 | The Reverend Amy Baumgartner is the Associate Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, 525 N. Broadway, Wichita, KS. Amy was ordained at First Presbyterian Church of Wichita, Kansas in June 2008. She earned a Masters of Divinity from Denver Seminary. Before attending seminary, Amy graduated from Ball State University with a degree in Landscape Architecture and worked several years for an architectural firm in Indianapolis, Indiana. You may contact Rev. Baumgartner by email AssociatePastor@firstpresbywichita.org, or by phone at (316) 263-0248.
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Religion
2012-08-01 14:11:33
Salvation and the variety of religious opinions
Q- The world is a big place. There are lots of religions. Some claim their religion to be the only one that will allow entrance into heaven. Some claim it will be sufficient just to know God and desire to be with Him in heaven. Why would God allow the creation of so many religions and the overwhelming confusion they have caused with respect to salvation?
A- The world indeed is a big place. The crux of your question seems to center on why God would allow many different religions. We could also ask a similar question as to why God would allow for the creation of deception and evil in our world. In the words of theologian Karl Barth, God is the “one who loves in freedom.” God is so concerned with the freedom of those created in God’s image that God allows us freedom to choose to worship God or to worship someone or something else.
Turning to the Bible will shed some light on why there are lots of different religions. The Bible presents a world in which there is a cosmic battle between God and the enemies of God. Within this battle between God and not-god, the enemy masquerades as angel of light to deceive people (see 2 Cor. 11:14). While this may seem unfair of God, we also know from the Bible that those who truly seek God will find him. Again, God holds freedom of his creation as important.
To understand multiple religions, we also have to be honest about the state of humans. We read in the first chapter Romans that humans are prone to go their own way. God and God’s nature is plainly seen through nature yet by choosing to worship that which is not the true God, God gives people over to their depravity. The writer of both letters of Timothy warns about a coming day when people will abandon sound doctrine to follow what their “itching ears want to hear” (see 1 Tim. 4:1-2 and 2 Tim. 4:3-4). This leads me to conclude that some religions are deceptions of the enemy of God and some flow from the depravity of human beings.
The example of the apostle Paul in Athens suggests a way to handle the multitude of religions. Paul engaged with those in the city who worshipped a multitude of different gods. He called the people of Athens to repent because God will one day judge all people on their beliefs and life actions.
The question raised by the world of multiple religions should not get in the way of our sharpening our focus on Jesus Christ. Regardless of how others say they have come to encounter faith, Christians are a people who have discovered that God has come to us quite clearly and openly in Jesus Christ, and announce this fact with no room for doubt. The challenge remains to consistently conform our lives to what God has done in and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Similar to Paul in the Biblical book of Acts, I would encourage you to seek God. God is not like a divine being made by the design of human hands but the ruler of the universe who has reached out to us that we might find salvation.
