Do all religions lead to the same goal?

Authentic search always leads to God

The Rev. Darlene Strickland, pastor, Unity Church of Lawrence, 900 Madeline:

Webster’s Dictionary defines religion as “a system of beliefs and practices relating to the sacred and uniting its adherents in a community.”

The world has many religions and hundreds of divisions and sects within them.

Each religion has a unique philosophy. In many cases, the most sacred and essential things in the world to one religious group – its god(s), scriptures, sacraments – are not seen as absolutes by other religions. It would appear that many different gods were competing for our devotion.

Webster continues – religion is “man’s expression of his acknowledgment of the divine.” Religion is manmade and therefore as diverse as the individual devotees.

Religion can serve to support, liberate and unite, or it can serve to constrict, control and separate. As this story by Anthony de Mello, the late Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, explains:

“A mother could not get her son to come home before sunset. So she told him that the road to their house was haunted by ghosts who came out after dusk. By the time the boy grew up, he was so afraid of ghosts that he refused to run errands at night. So she gave him a medal and told him it would protect him.”

The author, de Mello, concludes: Bad religion gives the boy faith in the medal. Good religion gets him to see that ghosts do not exist.

The spiritual path is a search for personal, experiential knowledge of the truth/God. It is a personal adventure, and it cannot be walked by anyone else. It is the search itself that is primary. All that is required of us is to commit ourselves, live our highest understanding of the truth and remain open – in all ways teachable and reachable.

An authentic search will always lead to God.

– Send e-mail to revdarlene@unityoflawrence.org.

Other faiths don’t encompass my beliefs

The Rev. George Wiley, ordained Episcopal priest, Osborne Professor of Religion, Baker University:

I don’t think all religions lead to the same goal.

Some Christians say yes, they do: All traditions point to God, or Ultimate Reality.

In Lawrence five years ago, visiting religion scholar and author Marcus Borg put it this way: Think of someone’s hand pointing to the moon. The moon represents Ultimate Reality, and each finger of the hand is a religion. They all try to get us to see the moon. If we focus on the contents of each finger (a religion’s beliefs and practices), we miss the point, which is to notice the moon, or God.

In other words, for Borg, Judaism is one “finger” for finding the divine. Sikhism is another, and so on. When people point out differences among these faiths, they’re missing the point, according to Borg. If I say that Christianity emphasizes salvation more than Judaism, or that Judaism speaks of improving the world more than Hinduism, Borg might reply that I’m focusing on the fingers instead of the moon.

But the fingers, the world’s religions, are so different that I’m not sure they’re pointing to the same moon. Theravada Buddhists, for instance, might think that looking for God, or Ultimate Reality, is a waste of time. Or is the Hindu God, who appears in many forms, the same as the God of Islam, who does not “take form” but instead speaks? Does any religion besides Christianity say, “God loves so radically that he comes to us as a suffering, dying human being”?

So while I’m open-minded toward those who say that all religions lead to the same goal, I ask, “What is this goal that they all lead to, and does it include my (Christian) belief?”

– Send e-mail to george.wiley@bakeru.edu.