There’s a traditional story about an elephant and a few blind men that goes something like this:
Three blind men came across an elephant and began to touch it so that they could figure out what it was. The one touching the elephant’s leg described it as a tree. The one touching the tail described it as a rope. The third man who touched the elephant’s trunk described it as a snake.[1]
Some people say religion is like the blind men who are all describing one true reality from their own unique perspective or experience. We are all fumbling in the dark, doing our best to describe the same enormous creature. No one religion can claim to be more true than the others.
This perspective has a flaw. The interpreter of this story is claiming that they have seen something the blind men haven’t. They’ve seen the whole elephant! And so they know how the blind men’s descriptions fall short. On what authority can they claim such breadth of insight? This in itself is a claim to have found THE truth.
When it comes to comparing different world religions, one very quickly discovers that there are many points on which they do not agree. The God of the Quran ‘is far above having a son’ (Sura 4:171), but one of the most famous verses in the Bible says, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,’ (John 3:16). These gods are clearly not the same.
And according to the Bible, the gods of other religions are real, supernatural beings who love to be worshipped and want to deceive the world in order to take the place of the one true God. The very first commandment God gives to His people is, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:30). The gods of other religions are not the same as the God of the Bible. They are competitors. They are enemies.
The God of the Bible is unique. And the Bible itself offers you more than just a ‘best guess’ at whatever spiritual reality is really governing the universe. God hasn’t left us to fumble around in the dark. The Bible is the very Word of God, spoken and recorded for us so that we could know Him for ourselves. And God sent His Son, Jesus, God in the flesh, as the perfect revelation of Himself. “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
If you’re serious about finding the truth, come along to one of our Sunday services.
[1] The story occurs in many forms and appears to have Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and Jain versions. In the nineteenth century, American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) put it into verse and it is probably this version which is best known today. It can be accessed from here.
