Copyright by Shea Oakley
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A common criticism of biblically-faithful Christianity is that it is an inherently arrogant belief system. The core of this arrogance is believed to be the claim that the only way to God is through faith in Jesus Christ. It is no doubt true that in our Post-Modern, multi-culturalist world it seems the height of conceit to suggest that every other religion and philosophy has it wrong and Christianity has it right. From a purely human perspective, then, Christians do seem to be narrow-minded and narrow-mindedness has become perhaps the cardinal sin of a culture that sometimes stridently champions tolerance and choice as the true way to happiness.
I would even go so far as to agree with those who decry Christianity for its exclusive truth-claim, except for one thing: what if it is the truth? The claim that Christ is the only way truly is the height of arrogance, but only as long as we can be absolutely certain that this foundational tenet of Christian belief is wrong. If it isn’t wrong then arrogance has nothing to do with it. If the reality is that Jesus was, as he claimed, the Son of the only living God then we must grapple with what he said about himself and what Jesus of Nazareth said was clear: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
If this claim represents reality then arrogance has nothing to do with those who hold to it. If this is reality then Christians who repeatedly attempt to tell those they know and love about this one way are acting not out of arrogance but out of the deepest possible concern for the souls of men and women.
The implication of Jesus being the only way to God is that any other road we are on apart from him is leading us to an eternity of separation from the source of every truly good thing we have ever known. I won’t get too much into the theology of Hell here except to say that the idea of cutting yourself off from the author and embodiment of love is a pretty good starting point for understanding the horror that Hell embodies. You simply do not want to end up in a place bereft of love.
In the light of this belief those annoying, seemingly arrogant Christians who are telling you things you do not want to hear might come to be seen in a different light. I cannot help but think of Holden Caulfield’s character in the seminal 20th Century novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. Holden sees his preferred destiny as being one who hides in the bushes near a sheer cliff and waits to jump out and catch lost children before they unknowingly walk off that cliff to their deaths. An Evangelical Christian is in many ways the embodiment of this character. We see the cliff and we see those we care about walking towards that cliff and we yell “STOP!” We don’t do this, God forbid, out of arrogance; we do it out of love, the same love that Jesus Christ showed us when He enabled us to see that he was ultimately the only way to avoid that eternally deadly fall.
Of course all of this is pure rot if Jesus isn’t who he claimed to be. But I, for one, would want to be very sure that it was rot before I rejected it out of hand, as is the custom of so many people today.
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