"All religions contain some truth," "That may be true for you, but not for me," "Religion is a matter of preference, not truth." These are common sentiments about faith, but are they right? Join us as we delve into the complexities of doubt, religious exclusivity, and the pursuit of truth.

Introduction to the Discussion

Thank you for joining us for this informative session where we're going to be exploring the question: Is it wrong for religions to be exclusive? This is a really important question to consider because at the heart of the Christian faith is the claim that Jesus Christ is the center of not just history, but should be the center of our faith. If that's true, then it suggests that if Christianity is true, that means the central claims of other religions of the world would not be true. Not all the claims, but the central claims. That's a big deal because I think all of us have this impulse that it feels wrong to say that everyone else is wrong, that it feels wrong to be so exclusive. And I totally get that, and it's a big deal. That's why we're going to be exploring it in this session. So thank you so much for tuning in, whoever you are, whether you're a Christian and you just want to be equipped on how to answer this question yourself or for others, or if you're seeking and you're trying to explore Christianity and what Christians believe, and you have questions. Either way, wherever you are in your walk with Jesus, I am so glad you're engaging with this content, and I hope this is helpful for you.

Addressing Doubts and Faiths

In order to get to this question of whether it's wrong for religions to be exclusive, we need to understand what religions are, or faith traditions, and the word faith brings up the concept of doubt. There's a lot of misunderstanding about doubt, and if you get that wrong, it's hard to even get this conversation off the ground to begin with. And so, that's where we're going to start, with an exploration of what is doubt and how do doubt and faith go together.

What Is Doubt?

To get at this, I want to share a story from our family. Janelle and I, we have four children, and our second oldest is Anne-Marie, or we call her Anna. Anna went through a phase a couple of years ago where she was struggling with dishonesty; she was lying a lot actually. And for some reason, the biggest struggle with this lying was related to eating her children's vitamin in the morning. For whatever reason, Anna could not stand her children's vitamins. She would hide them, she would chew them halfway and spit them out in the trash; it was crazy. So, we had a simple policy in our house: We have to watch you eat your vitamin because we don't trust that you're actually going to eat it. And then if it just disappears, we don't know what you did with it. And because you've been lying about other things, we don't trust that you're going to tell us the truth necessarily. So, that was kind of our policy at the time.

The Vitamin Incident

So, one Sunday morning, Janelle is trying to get all the kids ready for church, and I have to get to church early to set other things up, so I'm already gone. Janelle is trying to get all the kids ready, she comes into the dining room, and there's Anna and her vitamins are gone. This starts the conflict and the investigation. Janelle says, "What'd you do with your vitamins?" and Anna says, "Oh, I ate it." Eventually, she admits she didn't eat it; she hid it under the piano. Under our piano is one of the registers for our HVAC, our heating system in our house, and she threw it in one of those vents. So, Janelle now has to pause all her other stuff, pushes the piano out of the way (thankfully, it's on rollers), pulls off the register, and says, "Anna, you need to reach in there and get your vitamins, and you still have to eat them." Then another kid calls for Janelle's help, so she has to go help them, and she comes back, and there's Anna, and the vitamins are gone. "Anna, what'd you do?" She's like, "Oh, I ate them." This ensues another long discussion of fighting about it and going back and forth.

Connecting to Doubt and Faith

It's interesting because Anna was so adamant that she actually ate her vitamins this time that Janelle began to doubt her idea that no, you didn't, and I know you didn't because you wouldn't do that without me watching you. Long story short, it isn't until all the way after church, how we get home for lunch, and Anna apologizes to Janelle and says, "I'm sorry, I lied to you." What had happened is she reached in the vent, she got her vitamins, pulled them out, and then threw them further down the vent. Such a ridiculous story. What does that have to do with what we're talking about? Actually, it's a great illustration of the dynamics of faith and doubt, and again, that provides the foundation for what we're going to be talking about today.

The Nature of Doubt

At its most basic, doubt is simply the feeling of uncertainty or a lack of conviction. This is important because in this definition itself, doubt is not necessarily related to truth. Here’s what I mean: You can have doubt about something that's true. For example, Janelle began to doubt that she was correct about Anna eating her vitamin because Anna was so adamant. She had a feeling of doubt, a feeling of uncertainty about that, even though it ended up being true. So, the presence of doubt does not actually determine what is or isn't true. You can have lots of doubts about something that is actually true, or, what’s even weirder, you can have no doubts at all about something that’s not true.

Doubt and Faith: Companions, Not Opposites

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an essential component of it. Many people say doubt and faith are natural opposites, like if you have doubts then you don’t have faith. But that’s not true. Faith and doubt actually go together. Let me give you a basic illustration, something I heard from a pastor named John Ortberg. Off-screen, you can't see it, but I'm going to make a claim and I want you to consider whether or not you believe me, whether or not you have faith. Off-camera, you can't see it, I have a soda here in this room. I'm drinking a cup of soda. Do you believe me? Consider it. It's a claim, and you have to consider whether or not you believe me or not.

Demonstrating Faith and Knowledge

Well, I don't know if you believe me or not, but in this case, if you said yes, I believe you, you are right. Here’s my soda. I’m drinking it. Now, whether you realize it or not, what just happened when I pulled this soda into view is I destroyed your faith. Why? Because now, not only is there no doubt, but there is no more faith, right? The opposite of faith is not actually doubt; the opposite of faith is knowledge. If I make a claim that you have to trust, you have to go on faith with, right? I have a soda that you cannot see, you have to choose whether or not you believe me. But once you see that I do have a soda, now you don't have to believe because you know.

Doubt as an Indicator of Alternative Beliefs

So, this is an important point because it tells us that doubt is going to be present whenever knowledge is not complete. Doubt is just a necessary aspect of our lives and the world we live in, as long as our knowledge is not 100% complete. Doubt is not the opposite of faith; doubt and faith coexist. Doubts are an indicator of alternate beliefs. Going back to the opening example, Janelle doubted that Anna was being honest because she believed, and she had evidence, that Anna was not being honest. This happens all the time. Whenever you doubt something, it’s actually because you have an alternate belief of some kind.

Engaging with Your Alternative Beliefs

To be intellectually honest, if you're watching this and at this point you don't believe Christianity is true because you doubt it, it's because you have alternate beliefs. You doubt it for reasons, and whatever those reasons are, one, you should know what those are, and to be intellectually honest, here’s what you should do. You might say, "I doubt Christianity because I believe that if there really was a good God, He wouldn't let bad things happen." That’s actually called the problem of evil, and we’ll do another video session on that topic itself. Or, you might say, "I doubt Christianity is true because I believe that science disproves faith; that faith and science don’t go together, and I think science is true and therefore Christianity can’t be true." That is an alternate belief.

Religious Pluralism and Exclusivity

Now, I want to talk about the belief that it's wrong for religions to be exclusive. There are a lot of different names this goes by, and the way people talk about it is like everyone’s right, everyone has a piece of the truth, or whatever works for you, or that’s your truth but that’s not my truth. One way to get at this idea, in technical terms, it's called religious pluralism. Pluralism just means more than one; more than one religion is right, maybe even all of them are right.

The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

The story I've heard used to illustrate this, maybe you have too, is the story of the blind men and the elephant. The premise of the story is that there are blind people and they’re feeling different parts of an elephant and describing it to each other. One person’s feeling the tail and they’re like, "An elephant, whatever it is, it’s like a rope." And someone else is feeling the tusk of the elephant and they’re like, "No, no, no, an elephant is nothing like a rope, it’s more like a spear; it’s rigid and hard and tough." And someone else is feeling the elephant’s trunk and they’re like, "No, an elephant’s more like a snake." Someone else is feeling one of the elephant’s big legs and they’re like, "No, no, it’s like the trunk of a tree, what are you guys talking about?"

Challenges of Religious Pluralism

And the point is all these people are feeling an elephant, they just have small pieces of the truth and they don’t realize that there’s a bigger whole that they can’t see. And this is used sometimes to talk about the various religions of the world and this idea of religious pluralism. So if this view is right, then it would say, "Hey, you Christians, you have a piece of the truth but not the whole truth, and you Muslims, you have a piece of the truth and not the whole truth," etc., etc., and all the different various religions have aspects of the truth but not the whole truth. When you back up and if you could see the whole picture, you would realize you actually all really agree with each other and we’re all right.

The Attraction of Religious Pluralism

There’s something about this view that I’m going to admit I’m very drawn to personally. When I was in college, I took a world religions class and I loved getting to study the various world religions. We spent time digging into Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, Taoism, and so many others, and there were so many aspects of each of these that I really respected and came to admire. And for a time, I even kind of flirted myself with this idea of religious pluralism, like maybe they’re all right. Who am I to say that they’re wrong? Especially given the fact that had I grown up in that culture with parents who were like, say, Sikhs, I probably would be a Sikh as well. I probably wouldn’t be a Christian. And I really wrestled with that question.

And I don’t at all present this in an arrogant way, like "No, I know I’m right." I present this as someone who understands why people would want to say, "You know, everyone’s right." Because if you think about this, statistically speaking, we’re talking about a lot of people, right? Like 32% of the world identifies with Christianity, 25% with Islam, 15% with Hinduism, 7% with Buddhism, and we are talking not about millions of people but billions of people. And if any one of these religions is right and that means the other religions are wrong, we’re saying billions of people are wrong about what they believe and that just feels like it’s a big thing to say. And who am I to say that? And so again, I understand the draw of this view.

The Drawbacks of Pluralism in Religion

But the more I've explored this, the more I've realized that there are some major problems with claiming that it's wrong for religions to be exclusive and that everyone's right, and that there are just kind of we all have aspects of the truth. If this is your view, I don't mean any of this in an insulting way. These are probably just things you've never taken the time to consider before, and I want to encourage you to consider these things now.

Inherent Contradictions Among Religious Claims

The first major problem with this idea is that none of the major religions of the world teach this. In fact, if you take the time to study a major religion of the world, you realize very quickly that they say incompatible things about very major issues. For example, Christians would say there's one God, the Hindus would say it's a polytheistic religion, there's thousands of gods, so they say there's many gods. Buddhism, in essence, is an atheistic type of faith that says there is no God. Is there one God, thousands of gods, or no God? The issue is those cannot all be true at the same time and in the same way.

The Analogy of Scientific Discovery

Trying to think of an example of what this could be like, this would be like going back in time to the time of Galileo's scientific understanding that no, it's not the Sun and all the planets revolve around the Earth. Geocentrism is wrong, he claimed. No, it's actually heliocentrism; the planet Earth revolves around the Sun. And that was a big change in thinking in science at the time. Now, no one I know says no, they're both right—the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the Sun revolves around the Earth at the same time and in the same way. It doesn't work. They are mutually exclusive claims.

The Challenge of Mutual Exclusivity

When you look at the major claims of the major world religions, you find lots of things like this, not just the question of God, but what happens when you die, the nature of good and evil, whether there really is good and evil, and then what things fall into either of those categories, as well as the major question of what's wrong with this world, what's wrong with me, and how do we go about fixing that and addressing that? The major world religions offer very different answers.

Reflections from a Prominent Atheist Writer

I was reading a book by an atheist writer named Sam Harris; he wrote a book called "Waking Up," and he was exploring the benefits of spirituality. So, he, as an atheist, doesn't believe in God but he does believe that there are benefits to spirituality, which is kind of interesting. I just thought this was fascinating. I mean, I disagree with him on a fundamental level about so many things, but I wanted to learn what he thinks about all this. It's interesting as I was reading through his book, I came across this quote where he expresses this idea even as an atheist who believes spirituality is good. This is what he has to say:

"He says we're often encouraged to believe that all religions are the same, all teach the same ethical principles, all urge their followers to contemplate the same Divine reality, all are equally wise, compassionate, and true within their sphere or equally divisive and false, depending on one's view. He says this: No serious adherents of any faith can believe these things because most religions make claims about reality that are mutually incompatible. It is impossible for any faith, no matter how elastic, to fully honor the truth claims of another."

Addressing the Central Claims of Christianity

In John 14:6, Jesus is recorded as saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." That's what Jesus claimed according to the gospel writer John. Here's the thing: if religious pluralism is true, then one of the central claims of Christianity is actually wrong. What's so ironic about this is that it's all meant from this place of saying, "No, we're all right," and "I don't want to be exclusive of any religion," but actually by doing that, you exclude them all. You're saying actually all of them are wrong.

The Exclusivity of Religious Pluralism

So that's why Paul Copan writes that though the Christian faith is a particular exclusivism, religious pluralism is a generic exclusivism. If the pluralist is correct, then the central doctrines of the world's greatest religions are false. Let's go back to this picture of the blind men and the elephant because, again, the picture is right. Let's say Christians, you're holding the tail of the elephant, you Muslims, you have like the tusk, and you Buddhists, you have like the trunk of the elephant, etc., etc.

Who Can See the Whole Picture?

Who can see in this picture? It's the religious pluralist. It's the person who says, "No, you all have a piece of the truth, but you're blind." To say that every major world religion has a piece of the truth but not the whole truth is actually a very arrogant claim. What you're saying is, "Hey, you Christians, you're blind. You Buddhists, you're blind too. You Hindus, you're blind as well. I, the people like me, we can see, and we can see that you just have a little piece of the truth; you don't have the whole picture, but I do."

The Arrogance of Claiming Complete Understanding

I have the whole picture, and actually, disturbingly, it's a very arrogant claim and actually an exclusive claim. But all comes down to this: What kind of a thing is religion? Greg Koukl writes this, he says, "There is a difference between ice cream and insulin. When choosing ice cream, you can choose what you like. When choosing medicine, you must choose what heals. When choosing ice cream, you can choose what's true for you; when choosing medicine, you must choose what is true."

Religion as Medicine, Not Ice Cream

There is significant confusion on this point. Americans tend to think of God, religion, and morals like ice cream, and not like insulin. They choose religious views according to tastes, according to what they prefer, rather than according to what is true. Non-believers view religion like ice cream, and remarkably, Christians have to do the same thing. In Luke chapter 6, Jesus said, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," and "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."

The Role of Religion in Addressing Human Needs

In other words, when Jesus came, he said you all are sick, and I've come to treat that sickness. What he, his body of teaching, and all the things that are included in that, and who he was, is like medicine. And if you take the wrong medicine, you're not going to get the healing you need. So, at the end of the day, I don't think it's really about, you know, well, that's true for you but not true for me. That's not really intellectually honest. It's true, or it's not true.

Encouraging Truth-Seeking and Continued Exploration

And I think there's good reason to believe it's true. And I hope we're giving you some food for thought if this is a view that you've had or kind of been settling in your mind. And again, we have other resources here to consider, continue this discussion. But I want to encourage you to consider if what we need is not ice cream but medicine, not just simply a matter of taste and preference but something to heal us. There's a lot at stake in this discussion, and it's worth digging into. So good job doing that so far, and I just want to encourage you to keep going, keep searching for truth because again, what did Jesus say? "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." He said he's the truth, which means if Jesus was right, that he really was the truth, that all of us, no matter what culture or religion we come from, can search for truth, and the closer we get to the truth, the closer we'll get to Jesus. So keep searching.