I regularly see this picture with words, ‘There are 5,000 gods worshipped by humanity…. but only yours is right’. The accusation is that any religion that makes an exclusive claim to truth is arrogant. The problem, of course, that the accusation itself is an exclusive claim – no religion is true – and, therefore, fails on its own terms.
Imagine a room full of Drs all claiming to have discovered a cure for your terminal illness. One stands up and says that only her cure will work. Is she being arrogant? Well only if what she claims is untrue. If it is true, then it’s not arrogant and you would be well advised to take the medicine.
In John’s Gospel Jesus says ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’. It’s an exclusive claim, but was he being arrogant or was he telling the truth. Like the hypothetical medicine above, the only way to find out is to test the claim and examine the evidence, the central plank of which is whether Jesus rose from the dead. Prove that he didn’t and you can dismiss him as a charlatan. But if he did then you would be well advised to take him seriously.
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