LOVE AND THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS
INTRODUCTION:
1) Comparing religions is not easy.
a) Claims differ greatly on issues of divine nature,
problems of humanity, and the character of salvation.
b) It is not true that all religions say the same thing,
just in culturally different ways.
2) Religions can be compared with respect to their truth
claims on answers to four perennial questions that humans
regularly raise.
a) What is the nature of the ultimate?
b) How may the human predicament best be described?
c) What is the character of salvation?
d) How is salvation appropriated?
3) Comparing these truth claims involves some basic issues.
a) What is the goal of life?
i) While there are many religions, there are not many
answers to the question of the goal of human existence.
ii) It may be narrowed down to three metaphysical [1]
systems:
(1) Naturalism – there is no god that matters.
(2) Monism – god is everything, or the soul of everything.
(3) Theism – there is a personal God.
b) What is wrong with humanity, what prevents the goal of
life from being attained (addresses the issue of sin or
evil)?
i) Hindu – the goal is identity with the Absolute; evil is
ignorance of the truth.
ii) Muslim – the goal is obedience to the law of Allah; sin
is disobedience to divine laws.
iii) Sin is always defined in relation to the ultimate.
c) What, if anything, the transcendent or the real has done
about the human problem?
i) What provision has been made?
ii) Answers range from nothing at all to everything.
iii) God can be viewed as the good that helps us simply by
being there to the One who intervened in history to save
humanity.
d) How is salvation appropriated?
i) If sin is ignorance, enlightenment is called for.
ii) If sin is inauthentic living, authentic living is
called for.
iii) If sin is transgressing God’s law, obedience is called
for.
BODY: How do these approaches to religion relate to the
requirement of love as a component of that religion?
1) We have seen that there are three types of world views.
a) Naturalism – religions or quasi-religions that focus
mainly on the world, whether or not they actually deny the
existence of God.
b) Monism – religions or religious philosophies that
identify God with everything that there is.
c) Theism – religions that posit a personal creator,
ontologically [2] distinct from creation, who is advancing
divine purposes in history.
2) Varieties of naturalism.
a) Holds that there is no god of any kind, in the world or
beyond it.
b) Naturalistic spirituality operates within the
all-encompassing system of nature.
c) Because no entities exist outside the natural causal
system, humans must create whatever meaning life has
without bringing God into the picture (Humanism).
i) Western humanism looks to upward evolution and the
increasing well-being of humanity, and salvation comes
through human effort alone.
ii) Humankind is the measure of truth as its own and only
savior.
(1) Evolutionary humanism – Julian Huxley.
(2) Existential humanism – Jean Paul Sarte.
(3) Political humanism – Karl Marx.
d) Deism, a second form of religious naturalism, does not
allow the creator to intervene in history.
i) Thomas Paine – God gave the world its start and its
existence a basis of meaning, but then left us on our own.
ii) God created the world but now lets it operate by its
own natural and self-sustaining laws.
iii) Though the existence of God is not denied, the natural
realm remains all that we can be concerned about.
e) Far eastern religions are mostly disinterested in a high
God.
i) Taoism – honors the spirits of rivers, mountains, and
stars, together with the patron deities of the trades and
occupations.
(1) Since the goal is oneness with nature and personal
happiness, the hindrance (sin) is unnatural behavior and
disharmony.
(2) The path to salvation is to live naturally.
(3) Since there is no high God to be concerned with, the
individual pursues the goal of religion in relation to the
material world and the natural Tao. [3]
(4) Religion is largely a matter of adjusting to the
teleology [4] of the world and its laws.
ii) Confucianism is similar – an ethical doctrine, a gentle
humanism.
(1) The goal is well-being on earth and the hindrance (sin)
is anarchy in behavior.
(2) Salvation comes from living together in good
relationships according to tradition.
(3) Humans become corrupt when they refuse to pursue the
good of other people and of the ancestors.
(4) Critically important are relations between father-son,
ruler-ruled, and husband-wife.
(5) What matters is regulation and harmony, respect and
courtesy, filial piety and adjustment to one’s place in
society.
iii) Buddhism – a world religion that in practice is
largely oriented to life on earth.
(1) Our miseries arise from the desire for things.
(2) Unhappiness arises from wanting this and that and being
frustrated at dissatisfaction.
(3) If people would just lose their desires, they would
find happiness.
(4) The state of losing desires is the goal called Nirvana.
(5) It is easy to attain, but there are disciplines
available through which one can begin to lose such desires.
(6) Rather than a personal God, emptiness and the
extinction of ego are central to original Buddhism.
(7) The root of misery is desire, and since there is no
personal God to help us, salvation is attained through
ascetic discipline, following the path laid out by the
Buddha. (Mahayana Buddhism tended only later to make the
Buddha into a personal savior).
iv) Zen is a Japanese variety of Buddhism whose goal is
also enlightenment in this world.
(1) The focus is on the fact that our minds are trapped in
ignorance and need to be liberated through mental
discipline.
(2) Zen offers a way to experience the unitary character of
reality, and since one cannot think one’s way into it, what
is required is a revelation that comes in a flash of
insight.
f) Naturalism focuses on the world.
i) But is it really true that there is no more to existence
than just this world?
ii) Love and devotion cannot be understood without
reference to a loving personal transcendence.
iii) Living well on earth is important, but there is still
a deep need in us to know God.
iv) Naturalism has trouble answering the ultimate questions
of life.
3) Varieties of Monism.
a) Monism identifies God with the world or with the soul of
this world.
i) God is not thought of as distinct from the world;
transcendence is equated with the material world.
ii) Its truth claim is that reality is ultimately one.
(1) God is the world.
(2) The world emanates from God.
(3) God is in the world.
(4) Through the world, God himself experiences change and
evolution.
(5) The world in both its good and evil flows from God
necessarily and is not the result of any decision on God’s
part.
(6) Since monism is hard to reason one’s way through, its
truth is grasped mystically rather than by rational
inferences.
b) Pantheism and Panentheism.
c) Hinduism embodies monism in a classic religious form.
(1) Salvation has an eternal dimension though not on a
personal plane.
(2) The goal of religion is oneness with being, and human
kind’s problem (sin) is that it does not recognize this.
(3) This makes knowledge the key to salvation – we must
learn to recognize our own divine identity.
(4) We need to change our way of thinking and accept the
fact that we are part of the divine essence.
d) What we call the New Age markets this philosophy in the
west.
i) New Agers like to say that all being is one,
interrelated and independent, and that God and the world
are all a part of one continuous reality without
boundaries.
ii) Everything, including ourselves, partakes of this one
divine essence.
iii) Whatever exists is god, and therefore perfect.
iv) Humans are divine and only need to wake up to that
fact, to honor and worship themselves.
v) New Age spirituality promises to help us tap into
spiritual energy within ourselves.
vi) It is a western form of Monism that places emphasis on
the individual, although (paradoxically) the idea of monism
originally was to lose personal distinctness.
e) Monism gives rise to questions.
i) How can we be one with Being when we sense our own
personal distinctness as a fact – our own personal
distinctness from God and from other persons, and we crave
fellowship with both?
(1) If God is impersonal, there can be no genuinely I-Thou
relationship with God, though the need for such a
relationship is fundamental to religions, including popular
Hinduism (as opposed to philosophical Hinduism).
(2) This is why monistic religion tends to develop theistic
cults such a Hare Krishna.
ii) Monism also has special difficulty with the problem of
evil – it declares it illusory or attributes it to God.
iii) It makes black flies as significant as humans.
4) Theism – there is a personal God existing in the world
and beyond the world who created the world and who
intervened in history to accomplish the salvation of man.
a) Infinite personal being, maker of heaven and earth, who
values human beings made in his image.
b) He cares (loves) so much that he enters into history to
restore the covenant relationship threatened by sin.
5) What does all of this have to do with love?
a) Religions can be viewed as alternative accounts of love.
b) Consider these statements that use the word “love” in
ways that have different implications for life.
i) If you love God enough, he will love you, but if you do
not, you will be sent away.
ii) Love is a desire that requires eradication if one is to
find genuine peace.
iii) Love requires respect for ancestors and submission to
leaders and to established structures of society.
iv) Love is attained by gaining the freedom to do as you
please regardless of the feelings of others.
c) Theories and love.
i) Naturalism – there is no god to love us.
ii) Deism – posits a transcendent god, but he is wholly
transcendent; he does act purposefully in history
subsequent to creation. He has no particular purpose for
humans in the world who have to figure out what is right
and wrong by studying nature and who live their lives
without a personal relationship with their maker. God will
judge on the last day according to man’s performance, but
it depends on a natural rather than a supernatural
revelation of God’s law.
d) Not all theism knows a loving God.
i) Muslims confess Allah as the one true God, Muhammad as
his apostle. God gave a revelation of his will for humanity
recorded in the Koran.
ii) Doctrine of sin is understood in relation to these
features – failure to submit to Allah’s will in the Koran.
iii) Islam has developed five pillars:
(1) The simple creed confessing Allah as God and Muhammad
as his prophet.
(2) Regular daily prayers.
(3) Fasting.
(4) Almsgiving.
(5) Pilgrimages to holy places.
iv) Man is judged based on observance, so atonement, no
Savior, each person is responsible for his own fate.
v) Fortunately for Muslims, what is commanded is fairly
easy to fulfill.
(1) Sin is not taken to involve inner corruption.
(2) It is assumed that people can obey Allah’s will in
their own strength.
(3) Having done what is required the faithful are entitled
to feel good about their achievements.
CONCLUSION:
1) Theists have a strong view of revelation.
2) If there is a personal Creator who loves us and wants us
to know him, he would have to communicate with us so that
we might know his thoughts and plans.
3) God would make himself known.
4) Not content just to give information, God has shared his
very self with us in history and recorded it in the gospel.
5) According to Jesus (the Word as revealed in the word),
the God who made the universe loves us and wants to relate
to us.
a) What could possibly give us a greater sense of
importance and value than that?
b) At the depths of the Christian revelation is the truth
that human history is being redeemed by the grace of God at
work.
c) We long for every person to gain knowledge of the ocean
of God’s love.
6) There is no greater love than this:
a) John 3:16 -- For God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him
should not perish, but have eternal life.
b) Rom. 5:8 -- But God commendeth his own love toward us,
in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
[1] Philos.
a. concerned with abstract thought or subjects, as
existence, causality, or truth.
b. concerned with first principles and ultimate grounds, as
being, time, or substance.
[2] on·tol·o·gy (on tolÆÃ j"), n.
1. the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of
existence or being as such.
2. (loosely) metaphysics.
[3] Tao (dou, tou), n. (sometimes l.c.)
1. (in philosophical Taoism) that in virtue of which all
things happen or exist.
2. the rational basis of human activity or conduct.
3. a universal, regarded as an ideal attained to a greater
or lesser degree by those embodying it.
[4] tel·e·ol·o·gy (telÅ" olÆÃ j", t"Ål"-), n. Philos.
1. the doctrine that final causes exist.
2. the study of the evidences of design or purpose in
nature.
3. such design or purpose.
4. the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are
apparent in nature.
5. (in vitalist philosophy) the doctrine that phenomena are
guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also
move toward certain goals of self-realization.