No one comes to the Father but through Me (John 14:6b)

To get things started, I decided to talk about one of the questions my 14 year old son asked some time ago. He wondered how we know we are right in our beliefs and the other faiths are wrong.

I remember having this same question when I was a kid. Mine had more to do with denominations: How did we Baptists know we had all the right answers while the Presbytarians, Methodists, Church of Christ, Assembly of God...insert whatever Christian denomination you can think of here...had it wrong. How did we know we were in because we didn't dance & the others were out because they did...the nerve! I was rarely allowed to go to church with my friends who attendend churches of other denominations because we were Baptist and those other churches believed differently about some things and different was...well, wrong! I have learned that while it is true that different Christian denominations view many things differently, as long as they are not doctrinal issues, we can lovingly agree to disagree and go right on being Christians together - hand-in-hand - bringing God's message and Jesus' love and salvation to the world. In other words, there are core beliefs that are essential for biblical Christians. My church sums these core beliefs up like this:

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, authoritative Word of God. We believe there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, His sinless life, His death on the cross for our sins, His resurrection and return. We believe that all persons are sinners by nature and condemned by God. We believe God in His grace has provided salvation for all who call upon Him.

These are the "must have" beliefs for biblical Christians. There are other beliefs and preferences (dancing, worship styles, how often to meet, how the end times will look, etc.) between Christian churches that are not doctrinal and will not affect our membership in God's family through Jesus. These are the things we can disagree on and still work together to accomplish God's purposes.

That being said, my son's question has a different angle than mine did when I was his age. I never gave other world religions much thought (in fact, I didn't think of them at all if I remember correctly). But the world is a much bigger place for my son's generation and world religions, especially Islam, are definitely more prevalent and well known in our country now. So my son's question was "how do we know our Christian faith is right and the other faiths are wrong?"

To begin with, we have to remember that no matter what our culture tries to tell us, there is absolute truth; if one thing is true, it's opposite cannot also be true. If your car is red, that is not just your truth while someone else's truth may be that your car is blue...no! Your car is red. So for our purposes, lets look at one of the Christian's doctrinal beliefs: that Jesus Christ is the only means by which God mercifully grants us salvation. Here it is. Jesus is the only way to the Father or He's not - but it can't be both. So we establish from the start that if our faith is right, the other faiths who believe differently must be wrong; if the other faiths who don't believe Jesus is the only way are right, then we are wrong.

To keep this post from becoming so long, I'll end here and see what comments are generated. In my next post, I'll look at why we can be certain in our beliefs and why our beliefs are much more reasonable than others. I also hope to get other authors to join me...people who know much more than I do!! I'm in the process of learning, so I don't even pretend to have all the answers. If I don't know, I will find someone who does!