Christianity In A World Of Religions
CHRISTIANITY IN A WORLD OF RELIGIONS
Craig J. Hazen
One afternoon I received a call in my office at Biola University from a teaching assistant at a local community college. He was contacting me on behalf of a professor of a religious studies course who was looking for representatives from various spiritual traditions to come and speak in his classroom. The professor wanted the students to hear firsthand from a wide range of religious thinkers and devotees—an admirable idea in my view. I was free on the morning they were asking about, so I was delighted to go and address the group.
A couple of days later I found myself in the classroom, and after a few announcements the professor began to introduce me as the morning's speaker. “This is Craig Hazen, and he will be interacting with us this morning from the standpoint of his religious tradition, fundamentalist Christianity.”
The label caught me off guard. I thought I was coming in to talk about a much broader category such as Christianity in general, or maybe Protestant Christianity, or Evangelical Protestant Christianity—all of which I could claim as my tradition. The term fundamentalist used to carry a noble meaning along with it but had lost its cachet long ago.
In the brief introduction the professor did not mention that I had earned a Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of California, that I had studied at the International Institute for Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, or that I had run a biology research laboratory. Perhaps he didn't mention these because they do not fit the stereotype of a fundamentalist which has come to mean, among other things, a kind of anti-intellectualism and separation from mainstream society. He knew that I was a professor of some kind myself but probably assumed that my graduate education consisted of memorizing obscure verses from the King James Bible at Grover's Bible College and Feed Lot.
In order to paint a more positive picture as quickly as possible, I reintroduced myself and gave them a little bit of background about my interest in the study of religions from around the world, human rights, and science. This caused the students a little bit of confusion because they did not connect fundamentalists with serious academic work, especially in these kinds of subjects.
I made a snap decision to turn the tables on them that morning by doing something much different from a standard presentation about biblical Christianity. I told them that given my background in religious, scientific, and cultural studies, I wanted to impart to them something valuable, some practical knowledge that would help them in tangible ways.
I assumed something about the students that turned out to be correct. Many of them were taking the popular religious studies survey class because they were curious about various traditions. In some respects they were using the class to take some of these religions out for a kind of nonthreatening test drive.
What I proposed to do that morning was to give them an expert guided tour on just how a clear-thinking person would go about a religious quest. Here you are at college, I told them, attempting to use analytic skills and careful reasoning to gain knowledge and insight into subjects ranging from music appreciation to organic chemistry. Why shouldn't we use those same cognitive tools to help us make sense of the seemingly crazy world of religion, especially since many of you are doing some careful evaluation about which religion you might embrace yourself one day? In other words, how would a thoughtful person go about a religious quest?
The students were genuinely interested in this idea. It did not dawn on me until later why they were so fascinated at this prospect. As it turned out, in their experience no one had ever linked the ideas of clear thinking or rational assessment with the pursuit of religion—as if they were separate categories (rationality and religion) and “never the twain shall meet.” Nevertheless, they really thought this was a novel idea and a great gesture. It was already toward the end of the term, and the professor had never offered anything along these lines, and neither had any of his guest speakers. The students were enthusiastic, but the whole topic had the added side bonus of helping the students forget all about fundamentalism. So with a willing nod from the professor of the class, who later told me he too wanted to hear what I had to say about such a novel topic, I started.
The first point I made in my impromptu presentation was actually a setback for my hope of shedding the fundamentalist label the professor had pinned on me. The students recoiled at the first proposition to come out of my mouth. In all honesty looking back, I probably said it without much in the way of nuance in order to stir things up a bit. Maybe deep down I wanted to get the students to a full and verifiable state of consciousness before I got onto the details of my talk. It worked. In fact, one sleepy surfer in the back of the room came alive after my statement and was even waving a skateboard with one hand to emphasize certain points when he joined the discussion.
What was this unsettling statement I made that attracted the momentary ire of the college class and caused the bags under their eyes to disappear? It was this: I made the unabashed claim that any thoughtful person who was on a religious quest would obviously start that quest by exploring Christianity first. In other words, a person eventually has to make a choice about where to start any kind of journey. If one is looking to buy a new car, one needs to decide if he should first visit the Daewoo or the BMW dealership. There must be some rational, objective criteria that a person uses to decide where to go first to kick the tires—price, proximity, status, reputation, quality, and a whole range of personal preferences. To at least some extent, the same should be true with religious traditions if you are intentionally setting out to explore them. Remember, I'm not trying to decide which tradition is true at this point but rather with which tradition it makes the most sense to start the quest. A person has to start somewhere. I think Christianity is, by any rational measure, the obvious place for a thinking person to start the exploration.
After a few moments of mostly good-hearted heckling from the students, I told the class that I would give them four reasons a thoughtful person on a religious quest would obviously start that exploration with Christianity. I spent the rest of my time with them that morning presenting this case with a lot of spirited interaction.
What follows is the case I made to the class. Of course, I've done a lot of thinking about my off-the-cuff lecture and have fleshed it out a bit in these pages. But the basic four points are the same.
Four Reasons a Thoughtful Person on a Religious Quest
Should Start That Quest with Christianity
1. Christianity Is Testable
I told the students that morning that at the heart of the Christian tradition are some claims about Jesus—His life, His teaching, His death, and His resurrection—that are testable. What I mean by this is that these claims are such that any thinking person can examine the evidence and reasonably determine whether the claims are historically accurate or justified. I think this is one of the primary reasons a thoughtful person sorting through the various religious traditions would obviously start with Christianity. Christianity is unique in that it actually invites people to investigate carefully its claims about God, humankind, the universe, and the meaning of life.
A passage in the Bible supports this notion, and I consider it to be one of the strangest passages in all of religious literature. In the New Testament the apostle Paul writes something that is a bit shocking given the way we normally think about religion and faith in the modern world. In this passage Paul is giving a discourse on the Christian view of life after death. But then in the midst of this, he says something that seems startling to our common sensibilities about religion. He says, “If Christ has not been raised [from the dead], our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Maybe just to make sure we would not be confused about what he is saying here, he repeats the idea several verses later. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor 15:12-19 ESV, emphasis mine).
Now why would I consider this to be one of the strangest passages in all of religious literature? For this reason: I have not been able to find a passage in the Scriptures and teachings of the other great religious traditions that so tightly links the truth of an entire system of belief to a single, testable historical event. Real “faith” in these statements seems to be invariably linked to the truth of a real-world occurrence. What the apostle Paul said here was radical in the context of most religious traditions. He was saying, in essence, that if Jesus did not come back from the dead (in his own transformed but still physical body, as the witnesses and Scriptures declared), if this did not really take place in time and space, then Christianity is bunk; our Christian faith is worthless, useless, or futile.
This idea that the truth of Christianity is linked to the resurrection of Jesus in a testable way does set Christianity apart from the other great world religious traditions in a dramatic fashion. Historic Asian religions by and large don't even argue with this point. When you boil it all down, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the like are about inner, personal experience and not about objective public knowledge. Other traditions seem to be about objective knowledge until you probe a little more deeply. Mormonism, for instance, seems to be about hidden gold plates, Jesus' ancient visit to the Western hemisphere, and latter-day prophets—things that could certainly, in principle, be evaluated in an objective way. However, when facing evidence contrary to these claims, the Mormon missionary, scholar, or apostle steps back and begins to talk about the special inner knowledge, a “burning in the bosom,” that is the only confirmation that really counts about these unusual stories. At the end of the day, the Mormon is no different from the Buddhist in that they both rely on inner experience as their ultimate source and warrant for religious knowledge.
This is why Christianity is unique and why a thoughtful person on a religious quest would be wise to start the quest with Christianity; it really is testable. If Jesus did not come back from the dead after being executed by a Roman crucifixion team in first-century Jerusalem, then, according to the apostle Paul, Christianity is simply not true. It openly invites people to investigate its claims objectively.
2. In Christianity, Salvation Is a Free Gift from God
Almost every time I speak on a college campus about why a thoughtful person would start her religious quest with Christianity, I wonder if I really need all four reasons. The first two reasons are so powerful that in my mind they can carry the day without much help from the other two that I present.
This isn't a hard conclusion to come to. Think about it. What if someone were to come up to you on a street corner and present to you a new path to God? During the presentation it becomes clear that the ideas being offered are in no way testable so you can never in principle objectively know whether they are true. In addition, the picture painted of God is that He requires a great deal from you. You must strive heroically to change the way you think, feel, and behave in every corner of your life in order to please the Deity and move forward on the path of salvation or enlightenment. Indeed, it might be the case that you will need to strive heroically for many lifetimes in order to reach the mark. Of course, there is a final logical twist here. If you have no way to gauge whether the basic religious system is true, you could also never know whether your intense striving to please the Deity was enough or if you were doing the right things in the right way. Even if at the end of the day a religious system like this is true, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for someone exploring the various religious options to start the exploration with such a system.
By way of contrast, what if someone were to come up to you on the same street corner and present to you a religious system that was testable, hence opening the door for you to do a vigorous investigation of its claims. In addition, the system set forth a picture of God as a loving Father who wants to give the free gift of salvation to anyone who will receive it. Do I need to say more? If this testable and free system accurately describes Christianity and if the untestable and arduous system accurately describes the other religious options, then I don't see how reasonable persons would not start their search with Christianity. It seems like a no-brainer of Olympic proportions.
Christianity is unique in its offer of salvation by grace alone, a free gift from God to anyone who will receive it. In the history of religion, there have only been a couple of instances of a religious movement that considered salvation or enlightenment to be a free gift from a deity. But even in those cases (such as in Amida Buddhism or a certain form of Bhakti Hinduism), it is not a no-strings-attached kind of gift. There is still work to be done on the part of the devotees.
Hence, the Christian tradition stands in a solitary spot in the spectrum of world religions when the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8—9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (NIV).
Salvation in Christianity is a free gift, and hence it is equally available to anyone. You don't need to be a spiritual superstar, of noble birth, or highly educated. Anyone can come, as they sometimes sing at revival meetings, “just as I am.” This is an attractive and unique feature and makes Christianity an obvious choice as a starting place for a religious quest.
3. In Christianity You Get an Amazing Worldview Fit
If you are trying to prioritize a group of religions in order to know which one you ought to check out first, it would be extremely helpful to know which of the religions painted a picture of the world that seemed to be a tight match with the way the world really is. If such a match could be determined, I know it would give reasonable people a lot of confidence that they were making a good choice about their starting point.
Let me come at this from the other direction. It seems reasonable to me that a thoughtful person would not want to start his religious quest with a religion that seemed to have tremendous difficulty making sense of the world we encounter. The problem here is that the world we bump into on a daily basis is one of the only sources of data we have to work with in evaluating all kinds of claims, including religious claims.
So if you have a choice to study under a guru whose mission is to reveal to the world that the moon's surface is made of spumoni ice cream, or under one who thinks the moon's outer layer is primarily anorthosite rock, a reasonable person would go with the one whose teaching seems to have the closest match to the way the universe really is. That is the general principle I am trying to communicate with this third reason.
To say that the Christian view of the world is the best fit with the way the world really is is a bold claim simply because there is so much that would need to be examined to find out if this assertion is justified. After all, the list of things to compare seems endless. But from my perspective, what I have learned about the various religions and about the world in general makes this claim totally plausible. Since I obviously cannot explore every aspect of the world (from cosmology to cosmetology) to demonstrate in just a few pages that this is reasonable, I shall use one profound example to illustrate the point: the problem of evil, pain, and suffering.
Every human being observes evil and experiences pain and suffering on almost a daily basis. It seems obvious that any religion that does not do justice to these common human experiences should probably not be at the top of the list for a thoughtful religious seeker. How do the various religious traditions explain these phenomena or make sense of them?
Devotees of Eastern religious traditions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, certainly encounter the same kinds of evil, pain, and suffering that other people around the globe experience. But teachers, thinkers, and leaders in these movements have a different way of dealing with the experience than we normally do in the Western world. Eastern traditions normally put evil, pain, and suffering in the category of illusion. Suffering can therefore be overcome through the understanding of its true nature. Evil and pain will fade away as the devotee gains enlightenment about the illusory nature of the phenomenal world. As a famous Tibetan lama wrote to me in a letter one time after I had given a lecture on Buddhism, “Evil and suffering are real only as long as the ego believes them to be real.” The lama put it in the simplest words possible for practical purposes. His solution to evil and suffering was to change the way we believe about them. They will then cease to be real.
It's finally time to ask the big question. If we are in search of a worldview that matches the way the world really is, then how do we evaluate these approaches to evil? After having some dialogue with the students for a short time on this question, I gave them the following illustration.
I have twin boys, and when they were babies, they played a character on a highly rated television sitcom. My wife and I would be on the set quite often taking care of our kids when they were not rehearsing or filming. Several of the writers and cast members heard that I was some sort of religion professor and found it interesting to discuss some of their religious ideas with me. One time over dinner before an evening filming, I remember listening at length to one of them describing in great detail the teachings of a new guru she was following. Although some of it sounded a bit off kilter to me, it was easy to sit and listen because it was so interesting to see how Eastern religious concepts were being enfolded into a Hollywood mind-set. One of the points this woman was making was that her guru thought that good and evil were ultimately not real and could be transcended through “right views.” After I'd had several plates of food (the catered cuisine was outstanding on the day of the performance) and a couple of cappuccinos, the woman finally asked me for my reaction to all of this, and she had covered a range of topics. I only asked one question, and I didn't ask it to be provocative or cheeky. I was genuinely curious about the answer. I thought it would simply keep the conversation going. I asked, “What would your guru say about the Holocaust?”
Several things happened the moment I asked the question. I hadn't realized that a number of people sitting nearby had already been tuned into our conversation for some time. But now they weren't pretending to pick at their food any more. They lifted their heads and turned them in our direction. It turns out that a good number of the cast, crew, and production staff were Jewish. As you can imagine, they were also interested in the answer to the question. The woman I was dialoguing with didn't notice an audience had subtly grown around us. She was busy thinking through the implications of the question. She had a bit of a blank stare; and from the look on her face, it seemed as if her whole worldview was imploding inside her head. You see, she too came from a Jewish family. And although she was far too young to be involved in the horror herself and did not even practice her family's faith, she knew very well from her family, extended family, and her Jewish cultural connections that the Holocaust was a defining chapter in her own identity and approach to life. The Holocaust was real and could not be denied in any sense—not historically, not emotionally, not morally.
Somehow (and I've seen this happen often) this woman had been completely blind to a gaping hole in her view of things as she was learning from her new guru. How could she so thoroughly buy into her guru's teaching about evil being an illusion and still take seriously the unthinkable suffering the Jews of Europe endured? She couldn't. And it certainly wasn't anything I said. I just happened to be there when she had a moment of enlightenment of a different kind: a realization that a worldview that attempts to dismiss such profound evil, pain, and suffering as illusion is simply not a viable guide to life.
Every religion has to attempt to make sense of evil because it is such a pervasive and serious phenomenon. And every religion struggles in the task. The Scriptures of Christianity confront the issue of evil head-on starting with the first pages of Genesis. There is a whole section of the Bible, the book of Job, dedicated to the unanswerable questions involved in personal suffering. Although the Bible never provides an answer to the why question in the cases of individual instances of suffering (such as, why did the drunk driver crash into me?), it does provide the most satisfactory context for coming to terms with the existence of evil.
Although I believe the biblical approach to the problem of evil to be true, I am not arguing that point here (there are many persuasive books that argue the point effectively). I am trying to make the more modest claim that if given the choice between a worldview that simply dismisses pain and suffering as ultimately not real and a worldview that admits they do indeed exist, which would you start with if you were shopping for a religion? This really is tightly analogous to the question I asked at the beginning of this section. Would you be more inclined to follow a guru who taught that the surface of the moon was made of spumoni ice cream or one who taught that it was made of anorthosite rock? Saying that evil is an illusion is like saying that the moon's surface is made of spumoni. We can rightly claim to have knowledge that both claims are not true. A good worldview deals with the obvious; it does not dismiss it.
My bold assertion at the outset was that the picture Christianity paints of the world actually matches, better than any other option available, the way the world really is. Of course, as I predicted at the beginning, I didn't even come close to proving this point because I would have had to explore so many issues in great depth. But I (and, more importantly, a whole host of people much smarter than me in our own day and throughout history) have come to the conclusion that the basic Christian view of the world is the only game in town if one is looking for the best fit.
4. Christianity Has Jesus at the Center
The time I had in my guest lecture to the college students was almost over. I was talking fast all morning to try to pack in all of my reasons as to why a thoughtful person on a religious quest would start that quest with Christianity. I thought I had made a pretty good case. The students were attentive and, hence, I assumed, interested in what I had to say. However, when I presented my fourth reason, things turned unexpectedly sour for a moment. I claimed that a good reason to start with Christianity was that it had Jesus as the indisputable center point in the tradition. The student with the skateboard immediately chimed in. He remarked that it was interesting I waited until the end to slip in such a loaded reason, a reason that sounded a lot more like straightforward evangelism than anything else.
I looked at the professor for the class who was sitting at the far end of the first row. I asked him if he had a chance during the semester to go over the views about Jesus among the religions of the world. He said he hadn't and gave me permission to address it if I wanted to. I took him up on the offer.
I could understand why “skateboard guy” and others in the class had an initial problem with my point about Jesus. They were missing some crucial information, so they were misunderstanding where I was going with my remarks. Jesus is without doubt the closest thing the world has to a universal religious figure. Almost every religious tradition wants to claim Him as its own in one way or another. My comment that “Christianity has Jesus at the center” is not a raw assertion of my own religious position. Rather it is an argument that if Jesus is such an attractive figure that the religious people of the world want to co-opt Him for their own traditions, then it makes perfect sense to give special attention to Christianity—the tradition that has Jesus firmly planted at the center and claims Jesus as its founder.
This is certainly not a raw assertion of religious favoritism—just the opposite. It is another strong reason for a thoughtful person to start a religious exploration with Christianity. Many religious perspectives want to claim Jesus as their own.
Take Hinduism for example. Many teachers and scholars have proclaimed Jesus to be one of the ten avatars of Vishnu alongside Rama and Krishna. Vishnu is one of the major deities in the Hindu pantheon of gods, and an avatar is “one who descends.” Hence it is not uncommon to find Jesus set forth as a kind of incarnation of Lord Vishnu. This is certainly not the documented historical picture of Jesus, but it does demonstrate the respect and influence he commands among many faithful Hindus. It is not unusual for a Hindu to revere Jesus to the point of veneration because He is such an impressive figure.
Likewise, it is not at all unusual for Buddhists of the later Mahayana traditions to see Jesus as a preeminent spiritual figure. Often He is considered to be a great bodhisattva—that is, one who is motivated by compassion to step back from the brink of nirvana in order to help others along the path to awakening. Buddhists often believe that during His day Jesus offered all of the Buddhist teaching (dharma) to which His generation was open. A few even see Him as the maitreya bodhisattva, an enlightened messianic being in the Tusita heaven awaiting His last reincarnation. The Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, has said on several occasions that he is not worthy to be compared with Jesus, believing that Jesus is a “fully enlightened being.”
Islam is an especially interesting case. One would not glean from popular treatments of Islam that Jesus even enters into the religious picture. But knowledgeable Muslims and their texts give the fuller view. If the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, and Jesus went head-to-head in a simple contest where their special attributes were tallied up, Jesus would win by at least six to one. Muhammad was a prophet. According the Qur'an and Islamic tradition, Jesus was also a prophet. However, unlike Muhammad, Jesus was also born of a virgin, was a worker of miracles, was carried to heaven by Allah without tasting death, was called the Word of God, and will return to appear to all before the final judgment—all according to the Qur'an. Now clearly Muhammad is considered the greatest prophet because he carried the final message of Allah to humankind. But Jesus is a revered figure who is second only to Muhammad in honor and respect. He is certainly not considered to be divine by Muslims but is considered a pinnacle of righteousness and a nonnegotiable object of Muslim belief.
Of course the parade of Jesus enthusiasts does not end there. It is hard to find a major tradition or a minor movement that does not give Him a special place of honor and find a significant way to enfold Him into their system of beliefs. The Baha'i, the Sikhs, the Mormons, the New Age Movement, the Unitarians, Religious Science, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Jains, the Deists, and many more find a way to put their “hand in the hand of the man from Galilee.”
Since Jesus is by any measure the only universal religious person, a figure so towering that almost every religious body has to find a way to bring Him aboard in some capacity, it makes perfect sense to me that anyone on a religious quest would know just where to start.
My official time in front of the class of college students had ended, but the discussion certainly did not. At least a dozen students followed me out the door, and we sat at some tables outside and discussed big religious issues for several more hours. Even though my talk ended up being quite a Christocentric presentation, the students were not put off by that. These are difficult issues, and they seemed to appreciate not just that I took a position but that I invited careful scrutiny of my own conclusions. As one young woman said at the end of our time together, “What are we so afraid of? We ought to be asking the toughest questions, and religious leaders and teachers should be prepared with honest answers. If there is a God, one thing is certain: He made us thinking people. As long as we are kind to one another, we should be able to discuss these things openly.”
She was right: we shouldn't be afraid. Her comment reminded me of a famous saying of the apostle Peter from the New Testament—really a command to all Christian believers. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15 NIV).