Lausanne World Pulse – What Makes Christianity Fundamentally Different from Other Great World Religions?
By Jerry Root
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The Christian faith is unique to the |
The unique claims of Christianity have often caused consternation for those outside the faith—and at times produced an unnecessary condescending attitude within those of the Christian faith. Perhaps it would be wise to sort some of this out to the benefit of both Christians and those of other faiths. I will attempt to do this by clarifying what can be shared by all faiths and then taking note of the one thing that sets Christianity apart.
Common Beliefs Shared by All Great World Religions
C. S. Lewis noted that just because a person is a Christian he or she does not have to believe that everything in all the other religions is necessarily wrong.1 The sociological fact of religion is noteworthy; that is, all cultures have religion. All societies seem to embrace the idea that human beings are fundamentally religious or spiritual beings. Perhaps the materialistic Western nations might be seen as an exception to this generalization; and yet, individuals in the West seem to pursue their materialistic interests with religious devotion. As was once observed, human beings were made by their creator to worship; they cannot help but worship. If they will not worship God, they will worship something in God’s place. All religions have their mystics; people who devote themselves to seeking God with their whole heart—this is not a phenomenon peculiar to any one particular religion.
Furthermore, taking a lead from German philosopher of religion Rudolph Otto, Lewis marks the things all of the great world religions have in common2:
- Belief in a divine essence of some sort. Lewis calls this the numious. Religions have variations in their understanding of the divine and describe it differently if they are animistic, pantheistic, polytheistic, dualistic, monotheistic or Trinitarian monotheistic. Nevertheless, they all believe in some sort of divine.
- Belief in a moral law. However, everyone tends to break this moral law.
- Belief that the divine is the keeper of the moral law. Violations of the law are an offense against the divine. All of the religions believe that human beings stand in a precarious place before the divine and this has shattering consequences. At this point Christians would stand in relative agreement with a host of other religions.
The religious dilemma for all is, can the offense stated in this last point be corrected; and if so, how? Here it is that Christians distinguish themselves from the other religions. All of the other religions say that human beings must fix the problem by performing an additional set of rituals and abiding by a secondary code. Sadly, some Christians can fall into such a pattern when their interpretation of the Christian faith drifts toward a form of works righteousness—that is, they believe they can earn their way back into God’s good graces by means of human merit. Seldom is such a program for repairing the alienation between the person and the divine able to give assurances to the follower of the religion. If the first code was so easily violated, what confidence does one have that he or she will do better with a second code? These religions are fraught with the fears and insecurities which attend themselves to human weakness and moral lapse.
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Dr. Jerry Root is associate director of the Institute for Strategic Evangelism at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, USA. He has taught in the evangelism masters program for the past eleven years. Root has invested nineteen years in student ministry, evangelism, and discipleship. |