The Only Way?

Each week during the season of Lent I’m focusing on a challenging facet of our faith. Today’s topic is not just challenging, it’s scandalous. Indeed, it’s a scandal with a name: the scandal of particularity.

What is it? The belief that in Jesus we have met God come among us, and that he provides the one and only means of salvation.

In a culture that believes that all religious roads eventually lead to the same destination, such exclusivity is truly scandalous. In fact, it was already scandalous in Jesus’ day. It was a primary reason why the religious leaders schemed to have Jesus crucified.

So why would Christians even want to claim that Jesus is the only Savior? Because Jesus said so himself. On the night before he was crucified Jesus told his disciples, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It was jarring when he said it, and even more jarring the next day when his body hung dead on the cross. How could it be?

One of our culture’s most valued virtues is tolerance. And it is a virtue. Given that we come from so many places and hold so many different beliefs, it is well that we tolerate each other. But for many, tolerance is more than simply forbearance. They base their tolerance on the belief that all truth is relative. That is, since we all have different life experiences, we have different truths, and there’s no way to tell who is right – and even to ask who’s right isn’t right. So it goes when people believe that truth is relative to our experience.

Some Christians have tried to de-scandalize the particularity of our faith by discounting Jesus’ exclusive claims. But when we try to make Jesus culturally palatable, we no longer have Jesus. He is who he is. He said what he said. He did what he did.

So what should we do – try to out shout different believers? That doesn’t match with how Jesus related. His way is to treat people with respect. We want to listen to them, knowing that they, too, are made in the image of God, and are seekers like we are. Because Jesus wins people’s hearts through love, that must be our pattern too. We can do so, and still gently affirm that Jesus is who he said he is – the only way.

Claiming for Jesus what he claimed for himself is a wise and faithful expression of our faith. But questions remain about how God will work out judgment and salvation for each person in the end. Knowing how loving and just he is, we can leave that to him. It’s okay not to know.

I’ve been helped greatly by an observation about the symbolism of the cross, with its vertical and horizontal beams. Jesus had a “vertical” relationship with the Father, and knew that he was himself the means for us to relate to the Father. But his arms were open wide on the cross’ horizontal beam. And that matched his “whosoever will” invitations to follow him. He demonstrated that broad reach on the cross, as he extended salvation to the thief crucified next to him – a thief who didn’t even fully understand who Jesus was.

When Jesus’ body was buried in the grave, his disciples’ faith was buried too. But you’ve heard the good news: he rose from the dead, and their faith also came alive. It made believers out of them, and it’s made a believer out of me. God can take care of the rest.