Deconstructing God: Surely There Can’t Be Just One True Religion

Following on from our Deconstructing God preaching series, we are publishing a series of articles addressing some of the big questions raised by our secular culture against the Christian faith. In this post, Alex Stark tackles the question of the exclusivity of Christianity.

Gautama Buddha—the founder of Buddhism—told a story about some blind men and an elephant.

The story tells of a king who gathers together all the men in his palace who were born blind. He asks the blind men to describe an elephant simply by touching it.

The first blind man places his hand on the elephant’s trunk and says, “The elephant is like a thick snake.”

The second blind man places his hand on the elephant’s ear and says, “The elephant is like a big palm leaf.”

The third blind man places his hands on the leg and says, “The elephant is a pillar; like a tree-trunk.”

Each blind man ends up describing the elephant in different ways, but all of them are grasping the one elephant.

At the end of the story, the Buddha says these words:

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honoured name!
For, quarrelling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing

Humanity has debated ultimate reality—God, the divine, or other—for centuries. It has led us to argue, divide, tribalize, and even fight. The moral of the elephant story is that because humans are so partial (or blind) in their seeing, they don’t realise that what they’re arguing about is actually, fundamentally, the same thing.

Today, this story gets deployed by moderns as an argument for relativism.

Relativism is the idea that all truth is relative. One culture might have their limited view of God; another culture might have their limited view. It’s all relative to their culture’s time and place. What unifies each culture’s beliefs is their partial eyesight. Relativism holds that all beliefs are legitimate because, even though they disagree, they’re all barking up the same ultimate tree. To put it another way: the beliefs of different world religions are like the descriptions of an elephant by different blind men.

Within a relativistic culture like ours, the mere idea that one can uphold belief in an exclusive truth claim is both intellectually primitive and even immoral.

Max Born, a 20th century quantum physicist and mathematician, famously said these words: “[T]he belief that there is only one truth and that one is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.” The objection is simply this: Surely, there can’t be just one true religion.

Here are five reasons why I think that upholding belief in the exclusivity of Christianity is rational and palatable—and, dare I say, good.

1. Relativism is not as Humble as it Sounds

Think about it. The story of the elephant and the blind men doesn’t just contain blind men and an elephant. It contains a narrator with 20/20 vision.

And who is that person? Well, in the case of the modern argument for relativism, it’s the enlightened 21st century person.

When modern people deploy this parable, they’re making an implicit claim that all those who faithfully follow a particular religion are blind.

Now, to be sure, some people really do believe what they believe for non-intellectual reasons. Some are people of faith because of family identity, cultural traditions, significant experiences, and more (all of which, by the way, are really important things in human life!). Others, however, believe what they believe because they’re sincerely convinced that it is true. They’re not happy with being identified as blind men in a parable; they want to be considered a conversation partner with the narrator.

And that’s the issue. The moment anybody tells this parable, they’re claiming (without argumentation) that they see reality as it really is. And this type of appeal to the intellectual high ground without reference to reason, evidence, or argument, is actually quite condescending. Relativism is not as humble as it sounds.

2. Relativism Self-Destructs

Think about it. If somebody were to say to you, “truth is relative,” you have every right to ask them, “Is that statement absolutely true?”

If it is absolutely true that truth is relative, then that statement itself is relative and therefore not absolute. If it is relatively true that truth is relative, then that statement itself is meaningless and therefore doesn’t hold.

Either way, claiming that truth is relative is simply contradictory.

3. Truth is Exclusive

Truth, by definition, is exclusive. When anybody makes a truth claim, they’re saying what reality is, and therefore implying what reality is not. The claim that “A is B” cannot co-exist with the claim that “A is not B.” Only one of them can be true, and that makes a lot of intuitive sense.

This gets really acute amongst the Abrahamic faiths. Any faithful Muslim, Christian, or Jew will believe what they believe about God and the world in an exclusive way. This is especially the case when reflecting on the person of Jesus: each Abrahamic faith disagrees on his identity and status. Only Christians call Jesus “God.” As you can imagine, all of these beliefs are exclusive and life-shaping.

But, here’s the issue. Given that the claims are to truth, and the truth is exclusive, then something sobering follows. Either all of the beliefs are false, and the Abrahamic faiths are wrong. Or, one belief is true, and the rest are false. But what’s not logically possible is for all of them to be true—not when each of their claims are exclusive.

The moment this is taken seriously it means that appeals to truth almost always necessitate the provision of evidence, reason, and argument. If you say, “X is true,” and I say, “Y is true,” we’ll probably ask one another, “What reasons and evidence do you have for that belief?” In other words, disagreement leads to debate and conversation, where the arbiters aren’t preferences and feelings but reason and evidence. But, if you say, “truth doesn’t exist,” you almost always dissolve conversation.

Here’s the point. It’s one thing to disagree on what truth is. It’s another thing entirely to deny the existence of truth. Exclusive truth claims actually promote conversation and debate.

4. Love is Exclusive

I’ve been married now for almost three years. When I stood across from my bride-to-be on our wedding day, one of the things we did is we made a vow to one another. When we made this vow, we did so with the all-important qualifier that went something like this: “to the exclusion of all others.” In other words, I said to my wife that I was giving myself exclusively to her, for the rest of our lives. That, among a few other legal, ceremonial, and religious pieces, is what marriage is.

And it’s the exclusivity of love-relationships which make them meaningful.

Imagine if I stood before my bride-to-be and said, “I give myself wholly to you, and a whole host of other women I’ve included in this adventure we call love.” For one, it’s not even possible. Giving one’s self to multiple people necessarily means they don’t give themselves wholly to any one of them. They only give themselves partially to them, as time permits, and attention allows.

Second, it’s not as romantic. What makes the marriage covenant so beautiful and so rushing is that both partners hear these words, “I choose you and nobody else. No matter what comes, no matter how time changes us and gravity ages us, you’re the one.” It doesn’t matter if someone more handsome or smart comes along. Marriage is an exclusive relationship for life. It’s insane and it’s awesome. Meaningful love—real love—is exclusive.

This point is really important because when we’re talking about Christianity, we’re not simply talking about abstract ideas which we intellectually affirm or deny. We’re talking about a God who pursued people for a loving relationship by stepping into history as a human. In the Christian story, truth is not just an abstract proposition—although, it certainly can be talked about that way (for example, academics today debate God’s existence in philosophy). Nor is it simply a historical fact—although, the fact that God put on flesh means that historians now study the life of Jesus of Nazareth at an academic level.

No, in the Christian story, truth is a person. And this has huge implications.

See, people relate to philosophical propositions and historical facts differently to how they relate to a person. The former two require intellectual judgments—necessary and good. But the latter? The person? Well, they require relational choices. Sure, we use our brains to think intellectually about people (like, whether they exist and things like that), but the point is that we do more than that when we relate to them. We pursue them or we run away from them. We are delighted by them, or we are frightened by them. We’re never simply asking, “Are they real?” We’re asking, “Are they good, and will I let them know me?”

The fact that God has revealed himself as a person is shocking. It means that whenever you—whoever you are—investigate the truth of Christianity, you are not simply trying to ascertain whether you want to give mental assent to a bunch of ideas; you’re being invited into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That relationship is one where you are citizen and God is King; where you are child and God is Father; where you are beloved, and God is Lover.

And it all begs the following question: “Are you open to this relationship?”

5. Jesus is the most Inclusive Exclusivist available

One of the most famous passages of Scripture comes to us in the Gospel of John. John writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

These are staggering words. Entertaining a topic like the exclusivity of truth can feel like hiking up an arduous mountain. It’s tense, intellectually rigorous, and maybe even a little exhausting. But reading these words is like looking up only to find that the first person to ascend the mountain on humanity’s behalf has actually come running back down to anybody and everybody he can find to be with him where he is. He is not picky in whom he invites; he is extravagant and lavish. He just wants to bring as many people with him as possible.

What’s the point? The point is that Christian belief is necessarily exclusive—for intellectual and relational reasons. But it is inclusive in its invitation. Whatever your background—race, class, culture, job, plans, political party, etc—God invites everyone to come to him through Jesus Christ. You need not delay, and you need not doubt. There’s always room for, to quote John’s Gospel, “whoever” to come and take a seat at Jesus’s table.

Jesus is the most inclusive exclusivist.

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