Education is frightening.

Sermon Series: Christianity and World Religions Part 2, (Continue)

So that brings me to three ways of viewing other faiths.

I want to share some statistics about the major religions of the world. There of course are probably thousands of small groups—even new religious groups being formed all the time (some are off their rocker of course). But these numbers will give you some perspective.

There are about 6 billion people in the world’s population, give or take a few billion!

Of those, 2 billion are Christian or about 1/3 of the world’s population.

· There are 1.3 billion Muslims or Islamic faith groups., about 1/5 of the world’s population.

· 900 million Hindus, about 1/7 of the population.

· 360 million Buddhists, or 1/20 of the world population.

· 14 million Jewish adherents , a very small fraction of the world’s population.

Yet because of Abraham’s faith the Jewish and the Islamic groups exist—so that’s why it’s important to study those groups.

In America, the statistics are very different.

· 77% of the population claim to be Christian

· 15% claim no religious affiliation in America—the 2nd largest group

· 1.3% are of the Jewish faith

· .5% — that’s one-half of one percent are Muslim

· .5% are Buddhists

· .5% are Hindus

Interestingly, It’s the Hindu, Buddhists, and Muslim faiths that are going faster than any other group in our country, though they are very small fraction of our population.

This is an interesting statistic that I think we need to pay attention to: Identification with Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11 years — about 0.9 percentage points per year. If this trend continues, then by about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S.

How do we look at the 2/3’s of the world’s population who are not Christians?

Christians tend to fall into three different groups in terms of how they view the other religious groups.

First, there is the pluralist group. This particular view is also held by more non-religious and nominally religious group in addition to some Christians in our culture. The pluralist view is this: Every religion is an equally valid path to make your way to the ultimate reality that is God.

I had heard of an English professor in a small Baptist school in Southwest Virginia, who believed that and talked about her pluralistic views often in class. And this was not from some young liberal professor. This was an educated, learned woman who was in her 70’s who chose to keep teaching rather than retire.

In this pluralistic view, what’s true for you may not be true for me. Christianity is true for me because I’m an American, I was reared in a Christian home—this is my truth, but your truth may be different and they’re both equally valid paths to the same end.

Now I struggle in this area because I want to respect other people’s views and beliefs. But I think you have to be careful here because you don’t show respect to other people’s beliefs if you say, “well we are just saying the same thing.”

A Muslim believer would not feel respected by a Buddhist person who says—well we are saying the same thing. Because Muslims believe in one God while Buddhists do not necessarily believe in one god. So you don’t show respect to another person by saying, “Well, we’re saying the same thing.”

To say that all paths to God are equally valid causes problems for me. Think of how many cult groups have started in America alone where they go out and prey upon people’s emotions in times of weakness. They need someone to really structure their lives. In the end that person has such control over person’s lives that he leads them to commit mass suicide. Can you say that religious expression is equally valid with any other religious expression? Just because someone can find some followers and can claim some religious truth doesn’t mean what they have is true. To me not all religious claims are equally valid.

So the pluralist view can cause some problems.

The second view is the opposite – the Particularist/Exclusivist view. The particularist says, “Hey nobody’s got it right except us.” The exclusivist says “We are the only ones who really have the truth. We are the only ones who are going to make it to heaven.” Exclusivists regard their own faith tradition as the only completely true religion. Other religions might have elements of truth in them — beliefs arrived at either by accident, or by observing nature, or by following their conscience. But they are largely false, and are often viewed as rivals to the one true religion.

We have Christians who are exclusivists. They would see 90% of the rest of the Christian population as condemned too, because they’re not real Christians yet. The Scripture verse that often quoted to try to support this view is Acts 4:12—Peter is speaking to the Sanhedrin:

There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them.”

But what Peter is really saying here to the Sanhedrin is don’t expect another Messiah, he is the Messiah. That’s the point he is trying to make in the context of that Bible story. He is not talking about other religions of the world and whether God is at work in those other religions or all they all condemned to hell. He is simply saying Jesus is the messiah, he’s the one who has already come.

The college had just started allowing dancing on campus. The Pastor I heard about dancing on campus and informed me that everyone at that college was going to hell because dancing was now allowed on campus. I thought hello—dancing is not the basis for getting into heaven. But that’s the tendency we all can fall into—if someone sees something differently we might decide they are on the “outside” and are doomed to hell.

This exclusivist view for me puts God in a box; we paint a tiny view of God which I think is inconsistent with the majority of the Biblical view of God. Ghandi once said, “I would have almost become a Christian if it were not for the Christians I have known.”

It might be amazing anyone becomes a Christian sometimes with some types of people who are running around out there claiming to be Christ followers, including me sometimes. So does God work in other faith groups? That leads me to the third possible view:

Inclusivists. The inclusivists view looks at all people of this earth and sees them all as a part of God’s creation. God loves all people. This was an important teaching of John Wesley.

In the Bible story of Jonah, God called Jonah to a nasty group of people, the Assyrians, so he could call them to repentance. And they repented. Here’s how the story goes—listen to Jonah’s response to these events and how God responds to Jonah:

Jonah 4:

This change of plans upset Jonah, and he became very angry. 2So he complained to the LORD about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, LORD? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people. 3Just kill me now, LORD! I’d rather be dead than alive because nothing I predicted is going to happen.” 4The LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry about this?”. . . 11But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”

There’s the story of Sarah and Abraham in the Bible. Hagar is Sarah’s mistress. Hagar has a child by Abraham. His name is Ishmael. Abraham and Sarah send Ishmael away. They are off in the wilderness weeping. God appears to Hagar and says, “Don’t cry. I see your sorrows. And I’m going to make of your son Ishmael a great nation as well.” So the Arabs and Muslims claim Ishmael as their father of faith, not Isaac the son of Abraham and Sarah.

So we have this picture of God in the Old Testament who is perhaps at work in other ways than what we might expect or could even understand. This picture is brought forward in the NT in Paul preaching in Athens. Paul notices there people are worshiping a multitude of gods. Paul begins to preach to them and does not do it in a condemning way. He even starts out by complimenting them.

Acts 17:22

“It is plain to see that you Athenians take your religion seriously. 23When I arrived here the other day, I was fascinated with all the shrines I came across. And then I found one inscribed, TO THE GOD NOBODY KNOWS. I’m here to introduce you to this God so you can worship intelligently, know who you’re dealing with.

24″The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines 25or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him. 26Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living 27so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. 28We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! One of your poets said it well: ’We’re the God-created.’ 29Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone for us, does it?

30″God overlooks it as long as you don’t know any better—but that time is past. The unknown is now known, and he’s calling for a radical life-change. 31He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead.”

Over and over the Bible indicates that God works even through people who don’t know him to carry his purposes and plans. So the inclusivist view says “Yes Jesus is the savior; he is the one definitive God. We judge all other claims to truth in the light of Jesus Christ and his teachings–but God can and does work in the lives of other people.”

Again John Wesley taught this in his idea about God’s prevenient grace whom I will talk about in a few weeks. God is at work and drawing those to him who are truly seeking after him.

That brings me to the Bible passage today and the story of the Wiseman.

On Epiphany Sunday. Epiphany means manifestation or appearing. On the Christian calendar this the time of the year that we recall the story of the Wisemen who came to worship Jesus and bring him gifts. That happens sometime after Christmas. The shepherds were long gone before the Wisemen ever show up. In fact by this time Jesus’ family had moved into a house according to the Bible story. Some scholars believe it might have been as long as 2 years after the birth of Jesus before the Wisemen arrived.

I believe this story shows how God is at work among people of other faiths.

So who were the magi? Magi: This is a Greek term that refers to those people who were priests in Persia of Zoroastrian faith. Zoaristism did believe in one God but it differed in from Judaism in many other ways.

These Wisemen might have been emissaries of the king and were astrologers who looked to the sky to try to tell what the future was going to be. The Old Testament frowns upon that way of discerning truth. Yet this is what these guys are practicing their faith.

God first invites shepherds who were Jews to worship Jesus. Jesus goes to the temple at 8 days old to be circumcised. 2 elderly Jews at the temple who have been waiting for the arrival of the Messiah see him as the Messiah. But 12 days on the church calendar after he is born who does God call to be the next group of people to pay homage to Jesus –but people from another religion from a faraway place.

In Matthew’ gospel the message is –Jesus even calls those who are not Jews to come and follow him. And how did God speak to those Zoroastrian priests? He spoke to them in the language that they were use to seeking God in? They were use to seeking God in the stars. God doesn’t do that anywhere else. Because that’s the only language they know to search for God—God causes a cosmic event to happen.

It could have been a comet or the lining up of Jupiter and Saturn. Who knows what it was. God spoke in their language and caused the stars to line up so that they would follow and hear that there was a word from God. God used their religious language to reach them—see there’s that prodigal hugging God I keep harping about.

Why would God call these particular magi? God could have called anybody to come to Bethlehem to see Jesus. He called them because even though they didn’t understand all the truth, they were honestly seeking after God. They were willing with the star in the sky and take several weeks journey and take their possessions and give them to the Christ. God honored their heart by inviting them to come because their hearts were seeking after God.

When they came they saw the star stopping at the house. What did they do? They filled with joy. People who are seeking after God even if they don’t have all the truth are going to experience great joy. Those who find the truth in Jesus then are filled with joy and they worship him. Then what do they do? They leave gifts for the Christ.

A powerful story if you think about it. It teaches something about the heart of God—that God is at work sometimes in people of other faiths long before they know about Christ. Just like God was at work in your life long before you become a committed Christ follower. God wants us to use the language, the music, the culture of today’s people so they can understand. God wants us to do whatever it takes to tell people the good news because he is longing for everyone to come and know his son Jesus Christ.

God longs for all people to know that he once walked among them in human flesh and showed us the fullest picture of who God is.

For you to understand the love that God has for the nations of the world, the people of other religions. It is a call for us as Christians to understand God’s yearning that they might come and know Christ. It is also an invitation for you and me who claim to be Christ followers to let Christ’s light shine through us in such a way that those of other religions might actually hear, listen, understand, and long to know more about the Savior you worship.

That’s my goal in this series of messages—by the time I am finished I will have helped all of you and myself to be better equipped to let his light shine through you and me.

I want to make this statement at the outset of this series, so that you do not misunderstand me—although it may be difficult to always to speak with the type of clarity that I wish for:

I am absolutely persuaded that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. I have devoted myself to leading people to know Jesus. But when it comes to how God looks at those whoWorld Religion Day, What is the One World Religion Going to Be?

earnestly seek him, but who do not know to call upon Jesus Christ, I believe that the overwhelming witness of the life of Jesus is that God is merciful, and that he longs that none should be lost.

I often say in funeral sermons that I believe the last word in anyone’s life is the grace of God. I do not believe it is up to me to judge anyone’s eternal destiny. Only God will ultimately do that—the God I perceive to be above all a God of mercy, love, and grace.

In the weeks ahead I hope to learn more and teach you what I learn about how God has been at work in people of other faiths, what we can learn from them, and how we can share with them what God has done for us. I hope you’ll join me next week as I talk about Hinduism as we continue to seek more clearly our faith in relation to the other religions of the world.

PRAYER:

I am going to say a prayer that may express what you may want to say today—or speak to God in your heart in your own way today.

O God, I give you thanks for your love for us. I thank you that you are a bigger God than I first supposed. I am grateful that your love is so deep and wide that you reach all to all peoples. Thank you for being patient with me when I’m confused and don’t understand. Yet your longing was that I might know you fully and completely. Thank you for coming among us in Jesus Christ. Help me as a Christ follower to listen, understand and learn from others and at the same time to be capable of bearing your light to the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen. (Continued on next Sermon) Name(required) Email(required) Comment(required) Related articlesQuestions Thinking People AskWhat Do Jews Believe?