religions Aren’t all
just the same thing really?
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religions Aren’t all
just the same thing really?
A
small group of us were set a really hard algebra equation to solve at school. Not because we were good at maths, but because we weren’t. At all. And we needed to practise before the exam. It was a nasty maths problem, full of symbols, letters and brackets. At the end of our allotted ten minutes, we’d all come up with different answers. We couldn’t all be correct . . . or could we? I mean, truth is what you make it, right? We could have compared our answers and tolerantly said to each other, “Let’s agree to disagree on this. There’s no need to fall out over it. We’ve all got the answer that works for us.” We could have all held on to our ‘personal truth’ of the answer, and felt confident in our understanding of this particular maths problem. But we’d all have failed our maths exam, because not one of us had worked out how to solve those equations properly. There was a correct process and a correct answer. In other words: real, solid, actual truth. Let’s up the stakes and apply this to a group of world-class scientists who are calculating how to get you and your space shuttle to take off and fly into orbit without exploding. Now imagine they call you into a meeting, give you some big friendly smiles and explain, “It seems like we’ve all come up with different calculations for getting you safely into space—but don’t worry, we’re each going to follow our own workings because we’re probably all thinking along the right sort of lines.” Would that be good enough for you? Maybe it’s no big deal to fail a maths exam at school because you’ve got the wrong answer. It’s a different thing entirely when it’s something your life depends on. That’s when you need the right answer—the actual truth! It’s no shock that something as measured as a maths problem has one right answer. What may be surprising is that religions work in exactly the same way. They each say there is one right answer (or truth) behind our world. And this is where the stakes are the highest—because religions claim our lives do depend on what that truth is.
Why religions
are not all the same
I
’ve heard people say something along the lines of: “Religions are all the same really. They all have this big ‘something’ out there that we want to please by living the best we can. The specifics don’t matter that much.” But when we put this to the test, we see the specifics are a big deal. All religions have such different starting points, end goals and ways to live— it’s hard to think they can all be equally right. Take these examples: Buddhism says we need to escape this world and join to Nirvana—a kind of perfect ‘emptiness’ free from suffering and the cycle of life. The way to do this lies within us and our ability to ‘blow out’ our desires. Whereas Christianity says that none of us are good and that we are instinctively selfish and naturally anti-God. One says, “We are the answer” while the other says, “We are the problem.” Can both these religions be true and more or less the same thing? They are complete opposites! Then there is Islam, which says that Jesus is one of many prophets. Yet Christians say he is actually God himself. There is simply no way that Jesus can be both God and not-God at the same time! If he isn’t God, then maybe we don’t need to know that much about him; if he is God, then we need to pay attention to everything he says! According to Buddhism there is no god or being out there, just Nirvana. Yet Christianity and Islam both believe in a God who is a real person and made all of us. And Christians go even further, believing God made us to look and be like him. He knows our names and wants us to be part of his family forever. Again, it is hard to see an abstract force and a personal, involved God as pretty much the same thing. All the religions out there are like all the different maths answers my group came up with at school. There can only be one answer about who God is and what’s really going on. But how do we know which one is right?
Finding
the truth
T
o find out the one, real truth of what’s going on in our world and who God is, we need to admit our limits. We’re not going to get there on our own. Did you know that around 95% of the world’s oceans remain unexplored? 95%! If we can’t even get to the bottom of our sea, which we can reach out and touch, how much do we expect to understand about God on our own? Just as my maths group needed the teacher to step in and explain, we need God to come down and show himself to us. No matter what we, our parents, friends or workmates say about him—what does God actually reveal to us about who he is? What is the truth? All religions, including Christianity, have their sacred texts and teachings. However, what makes Christianity stand out is its unique claim that God came to earth in human form to make the truth clear to us. This God-man was called Jesus, and he was unlike any other religious leader who has ever lived. So what makes Jesus different? And what evidence is there for him actually being God?
What makes
Jesus different?
L
et’s quickly look at three ways Jesus stands out from all the other religious leaders: Jesus actually said he was God: The Jewish historian Josephus (37-c.100AD), who didn’t follow Jesus himself, referred to Jesus as the “so-called” God. The Bible agrees, making it very clear that Jesus told his listeners that he was God and also “one” with God the Father in heaven. We’re told that the Jewish listeners were so offended by this that they tried to kill him, saying, “You, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33). Jesus said he was the only way for us to get to heaven: Jesus told his followers: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father [or, to God and therefore heaven, his home] except through me” (John 14:6). One popular opinion out there is that there are many ways to heaven; all religions get you there in the end. But Jesus says very clearly that he is the way—the only way. So either Jesus is the way, or he isn’t. Jesus said he would die and then come back to life: Jesus told his followers repeatedly that he was going to be executed, but that three days later he would come back to life. It wasn’t just a prediction; it was God’s plan. In his death, Jesus said he was going to pay for all our sin, which means all our rejection of God (the way we ignore him and try to figure things out on our own), and all the pain we cause along the way. This way of life that cuts out God, our maker, can’t just be ignored. But Jesus came to take the punishment and death we deserve in our place. And his promise to come back to life was to be the start of new life with God for everyone who trusts him. But sure, it’s easy to say, “I’m God. I’m the only way to heaven. I’ll come back to life when I die.” It’s much harder to back those things up . . .
What’s the
evidence?
J
esus’ death: You can’t come back to life if you never died in the first place! We have confirmation of Jesus’ death from Tacitus (c.56-117AD), a Roman politician of the same time. He wrote that Jesus “suffered the extreme penalty” (meaning crucifixion) under Pontius Pilate. This means Jesus was beaten and whipped until he could barely stand, and then he was nailed to a wooden cross through his hands and feet. Once he suffocated under his own weight, the guard ran a spear through his side to make sure the job was done (because if the prisoner lived, the guard would be killed in his place!). We can be very confident Jesus died. The empty tomb: Jesus’ body was put in a tomb with a huge boulder rolled over the entrance and Roman guards standing outside. Yet after a couple of nights, the tomb was empty. Both Jesus’ followers and the Jewish authorities made statements confirming this at the time. The authorities claimed the disciples sneaked past the sleeping guards, rolled the massive bolder away and stole the body without anyone noticing. In their story, the guards saw Jesus’ followers (despite also being asleep!). Jesus’ followers claimed he had come back to life and walked out of his tomb himself. The details of this are in Matthew 28:11-14 (it’s worth knowing that Matthew’s retelling of Jesus’ resurrection was read in Israel about 30 years after the event. If he’d been making things up, the people reading it would have known and dismissed it straight away as fake news. Instead, it seemed to agree with what they already knew and so it survived and spread further).
What’s the
evidence?
The eyewitnesses: The Bible tells us: “[Jesus] was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive” (1 Corinthians 15:6). The point is that the people who claimed to have seen Jesus alive again after his death were available for questioning when the news of the resurrection was spreading through the world. Yet there are no records of the Roman Empire or the Jewish authorities successfully proving the resurrection of Jesus to be a fake. Not a single witness of Jesus’ resurrection cracked under questioning, threats and torture to say “We made it up.” And these were not trained SAS soldiers who knew how to survive that sort of thing. They were fishermen, tax collectors, and everyday people like you and me. Jesus followers: The most powerful bit of evidence is how Jesus’ friends went from hiding when he was killed (John 20:19) to boldly talking about Jesus’ resurrection to anyone who would listen (Acts 2:14-38). When Jesus was arrested and about to be killed, Peter (one of his closest friends) denied knowing him to save his own skin because he was terrified (Matthew 26:69-75). Yet after Jesus’ tomb was empty, Peter stood up before the crowds in Jerusalem (full of people who had screamed “crucify him” at Jesus) and said “God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this . . . God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and [our Saviour]!” (Acts 2:32,36). Talk about asking for trouble! What had changed to make Peter so bold? Only one answer really makes sense: he knew that Jesus was alive again. Writers of the time, like Tacitus and Josephus, tell us the number of Christians only grew, even though they were constantly hunted, imprisoned, beaten, fed to lions and killed by the authorities. Jesus’ followers, and those who believed their message, were so convinced by Jesus’ resurrection that they were ready to die for their belief.
religions Aren’t all
just the same thing really?
T
he short answer is simple: no. The religions around the world are all built on massively different principles. It’s simply not possible for them all to be true at the same time. So we need to know which religion is right—or if they are all equally dangerous. Often destination is one of the big concerns behind questions like, “Aren’t all religions just the same thing really?” We want to know where we are heading and that we’re going to get there safely. But it’s like all the different religions have entered different postcodes into life’s GPS. No matter how confidently you follow one, or none at all, what happens if you find out the destination isn’t what you thought it would be? What happens if you get there and find out it’s too late to refuel and go somewhere else? We need to know the truth now. The evidence is there, both in the Bible and other historical texts, that Jesus really is God. He made big claims, and he lived up to them. He actually came back from the dead. If there is anyone we can trust to “prepare a place for [us]” in heaven after we die (as he promised in John 14:1-3), it’s the person who beat death. And, as the one, true God, Jesus warned that anything other than trusting him for ourselves is “the highway to hell” (Matthew 7:13). Because doing anything else is to ignore God after he has made himself known! It would be like me ignoring my maths teacher’s instructions and following my own ‘truth’ about how to solve the equation. No matter how confident I would have felt in the exam, I’d still have failed it.
If we are willing to trust Jesus for ourselves, he promises new life with God in his family forever! We want to encourage you to talk with a Christian friend, the person who gave you this leaflet or a local church if you want to find out more about Jesus and what it means to trust him. All of us at Our Daily Bread Ministries would love to help you. Visit ourdailybread.org/lookingatlife to see all our other resources like this. Or you can go to ourdailybread.org/lookingdeeper to read Who is Jesus? and Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. © 2019 by Our Daily Bread Ministries. All rights reserved. Printed in the United Kingdom
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