It Must Be True

Fred Plummer is the president of The Center for Progressive Christianity (TCPC.org). Open Circle is a member church. Fred has his Easter sermon online. He tells the story of a minister colleague who reasoned that the resurrection of Jesus must be true because the church wouldn't have survived 2000 years if it wasn't. Fred says:

But it seems to me that if we use the same test for a truth in religion we have a bit of a problem. For there are at least five or six major religions active in the world today like, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, and Shintoism, that are older than Christianity. Are they therefore "more true" according to my friend's test of truth I wondered? I realized that the followers of those ancient traditions probably do not think too highly of the traditional Christian idea that Christ is the one and only way.

If you grow up in Christian-dominated culture - as I did in rural Pennsylvania - where you never have contact with any other religions, there is virtually no reason to even give a second thought to the ultimate truth claims of Christianity. They must be true. Its all you know. And it's ancient.

It's difficult to imagine that there are people growing up in other parts of the world who think the same way about their faith tradition, and some of those faith traditions are far older than Christianity. They must be true too. Right?

There is more than one way up the mountain.