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    But Don't All Religions Lead to God?: Navigating the Multi-Faith Maze
    But Don't All Religions Lead to God?: Navigating the Multi-Faith Maze
    But Don't All Religions Lead to God?: Navigating the Multi-Faith Maze
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    But Don't All Religions Lead to God?: Navigating the Multi-Faith Maze

    By Michael Green

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    About this ebook

    We've all heard the rationale: "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere." Or "All religions are pretty much the same." But are they the same? Does it matter which one you follow? In this insightful and compelling book, Michael Green invites readers into a relationship with Jesus Christ, the divine revelation and only pathway to the one true God.
    In a conversational style geared toward nonbelievers, Green compares Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and other religions to help spiritual seekers navigate the multi-faith maze. "But Don't All Religions Lead to God?" is an ideal reference and evangelism tool for churches and individual Christians as well. It offers scriptural references, looks at how divergent religious traditions view salvation and eternity, and answers difficult questions such as "What about people who have never heard of Jesus?" and "How should Christians regard other religions?"
    In the midst of our pluralistic and tolerant culture, here is an important and convincing argument for faith in Jesus-the only great teacher whose death and resurrection provided grace, forgiveness, and an eternity in the presence of God.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 1, 2002
    ISBN9781441233479
    But Don't All Religions Lead to God?: Navigating the Multi-Faith Maze
    Author

    Michael Green

    Michael Green (born 1930) was a British theologian, Anglican priest, Christian apologist and author of more than 50 books. He was Principal of St John's College, Nottingham (1969-75) and Rector of St Aldate's Church, Oxford and chaplain of the Oxford Pastorate (1975-86). He had additionally been an honorary canon of Coventry Cathedral from 1970 to 1978. He then moved to Canada where he was Professor of Evangelism at Regent College, Vancouver from 1987 to 1992. He returned to England to take up the position of advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York for the Springboard Decade of Evangelism. In 1993 he was appointed the Six Preacher of Canterbury Cathedral. Despite having officially retired in 1996, he became a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Evangelism and Apologetics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford in 1997 and lived in the town of Abingdon near Oxford.

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      Book preview

      But Don't All Religions Lead to God? - Michael Green

      Backcover

      Introduction

      I was sitting recently in my pyjamas talking with fellow patients in a hospital ward, having just had a heart attack. We were chatting about Jesus, as it happened. The prevailing view among my friends there was that all religions are much the same, and in any case we can rely on any or all of them leading to God.

      Returning from hospital I had a phone call from a long-time friend who visits in prisons. He told me of four experimental Kainos wings run on Christian principles, which are by far the most successful in preventing reoffending. They are under threat of closure by the Home Office. Why? On the grounds that Christianity is no different from any other religion and must be given no privileged position: all faiths must be treated alike. Can anything be more crazy when the country is crying out for a way to prevent reoffending by discharged prisoners? As one Chaplain put it, We are being sacrificed on the altar of multi-faith political correctness.

      Another friend who is a teacher expressed her surprise that some of the assemblies at school were being given over to Buddhism. Well, all religions lead to God, so why not give our students the choice? responded the Head.

      It seemed to me that there was a bit of confusion out there.

      So I wrote this book. I deliberately kept it short so that you will have time to read it: it is an important subject on which there is a lot of muddled thinking.

      Enjoy it!

      Michael Green

         Christmas 2001

      (or should I have said the Winter Festival,

      or the Saturnalia? No doubt they are all the same!)

      Chapter 1

      "It Doesn’t Matter

      What You Believe

      As Long As You Are Sincere"

      That is something you often hear when religion is being discussed. Not, of course, when the talk is about politics or whether one country should bomb another. You never hear it when people are talking about the horrors of Auschwitz or Belsen. Hitler was undoubtedly sincere in his hatred of the Jewish people, but everyone would admit he was wrong. (If you don’t admit it, I shall take leave to disbelieve you!) The massacre of six million Jews in the Second World War was deliberate, ruthless, and the product of a very clear and sincerely held belief. Hitler was sincere but terribly wrong.

      An example like this, which caused the annihilation of millions of people, should make us very cautious about claiming that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. It is manifestly nonsense. For centuries people sincerely believed that thunder was caused by the gods at war. We now know that this sincerely held belief was superstitious rubbish. They were sincere but wrong. For centuries people sincerely believed that the sun went around the earth. When Galileo, following Copernicus, showed this was not the case, he was forbidden by the pope to hold, teach or defend such a view and was handed over to the Inquisition. I am sure he would not have agreed, as he languished in his prison, that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere!

      Now, of course, sincerity is vitally important. Everyone dislikes a hypocrite. But sincerity is not enough. I may sincerely believe that all airplanes at London Airport will take me to America, but I would be wrong. I may sincerely believe that lots of cream and chocolate is the best way to recuperate after a heart attack, but I would be wrong.

      If the notion that sincerity is all you need is manifestly ridiculous, why do people say it so often when the subject of religion is raised? There may be several reasons.

      For one thing, people may simply not want to get drawn into a religious argument. They know that these are fruitless, and so they try to avoid an embarrassing and perhaps acrimonious discussion by claiming that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.

      Others make the claim, I think, because they have never really stopped to think. They would never say it about a historical topic like World War Two: you may sincerely believe Hitler won, but you would be mistaken. They would never apply it to mathematics: nobody in their right mind imagines that if only they believe hard enough that two and two equals five, that would make it so. However great your sincerity, you would be wrong. No, it is only in the area of religion that people talk like this, perhaps because it is so hard to achieve certainty in religion. The topic is as slippery as soap in water. Much better, then, to duck out of the subject altogether and airily suggest that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.

      Another reason may be this, at least in the UK and USA: we are practical people. We are not famous for our philosophical thinking. If something works, it is OK, no matter who invented it or what he intended. As a race, we are concerned with actions, not with theories. So it is not difficult to carry that attitude a bit further and maintain, It does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.

      But I fancy there is a deeper reason. Religion is about the fundamental issues of life and death, and there is something in us that does not want to look at them. They feel rather spooky and uncomfortable. We would rather live for the here and now and shut our eyes to complex matters like life and death, heaven and hell. Much easier to rely on sincerity and living a reasonably decent life, in the hope that this will carry us through.

      This attitude is very widespread. I found myself chatting to a fellow patient in the hospital on just this very matter recently, and he listened with some interest to the story of Jesus, to His offer and His challenge on our lives–and then he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and made it clear that the topic was uncomfortable. I asked him if he would like to look at a brief account of the evidence for who Jesus was and what He had done for humankind, and he declined. I told him of a monthly Men’s Breakfast (at which I had recently spoken) in his home town, and suggested I might get him an invitation. But no, thanks. I don’t think it matters what you believe as long as you are sincere.

      Where does this leave us? Well, the teachings of Buddha and the teachings of Jesus point in fundamentally different directions. You may be a sincere follower of the Buddha, but what if that allegiance should prove in the end to be mistaken? You may be sincere in thinking Jesus Christ is out of date and anyhow, He was merely a good man. But what if you happen to be sincere and wrong? What if God should meet you at the end of the road and ask, Why did you not bother about My Son Jesus who gave Himself to put you right with Me? Will you mumble, Oh well, I thought that it couldn’t matter what I believed as long as I was sincere? The fact is that belief is the spring of action, and right belief the spring of right action. We cannot escape into sincerity. Sincerity is absolutely

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