Photo of mosque in Medina by my riding buddy Mo

I am not an expert in world religions. I’m not even knowledgeable. I’m just curious. This post is an attempt to understand something by writing about it, not an authoritative explanation of anything.

John 16:4 has both comforted and troubled me:

I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me.

It has comforted me because that’s been my experience. For decades I tried having a relationship with God without Jesus. I prayed to God. I meditated. I was part of several 12-step spiritual communities. Although it helped, it did not come close to what happened after I accepted the love of Jesus. I was suddenly listening to the 1812 Overture from inside Carnegie Hall, and the past sounded like the Beach Boys through a transistor radio from the 1960’s.

It has troubled me because some Christians interpret it to mean that other religions are inferior or just plain invalid. Some go so far as to claim that if you are anything but a Christian, you will burn in fire for all eternity.

I can’t bring myself to share that opinion. It seems rather un-Christian. After all, the second greatest commandment instructs us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Would a God that wants us to love our neighbors not do the same, but instead condemn them to everlasting agony for not making the choice I made? For, perhaps, already being so devoted to their religion that it would feel disloyal or immoral to consider another?

Even Paul points out that non-Jews with a conscience are better people than Jews who know the law but break it anyway. In Romans 2:14 he contrasts them to good Gentiles:

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law … show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness …”

And what about those who have been exposed to fake, toxic versions of the Christianity I love so dearly? Romans 2:24:

Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonor thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you …”

That passage referred to the Jews, but it’s also true of Christianity. These passages support my instinct that the purpose of John 16:4 was not to condemn other religions. But that’s just my thinking. What does the Holy Spirit tell me? I’ve prayed quite a bit about this. Prayer, to me, is pondering a question or challenge in the company of God. Or Jesus. Sometimes I pray to one, sometimes to the other. Even though they are the same. Don’t ask me to unravel that mystery; I hardly understand it, myself. But I can work with it. When I pray to God about this issue, the first thing that comes to me is a warning about spiritual pride. It’s just too easy to use that part of Scripture to fool myself with a false certainty: I am Christian, so I am right. I am saved. And you’re not.

In Colossians 3:12 Paul points gives us some guidance that I find helpful here:

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering.

Humbleness of mind. To me, that means remain teachable. Be certain of the love of Jesus in your heart, but don’t be too certain of what your brain thinks it knows about other things. When I approach John 16:4 in that spirit, I wonder about the context in which Jesus spoke those words. Was he comparing himself to Islam? Of course not. Muhammad founded Islam about 600 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Did the Jews at that time know about Hinduism? Buddhism? Probably not. So Jesus was probably comparing himself to the false gods of the time, such as wealth, fame, power, influence, and so on. Even more than these, I suspect he was referring to the hypocritical practitioners of righteousness who had become so powerful in his own faith.

However, I’m also wary of twisting His words to mean something they were never intended to mean. Whether well-meaning or evil, a false teacher is still a false teacher.

So what am I ‘sposed to do?

A man once told me it can sometimes be just as valuable to stay with a question as to get an answer. In that spirit, I’ve been doing a little reading.

The guy who took the picture of the mosque up top, Mo, prayed for me in that very mosque last year. So I’ll start with a total amateur’s understanding of Islam. According to the Islam Scholars at Harvard, spiritual transformation for a Muslim is the result of four actions:

1. Certainty in faith
2. Ethical practice in all spheres of behavior
3. Liberation and discipline of the conscious
4. Demonstrating the best and most virtuous action for a given moment.

While on a ride last Saturday, I asked Jagdish, a Hindu riding buddy, about Hinduism. He explained that Hindus believe there are paths you can take toward enlightenment. Unlike the four actions of Islam that are performed in sequence, a practitioner can take any of these actions independently of the others.

1. The path of selfless action (Karma Yoga) – Act not with selfish motives, but with love and as an offering to God.
2. Path of devotion (Bhakti Yoga) – Surrender yourself to God through love, prayer, and devotion.
3. Path of knowledge (Jnana Yoga) – Study sacred texts and yourself to gain knowledge and wisdom, and understand the true nature of life.
4. Path of meditation (Raja Yoga) – Achieve inner peace and connect with the divine through the practice of meditation and self-control.

Judaism does not seek specific actions or paths to enlightenment, but relies rather on a life of living righteously. You do that through practices such as these:

1. Obey God’s commandments.
2. Seek God and align your will with His.
3. Repent after doing wrong.
4. Act with compassion, be generous, and fight to bring about a more just world for all people.
5. Study the Torah and be sincere in your devotions.

Anyway, still speaking from ignorance but with a lot of curiosity, I get the impression that those religions, and perhaps others, are designed for good people. Practitioners achieve righteousness through their own efforts. That seems mighty fair to me: you do the work, you get the results. Unfortunately, that isn’t a good formula for sinners. After all, righteousness requires discipline, focus, reliability, introspection, resilience, and other qualities that sinners tend not to have in abundance. Take your average alcoholic, drug addict, high school drop-out, petty criminal, and so on, overlay a Venn diagram with the qualities of the righteous, and you probably get zero overlap.

So what’s a sinner to do?

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
– Luke 5:32.

And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ…”
– Phillipians 3:9

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
– Proverbs 3:5

Technically, Proverbs is Jewish, but I find that overlap kinda cool.

Bottom line, Jesus transforms a sinner into someone who loves. The practice of Christianity is not about achieving righteousness so that I may be worthy of God’s acceptance or somehow achieve superiority over others in an afterlife. Christianity has absolutely nothing to do with my value or worth. Instead, I simply realize how abundantly I am loved. And it is out of that love, because of that love, that I become, not righteous, but transformed. Once more, Jesus’s instruction is crystal clear on this matter. Matthew 22:37-40:

… Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Love. Not righteousness. Or discipline. Or ethical practices. Or devotions. Love. That’s what Christianity is supposed to be about. Righteousness, discipline, devotion, and other laudable qualities follow once the love is there. But they begin with the love from God, then the love of God, followed by the love of neighbor.

And so, on this matter I’ve come to a few conclusions. For now. Because I’ll keep praying about this, trying to understand it spiritually.

1. If Jesus came to for the sinners, I should be grateful to be a Christian, not prideful. After all, saying I’m a Christian is also saying I was a sinner who could only be redeemed by the love and power of Jesus. And if it was Jesus himself who transformed me, then what have I got to brag about?
   
2. In that spirit of humility, I am called to treat practitioners of other faiths (or no faith at all) with respect. Perhaps they are, indeed, the righteous. Perhaps they did reach a degree of holiness through their own efforts, something I was unable or unwilling to do. Perhaps they have “the law” in their very nature, as Paul suggests.
   
3. I will continue to pray to what I believe is The One True God (in his three manifestations, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), but I will also love my Muslim, Jew, Hindu and Buddhist neighbors as they pray to what they believe is the One True God.