It’s a common assumption that in order to be
Christian, a person must believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation and
that Christianity is superior to all other religions. Progressive
Christianity spreads the good news that there is a way to be Christian without
making this claim. There is a way to follow the Christ while honoring the
possibility that followers of other religions are also led to the love that is
God.
Certain Bible passages are often used to
suggest that Christianity is the only way to God. The best-known is John
14: 6, where Jesus is quoted as saying “I am the way, and the truth, and the
life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” Another is John 11:
25-26: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though
he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never
die.” The gospel of John contains a number of “I am” statements
attributed to Jesus: “I am the door”, “I am the bread of life”, “I am the
light of the world”, “I am the good shepherd”, “I am the true vine”, “Before
Abraham was, I am”. These statements may refer to the Exodus story of
Moses and the burning bush. When Moses asked the voice from the burning
bush who he was, God’s answer was “I AM”. In these “I am” statements in
the gospel of John, the writer may have suggested that Jesus was identifying
himself as God.
Many Christians use the “I am” statements in
John as proof that Jesus is the only way to God and salvation, and therefore
that Christianity is the only true faith. But it’s important to look at
the assumptions behind this claim. First, it assumes that the Bible is
the last word on the subject of religion. This makes no sense to
adherents of other religions which have their own sacred texts, some of which
also make claims to exclusive truth. Nor is it compelling to
non-Christians who don’t start with the assumption that the Bible is the
authoritative expression of God. Attempting to use the Bible as proof of
the truth of one’s interpretation of the Bible is an example of tautology, or
circular reasoning. Christians can employ their God-given reason to
question those parts of the Bible that violate common sense or common
decency. It is appropriate for Christians to think critically about any
passage in the Bible that suggests that Christianity is the only true
faith. Being a Christian does not depend on a rigid presumption that
every word of the Bible is literally true or even particularly useful.
The Jesus Seminar, a group of biblical scholars who have evaluated the historical
accuracy of quotes attributed to Jesus in the gospels, concluded that the “I
am” statements in John are very unlikely to contain the authentic words of
Jesus. They were instead reflections of the beliefs of the branch
of the early Christian community associated with the writer of the gospel of
John.
Another issue is that the first-century
Christian community from which the gospel of John emerged did not anticipate
the Christian religion as we have come to know it. It’s particularly
ironic that “proof-texts” for the exclusive truth of Christianity used by
evangelical American Christians today are drawn from this most mystical, most
“gnostic”, and least historically-focused of the four gospels. It is the
gospel that is the least focused on supposed “facts” about Jesus, yet it is the
most often quoted to support the supposed “fact” of Christian religious
supremacy. The theology of the first-century community around the writer
of John was not the same as the orthodoxy of evangelicals today. For instance,
the infancy of Jesus is not mentioned at all in John, so it has nothing to say
about the doctrine of the virgin birth.
Good news: there is a way to interpret
the “I am” passages which liberates them from religious chauvinism. Jesus
was a mystic, especially as he is depicted in John. That is, he
experienced God directly, within himself. Many Christian mystics have
shared this experience over the last 2,000 years. The “I am” passages may
be Jesus’ poetic expressions of such a mystical experience in which his
personality and ego fell away and the only reality he sensed was that of
God. If this is how we understand the passages, then when Jesus said “I
am the way ... no one comes to the Father, but by me”, this may mean that the
way to God was to become one with God, as Jesus did. It may mean that we
do not get to God through dogma or doctrine, but rather through mystical union
with God, an experience shared by mystics of many religions throughout history.
Other passages in the Bible provide helpful
language to express religious pluralism. Philippians 2: 5-7 is a
beautiful expression of the humility of the Christ: “Have this mind among
yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing
to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in
the likeness of men.” We might well ask: how could the religion of
an empty man get so full of itself that it would claim to be the only true
faith? Integral to having a mind of humility among ourselves is
abandonment of any claim to the superiority of our religion. Our walk of
faith is hindered by this hubris, and it is insulting and hurtful to
others. Jesus said “whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”
(Matthew 20: 26) To declare that we have the true faith compared to all
others would contradict our calling as servants. It gets in the way of
having a mind of humility. The highest values of our religion, the very
reasons that we follow the path of the Christ, are contradicted by claiming
that Christianity is superior to other faiths.
The gospel stories of Jesus portray him as a
faithful, devoted Jew who had no intention of crossing the boundaries of his
native faith. Instead, as he said in his Sermon on the Mount, he intended
to fulfill the law of Israel completely. In his view, that entailed not
only following the letter of the law, but following it all the way to its
source in divine compassion. He set an example for us to emulate: follow the
particularity of your religion all the way to its wellsprings in the love that
is God. Once you are there, you will find that you drink from the same
well as people of other traditions. (See John chapter 4, the story of
Jesus drinking water with the woman at the well in Samaria.) This is what
led Jesus to serve and honor gentiles and Samaritans, people outside the
boundaries of Judaism.
Christians who immerse themselves in the
spiritual practices of their tradition and follow Jesus with acts of selfless
service to others discover that they have very much more in common with serious
practitioners of other religions than they have differences. While these
differences exist, and should be respected, they are trivial compared to the
shared spiritual experiences of people across religious boundaries.
In Revelation 21, there is a vision of a
heavenly city coming down to earth that is culturally and religiously
pluralistic: “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord
God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine
upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its
light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their
glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day - and there shall be no
night there; they shall bring into it the glory and the honor of the
nations.” This indescribable, effulgent presence of the divine transcends
every religion, including our own, and calls us into deep communion with people
of all faiths.