Do all roads lead to God?

People often challenge me on the exclusivity of the Christian faith. They feel that Christians are arrogant and big headed by claiming that all other faiths are wrong and Christianity is right! This is understandable, after all, are Christians the only people who have a monopoly on the truth?

I agree that it does seem rather arrogant to make exclusive claims that Christianity is right and all others faiths are wrong. But the Christian claim is not arrogant if in fact it is true! For example, if I said to you that 2+2 =4, would you say that I was being arrogant? No, of course not. The reason why I'm not is simply because its absolutely true! On the other hand, if I said that 2+2=5 then you would be understandably annoyed if I claimed that this calculation was true. In fact you would have several questions to ask about the capability of my maths teacher!

What I hope to do within these few pages is to expose some misconceptions that people have about other religions and to demonstrate exactly why Christianity is the only way to God, and therefore why it is not arrogant to claim it is the only truth.

Many people are familiar with the analogy that God is at the top of a mountain and there are many pathways which lead to him. The analogy is both simple and appealing, but is it true?

Every summer, my wife and I go mountain climbing in Scotland. There is one mountain in particular that we've scaled several times, approaching it by different paths which lead to the summit. The one thing about the mountain is this, no matter what route you take, the top of the mountain never changes and the view remains the same. If all roads lead to God, then one would expect the same God to be at the top, and it is precisely at this vital point that the 'one mountain many paths' analogy falls down, since the God at the end of each religion is quite different.

There are so many religions in the world that space does not permit me to explore them all. Nevertheless I would like to concentrate on the four main religions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in order to show how even within these four faiths there are immense differences with the "God" at the top of the mountain.

To begin with let us briefly consider what each of these religions say about God.

Religion	Their View of God
Islam	There is one God (Allah) who is holy. He cannot be known by us personally
Hinduism	There are many gods (in the Hindu faith there are over 350 million gods)
Buddhism	There is no God
Christianity	There is one God who is holy. He can be known by us personally and wants us to know him.

Immediately we can see that the 'view' from the top of the mountain is quite different (using our opening analogy). Clearly these four faiths cannot all be right. Besides if all roads lead to the same God then Buddhism is ruled out immediately because it doesn't believe in a God at all!

Having established that there are major differences within these main religions, let's see if there is an area where they agree. First of all, there are highly commendable elements within other religions. Many have high standards of ethics and morality within their faith which must not be rubbished in any way. But the big question is this: Are people capable of living up to those high ethics? The sad truth is that whether you live as a Buddhist in Bangkok or a Muslim in Malaysia, every person has failed to live up to the standards of their faith. Having failed to live up to them, the one thing that is needed is to be forgiven and saved from our many failings and sin.

In one form or another the different faiths all recognise that man is sinful, and that sin separates us from God because he is holy and we are not. Therefore if sin is the one thing that keeps us out of heaven because it alienates us from God, then we have to examine how these faiths effectively deal with the problem of sin.

Absolutely every faith (apart from Christianity) believes that if one does enough good works either by some form of religious activity such as praying, giving money to charity or doing good deeds then this will somehow compensate and so appease God. The hope is that the good in the person's life will outweigh the bad - rather like the scales of justice. But here we encounter two huge problems. First of all, we have no idea how much sin have we committed! Indeed, few of us can remember all of the wrong things that we have said and done within one day let alone a lifetime! Besides, it isn't just the things that we regard as being sinful that we have to take into account, it's ultimately the things that God says are sinful, for if God is God, then he is the one with the authority to decide. Second, how much praying, fasting, or good deeds do you have to do in order to pay for any one of those sins? We don't know! In fact, we can't know, for only God can know these things. Therein lies our problem. We know that we need to be put right with God, but we have no idea how much we have to do to guarantee that we have paid for all of our sins in full. In other words, man is hopelessly lost and he cannot save himself.

If we cannot save ourselves, then it stands to reason that the only person who could save us is God himself, for it is He who will judge us one day. In the Bible, God clearly tells us that every person is sinful by nature (in other words, no-one is perfect). That's why the Bible says, 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23). Sin separates us from a relationship with God both in this life and in eternity. But God goes on to tell us that our sin carries a penalty and that penalty is death: 'the wages of sin is death' (Romans 6:23). Nothing else can pay the wages of our sin but death.

Clearly we will all die if we pay those wages, and that is precisely why God stepped in to rescue us by sending his Son Jesus! Jesus died in our place to pay the wages for our sin in full. He did this for several reasons. Firstly, because of his immense love for us (John 3:16) and secondly, because we could never pay for our own sins (Proverbs 14:12).

If Jesus is both fully God and fully man, and He paid for our sins in full, then we can be absolutely certain that he has done just that! It is God that we have offended by our sinfulness and amazingly God, in the person of Jesus Christ, is the one paying the price for our sins. So we are guaranteed that our sin is paid for in full because God has paid the price. This is both the mercy and the majesty of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All world religions, with the exception of Christianity, rely upon man vainly trying to please God by means of religious activity or their good works. Whereas Christianity is totally reliant upon God reaching down to man in the person of Jesus Christ and offering total forgiveness through him.

This is why Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.' (John 14:6)

Jesus is the only person who completely pays the price for sin and makes us fit for heaven. That's why the Bible says, 'For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.' (Romans 6:23) 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.' (John 3:16-18)

We started with the analogy that all roads lead up the same mountain to God. But I trust that you will have seen that they all, except Christianity, lead to a dead end by trying to approach God on man's merits and not on God's. Only through faith in Jesus will a person see eternal life precisely because he is the only person who sufficiently and fully pays for the one thing that keeps us out of heaven... sin. For Jesus is the way to God, the truth of God and the life-giver from God. I would like to leave you with a different analogy from the mountain one which we started with:

Let's just imagine that you have the chance of flying to the sun in one of two rockets. The first rocket is built by man using materials found only on earth. The second rocket (and here is where we have to use our imagination) comes from the sun and is built from materials there. It has landed on earth and is now ready for a return flight back to the sun. Which rocket would you travel in?

Chances are you would choose to travel in the second rocket, which came from the sun in the first place. Because you are absolutely certain that it is capable of withstanding the heat of the sun for the simple reason that it was built there. The first rocket however gives you no such guarantee.

This analogy shows the fundamental difference between other world religions and Christianity. Other world religions are man trying to reach up to a holy God using man made materials. Christianity on the other hand is God reaching down to the world in the person of Jesus Christ who has already come from heaven and is therefore capable of carrying us back there too. Tell me, which would you put your trust in? In the man-reaching-up-to-God, or the God-reaching-down-to-man religion? If you don't want to take the risk then put your faith in Jesus today (How to become a Christian).