My whole life up until a year ago I did not know of my faith in God. The world is full of many and different religions, so I had the choice of religion that in my opinion seemed “right”. But aren’t all religions “right” in their own sense? And if all religions are right then why does each of them say only their religion and their belief system will get you into heaven-nothing else and no other faith.
Well, the answer is that they don’t. Which other religions teach this? Other than Christianity, the only major religion that generally teaches this as far as I know is Islam, although Islam is easier to interpret in an “inclusivist” sense than Christianity (since for Muslims what saves is submission to God and the effort to do God’s will). Perhaps some forms of Vaishnava Hinduism teach something like this, but the Hindu belief in reincarnation makes this “exclusivism” look very different from the Christian and Muslim versions. Certain forms of “Pure Land” Buddhism promise “salvation” in the sense of rebirth in a paradise through faith in Amida Buddha (and in him alone), but this for Buddhists is not quite the same thing as ultimate salvation (which is not best described as “going to heaven” at all). Many Buddhists do believe that only a Buddhist is going to have the “right views” that are essential for final liberation. Of course I haven’t mentioned Judaism, which has always insisted as far as I can see that Gentiles do not need to become Jews in order to be saved.
Christianity is really unusual among world religions in the intensity and urgency with which it has historically insisted on faith in specifically Christian revelation in this life as being necessary for salvation. However, you are right that all three of the great missionary religions (Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism) generally teach that they are essential in some way for the achievement of final salvation.
But the catch is that “salvation” means something quite different, particularly in Buddhism. Buddhists believe that final salvation is “nirvana”–freedom from selfish passion and from the cycle of death and birth. Buddhists generally deny that nirvana can be identified with a place of bliss or with union with some kind of Deity, although one can, with a bit of stretching on both sides, make connections beween nirvana and the Christian (or Islamic, especially Sufi) understanding of union with God.
Furthermore, I would challenge whether the Christian understanding of salvation is best described as “going to heaven,” although this is the popular shorthand. The Anglican bishop N. T. Wright has pointed out that the New Testament never uses the word “heaven” for our final destination as Christians. This may be semantics, but I wouldn’t dismiss it. What we are promised as Christians is
a. Sharing in God’s final Kingdom, the new heaven and new earth (the aspect that Wright stresses), and
b. The Beatific Vision, union with the Triune God (traditional Christian, especially Catholic, terminology, which is insufficiently stressed by Wright)
I think that these are probably two different ways of describing the same reality. But neither of them is simply “going to heaven” in the sense of living for ever in some otherworldly paradise. The language of the Book of Revelation and other parts of Scripture strongly indicates that earth, not just “heaven,” will be transformed and become the dwelling place of God. And the Beatific Vision is far more than just a paradise–it is union with the Creator of the Universe, with the source of our Being and the goal of our deepest longing.
As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, forming in His own person (and in His own tortured human body) the bridge between us and God. That is why Christians have historically insisted so strongly (and so much more stringently than other religions) on the centrality of Christ as the way of salvation. But more and more Christians are recognizing that the centrality of Christ does not require us to declare that all those who have never heard of Christ (or who for whatever reason have not explicitly believed on Him) are eternally lost. Only those who finally turn away from Christ
knowing who He is will be damned by that rejection. So we can be “agnostic” about what happens to people of other religions.
People of the wolrd like Gandhi, who were not Christian and good people in general who aren’t Christian, where do they go after death. My point in this thread is, how do we know Christianity is truly the “one” religion, and if I were a good person my entire life but did not have a strong relationship where would I be headed?
Depends on what you mean by “good.” If you mean “living a respectable life” or doing the kinds of actions that cause society to applaud you, then God doesn’t care about that. You can do all sorts of “good” things and still be rotten to the core with pride and selfishness. But if you mean by a “good person” “one whose actions spring fundamentally from love of God and neighbor,” then such a person is obviously moved by the Holy Spirit and on their way to God, even if they have never heard of Christ and/or do not believe in God.
Edwin
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