Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (52 page)
Read Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? Online
Authors: R. E. Sherman
To be sure, Christianity is anything but immune from problems, weaknesses, and divisions. But this is also the case for every other religion. Could the difficulty here be that all religions are filled with highly fallible, wayward people? Could it be that the real problem is that people tend to believe their own religion provides the one true way
while also
having an attitude of judging people of other faiths?
How could the humble Jesus be so arrogant as to claim to be the only way to God? This is a very troubling question, unless Jesus was God himself and was just stating the truth succinctly. According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus claimed to be one with God many times.
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This precludes the option that he was just a great teacher or prophet. He could not have been a great teacher or prophet if he repeatedly blasphemed God by falsely claiming oneness with him. As numerous Christian thinkers have pointed out, we are left with
two choices: Jesus was either who he said he was, or he was out of his mind. There is, actually, one other possibility: that early Christians conspired to put words into the mouth of Jesus as the New Testament was being written and when the canon was finalized at church councils. According to this view, he did not really say that he was one with God. However, those who wrote the gospel accounts were eye-witnesses of the events described. If they became co-conspirators after Jesus’ death to claim he said things he did not say—and that they saw the resurrected Christ—they would not have been willing to die for their faith in the divinity of Christ. Nearly all of them were martyred.
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And so, each person is confronted with the necessity of deciding which of these options is true.
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Many evangelicals insist that acceptance of Jesus and Lord and Savior is the only way to salvation. Strictly defined, this means that a high percentage of mankind has never had any opportunity to be saved. Does that strike you as the will of God?
One Way to God Available to All Mankind
If there is just one way to God, shouldn’t it be available to all people at all points in time? Nevertheless, Christians have generally taken the position that the only people who will be saved are those who explicitly receive Jesus by faith as their personal Savior. This position does not provide any provision of liberation for those who have never heard the gospel. However, the Bible does imply that there is a way for such people.
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We see this principle highlighted, though in a negative way, in the parable of the faithful and evil servants, where Jesus said:
And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare
himself
or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes.
But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.
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While many doubt Christianity’s claims in part because Christianity doesn’t appear to offer salvation to those who have never heard of Jesus, no one seems to be bothered by the fact that Buddhism doesn’t offer liberation to those who have never encountered it. There is, however, a Christian solution to this dilemma that is entirely consistent with biblical teachings, though it is not widely known or held.
Consider Jesus’ words in John 14:6b again. He said:
I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.
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It is possible that “except through me” could mean that everyone must come before Christ to be judged, and that there is no way around that. Such a belief gives Jesus the complete preeminence that evangelicals subscribe to. In fact, it gives Christ more preeminence than the standard evangelical belief. In other words, Christ is above any cut-and-dried criteria that humans think they know about who will be saved and who will not. Who will be saved? In every case, the answer is that Jesus decides.
Such an alternative belief is also completely consistent with John 3:16:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
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That verse does not preclude Christ from granting executive pardons to any person who otherwise would be condemned because of his or her absence of belief in Christ. This would particularly be true of those who had never heard the gospel, as well as those who had never had a fair opportunity to consider and accept it. It might even include Jews who all their lives had been taught disparaging things about Jesus. Just as Jesus, dying on the cross, pled with God, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,”
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so Jesus may petition God for the pardon of any person who has ever lived.
Jesus is the judge of all people, including Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses. He decides the eternal destiny of every person. As stated in the New Testament book of Acts:
He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.
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Since Jesus is “judge of the living and the dead,” it could be viewed as wrong and arrogant for evangelical Christians to boldly state precisely what criteria he will use in his judgments of every person in history.
The usual interpretation of the verse where Jesus says “no one comes to the father except through me” is fraught with difficulties of application. To listen to many evangelicals, many people will be excluded from salvation who never had a chance to believe in Jesus, including those who never heard of him because of where they lived, almost everyone who lived before he was born, and even children who die young. Evangelicals claim that the basis for salvation is faith, not works, and that it is utterly critical that this faith must be in Jesus, and in no one else. Curiously, many of these evangelicals also maintain that Jesus was implicitly present in many different ways in the Old Testament. For example, Jesus was the Angel of God’s Presence,
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Commander of the Lord’s Army,
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Priest Forever,
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Redeemer,
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and “a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples”
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in different Old Testament passages that are historical accounts (and not prophecies of future events). These evangelicals also teach the Trinity, stating that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are virtually interchangeable. And yet faith in God is not enough for salvation, in spite of the virtual interchangeability of God and Jesus.
Related to this issue is whether people who knew of Jesus, but never became Christians—and yet seem to have followed Christian principles, such as loving others, during their lives—can be accepted into heaven. Typically, someone who balks at the idea of these “good” people not going to heaven will say, for example, “So, will Gandhi be saved?” The truth is, we will never know for sure in this
life. According to the Bible, if Gandhi is saved, it will be in spite of his Hinduism and it will truly be by the grace and pardon of Christ. Jesus will make this decision for every human being who has ever lived or who will live. In all of this Jesus is totally exalted, as is made clear in Colossians:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
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We also see the supremacy of Jesus underscored in Philippians:
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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Jesus also boldly proclaimed
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
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That authority includes the power to judge the eternal destiny of every person. This is not universalism, the belief that everyone will be saved. Jesus will not grant executive pardons to everyone. Furthermore, Jesus will even reject many who claim to be Christians.
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One reason Christians are often awkward in their sharing is that they may be overstepping the bounds of what mankind is authorized by God to do by trying to dictate what only God can decide:
who will be saved and who will not. Spiritual arrogance, whether it is really that or just appears to be that, is always awkward.
Stephen Prothero, professor of religion at Boston University, highlighted the complexity of questions such as, “Is religion toxic or tonic? Is it one of the world’s greatest forces for evil, or one of the world’s greatest forces for good?” His answers: “Yes and yes, which is to say that religion is a force far too powerful to ignore.”
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Buddhism has had an enormous impact on the nations where it commands large followings, and in recent decades it has drawn a sizable number of adherents in many Western nations. However, what we have seen in this and the preceding chapters is that Buddhism’s most serious shortcomings are inherent and insurmountable:
- Transformation via Buddhism is very slow and is only feasible for an elite few. Because of this, in practice Buddhism is a much narrower way than Christianity.
- The absence of grace, mercy, and forgiveness in Buddhism is a crippling shortcoming. Imperfect people, no matter how good, will commit bad deeds. The process of working off the resulting bad karma is imperceptibly slow. The result is the eventual deterioration of one’s spiritual condition, from one lifetime to the next, for nearly everyone. People need a savior who is gracious, merciful and forgiving, and fully divine, if they are to have a decent chance of progressing spiritually. Receiving a modest transfer of merit from a bodhisattva is not helpful enough for most people. Each person must still proceed on his or her own toward enlightenment, weighted down by bad karma and character weaknesses.
- By asserting that God is not relevant to the development of one’s spirituality, Buddhists leave themselves wide open to the worship of idols and lesser gods, often
involving the slavish repetition of mantras in an effort to change reality.
The issues and problems of Christianity, though many and troublesome, are potentially resolvable. The judgmental attitude of many Christians could be neutralized if the humility and Golden Rule
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taught by Jesus were taken more seriously. Truly encountering God should make a person humble. The problem is with so-called Christians whose arrogance prevents them from being convicted by the Holy Spirit. The need for revival is great, yet sweeping revivals have occurred many times in history. May another one begin soon!
This book has charted a challenging and I hope an exhilarating journey for the reader. We have entertained the hypothesis that key aspects of Eastern and Western religion are much more connected than is generally assumed, and we have seen how plausible that notion is. Appreciating potential connectedness could serve as a solid basis for greater understanding, compassion, and interchange between devout practitioners of different Eastern and Western religions.
We have also developed an appreciation for the intensity of several irreconcilable differences between Buddhism and Christianity. A spiritual marriage is out of the question. Forcing it would create spiritual schizophrenia, for which the only remedy is to join one camp and abandon the other. The choices are clear, as detailed at the beginning of
Chapter Sixteen
:
- Seek an interactive relationship with a personal God and other believers, or burrow deeply into the divine within, fixating on it through marathon, self-disciplined meditation.
- Accept God’s antidote for our bad karma, his mercy, grace, and forgiveness, or tough it out, heroically accepting its ugly consequences during a succession of reincarnations.
- Cultivate an attitude of humility—or arrogance—toward different faiths.
- Seek to intervene in the lives of those who believe differently, or “live and let live.”
If we don’t make these choices, we either end up standing for nothing, or we founder, sinking into the quicksand of spiritual wishy-washiness. Jesus had words for people in that condition: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
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