The Insurmountable Conflict

Our society still generally likes religion very much. It likes the fact that there are a lot of religious choices available. People tend to think that religion is like a grocery store: it’s good to have choices, and the more the better. One might work better for you than others, but it is good to have one. However, when it comes to Christianity, that creates a problem because there is a fundamental and inescapable conflict between the Christian faith and our culture.

From the first coming of Jesus until now, the aspect of Christianity that has bothered many people is that famous claim of Jesus found in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (NKJV throughout).

Jesus’s statement comes in response to the questions of the disciple who would become the infamous “doubting” Thomas. Jesus had just claimed a unique connection to God, which would enable Him to prepare a place for His disciples. Jesus informs them that they know the way to this place. Thomas responds that since they don’t even know where He is going, they can’t possibly know the way. Of course, Thomas was in the presence of that “way” in Jesus Himself. If Thomas followed this “way,” he would arrive at the correct place.

As one writer said of Jesus’s statement here, “Jesus was not exhibiting a narrow arrogance. Rather, He was making the only possible deduction from the fact that He, the unique Son, was the sole means of access to the Father.” For Christianity to be anything more than a sentimental religious mishmash, Jesus must be exactly what He claims to be here. But there’s the rub.

Jesus, as seen through the eyes of our culture, and many other cultures too, is a very popular fellow. One spring day, when I was in campus ministry, two Muslim students came by as I was in the yard. They stopped to talk. They had all sorts of questions about Christianity. One thing they kept telling me was how much they admired Jesus. To them, he is an important prophet, but not the way.

Jesus is often much-admired even by some detractors of Christianity. He is still heralded as a great teacher, an inspirer of men and women, and an example for us all. If only we could leave off all that theological stuff, they say, Jesus would be a great man. In fact, one thing almost all modern theologies have tried to do is to develop some version of Christianity that keeps Jesus and His moral teaching but removes that ugly “the Way” aspect that our culture just cannot tolerate.

Of course, this much-admired Jesus is not the Jesus of history, of the Bible, and, thus, of reality. He is a reconstructed, watered-down Jesus. The real Jesus is the one who claimed to be the only way to God. As C. S. Lewis liked to point out, a Jesus who claimed to be all that but wasn’t would have to be a liar or a lunatic.

We find ourselves in a cultural situation in which you are very welcome to have as many ways to God as you want, just so there is more than one. That is probably the key element of belief in the pop-religion of our culture. However, this means that our culture has an intense mental conflict going on that would almost be amusing were it not so serious.

When the current society stumbles upon the historic Christian faith, there comes a kind of mental breakdown. In the oldest “Star Trek” series, there was a notable episode involving a probe named “Nomad.” It was a very powerful probe that had become damaged and then lost in space. There was little anyone could do to stop it. In being damaged, Nomad had the idea that it was to “sterilize,” meaning destroy all imperfection.

It was heading back to earth to do just that. It saw human beings as imperfect, but Nomad thought Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise was its creator—its memory had been altered when it was damaged. Therefore, for a while, Nomad was willing to obey Captain Kirk, and Kirk tried to determine what to do about Nomad.

Just before Nomad could destroy everything in sight and then head for Earth to destroy everything else, Captain Kirk had a little conversation with Nomad. He informed Nomad that he, Kirk, was not Nomad’s creator. That was an error, an imperfection. Kirk then reminded Nomad that Nomad had not detected this error, which was another error. Kirk then told Nomad that, by his own directives, Nomad must destroy himself! Nomad did just that, and the crisis was averted. Fortunately, they were able to beam it out into space just before it “sterilized” itself!

When the culturally dominated members of our society encounter a historic Christianity and the belief that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, something similar happens. Our culture says you are justified in believing anything you want, but one of those possibilities is a non-relative view of truth. The “no exclusive truth” idea of our culture says that what the Christian believes is impossible, incomprehensible, and even dangerous. Put these two together, and you get the Nomad effect.

It’s not just the “religious” implications of this statement from Jesus that worry people. Our society is steeped in the idea that there simply cannot be one ‘true’ answer to any kind of question. Science often operates in a way that seems to reinforce this. It is all about proposing, testing, and revising ideas about the world. Some think science is not and cannot be about reality at all, since they think it is impossible to know if there even is a “reality.” Without getting into a debate about how science really works, you can see how this “everything is provisional” idea, even if it is incorrect, has permeated our society. If everything is up for grabs in science, and if science is the way everything should work, what’s up with some of these Christians who keep talking about the way, the truth, and the life?

All this has affected more than just the people with no connection to the Christian faith. Even church people often are just not so sure there could be a final truth, especially in ethical and religious matters. What about the sincere and nice practitioners of homosexuality? What about people in cultures where Christianity is relatively unknown? Those are just a couple of real examples that bother people who are not especially hostile to Christianity. They just struggle with any kind of certainty in matters like these.

What seems to worry people about exclusive claims from Jesus is the popular idea that this will lead to “intolerance.” There is a very popular mythology here that usually goes unquestioned. This myth says that if you make exclusive claims about anything, especially religion, it is bound to lead to intolerance. Intolerance is the greatest of sins in our culture. Of course, when you think this, you will eventually run into another version of the problem with: “We will not tolerate intolerance around here.”

Our culture has a strong element of belief in the sacred, self-defining individual. The choices of the self-defining are seen as unquestionable. This extends to religious and moral views. Strong elements in our society insist that if someone defines a moral and religious view for himself, even a mere analysis of that view that is anything but affirming is a serious wrong and an attack on that individual. However, a “self-definition” that includes views that do not accept this scheme (such as Christianity) will be condemned, and no one seems to notice the inconsistency. Again, it is the problem of the intolerance of intolerance.

Tolerance really is a virtue. It’s just that our culture generally doesn’t understand tolerance. Culture has redefined that word in a way that empties it of any real meaning. True tolerance is patience with those you know are wrong. It is a commitment to allowing others to be incorrect even when you know better. It is something that has its roots in the Christian faith. False tolerance—the kind promoted by our culture—says we must accept every idea as being equal because we have no way of knowing which, if any, are true. Given the current human condition, that always leads to one thing: might makes right. In its most benign form, this means only the ideas of those in power get a full and fair hearing. In the end, if you think you cannot appeal to truth, you will appeal to power, and finally to violence.

This is why we must decide if we will be “friends of the world.” The word for “world” here is a Greek word that was transported directly into English. It is the word kosmos. We still use it in the whole universe. In Greek philosophy, “the world” (kosmos) was a somewhat neutral term describing “the world-order, the world-system, the total of things preserved by this ordering, the world in the spatial sense, the cosmos, the universe, the earth, and also the inhabitants of the earth, humanity.”

However, in the New Testament, the Christian church is warned to maintain its distance from the world and to keep itself free from the world’s seductive power. There is this important sense of “the world” in the New Testament, which is about the power of a corrupt culture to pull us away from the truth, and, thus, the God of truth. It is in this sense of the word that we read in 1 John 2:15-17:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

When Christians hear the phrase “the world” in this context, it probably suggests some horrid lifestyle. It certainly can have a connection to that sort of thing, but “the world” is not limited to just that. The world has this seductive power because it often begins in ways that are not all that horrid. The world just wants us to appreciate all perspectives. The world just wants us to practice a little epistemological humility. The world just wants us to go along with some very modest requests that can sound good, harmless, and even desirable.

There is a prescription for this given by Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:3-6:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

* Kent B. True is the alter ego of Harold N. Orndorff, Jr., a retired campus minister who has taught college and seminary courses in the fields of apologetics, philosophy, ethics, and logic. Lately, he enjoys studying his grandchildren, who are very interesting ones and all. Contact him, if you must, at hnoii@hotmail.com.