Question:
What right does anyone have to say that another religion is wrong or incorrect? What I think God is, is a highly personal thing and is different for everyone and depends on one’s views.
This is a view that has echoed countless times from countless mouths. It is the mantra of today’s society. I heard it summed up once in my college newspaper. A young man said something to this effect – “The most reprehensible thing that a person can do – short of violence upon another – is to force his religious views on someone else.” You’ve probably heard it many other ways. Perhaps “I believe in my God and you believe in your God. Who are we to force our views on one another?”, or “There are many ways to God. I have simply chosen the route which is best for me”.
Comments such as these all run in the same vein. The gist of these kinds of statements is this; “we do not know for certain what or who God is. The concept of God is a personal thing, a topic relevant to every human being. Each has his or her own belief about God. How dare you act in such arrogance and intolerance, forcing your beliefs – which are solely that, your beliefs – on someone else, who may have different beliefs, and is entitled to those beliefs as a basic human right?”
Let us look at this question. Let us say that this question is directed towards Christianity (which it often is). What is Christianity’s answer?
Before we begin we must define the concept of God. When dealing with the Christian God, we must make sure we are using the correct concepts, because they are often confused in our society. Let us make a quick and simple definition – God is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, completely good, and has existed for all time. From now on I will refer to God with a capital God from now on in this manner.
Let us now say that whoever brought up this argument is correct. Say that indeed we have no right to force our beliefs upon another. Say that each individual has his or her own convictions about God, and that it is morally wrong to force your convictions on another. What then does this say about the character of God?
This is a good question. Let’s make an analogy to reveal some further truth. According to the argument, if you believe that the God of the universe is housed solely in a Granny Smith apple, that is sitting on your kitchen table, then that is fine. Alternatively, if I believe that the God of the universe sits enthroned solely upon my back porch lawn chair, then that is fine. No big deal, right? However, we see on further inspection, that only one of us can be right. God cannot exist SOLELY in your Granny Smith apple AND SOLELY exist on my back porch. The two are mutually exclusive. You cannot be at your Grandma’s house in Atlanta and at the London airport at the same time. You are either in one place or the other. If I were to say you were in London at this moment, I would be either right or wrong. Because the Christian God is omnipresent, and the previous analogy may be confusing, so let me give you another one.
Say that my Bible says that ‘God is this, this and this’. It also says that God must be ‘this, this and this’ otherwise GOD IS NOT GOD. Say that your “Book of Holy Sayings” says that God is ‘that, that and that’. Let’s say that your Book also says that God must be ‘that, that and that’ in order to be God, otherwise GOD IS NOT GOD. Now, if my ‘this’ and your ‘that’ are not the same thing, then it is impossible for both of us to be correct. If God is your ‘that’, then according to my beliefs your God IS NOT GOD, because my beliefs state that God MUST BE ‘this’. If my God is ‘this’, then according to your beliefs my God IS NOT GOD because your God must be ‘that’. In other words, if our beliefs are opposite or contradictory, then we cannot both be correct.
Here’s another example. Say my Bible says that God is green. Let’s say that it also says that anything that is not green cannot possibly be God. Let us also suppose that it also says that my entire Bible is true. I am a ‘green christian’. Now, let’s say your Koran (or some other Holy Book) says that God is red. What if it also says that anything that is not red cannot possibly be God. Along with that, suppose it says that the entire Koran is perfect and true. You are a ‘red muslim’. Now, can both of our religions be true? No. Why is that? Because they contradict each other. My religion says that it is true, that God is green, and anything that is not green can’t be God. Your religion says that it is true, that God is red and that anything that isn’t red can’t be God. One of us has to be wrong – if God is green, then you’re religion is wrong because it says that God can only be red. If God is red, then I am wrong, because my religion says that God can only be green. They both cannot be true.
I think you get the picture by now. “But what if God is both red and green then Mr. Smarty-pants?!,” you ask. Well, in that case, we are both wrong! My religion says that God can only be green – not green and red. Your religion says that God can only be red – not green and red. This is the way religions in the world are; they claim fundamentally different and opposing things about God and reality and they all claim to be truth. Yet all cannot be true, as we have just demonstrated. Thus, some must be wrong.
We see with these examples that we are only left with two options to absolve contradictions between the religions. Either one of us is right, and the other is wrong, or God has lied to one of us. The first option of course needs no further discussing; someone is right and someone is wrong. But perhaps God is green and red after all and we just got mixed up in our religion. How do we answer to that? First let us shed the red and green analogy for a while. What if there is more than one way to God after all and Christians have just kind of gotten mixed up a little in their religion?
To answer that question, let’’s figure out what ‘mixed up a little’ could mean. Consider Christianity’s track record. From a Christian perspective, Judaism and Christianity are (according to a Christian view, since Christianity is merely a continuation of Judaism) one and the same. This makes it the oldest religion known to man that is still practiced today. Their beliefs and customs have been preserved to an astonishing degree. In fact, we can be 99.9% sure that what the original writers of the Bible wrote, we have in accurate form today. To see evidence of that click here. From the very beginning – and Christianity claims to have been here from the very beginning, literally – Christianity has claimed to be the only way to God. We have accurate copies of the original texts that say so. Genesis 1:1 says that “In the beginning, God…”, and it goes on to describe creation. The Bible claims th
at this God, is the only God, and that there is only one way to get to Him. Notice that Christians aren’t saying “We have determined that there is only one way to God…because we know everything.” Not at all. Christian’s are claiming that GOD told them that there was only one way to get to Him and it was through belief in Him; belief in Jesus Christ. Christians hold no claim of being morally superior or more intellectually developed than anyone else. They are merely proclaiming what they believe God has showed them. The point of all this, is that Christian’s believe that God is the only way not because they are arrogant, but because they believe this is what God has been telling us from the very beginning. We also would notice that if Christianity had indeed gotten ‘mixed up’ somewhere along the line, then there would be some sort of internal inconsistencies. In other words, there would have to be stuff in the Bible which didn’t make sense with other things that were written in the Bible. But there no such contradictions. The common man has heard that there are many contradictions in the Bible; I challenge that man to name one. Christianity has been almost supernaturally diligent in keeping with its original beliefs – indeed they have not changed since they were first laid. It seems almost silly to say that Christianity has gotten ‘mixed up’ along the way. Though there were on going revelations to man along the centuries, they stayed consistent with each other and complemented each other to eventually form a large, complete, comprehensible book. There has not been any mixing up going on.
What is our point though by showing this? It is merely to show that Christianity is either wrong, or it is right. It is not partially right, or maybe right, and a little bit right. Christianity is either all or nothing. Despite what I have just described, some people will still be amazed that Christians can think that way. I submit to you this – most religions around the world think similarly! Mormonism, Islam, and Judaism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics – they all believe there is only one way you can get to God. It is not a new or novel concept. A ‘multiple-road’ road to God concept is a minority among the religions in the world. Many Americans would rather this not be – then they would not be bound by feeling they have to live a certain way – especially if they don’t like that particular way.
The concept I think many Americans either are unable or don’t want to grasp is the fact that there is a right and a wrong – that a religion might be incorrect! Both Christianity and Islam (I have no particular beef against Islam, it is just a large world religion with which I can compare Christianity) cannot both be correct – they claim fundamentally different beliefs. These are beliefs that contradict each other so they cannot be harmonized. Since they are opposite of each other, only one can be correct. Similarly, different religions, on the surface may seem to say the same thing or have the same morals. However, at the root, they claim fundamentally different things and cannot be harmonized. Such things are evident when you read the Bible and Jesus says that He is the only way to heaven and to God. Not Muhammad, not Krishna, not through reincarnation, and not through living righteously. HE is the only way – belief in Jesus. With a statement like that, it is either true or not true. He either is the ONLY way or He IS NOT.
I believe that you get the point. But let us look, quickly, and the opposing argument. Let us suspend our logic for a moment and say, just for minute, that Jesus isn’t the only way to God. Let’s say that there are multiple ways – that however you may experience God, then that is right for you. Sounds good, right? This is the belief of many people. Well, let’s ponder that for a second. The only way for everyone’s personal view of God to be true – for each person’s conviction to have merit – is to have a God that is in fact no God at all.
Whoa! “Why?” you ask. Well first, let us look at the moral consequences.
If the God of the universe is made manifest in all religions across the world, and shows himself however each human wishes him to be shown, then this God is a liar. In many religions like the ones I just mentioned, they believe that a particular way is the ONLY way to get to God. If this is true and it is also true that there are many ways to get to God through whichever religion you choose, then God has not told us the truth. He lied in telling us there was only one way when there were many. What sort of God would lie about himself to the very creatures He created? That certainly isn’t a good God. If God was completely good, and knew everything, then in his divine Goodness, He would want to communicate to His creatures about Himself. He would want to tell them how to discover Himself and thus live better their lives. After all, if God is perfectly good, then it must be a good thing to know God. But wait a minute. If God is completely good and knew everything, he would try to make sure that all the ways he revealed himself to people would not be contradictory. A good God would do this because that would be a good thing. However, since the religions of the world are contradictory after all, our only alternative is to conclude that God simply isn’t powerful enough to make them be. He would have wanted to, but He would have just been unable to do so. Also, if God is perfectly good and all powerful, and all religions are true yet contradictory, then God cannot be all knowing. As with the last point, if God was good, and wanted not to lie to us through contradictions in religions, He would have made it so that there were not contradictions. If He was all powerful and all good, then the only explanation is that He indeed wanted to remove those contradictions but simply did not know how.
The point here is that if God were defined as whatever you personally believed about Him, then God cannot be omnipotent, He cannot be all-knowing, and He cannot be completely good. These, of course, are not requirements for God. But I think it is important to realize that you cannot have those qualities if you define God in that way.
What qualities then can we deduce that a god has that manifests himself in different ways to all people and whatever a person chose to believe about god is okay? To illustrate let me put forth a couple of personal beliefs.
Belief 2: “God is an impersonal force that is everywhere”
Belief 3: “God is an alien being that resides on the other side of the galaxy”
Belief 5: “There is no such thing as the supernatural. Science is God”
Belief 6: “The statue in front of the temple is God incarnate”
Belief 7: “Each animal has a separate counterpart who is divine and is God”
What is my point? My point is that sure, you can believe anything you want about God! Can all these beliefs be correct? Of course not, many of them are contradictory. When we view the argument in this light we start to see the true silliness of the concept. I can believe anything I want to believe about anything. I can believe that Elvis Presley was George Washington
reincarnated returning in the power of Zoroaster. I can believe that New York City is located in New Delaware. The fact that I believe that does not change the fact that New York City is not located in New Delaware. There is a right answer to where New York City is and a wrong answer – I can believe what I want – but the key of course it to find the right answer.
That leads us, finally, to a different point. Let us say then that there is, a real objective God. How do Christians know that their God is the correct one? Especially considering that there are tens of thousands of gods to choose from? A skeptic might say that “No one can say beyond a shadow of a doubt who God is. If that is the case, then you would have no right to force your religious views on me.”
This is in fact, one of the more intriguing concepts. I would say that I can know for sure that I believe in the true God. I would concede that I can’t prove to you that I know the true God. I would also step forward and say that I can’t prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that this true God exists. That statement may startle some. But I believe it is true. The reason is this – it is at that point that faith steps in. No God, if He were perfectly good, would force you to believe in Him. A perfectly moral God would give you the free choice of either choosing Him or not. But what does this have to do with the question?
I agree with the man that says that I do not have the right to force my religious views on them. No one should have beliefs forced upon them. I should however, if I am a moral human being, share my beliefs with others. Why is this?
I believe most people in the world would wholeheartedly agree that we as a species are not perfect. The God we are referring to, however, is perfect. And with perfection comes perfect Goodness. Seeing then how we as humans are not perfect, it is in our best interests to reach perfection. Because it is there that perfect goodness is – and everyone would agree that good is better than bad. This means, that if you knew the true way to God, you would know the true way to perfection, and thus to perfect goodness. Human beings, being depraved and needing of perfection and perfect goodness, would be in necessity of such things. In not experiencing divine perfect, in not attaining all that I am capable of, I am falling short of my potential, falling short of ultimate goodness that I could experience. If you happened to know the way to God, you would know the way to ultimate goodness. It would only be moral of you to share what you know with everyone else. If you shared what you knew with no one that would be despicable. You would keep ultimate goodness all for yourself. If you didn’t try to tell everyone you knew, that would be despicable also. You would be hoarding ultimate goodness again for yourself and your friends. It would thus only be moral, in fact commendable, if you did share it with everyone.
But what if I didn’t want to know? Well, it would still be immoral if you didn’t at least tell me about the way to ultimate goodness. I might not know what I was missing. Who would not want to tell his friend about a marvelous place he had found to eat in town in fears that his friend might not want to know?
Thus in contrast to the comment I introduced with, I think one of the most commendable things a person can do is to share with me his beliefs about God.
In light of all these things, I find it safe to conclude that in order to have a view of God that is makes any logical sense; God must be an objective God. God must be a God that does not depend on human thoughts or ideas for a definition, but exists all on His own; a God that has attributes that do not depend on anything but Himself. Also, it is safe to conclude that in having an objective God, for Christians (and their view of God) it is only expected that one would share (not forcefully) one’s belief with others; in fact to not do so is immoral. It is also safe to conclude that not all religions are right – not all are equal. Some must be right and some must be wrong. Theses are simple conclusions – yet they are the stumbling block of many a man.
Please Note: when I say all religions are not right and equal, I am in no way disrespecting other religions. I can say with certainty that they are not right – however this does not lessen my respect for them one iota. If you believe that California will break off into the ocean tomorrow, I may know you’re wrong, but that does not lessen my respect for you. Some of the best, kindest, humble and sincerest people I’ve met have not been Christians. I long for their salvation yes, but I appreciate them and respect them also for who they are.
