THE FALLEN CLERIC

I should begin by saying in my opinion YES, absolutely, Jesus is the only way to God.  But it’s not enough to say this because in saying it you haven’t really said anything.  All you’ve said is that Jesus is the way to God.  You have said nothing about what this actually means.

There are two ways of thinking about this question and they both hinge on one’s interpretation of John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father but by me.”  Again, wonderful.  But what does it mean?

The traditional view is that it means only Christians will get to be with God in the next world (and in this one!).  Only Christians have come to Christ for forgiveness of sin and so everyone who is not a Christian will be eternally separated from God.  The problem with this is that even the Christians who hold this belief don’t actually believe it.  If I approach one of them and say, “What about those who have never heard of Jesus during their lives at all?” almost all of them will say, “God will judge them according to what they knew.”  Very few Christians are willing to say that everyone who ever lived before Jesus, along with all who will die without ever having heard of him will be separated eternally from God.  So they say there’s a loophole.  Apparently the death of Jesus will ultimately secure even some who never formally accepted him, because of God’s mercy and love.

Which leads to interpretation #2, which has not a lower but a higher view of Jesus.  This view holds simply that all who come to God come through Christ.  Let’s say I am drowning and you throw me a lifeline, pull me to shore, and then immediately leave the scene once you know I am safe.  After I recover my senses, I may remember your face and thus “know” who saved me.  Or I may have been so panicked and hysterical that I don’t remember your face at all.  In fact maybe I don’t even have any memory of being saved.  None of these three scenarios changes the fact that it was you who saved me.  It was you whether I realize it or not, whether I saw you or not, whether I remember you or not.  You did it, and you were the ONLY one who did it.  Even if I think someone else did it, you were the one who actually did.  What I understand about it takes away absolutely nothing from the reality that it was you who did it.

This view completely freaks out large numbers of Christians and they believe it is close to heresy, if not actual heresy.  They believe it takes a low view of Jesus, but it doesn’t.

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Originally posted 2009-11-13 13:47:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

…it is the will to pray that is the essence of prayer, and the desire to find God, to see Him and to love Him is the one thing that matters.  If you have desired to know Him and love Him, you have already done what was expected of you, and it is much better to desire  God without being able to think clearly of Him, than to have marvelous thoughts about Him without desiring to enter into union with His will.

– Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

I wish that with a stroke of my “pen” (keyboard), I could cut out of people’s lives all the gangrene that they have accumulated by going to church all of their lives.  As a pastor I am certainly not against going to church, but the longer I do this job, the more convinced I am that the church probably stands as frequently as a barrier between people and God as it stands as a beacon, pointing the way to life.

Religion, with all its insistence that it knows the way, often does not know anything at all.  Knowledge itself is not inherently good or evil.  Knowledge can be used to light the paths of those who stumble, or to bludgeon those who disagree with us, and is used far more often for the second than for the first. (continue reading…)