entire book and secondly (b) that a devout Muslim would not consider what I read the true Koran, because only in its native Arabic is it deemed pure; it becomes corrupted when translated into any other tongue. Nonetheless, after reading extended excerpts, I can sympathize with Angela all the more, for it is not particularly friendly to Christian theology—less so than I had even supposed—though we will save those excerpts for later in our reading today. In any event, she grew almost livid with anger over parts of what she read, and, when she sought to ask questions from the Afghanistan man who had provided her with the text, he in turn became very angry. That is the unfortunate reality in a universe in which no single universally agreed upon blueprint or guidebook is offered. We can, of course, deny that such an issue exists and perhaps we can even succeed on an individual level because, in our little corner of the world at least, no such conflict occurs. Yet that is really no solution at all. So what are we to make of the existence of so many diverse faiths? I have previously consolidated three basic reactions I believe people take in addressing the plurality of religious faith.
[One may] look around at all the different faiths, see their similarities and their differences and conclude that (1) they are all false, mere figments of human imagination, which is precisely what I did from the time I was fresh out of high school up until the time of my conversion. One can look at all the similarities and differences of the multiple religions and conclude just the opposite: that (2) all faiths are true—all paths lead to the same eternal garden. And finally, one can look at all the similarities and differences between the faiths and (3) conclude that some may be right, some may be wrong, and it is his business to figure out what is true and what is false.
Like all generalizations, some people are going to take these positions to the extreme while others will be less assertive; some may also perhaps remain inconsistent in their thinking, attempting to combine one of more of these approaches depending on the particulars of a given case. Yet I maintain that these three approaches cover the vast majority (if not the entirety) of given responses offered to the question of multiple faiths. As is stated, we could, of course, conclude that all faiths were false. In many instances, persons who propose this kind of answer do so because they have already dismissed the validity of any kind of metaphysical claim from their minds. If we believe, for example, that God is a figment of the imagination, it would follow that any religious system that attempts to posit His existence is necessarily a fabrication. Such individuals might acknowledge that religious faith seems to enrich a person’s life, perhaps equating a spiritual outlook with an evolutionary adaptation that aids in the survival of the species, perhaps not. It does not necessarily follow that those who do not believe that any religious system is right or true are going to be antagonistic toward those who do. But it does mean that within their own minds—whether they air their views publicly or not—they believe that any given religious system is at best subjective and ultimately untrue. Religious faith may very well be helpful to other people, but it is akin to daydreams or an active fantasy life and the level of benefit such provide.
A certain crossover often occurs with persons who posit that all religions are true. Often, they too see religion as being subjective, but rather than seeing that as a means for falsification, they see it as a great good that should be embraced. When someone posits this particular stance, rarely (if they have done much research at all) is it based on the harmony of doctrinal assertions within a range of given faiths, but rather on what the person believes is the “spirit” of all faiths in general. Such a person will argue that all religious faith is fundamentally the same and only superficially different. No matter where we fall within this range of interpretations, there is something to be said for this view. Whatever we may say about a given faith, people themselves, at least, are fundamentally the same the world over and only superficially different. There are, to be sure, different cultures and different ways of conceiving the world, but at heart, we all feel pain, we all experience desire, we all ask the reason why, we seek answers to the unknown. So then, we can conclude that men the world over seek answers to the same fundamental questions and that, in this regard at least, all religions attempt to provide their adherents with answers. But just because people are themselves fundamentally the same and only superficially different the world over, does this also mean that their religious systems are likewise fundamentally the same and only superficially different? Mightn’t it be better to argue that they are alike in that they try to answer the questions of a common humanity and fill a spiritual need that all persons equally share? But does it automatically follow that if they are alike in this way, they are so much alike in all other ways that the differences are so negligible as to not merit mention? Are all religions going to offer equally valid answers? I would argue that we simply cannot be appealing to this kind of validation if we are arguing that all religions are fundamentally true.
Let us go back to our example of the Koran and the bible for a moment. Proof-texts can admittedly be problematic, for one because they can often be taken out of context at the expense of the whole. For that reason, I have chosen two passages that, despite the fact that neither are in the original language, nonetheless should show beyond a reasonable doubt that what is being postulated between the Koran and the bible is mutually exclusive. For my text from the bible, I have chosen 1 John 4:1–3 and will be quoting from the NASB because of its faithfulness to the original Greek:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
However, we are left with a little wiggle room here, for, based on this passage alone, just because we acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh—just because we confess Jesus—does not necessarily mean that we are saying anything else than that He is a great prophet. Of course, most of us familiar with Christian theology would find it strange someone would assert that He had “come in the flesh” if He were simply a prophet, but to make our point abundantly clear, let’s turn again to 1 John 5:1, 9–12:
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. . . . If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for the testimony of God is this, that He has testified concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.
I suppose that if we wished to be contentious, we could still find some loophole to claim that these passages do not posit that Jesus is God but simply a prophet. However, I think that if we did so, contentious is exactly what we would be. We might not accept the claim that Jesus is the Son of God, but to say that this is not what is being claimed seems to me lacking in intellectual integrity. But now that we have a fairly good example of what the bible claims about Jesus, what does the Koran say? Of course, we should again acknowledge that the devout Muslim will not consider these English words inspired, but they nonetheless seem quite clear in their intended meaning: I don’t think that much is going to be lost in translation. In Sura 19, the account of Mary, mother of Jesus, is recounted to Zacharias, father of John whom we know as the Baptizer. As much as I would like to cull a succinct quotation to keep the central thought flowing, I think it wise to present the story as it appears in full:
[God is speaking to Zacharias:] And you shall recount in the Book the story of Mary: how she left her people and betook herself to a solitary place to the east.
We sent to her Our spirit in the semblance of a full-grown man. And when she saw him she said: “May the Merciful defend me from you! If you fear the Lord, leave me and go your way.”
“I am a messenger of your Lord,” he replied, “and have come to give you a holy son.”
How shall I bear a child,” she answered, “when I am a virgin, untouched by a man?”
“Such is the will of your Lord,” he replied. “That is no difficult thing for Him. ‘He shall be a sign to mankind’ says the Lord, and a blessing from Ourself. This is Our decree.”
Thereupon she conceived him, and retired to a far-off place. And when she felt the throes of childbirth she lay down by the trunk of a palm-tree crying: “Oh, would that I had died and passed into oblivion.”
But a voice from below cried out to her: “Do not despair. Your Lord has provided a brook that runs at your feet, and if you shake the trunk of this palm-tree it will drop fresh ripe dates in your lap. Therefore eat and drink and rejoice; and should you meet any mortal say to him: ‘I have vowed to fast to the Merciful and will not speak with any man today.’”
Carrying the child, she came to her people, who said to her: “This is indeed a strange thing! Sister of Aaron, your father was never a whoremonger, nor was your mother a harlot.”
She made a sign to them, pointing to the child. But they replied: “How can we speak with a babe in the cradle?”
Whereupon he spoke and said: “I am a servant of God. He has given me the Book and ordained me a prophet. His blessing is upon me wherever I go, and He has commanded me to be steadfast in prayer and to give alms to the poor as long as I shall live. He has exhorted me to honour my mother and has purged me of vanity and wickedness. I was blessed on the day I was born and I shall be blessed on the day of my death; and may peace be upon me on the day when I shall be raised to life.”
Such was Jesus, the son of Mary. That is the whole truth, which they still doubt. God forbid that He Himself should beget a son! When He decrees a thing, He need only say “Be,” and it is.
God is my Lord and your Lord: therefore serve Him. That is the right path.
Yet the Sects are divided concerning Jesus. But when the fateful day arrives, woe to the unbelievers! Their sight and being shall be sharpened on the day when they appear before Us. Truly, the unbelievers are in the grossest error. (Qtd. in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 881–882)
The passage then breaks away from Mary and presents an account of Abraham. However, slightly before it concludes, it returns again to the subject of Jesus where we find this unequivocal statement:
Those who say: “The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son,” preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack, the earth break asunder, and the mountains crumble into dust. That they should ascribe a son to the Merciful, when it does not become the Lord of Mercy to beget one! (Qtd. in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 884)
We can, of course, find quite a bit of overlap (and conversely quite a bit of difference) between the Koran and the bible, though these passages should demonstrate that in terms of doctrine, it cannot both be “a monstrous falsehood” to proclaim that “[t]he Lord of Mercy has begotten a son,” and true that “[w]hoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” To speak of Christ as the Son of God is to Islam to “preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack, the earth break asunder, and the mountains crumble into dust.” Yet for Christianity to say that Christ is not the Son of God is the hijacking of the centralmost doctrine of the faith. To maintain the integrity of either faith, we can’t very well say that they are fundamentally the same; while some on the outside looking in might personally consider these only superficial differences, those within these faiths are certainly not going to see it that way. Of course, some might dismiss both faiths and suggest that there are many paths to God, but dogma and doctrine are the great anathema. Yet in dismissing creedal proclamations, such a person is suggesting that the two faiths we have been considering at least are false, which still leads back to the third stance that some faiths are wrong, some are right, and we would do well to consider for ourselves which is which. Still, perhaps we should present one more schema before we proceed, for it may prove revealing:
We can divide the major religions of the world neatly into two general categories: on the one hand you have the religions of the Middle East—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—which all (1) claim to be historically based, (2) are linear (start at a beginning and move toward an ending), and (3) are dualistic in the sense that they acknowledge good and evil. Virtually every other religious system—Buddhism, Hinduism, animism, paganism/neopaganism, Shintoism, etc.—is (1) mythologically based, (2) circular/cyclical, and (3) non-dualistic (no clearly delineated right or wrong).
There is much we could say on this matter, but for now, let us just note that many who claim that all religious faiths lead to the same eternal garden have a great sympathy for the second category of religious systems. Many secretly dismiss the validity of the “religions of the book” as complicating an otherwise beautiful thing. Yet again, to dismiss these three major faiths from our considerations is not to posit a true form of religious unanimity, but rather to posit that some views are plainly better than others, which again lands us in the third general category of saying that not all faiths are true, not all faiths are false, but some are plainly better than others. To my mind, this is really the most rational position we can take: that is, to say that not all faiths are true, not all faiths are false, but some are plainly better than others. We may, of course, disagree very strongly about what is better, but we do little to advance peace and harmony (not to mention allowing each faith system its integrity) by saying that something is true when it is not. We do well to instead emphasize that all people are fundamentally the same and only superficially different while simultaneously acknowledging that such is not the case with all people’s religious beliefs.
With these thoughts in mind, I will share with you the e-mail I wrote to Angela, who, as you will recall from the beginning of our newsletter, grew angry when reading the Koran because it conflicted with the bible, whereas the man who supplied her with the copy of the Koran likewise grew very angry when she questioned him. So then, with a few minor corrections and clarifications, this is the e-mail I dashed off to her in April:
Sounds like a mutual conflict of cherished beliefs. Are you saying that you would not make a good apologist, at least to Muslims? [Smile.] But no, when it comes to the religious beliefs that we hold dear, these run very deep for all of us who take our faith seriously. This factor is just as true for those of other belief systems as it is with our own. What is more, because for many of us the beginning of our respect for our faith began when we were children (even if we rejected it for many years), any perceived affront to our faith is often also an attack on our upbringing: on our Mom and Dad and other family members—as well as our very culture in many cases: the “operating system” that drives all the other software, the very foundational center of our identity. In any case, we all know that when someone starts attacking family, our hackles go up really fast.
I have, not surprisingly, puzzled over the plurality of religious expression the world over and one thing that I think we can say honestly as impartial observers is that Christianity is not itself the most rational of religions from an outsider’s perspective. The fact that you and I struggled so long with some of its central tenets further attests to this fact; the fact that our faith is a growth process that deepens each passing year also speaks to this factor. We would not expect that someone who has been exposed to Christianity for five minutes is going to consider it completely rational unless the Holy Spirit has been working overtime in his life.
For most of us, our religious faith is central to who we are and goes down very deeply. For many of us there is a very private element to it as well, which is why we don’t throw it blindly before swine. There are many occasions where we could not possibly express the fullness of our heart and when someone attacks these beliefs—or even treats them flippantly or appears to be somewhat sarcastic, confrontational, or disrespectful—our responses vary from a personal reaction of anger and/or hurt to a compassionate reaction of love for the other person’s inability to see spiritual beauty.
As you know, Ravi Zacharias is a master of inter-faith dialogs and in the extended interview Reaching the Happy Thinking Pagan he says something I have found very insightful: “If you can make any religion look idiotic, chances are, you haven’t understood that religion. You can’t take treasured beliefs from the past and mock them.” Now certainly we know how we feel when we have our faith mocked, but we don’t always carefully consider how persons of another faith are going to feel, particularly if we ask them hard questions in an attempt to “show them the error of their ways.” It all goes back to the golden rule, really. The best approach we can take is to speak for ourselves, but in a loving way, letting the other know we don’t agree and this is the reason, but that we also respect their right to think, reason, and adhere to the faith that they believe just as strongly as we do our own. If we can communicate the fact that we value them as a person and that they are more than their beliefs in our eyes, that goes a very long way. It is possible for us to get to a point where what other people believe does not threaten what we believe. Of course, there will be those who still become angry with us for believing as we do. The important thing is that we make sure that we don’t play into this anger or contribute to the process. If we have not in some way further egged the process on, then I believe Scripture is quite clear in turning the other cheek. This effectively accomplishes what the Scriptures say about “If your enemy is hungry, give him to eat; if he is thirsty, give him to drink” because by so doing you will “heap burning coals on his head.” A rather drastic metaphor, but we all know that we have been shamed by our hot-headed responses when the other person has remained cool: how much more shamed would we be if the other person was also very loving to us as well!
When you approach the Koran, I would keep in mind that even though this faith is younger than Christianity, it still goes back for many centuries and is foundational to the lives and culture of a large portion of the world. For many of the devout Muslims, the Koran is every bit as much inspired as the bible and is itself useful in edification, correction, and admonition. There are parts of it that seem [internally] contradictory, sure. Most of the thinking Muslims would confess that fact. But they do the same thing thinking Christians do with the parts of the bible that seem conflicting: they try to figure out the larger meaning and search for the reconciliation of these differences. (And if you say that the bible is not seemingly contradictory in places you are probably not being honest.) Because the Koran is God’s final word to the Islamic community, a devout Muslim would be inclined to interpret the bible in a similar manner that a Christian tends toward in examining the Koran.
What I am encouraging then, is a difference in approach when you read. You are now reading for your own edification, evaluating its truth claims based on how they will enrich your life (or how they will destroy someone else’s). But if you instead can put yourself in the shoes of the Muslim and understand that the reaction he has to the bible is going to be nearly the same as the one you have to the Koran, then some empathy can take place. You both were looking for answers at some point. You both believe that you have found the answer. Yet neither of you agree on the answer because your answers disagree. This disagreement over your religious faith can either divide you or it can provide opportunities for you to demonstrate your love and understanding. The two of you actually aren’t much different at bottom. The only real difference is that you believe books that often conflict with one another. It is not that this difference is unimportant. It is that Christianity is larger than a set of beliefs. It is a lived life of love, transformed on the inside by the Holy Spirit. We may never be able to influence another person’s creedal proclamations, but we can, through the empowerment of God, learn to love them in spite not only of the things they do, but the things they believe as well.
This issue of other religious faiths is not an easy question to answer. However, I don’t think we gain much ground by denying that it exists; as I have said thousands of times before, denial never got anyone anywhere. If we call ourselves Christians we should hold our heads high; we should not be ashamed of what we believe nor should we deny our Lord. However, while we should never be ashamed of our beliefs, we should also treat others with consideration and respect, recognizing that for many, their belief systems are just as heart-felt as our own. It is not for us to change the mind of another; we have simply been called to be seed planters and care givers, discretely depositing kernels of wisdom and truth where they are likely to sprout and liberally watering with love even that which we have not planted. The Apostle Paul surely had it right when he wrote to the Church of Corinth: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Because we serve the God who gives the increase, the most effective and often overlooked tool we have for ministering to others is prayer. The God of the harvest is a gracious and loving God and it is His Spirit that convicts of sin and illumines hearts and minds with the truth. Where there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; where there are tongues, they will cease; where there is knowledge, it will pass away, but love never fails. As C.S. Lewis noted, of the major religions of the world, Christianity’s unique contribution is grace: boundless, abundant, and free to all who will but believe.
God bless,
Eric
“The essence of Christian theology is grace; the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.”
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