Chrisitan attitudes to other faiths

Let's look at the extremes first:

		All faiths lead to God. Some Christians say this. Often it is because they haven’t thought it through and they just feel uncomfortable about saying that Jesus is unique. Maybe they are conscious of forced conversions, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. and they want to distance themselves (rightly) from these things. The problem is: their view does not match up with the Bible and it fails to do justice to Jesus’ life and message.

		All other faiths are completely wrong. In their zeal to speak clearly of Jesus as the only saviour, these Christians also overstep the mark. Some of them say that there is simply no truth in other faiths; others go further and attribute other faiths to the devil. Again, I do not believe these Christians are faithful to what the Bible says on this matter.

What then do I believe is a view that can be supported by the Bible, the book Christians call sacred? I believe we are called to dialogue based on two concepts:

Things we share in common. For example:

Islam agrees with Christianity that there is one God and that worshipping idols is both wrong and pointless.
Judaism gave birth to Christianity (literally!) and we share some common Scriptures.
Hinduism's non-violent resistance, as practised by Gandhi, owes much to the example of Jesus.
In short, if we are honest, we can see some things in most religions that accord with our beliefs as Christians. This does not mean that we accept everything but equally we can hardly claim that there is no truth present.

Irreconcilable differences. Again, some examples:

There are very different views of humanity within different religions. Christianity does not accept, for example, the concept of karma or the need for many reincarnations.
Christians believe that faith must be embraced willingly and personally. So we are happy to allow freedom of religion. This contrast strongly, for example, with Saudi Arabia where the interpretation of Islamic Sharia law means that Muslims are not allowed to change their faith, on pain of death.
The main differences centre around salvation and Jesus, which will be discussed on the next page.

Use the email address below to give feedback / ask questions to the author, whose views these pages reflect

Six Big Questions Rev John Hibberd sixbigquestions@throughfaithmissions.org