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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us April 30, 2005 ‘I am the way, and the truth and the life’ “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 6). Have you ever wondered over those words? Over the years a number of Christians have come to me confessing that that statement makes them uneasy. It makes Jesus sound, they say, so arrogant, so exclusive. That's pretty strong but it does seem to me that if that pronouncement were literally true most of the people who have ever lived would never have had any chance of what Christians call, “redemption’ — the grand majority of people who have walked this God’s earth have never had any contact with the gospels at all. How could a good God banish them? Scott Dalgarno So what gives here? Why is this in the Bible? Well, how else does one differentiate a religion, I mean, early on, except to lay claim to its distinctiveness? There are times and seasons when it is important to declare where you stand over against the competing claims of the faiths that dominate one’s times. But, how should Christians think of other religions today? Well, I believe that we ought to think of them with respect and take them seriously. Who is to say that God, in God’s infinite wisdom, does not work through the cultures and beliefs of other people whose view of life is very different from our own? Then, how should we judge between them? Well, a rubric of Christ’s goes this way: “You will know them by their fruits.” The idea here is that simply because a religion has many adherents does not make it ultimate truth. The truth is in the quality of life that religion brings forth from its believers. Jesus once described a vision of the end of time when all peoples of the earth will be gathered and judged. The judge, in his parable, separates everyone, dividing them into what Jesus calls the sheep and the goats. The sheep are deemed worthy and the goats unworthy. And what is the measure of worthiness to enter the precincts of heaven? It is not whether or not each soul has made the proper confessional statement articulated in precisely the right words prescribed by tradition. No, it is based entirely on whether we have done four things. Have we fed the hungry; clothed the naked, visited the sick and those in prison, and finally, have we been welcoming to strangers. That’s it. As we care for the unfortunate, he says himself, we care for him. Now, those who have served him in this way are surprised to discover that it is Jesus for whom they have cared. “Lord, when did we feed you or visit you,” they ask? “When you have done it to the least of these,” he says — the littlest people, “you have done it unto me.” Therefore, to care for and honor Jesus can be done without even knowing it. The goats, those found unworthy, ask, “Lord, when did we not care for you?” And Jesus answers: “Whenever you have not cared for the littlest ones among my brothers and sisters you have not cared for me.” Referring to the truths in this parable Rev. James Forbes once said, “Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.” Simple as that. Jon M. Walton has said, “There was a permissiveness in Jesus that surprised his disciples and amazed his enemies. His way was to draw a circle so broad and so inclusive that even those who wished to stand outside it found themselves enveloped in it unexpectedly.” That’s just part of his magic. What lines of exclusion Jesus drew himself were invariably reserved for Pharisees and members of the temple elite, who themselves specialized in building walls to exclude others. Jesus was not a stickler for creeds and formulations. When he talked about heaven and the reign of God he did so by telling stories about huge feasts in which people are invited and they have the choice of whether they want to come join in or not. The stipulation being that God gets to decide the guest list and it’s awfully long and for that very reason this party is not one that say, the CEOs of the Fortune 500 might relish being seen at. Is this just too generous? To some minds, maybe. To Jesus’ mind, I don’t think so. The great expert on comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell, was once asked by Bill Moyers why, after seeing so many commonalities in the world’s religions, one might finally choose to one over another. Why, say, choose Christianity? His answer was simply that Christianity is the story that we know in our bones. It’s the story that we, here in the west, are hard-wired to understand. We are predisposed to take in its symbols, its values, its traditions. They belong to our culture. They are part of our cultural and spiritual treasure. “Why be a Christian?” Moyers asked, and Campbell answered: “Because you dance with the girl you brought.” In some nearly genetic sense the person of Jesus is, for those in the west, “the way the truth and the life.” Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland’s First Presbyterian Church DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Free Musick Downloads Slippers Women's & Men's Slippers Ceramic Piggy Banks heloc Calenders 2005 Calender 2005 Accelerate Weightloss Products Memory Foam Mattress tcg student loan consolidation home equity loans teleconferencing W2 Forms cortisol weight loss Tatoos website design & marketing student loans African Safari Conference Calls - $50/Month Security Systems diamonds Currancy Exchange Online Casinos Community Student Loans Tatoo Poker Games Homeschooling Click Here .:Advertisements:. 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