Is Everyone Right? The Problem of Universalism

Are all of the REALLY essentially the same? Nope

I feel like I have heard more about people either advocating universalism or just simply teaching about it and others catching on to this teaching than I think I have ever heard. It started with the controversial book by Rob Bell (Love Wins) that did not endorse universalism so much as it didn't deny. And then there is the Mitt Romney/Mormon debates. We hear people talk about how Mormons and Christians are the exact same. And that also Buddhist, Hindus, Zoroastrians and Muslims all worship the "same god" but they have different names and requirements. Moral relativism is the only truth in our society. To deny the truth of someone else's belief (even if it is entirely contradictory to your believing) is the only bad thing you can do. Now why is it like this?

I had a long discussion (more of a debate) with a kid I didn't know over facebook (who told me he is a Christian) over the legitimacy of the claim that Christianity is the one true religion and worships the one true God, while all others do not. His main driving point was how could I believe that people who lived good lives and worship the only way they knew could go to hell because the don't believe in Yahweh, the God of the Bible. Honestly, I will say this is a tough question I have wrestled with frequently in my life. It seems like it is hateful to believe that God would do this to people. I can honestly say with all of my heart that I would love for nothing more than all people to go to heaven for eternity. Only problem is, we put some holes in Gods power when we do this.

One problem of this is resounded throughout the New Testament. That only through Jesus can we get salvation. Jesus even proclaimed this by saying " I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Now to analyze what is going on in this passage we must see that with everything he says "the way", "the truth", and "the Life". With Jesus saying "the" he implies that there is no other way, no other option, not other person to turn to. He is our one hope. We cannot look to Muhammad for salvation by the Father, because he does not represent the Father, but rather Allah and rejected Jesus as the Son of God. We cannot look to Buddha for help because he looked to himself for fulfillment, rather than to God. So what makes us want to say that everyone is right?

Most of this is out of mercy, oddly enough. We don't want to imagine anyone going to hell, even if it is our grandma, third aunt or cousin's fiancee's mother...basically anyone going to hell is sickening to us. So we reject the thought that anyone who rejected or never even heard of God will be judged and give them a free pass. Only problem is that God tells us to go to people to teach them about Him. In Matthew 28 Jesus says "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit". If Jesus wanted us to go tell people, wouldn't that negate the free pass to Heaven that everyone who has never heard about Jesus and his teachings has? Of course it would! To think God only wants us to go, "just cuz" is crazy. God wants the whole world to know him and uses Christians as his mailmen to take his teachings to the world.

If you are a Christian you should be sickened by the thought of people not knowing Jesus and this shouldn't just be used as fuel to a non orthodox view of God's grace. It should be used as fuel to go and teach people about Jesus whether they be rich businessmen in Hong Kong or poor peasants in Romania. This compassion should be manifested in ways rather than telling God that He is wrong.

God does love people and wants them to be with Him for eternity. To get this they must come to know Him, not some other god. Jesus was sent so we did not have to work for grace. Every other religion has sets of rules you have to follow legalistically. With Islam it is the Five Pillars of Faith. In Buddhism it is the Noble Eight Fold Pathway. While there are sins we can break, we aren't condemned when we don't follow them to ever cross of a "T" and dot of a lower case "j". We are covered by the death of Jesus through trusting Him and not by loopholes or by living a good life in which you never killed anyone or did anything too bad.