Jesus and Other Religions

This sermon was originally preached on January 4, 2009. It has been updated.

A lot of people would love to lose 60 pounds in a couple of months. But my friend was a nurse and so she knew that something was seriously wrong with her. For one thing, she wasn't dieting; she was losing weight because of involuntary projectile vomiting. She also knew that the problem probably involved her gallbladder, the organ that enables your body to break down fats in your food. It does so by squeezing out bile. If the bile calcifies in the duct leading from the gallbladder, it forms into gallstones. But no gallstones were detected by imaging. Another possibility was cancer. But all the tests came back negative. She was sent to various specialists but they too were perplexed. Her doctor began to run out of ideas and started to fall back on that old medical excuse: “It's all in your head.” But my friend knew that something was physically wrong with her and because she was unable to digest her food she was becoming malnourished. At the rate she was losing weight, she would be dead by the end of the year.

One day her regular doctor was out of town and she was seen by his partner in the practice. As she described her symptoms and the test results for the umpteenth time, something triggered a new diagnostic possibility in this doctor's mind. He ran a test and it turned out that my friend had something called a porcelain gallbladder. The bile hadn't solidified in the duct but inside the gallbladder itself, coating the lining and hardening so that the gallbladder couldn't contract and squeeze out the bile to do its job. Surgery cured my friend. In addition, she was fortunate because having a porcelain gallbladder is often associated with gallbladder cancer and rarely exhibits signs and symptoms until it is too late to save the patient.

The bicyclist was lucky to be alive. First he was struck by a drunken motorist who sent him flying through the air. Unfortunately, he landed right in the middle of US-1. Another car ran over him. He got caught in its undercarriage and dragged for a dozen yards. His injuries were terrible. And the most mangled part of him was his leg. The consensus of the doctors at the hospital was to amputate it. One surgeon dissented. He thought he could save the leg. The patient decided to go with this maverick, reasoning that, in either instance, the worst case scenario was that he'd lose the leg. But if the surgeon were right, he'd keep it. The last I heard, he was learning to walk on that leg and hoped eventually to walk without a cane.

Our sermon suggestion reads, “We Christians believe that Jesus is the road to everlasting life. Does this mean that Jews, Muslims and Buddhists do not have access to an afterlife?” The purpose of my medical prologue is to reframe the question. After all, if we think of heaven or the afterlife as a destination, the idea that there might be different paths to it seems reasonable. My hometown of St. Louis is almost in the geographic center of the country and can be reached via any of a number of roads and highways going east, west, north or south. There is only one road, however, to Key West.

But I want to change the metaphor. Author Karen Armstrong points out that religions tend to be born during times of warfare and turmoil. They are primarily answers to the problems of suffering and evil. So the question “How do I get to heaven?” is not really analogous to the question, “How do I get to St. Louis?” It is more like the question, “How do I get to a state of spiritual health and well-being?”

We know that with a medical problem, it is crucial to get the right diagnosis. And once that's made, you need to choose the correct course of treatment. And you need, as we've seen, to have the right doctor. It's odd then that we do not feel we need to make similarly accurate choices when it comes to our spiritual health. We tend to treat all religions as equal options. That's like saying that my friend would have done just as well if she had gone to a chiropractor. Or that the guy's mangled leg could have been saved and fixed through acupuncture. While these alternate medical systems might work for certain conditions, neither needles nor a realignment of the spine would have worked in these very serious cases.

What is the cause of our spiritual ills? What is the best way to fix them? Let us consider the diagnosis and treatment proposed by each of the religions mentioned in our sermon suggestion and see how they stack up in terms of what we know about the world's ills.

Buddhism says all suffering is caused by desire or craving. That's the diagnosis. The solution is to become detached from the world. Which is made easier because Buddhism says the world is just an illusion. Let go of it and you can have peace. And you don't have to worry about an afterlife. To Buddhists and Hindus, eternal life would be a horrible fate. The goal of those two religions is Nirvana, which literally means the “blowing out” of the flame of life. They wish to simply be absorbed into the World Soul and lose all individual consciousness.

Desire can certainly lead to suffering, especially if that desire is thwarted. We want something—love, wealth, power—and find out that we can't achieve it. That frustration can lead to anger, conflict, murder or suicide. It may lead to theft and fraud. Ironically even fulfilled desires can lead to suffering. Those who win the lottery or who seek celebrity can find them to be as much of a curse as a blessing. The relentless and remorseless scrutiny of your life, the way these things can distort and destroy relationships, and in the case of celebrity, the constant pressure to remain “hot” can make your life a mink-lined prison. So Buddhism's diagnosis of our problems looks pretty good so far.

But desire is not the only thing that makes us suffer. Fear can also cause suffering and not all fears are illusionary or exaggerated. Losing your job and your home are very realistic things to fear. Getting cancer or some other serious disease is a legitimate fear. Buddhists would say that fears are just negative desires, the desire not to have bad things happen to us. They would say that even our needs are attachments that must be jettisoned.

No matter how good the diagnosis is, the Buddhist treatment of the disease is problematic. To tell people simply not to care about the world or their own needs seems inhuman. It's like telling the cyclist with the mangled limb to detach himself emotionally from his leg and his problem will be gone. And the idea that reality is just an illusion is akin to telling my friend that her illness is all in her head. Reality continues to exist and impact us regardless of whether we believe in it or not.

Let's move on to the other two religions mentioned. Both Islam and Judaism would say that the problem with the world is humanity's sins. This is a more precise diagnosis than Buddhism's. Both Judaism and Islam recognize that there are good desires as well as bad ones. But what do they propose as the treatments for the condition of sinful humanity?

Judaism proposes following the laws of God. Sin is doing what's wrong. So just follow the rules and do right. That sounds good but if it were that simple, sin would have been eradicated millennia ago. The problem is not just a matter of knowing what is right and what is wrong. There is an internal resistance to always doing the right thing. And we are not always rational about it. We often deliberately choose short term rewards over long term benefits. People will risk a good marriage, the stability of their family and the mental health of their children for a fling. People will endanger careers, reputations, and even their health for the transitory pleasures of winning a competition, or experiencing some sensation, or taking revenge, or trying to possess something that is not essential. The impulse to sin is deep within us.

The problem with fixing humanity's sinful nature merely by following rules is that it's trying to fix a broken leg by prescribing long walks. Instead you must first set the bone; only then can you do the physical therapy necessary to recovery. My friend knew that her gallbladder was involved. But eating a healthy low-fat diet alone was not going to cure her. However, after her porcelain gallbladder was surgically dealt with, following the rules of a healthy diet was important to her recovery. In the same way, the internal problem that causes sin must be dealt with before one can attempt to follow the rules of living a morally good life.

Islam literally means “surrender.” A Muslim is one who surrenders to the will of God, who in Arabic is called Allah. “Jihad,” by the way, means “to struggle.” In mainstream Islam, it primarily means one's personal struggle to achieve moral perfection by following rules that largely overlap those of Judaism. This is admirable but, again we must ask, “Can we do this through our own will alone?” My friend was a nurse. She knew her illness must involve her gallbladder but she was unable to cure herself. The cyclist knew his leg was more than merely broken. They both needed a doctor, one who could make the right diagnosis and then perform the appropriate surgery. They couldn't operate on themselves. They needed someone outside of themselves to cut into them, reach inside, cut out what was wrong, put their bodies back in order and then sew them back up. They needed someone to save them from physical illness, injury and death.

The Bible says humanity's problems lie in the human heart, the very core of our will. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jesus says that sin is not an external problem that can be rinsed away like dirt but a pollution that arises from within our hearts. (Mark 7:21-23) God vows to replace our stony hearts with hearts of flesh. (Ezekiel 26:36) To keep the metaphor going, think of Jesus as our heart donor, the one who must die so that we may live. If we let him save us, our old life is over and our new life begins. We are reborn spiritually. And this process starts when we accept Jesus into our life and let his holy Spirit go to work on us. External rules are not the answer. Instead God says he will write his laws in our hearts, that is, change our programming. (Jeremiah 31:33)

This is the treatment Jesus offers. He doesn't just say, “Stop doing wrong. Do right instead.” He says, “Come to me and I will transform you.” After all, how can there be any earthly or heavenly paradise if people stay essentially the same as they are now? We are spiritually sick, morally ill. Enlightenment is not enough. Good intentions are not enough. Coming close to the right diagnosis is not enough. Being in the general vicinity of the proper course of treatment is not enough. We need a savior. We need Jesus.

No matter how well intentioned, the wrong cure is still wrong. And the right cure won't work if we don't trust and cooperate with the doctor and follow his orders. When working as a nurse I gave respiratory meds and breathing treatments to people who continued to smoke. They were undoing what I was doing to save them. Just as the existence of quacks and snake oil doesn't invalidate the truths of genuine doctors and medical treatments, hypocrites don't invalidate the truth of Christianity—because they don't follow its most basic principles. And those who leave the faith don't invalidate what it does for those who continue in the faith, any more than someone who drops out of Alcoholics Anonymous invalidates what it does for those who stick to the program.

This does not mean that Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jainists, Sikhs and others do not have access to an afterlife. It does mean they, like anyone else, must have the humility and courage to change and to seek the God who is Love Incarnate. Jesus promised that if we seek we will find. (Matthew 7:7-8) Nor does this mean that Western “Christians” are automatically saved by virtue of their geography or culture or church membership. A mouse doesn't become a cookie just because it finds itself in a cookie jar. Living next to a huge metropolitan hospital or world class clinic doesn't make you well unless you take advantage of its facilities. Our complacency is killing the church in the West. Just as the US is far from the physically healthiest country in the world (we rank 47^th in life expectancy) so too the most vibrant centers of Christianity are no longer located in the West. The largest number of Christians and the greatest growth can be found in the churches in Africa and Asia, where being a disciple of Jesus can really cost you.

I think at least part of our wish that any religion can save people is not so much rooted in tolerance as in indifference. It's hard enough to get people to help folks in other lands and cultures with physical needs. And assuming that they are just fine spiritually gets us off the hook when it comes to spreading the good news of Jesus. Some people point to the disastrous things that missionaries have done in the past as an excuse not to try to do it better. How well would medical science do if we closed down certain areas of research because of failures in the past? Lobotomies were a terrible idea, but should we stop all brain surgeries? The earliest treatments for HIV and AIDS were harsh and left some thinking that the cure was worse than the disease. Today with treatment AIDS has become a chronic illness that can be lived with instead of the automatic death sentence it was in the 1980s. I know people alive today because of the right medicines. Today's missionaries, like a neurosurgeon I know, often bring the near miraculous healing of western medicine to people without much in the way of healthcare. And this makes the people they help become interested in what motivates these missionaries to leave their families and their wealthy countries to minister to those who can't repay them.

Any religion can give you a reasonable moral code, a cozy group of like-minded folks, colorful rituals and comforting ideas. So can joining a Star Trek or Doctor Who fan club. These groups even have designated charities they give to. I have heard fans say they use fandom as a substitute for religion. They fully know that these saviors of other worlds and times are fictional characters. But their fantasies make their viewers feel good.

But if you suspect that there is something radically wrong with a real world that has 40 wars going on at any time, one where global human trafficking, including the sexual exploitation of women and children, is a $150 billion a year industry, one where torture, racism, oppression and every other evil go on everyday; if you think we need something other than just more rules; if you think we need deep personal change that can only come from a loving creator, who dares to become one of us, to live and die and rise again with the healing we need, who asks to come into our very souls and transform us into new creations, spiritually reborn as his sons and daughters, then there is really only one option: Jesus Christ.