We live in an age of relativism. It is popular in
our culture to suggest that no one religious system is the answer to
man’s problems and that all religious teachings have something good to
say. Attacks on Christianity and the Bible are increasingly
acrimonious, especially on those of us who attempt to follow what the
Bible says and who maintain that it is the one and only true path to
God.
Jesus Christ is an easy target for those who follow
relativism. John 1:1–14
makes it
abundantly clear that Jesus is God and
that He came to earth and dwelt among mankind. Verse 14 says very
clearly, “The Word [Jesus] was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” In John
14:6 Jesus tells us clearly that He is the only path to God, ”I am the
way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father but by
me.” In 2
Timothy 3:16 –17 the
Bible is portrayed as all a person
needs for instruction in living: “All scripture is given by inspiration
of God … that the man [or woman] of God may be perfect, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works.”
Atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and anti-Christian
activists view such statements as arrogant, empty claims of
superiority. They would have us believe that all religious systems are
equal and all contain some elements of truth and wisdom. They claim
that all religious systems, including the Bible, also contain massive
amounts of error.
It is not difficult to see why relativism has been
accepted by so many people. All of the major religions such as Islam,
Hinduism, and many forms of Buddhism claim to be the only true path to
God, or at least to perfection. Only the Bahá’í and some
modern cult systems view all religious systems as equally valid. It is
also a fact that many religious teachings made in the name of
Christianity both now and in the past have been false. (Who can
forget the Branch Davidians, Jim Jones, and Marshall Applewhite?) It is
also of interest that all religious systems have some positive things
that they teach that are beneficial. The Hindu Vedas certainly have
some wonderful concepts of man’s responsibility to take care of the
environment in which he lives. The Koran
has a marvelous sense of
controlling the environment in which one lives so that immorality does
not occur. Buddha understood how to reduce conflict between one
another and live at peace. Seeing elements of truth and wisdom in the
writings of a religious system may lead someone to feel that everything
taught by that religion must have similar credibility. That is simply
not true.
Another misunderstanding prevalent among those who
promote relativism is that the actions of members of a religion
demonstrate the truth or error of that religious system. I have
frequently seen Americans in other countries conducting themselves in
rude, abusive, and even illegal ways. It has always disturbed me to see
the local people in a situation like that, condemning the United States
and all Americans on the basis of what they saw some Americans do.
There have been people who claim to be Christians who have had
attitudes and have practiced things that are opposed to everything
Jesus Christ taught. This includes those supposed Christians involved
in the Crusades, the Ku Klux Klan, various cults, and even dishonest
politics. I am sure there are people in every religious system who are
honest, kind, peaceful, and giving. It is wrong to condemn all Muslims
because of the heinous acts of Al-Qaeda or to condemn all Germans
because of what Adolph Hitler did. Humans are full of arrogance,
ignorance, and selfishness. The only way to fairly evaluate a system is
by looking into its written credo — the beliefs and commanded practices
that the founders of the religious system taught. How the religious
system has affected the standard of living in the cultures where it has
been dominant can be of some use, but even that process is prone to
error because of the number of variables involved.
In view of all of this, what evidence do we have
that validates the Christian system and the claim that it is the one
true path to God? How can we know that the Bible is the inspired
message from God telling us how we should live? There are some areas we
would like to offer that support the view that Christianity is the one
true path that all men should follow that will bring them to God.
We have already pointed out that trying to tie a
religion to the acts of individuals who might claim to be a part of
that religion is inconsistent. Looking at what the sacred writings of
the religious system teaches however, is a way of avoiding the
inconsistencies of humans and allows us to make equitable comparisons.
One can begin by looking at internal characteristics involved in the
manuscripts themselves. We can look for such things as clarity,
brevity, whitewashing, and sanitizing as indicators of the credibility
of the message, without even looking at what the document teaches. This
is something the reader can easily do, especially in this day of
computers and evaluation tools.
This is a term used to tell how clearly the ideas
have been expressed by an author. When you read something, you should
stop and ask yourself “How clear is what was just said?” (Not “do I
believe that?”) To assist us in making unprejudiced judgments in this
area, there are a number of educational software programs that school
teachers use to get a picture of what a student has written before 
they
read the student’s paper. Over 5,000 students took my physics,
chemistry, earth science, and math classes during the 41 years I taught
in the public schools in South Bend, Indiana. If you ask virtually any
of them, they would tell you that spelling, grammar, and punctuation
were not my long suits. Still, I would frequently give students a list
of misspelled words when I returned a paper I had graded. The words
were carefully printed out by the computer I used which scanned the
student’s paper and compiled the list. The same computer program would
tell me how many words the student had used, the reading level of the
paper, and something called a “fog index” which told me how clearly the
students had expressed their ideas. The fog index scale ran from 1 for
something perfectly clear, to 14 for something absolutely obscure. On
that scale the comic strips would run 1 or 2, the front page of the
newspaper 2 to 4, Shakespeare 3 to 6 and the 1040 Income Tax
Instructions for the long form 13 to 14. (I actually ran that one year
and most of it was over 12 and some of it was over 13.)
Many years ago I had a wonderful group of physics
students who were in the habit of not doing their homework. When they
bombed one of my tests as a group I gave them my “You’re not trying
etc., etc.,” lecture. The next morning I found a letter from the class
in my box signed by all 36 kids. They had run a fog index on my test
and it was 11.6. “You can’t count a test with a fog index of 11.6,”
they said, “We want another test that is at least under 8!!” After that
I ran a fog index on my tests before I gave them to the students.
I would encourage the reader to scan the New
Testament and compare it to the Koran,
the
Vedas,
The Urantia Book,
and
the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Buddha, and Zoroaster. Look
at the reading level and the fog index, and try to compare writings
that are similar — history with history, poetry with poetry,
commands with commands, etc. All of these works have similar problems.
They are all ancient in their authorship, and they have all been
translated into English. Muslims are fond of suggesting that the Koran
can only be understood if one has fluency in Arabic, but all of these
books came from an ancient tongue foreign to English, and thus face
similar problems. In many cases such as Arabic, computer software is
available in that language, so even that problem is not difficult to
handle if one is well informed and able to read all languages fluently.
The contrast in the data on fog index is striking.
The book of Acts, the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament have
very low scores on the fog index — most well under 4. (Remember the
lower the number, the clearer the writing is.) The apocalyptic works of
the Bible such as Revelation are high — over 7 — typical of that
literature style. The Vedas, by comparison, are consistently over 10
and large sections are over 12. Just reading the Vedas will leave you
with very little doubt that they are radically different than the
biblical manuscripts. The Koran,
The Urantia Book, and the
writings of
Bahá’u’lláh, Buddha, and Zoroaster consistently run
higher than the Bible in every kind of literature where the style and
intent of the writing is comparable. It is an interesting comparison
and useful in making evaluations.
All one has to do is to think about the most recent
political campaign in the United States to realize that humans do not
tend to be brief. Again, the comparisons between the Bible and other
manuscripts are most interesting. Of the 12,000 days that Jesus Christ
lived upon the earth, and of the 1200 days which made up His ministry,
if you added up every day of His life accounted for in the New
Testament you would get a total of something around 34 days. One
can see the frustration of the gospel writers as they are restrained
from doing what their normal human impulse would have them do. John
concluded his gospel account by writing “… there are also many other
things which Jesus did, …” and John was not allowed to record them all
because “… even the world itself could not contain the books that
should be written” (John
21:25).
Just look at the volume of pages in the Vedas and
The Urantia Book and you will
see there is no brevity. Any reading of
the Koran will amaze careful
readers at how much repetition and
irrelevant material it contains compared to the primary message being
presented. The Bible’s brevity is incredible.
Atheists and skeptics are fond of making references
to the “dirty stories” of the Bible. There is no question that the
Bible has the dirty laundry of its heroes as well as the stories of
their successes. David’s sordid affair with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11),
Abraham’s willingness to let his wife be another man’s wife (Genesis
12:10 – 20), Paul’s murderous background (Philippians 3:4b –6), and the
affair of a member of the Corinthian church with his stepmother (1
Corinthians 5) are all there for us to see. American politics has
taught us all that cover-up is a way of life for many people in power.
It is pretty easy to control the press and slant history if you have
the power of total control. One of the amazing things about the Bible
is that the bad is shown along with the good — something humans who are
in power do not do.
Most religious books have been whitewashed and
sanitized. If you go to your local bookstore you can buy a copy of the
Koran which is translated by
N. J. Dawood and published by Penguin
Classics (ISBN-10: 0140449205). This is the translation of the same
words as the Koran that Bin
Laden and his followers are reading. You
can also get a copy of The Essential
Koran: The Heart of Islam
published by HarperSanFrancisco and translated by Thomas Cleary
(ISBN-10: 0062501984). This version of the Koran has had some of the
material objectionable to Westerners softened or removed altogether. If
one reads external accounts of contemporaries of Muhammad, one will
find something about Muhammad’s history, lifestyle, and methods. There
is total consistency in Muhammad’s life with the un-whitewashed version
of the Penguin Classics material.
One can easily check the accuracy and understandings
of the authors of various religious manuscripts. This can be done from
just about every discipline that is available — mathematics, geography,
science, history, psychology, literature, and medicine. In this journal
we have had numerous articles over the years talking about the
scientific integrity of the Bible. It is difficult to read Leviticus 17
and not be impressed with the biblical understanding of the importance
of blood. Genesis 1,
when
taken literally, has amazing concordance with
what science now knows to be true of the sequence with which life
appeared on earth. There are vast numbers of scientific statements in
the Bible which predate the discovery of these truths by modern
science. When apparent errors are seen in biblical writings, a careful
examination of the original language removes the error in virtually all
cases.
In contrast to the great accuracy of the Bible in a
variety of disciplines, other religious writings show considerable
error. The Koran contains a
number of scientific errors and the
Book of Mormon has many
scientific and historical inaccuracies.
(Go to this link to see a list of these
errors.)
It is important to note in this discussion that the
subject of miracles is not a part of examining the Bible for accuracy.
If the Bible presents something as a miracle, then it is recognized
that this is not a natural scientific event. Explaining the
resurrection is not a valid enterprise, because it is not presented as
a natural event. If it were explained by a natural process that would
invalidate the biblical claim that it was a miracle. The same would be
true of claims of any other book — and in some cases things that are
claimed to be miraculous have been shown to be natural events. It would
take a large book to explore this subject adequately, but our purpose
here is simply to identify some methods of validating the religious
systems being considered. (For a list of scientific statements in the
Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon, go to this link [a PDF file of these
lists] or send
an
addressed
envelope
with a 44-cent stamp and we will mail it to you.)
Many years ago on a flight from Dallas to Chicago I
had a seat-mate who was a very successful businessman. As he was
telling me how he made all of his money he explained that when
something worked he always applied that system 100 percent to
everything else he had. The fact that it worked showed that the system
must have intelligence and good design behind it. I responded that his
logic was exactly the reason why I have used the Bible as a guide for
my life. When I decided I could no longer be an atheist because of the
scientific evidence I saw for the existence of God, I started reading
every religious document I could find. I was looking especially for the
reasonableness of what the system taught and what the logical result
would be of following that system. This is perhaps the most compelling
evidence for the validity of Christianity. A few simple examples might
be the best way to demonstrate this.
The relationship between man and woman is one area
where the contrast in systems is striking. Many religious systems like
the Koran and the Book of Mormon teach polygamy — the notion that a man
can have many wives. It should be obvious to any thinking person that
polygamy is an unworkable system. Males and females are born in roughly
equal numbers. If one man like Bin Laden has 15 wives, then there are
14 other men out there who do not have a wife at all. The best they can
hope for is a harem of their own when this life is over, making them
prime candidates for suicide bombings. In addition to the obvious
imbalance in wives, polygamy has a denigrating effect on women. I
remember one Mormon wife who was interviewed on TV when the modern
issue of polygamy came up in Mormon groups saying “When my husband
decided to marry another woman I found myself asking, ‘Why am I not
enough?’ I finally realized it was to produce more children.” It is
difficult to comprehend how a woman can have security and a positive
self-image free of competition in a polygamous system.
Polygamy totally misses what God intended for
marriage to be. When Jesus was asked about the whole question in
Matthew 19:3 – 6 He referred His questioners to Genesis 2:24. “‘Haven’t
you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them
male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man will leave his
father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh”?’”
The issue of system design is very broad and applies
in many ways. Read Matthew 5 – 7, and ask yourself what the world would
be like if every person on the planet followed just the words of the
Sermon on the Mount. What would happen if everyone returned good for
evil, if everyone strove to love those called their enemies, if
everyone went the second mile in all relationships, if everyone really
did strive to be at peace with all men? (Matthew
5:38
–
46). The
contrast to this teaching are the sharp military commands of Muhammad:
“Anyone who attacketh you, attack him in like manner as he attacked
you.” (Qur’an 2:194).
It is important to understand that not all Muslims
interpret Muhammad’s commands as being physical, but he practiced war,
was a military leader, and certainly established his Islamic empire by
military methods — a huge contrast to Jesus hanging on the cross saying
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
The final point about system design is the fruit
test. Jesus said, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16a).
When Christianity is practiced as Jesus taught it (not as some humans
have practiced distorted versions of it), what has been the result?
Take your local phone book and look at the names of the hospitals in
the city where you live or a large nearby city. How many hospitals
contain a name that lets you know that the hospital is connected in
some way to a group that is expressing their faith in Jesus Christ by
ministering to the sick? How many Muslim, Buddhist,
Bahá’í, or atheist hospitals are there — even in places
where those religious systems dominate?
In this journal we have reviewed several books in
the last few years that have explored the results of Christianity.
Under the Influence by Alvin
Schmidt, reviewed March/April
2003, gives
a clear picture of how women, medicine, care facilities, treatment
centers, and schools have been positively impacted by Christianity. The
God that Did Not Fail by Robert Royal, reviewed in July/August
2007,
showed the effect of Christianity on Western culture and the positive
impact it has had.
Take a look at the 12-step programs sponsored in
your community. Look at the nursing homes and child care facilities in
your area. Check out the HIV treatment centers. Look at the homeless
shelters and women’s shelters in your area. Go on the Web and do the
same thing in areas where Christianity is not dominant and see what is
happening 
there. Even in Europe where the
press touts the advantages of
the “post-Christian era” Christianity changes lives, provides for the
needy, and promotes the care of women and children. I might not agree
with the theology of Mother Teresa or Danny Thomas or the local
homeless shelter director, but I admire their lifestyles and the
selfless dedication that they made to doing what Jesus said to do for
those who were in need. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to
eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger
and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick
and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. … I
tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these
brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:35, 36, 40b).
My life has been changed for the better by my
association with biblical Christianity. I can truly say that it has
been a good life and I have been blessed by serving Jesus Christ. Know
why you believe what you believe, and do not buy into relativism and
the apathy and indifference that it breeds. Let your light shine for
Jesus.
Back to Contents
Does God Exist?, MarApr10.
4/20/2010
