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Christianity is exclusive in that Jesus claims to be the only way to God. This does not sit well with many people and even Christians wonder what about those who have never heard the Gospel? Are Amazonians damned because they have not heard?
The first point to make is that hardly anyone on the planet has never heard of Jesus. The irony is that people in western countries, where information and resources are most abundant, are least receptive. The message has reached nearly everyone but not everyone has responded.
Previously western ministers looked with pity to the unsaved masses in Africa, Asia or South America and developed strategies to reach them. Today the situation is reversed – the developing nations are experiencing a boom in belief and in Europe and other developed countries belief has been replaced by humanism and practical atheism. In fact, nowadays it’s the developing countries sending missionaries to Europe!
However, let us not take Jesus out of context and try to deal with his claims piecemeal. He also claimed to be eternal (John 8:58) and the one through whom the world was made (John 1:3). If he was present at the creation of the world and is an eternal being then there was no time before Jesus. He says he’s the Son of God (John 9:35-37), the everlasting Word of God (John 1:14) which never passes away (Luke 21:33). Thus, although we are fortunate to live in a time which knows the ultimate, incarnate revelation of this Word in Jesus of Nazareth, this does not mean that the Word of God has not reached other people at other times and in other ways.
Ultimately the Word of God has been around since the beginning and available to all people. We might consider re-reading John 14:6 as “God’s revealed Word is Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through this”. Salvation is, and has always been, by believing in God and entrusting yourself to his will and way.
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The word “Religion” is fairly widely applied to Christianity when nothing could be farther from the truth. Of course, from a demographics point of view it is convienient to classify Christianity as a religion but Christianity at it’s core is nothing more than the belief in the Gospel and a commitment to Jesus.
Typically people identify religion with a belief in God or the supernatural but these concepts are independent. There are religions (like Buddhism) without a God and supernatural beliefs (like Astrology) without a religious component. I would define religion as membership in an institution which holds precepts and enacts ritual.
The first Christians did not fit the bill – they were literally followers of Christ, people who believed in Him and followed Him around, learning to trust and obey Him and live as He did. For 3 centuries, Christians they were wandering, persecuted, vagabonds, with very little means, simply spreading the Good News. The institutionalisation began with Constantine and continues until today. I call this “hijacking the faith” and it stinks.
By getting back to the roots and reading the Bible without prejudice Christians throughout the ages have managed to break free of this institution, this religion, and discover the real message, the real Jesus, the living God. Fortunately the Bible has been faithfully preserved and this can be scientifically demonstrated undermining another vague modernist pseudo-theory that the Church has adapted the texts for its own agenda. What is true is that various parties througout the ages have promoted interpretations in support of political or other schemes. The success of cults which have done this was always inversely proportional to their followers knowledge of the Bible.
Jesus himself was anti-religion and vehemently criticized the religious establishment of the day. This establishment had him crucified – there was no compromise and no reconciliation. It is clear that Jesus of Nazareth would not be welcome in many churches today.
Jesus did not come to establish a new religion or give us a neat set of dos and don’ts. The unique focus of Christianity is a Person not a Principle. Jesus himself, his life and death, was the point of his ministry, his moral teaching secondary.
Freud’s legacy is that many people now believe that God is a human invention designed to quell our fears of death and the afterlife. According to atheists, God and heaven are too good to be true and must be human inventions. By this logic, all theists are optimists to the point of delusion.
It will be obvious to some that this is a classic example of a scientist stepping outside of their area of expertise (psychoanalysis) and into metaphysics. There is a big difference between “science says” and “scientist A says”.
Of course, a thing doesn’t have to be nasty to be true so people’s optimism or warm, fuzzy feeling tells us nothing of the truth of the matter. I’ve never heard any Christian argue that God exists because this is a nice scenario. On the contrary, a world without God with no judgement or afterlife sounds quite good to many people desiring autonomy and self sufficiency. In fact, atheism is a nice world-view for those who want to run their own life by their own rules. Does that make it untrue?
Unfortunately, a commited atheist won’t have it either way. The nice, comfy parts are written off as “too good to be true”, the challenging, not-so-comfy parts are rejected out of hand as unacceptable or “inhumane”.
