Religious tolerance falls short of true faithfulness

Researchers scratched beneath the surface of Americans’ religious beliefs recently and uncovered what many of us would rather not talk about:

The gap between what people profess to believe and how they actually live is widening.

At first glance, recent findings by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggest our nation’s diverse religious beliefs are perfectly in line with uniquely American morals: We stand for what is right, and we stand for another person’s right to insist we are wrong.

But if you dig a little deeper into the forum’s survey of 36,000 Americans, you find a disturbing trend toward duplicity among people of faith.

For example, most Americans say they’re absolutely certain about standards of right and wrong, but they’re just as certain that someone else’s view can also be right.

That makes no sense.

The New York Times put it a bit too gently recently: “The report … reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths.”

To me, the bottom line seems to be that when it comes to their faith, many Americans aren’t very faithful.

Here’s a smattering of the survey’s findings:

“Seventy percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” including majorities among Protestants and Catholics.

“Among evangelical Christians, 57 percent agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life.”

“Eighty percent of Americans believe in absolute standards of right and wrong, but a majority of Catholics, Protestants and Jews insist their religion should “adopt modern beliefs and practices.”

“It’s not that Americans don’t believe in anything,” sociologist Michael Lindsay, of Rice University, told The New York Times. “It’s that we believe in everything.”

To evangelical Christians, the Pew Forum survey and others like it drive home the importance of knowing truth and living out that truth in our daily experience.

God’s word makes it clear that truth does not depend upon my viewpoint or your viewpoint. Truth is truth. Error is error. They cannot be reconciled.

The elephant in the room in any discussion of religious tolerance is that everyone cannot be right all at the same time.

Jesus Christ, God in human form, came into a world of diverse belief, wildly opposing religious traditions, and made this exclusive claim: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me” (John 14:6 – NKJV).

Think about that statement. It’s an all or nothing proposition. Either Jesus Christ alone really is the only means of salvation from sin, the only way to eternal life, or he is to be disregarded. You can’t have it both ways, or even somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

To be a true believer in Jesus Christ, by definition, places one at odds with every other worldview that purports to hold truth. To profess belief in Christ, yet at the same time insist there are many ways to salvation, is a nonsensical contradiction.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Consider the words of Jesus:

“Do not think that I am come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;’ and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household’ ” (Matthew 10:34-36 – NKJV).

I encourage Christians to strongly reject the lie that truth is relative. In the ambiguous and blurry jumble of this world’s religions, let us cling to the person of Jesus Christ.

Christ alone is truth. Christ alone is life.