By Dr. Douglas Groothuis
Most Americans believe in God or a God-like Higher Power, despite the recent upsurge of books vehemently promoting atheism and attacking religion in general, such as The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. This bedrock American belief in God has been present throughout the history of the United States, even in light of the freedom accorded to unbelievers and skeptics by the Constitutional guarantee of “freedom of speech.” Yet as the religious landscape has become increasingly varied in the past several decades, many Americans wonder how the different religions—such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—relate to God. One might ask, “If there is a God, why has he allowed so many different religions?” This is both a penetrating and a perplexing question. To move toward the best answer to it, we begin by eliminating one very popular, but inadequate, answer: God accepts and endorses all religions.
Many claim that all the major world religions lead to one God; there are different ways to find and know the same God. There is the general sense for many that this God hears prayers and is personal—that he is a thinking and acting being. Many believe this deity is a vague but benevolent being, who is hard to pin down, and who allows a variety of roads to spiritual fulfillment. After all, that seems to be the most open-minded, democratic, and generally mellow way to view it. Furthermore, if all religions have a divine source and lead to the same goal, this means that the strife, hate, and violence that so often occur between opposing religions should come to an end. Just as there are many roads that lead to the top of the mountain and many streams that end up in the sea, so there are many paths to spiritual enlightenment and divine approval.[1] According this mindset, there is no reason to criticize another person’s religion, since it is one of many means by which to relate to God. In the spirit of “Live and let live,” we can say, “Worship and let worship.”
This approach sounds wise in the abstract, but the particulars tell another story. While all religions are concerned with ultimate reality and how humans should relate to it, the various religions understand that reality and how we should relate to it in radically different ways. One great divide between religions is whether or not God is believed to be personal—whether God creates and designs the universe and intelligently orchestrates the events within it. The Buddha, for example, requires no such belief of his followers. The Buddha was either atheistic or agnostic about the existence of God; the question was irrelevant to his concept of reality and salvation, which involved changing one’s own being through meditation.[2] Taoism seeks to lead its followers into a deeper alignment with “the Tao” or the inner reality of life’s flow. (If that sounds a bit murky, it is because Taoism is thickly mystical and speaks in riddles and mysteries.) While there is a theistic strain to some branches of Hinduism (a very diverse religion in itself), the concept of a personal and perfect God is not essential to it. Some strains of Hinduism are atheistic, some are polytheistic, and others are pantheistic (i.e., the divine is believed to an impersonal and faceless force that is indescribable in words).
But if there is one God who is personal (a being who thinks and interacts with creation), it would be unreasonable to believe that this being would reveal himself as less than personal. If God wants people to know who he is, God would not sponsor religions that remove from him the qualities of personality. To the adage, “Worship and let worship,” one must say, “But some religions do not know of worship at all, in the sense of praising and honoring a supreme being, since they do not believe in the existence of such a being.”
Of course, religions other than Christianity strongly affirm that there is one true God, who is the personal and moral Lord of the universe. The historic monotheistic faiths are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all of which share in this world-shaking affirmation.[3] These three faiths (in their orthodox traditions) all hail Abraham as their spiritual father, believe that God sends prophets into the world, that God inspires holy books (although they disagree to what they are), and claim that all people will be held accountable before God at the Last Judgment. In this way, they are a million miles away from those religions that believe the ultimate reality is impersonal and voiceless (as mentioned above). So, perhaps we can answer our question, “If there is one God, why are there many religions?” by answering, “The one God is not respected by all religions, but God is equally honored by the historic monotheistic faiths.” In this case, “Worship and let worship,” seems to hold, since all these traditions emphasis divine worship and believe in objective moral values.
But it is not that simple. These monotheistic religions do not agree on the nature of the personal God nor on how we should approach God. Judaism and Islam deny a central and defining doctrine of Christianity: that the one God exists eternally in three co-equal persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). Christians worship God as a Trinity; Jews take this to be a mistake and Muslims deem it a blasphemy. Since Jews and Muslims deny the Trinity, they also deny the Incarnation. This is the teaching that God took on a human nature in the person of Jesus of Nazareth for the sake of human and cosmic redemption (see John 1:1-18; Philippians 2:5-11).
While Judaism and Islam rely on good works to contribute to their salvation, the Bible affirms that human sinfulness has disqualified all works as the basis for a restored relationship with the Creator. It is only God’s grace (his freely bestowed gift) coming through the work of Christ that can rescue those who are “dead in their trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). This gracious gift is received by faith in the finished work of Christ on one’s behalf—plus nothing (Ephesians 2:8). Christians go so far as to worship Jesus Christ as the Savior and Lord of humanity and to make this the essence of true spirituality. As Jesus said, those who worship God must do so in “spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), and he himself claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Sincerity and belief in one God are not sufficient for spiritual liberation, according to Christianity. As the Book of James says, “The demons believe [in one God]—and shudder” (James 2:19).
Given what we’ve argued, Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton’s claim that religions are more alike in their externals than in their deepest beliefs rings true:
So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.[4]
Therefore, our question, “If there is one God, why are there many religions?” cannot be answered by claiming that the one God equally employs all of the religions as vehicles for salvation. This manner of deity would be speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Or, to put it another way, such a god would give incompatible instructions for humans to find their way into his good graces. Such a mapmaker could not be trusted, let alone worshiped.
The deepest Christian answer to the question of why there are many religions if there is one God is twofold. First, God has revealed the one, true, and wise way of life in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:15-17) and through Jesus Christ, the only agent of human redemption (Matthew 11:17; John 3:16-18; 14:1-6: Acts 4:12; 1 Timothy 2:5).[5] According to the Christian worldview, God is not a vague or remote deity who is indifferent to truth and falsehood. In the end, truth is not democratic or even comfortable: it is rooted in the perfect character of the eternal God. This truth can be known through God’s written revelation in the Bible. Second, the existence of other religions is due to the fall of God’s creatures into sin. Human beings have turned away from their creator and rebelled against him. In so doing, they have a propensity to create false gods or to distort the revelation of the true God (Romans 1:18-32; 2 Peter 3:16). Yet God remains merciful, gracious, and loving, offering redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to those who will repent of their false beliefs and godless ways and accept the loving gift of God through Christ. As the Apostle John, the confidant of Christ himself, said of his master.
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God (John 1:11-13).
[1] These metaphors, no matter how much they spark the imagination, do not, in and by themselves, provide any rational argument that all religions are sponsored by one God.
[2] For more on Buddhism, see Douglas Groothuis, “Jesus and Buddha: Two Masters or One?” Christian Research Journal available at: http://www.equip.org/free/DJ660.htm. There are some theistic strains in Buddhism, but these are aberrations from the Buddha’s original teachings, which were not theistic.
[3] On the significance of monotheism in world history and the nature of its cultural and historical power, see Rodney Stark, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (New York: Princeton University Press, 2001).
[4] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1995; orig. pub. 1908), 136.
[5] I cannot make the point here, but there are good and sufficient reasons to believe this. One need not take a leap of faith to believe this. Many works defend Christianity as objectively true and the most rational worldview, but consider: J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987) and William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994).
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