Spirituality Column #773

September 7, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Oceans and Elephants

By Bob Walters

“The divine religions are like oceans. They have different names, but are all part of the same Sea!” – Facebook meme posted by a doctrinally challenged Christian friend.

It started out innocently enough but, it’s Facebook. Silliness inevitably followed.

So, mea culpa. 

Another friend on Facebook had recently shared an American religious survey that reveals an alarming trend of modern “born again believers”: upwards of 60 percent believe in “many roads” to heaven and the Kingdom of God.  We shake our heads.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” says Jesus in John 14:6, and that’s authority enough for most of us.  We have freedom to swim anywhere we want, and name the ocean anything we want, but salvation in any ocean has but one name, and that name is Jesus Christ.

Religions are not the same … that’s why they are “different.”  It is as uneducated a statement as anyone can make to assert that religions “are all the same.”  They have similar trappings – scripture, altars, priests, buildings, doctrines – but distinctly different promises, demands, and endings.  Jesus Christ crucified, dead, buried, risen Son of God, sitting at the right hand of the Father inviting us to heaven, is Christian.  Period.

When it comes to “religious surveys,” I consider Jesus pretty immune from their assertions.  A survey isn’t going to knock Jesus off His throne, God out of His Kingdom, or the Spirit away from divine truth.  Humans – all of us – make plenty of mistakes with assorted behaviors and opinions, but I never panic about the Godly truth of Christ.

And in trusting God’s truth, it is pointless to panic about man’s errant opinions.

My response – yes, on Facebook – to the survey was to offer a ponderance on why people who deny, disavow, or displace Jesus in this life are nonetheless interested in going to – or assume they deserve to be in – Heaven with Jesus for all eternity.  If you don’t exalt Jesus in this life, why would you want to be with Him in the next?

I pray for all souls to come to Christ, but in freedom, many don’t.  After some further Fb discussion, my dissenting friend popped up with the above meme about the divine religions and oceans.  The reader may here decide which “religions” are included.

I’m reminded of the old story of the elephant and how, depending on which part of the elephant a blindfolded person happens to grab, there will be great disparity of thought on what the overall object is.  Hold the elephant’s trunk?  It must be a snake.  It’s leg?  Maybe it’s a tree.  An ear?  Perhaps it’s a bird’s wing.  If the elephant is sitting on you, one may think it a static though murderous rock.  The essential truth is missed.

The true ocean of salvation is Jesus Christ, and the reality of the whole elephant is far more significant than the divisions and imaginings of its various parts. Let’s not drown in a heretic’s ocean of false religious expectations, or imagine the truth of Christ to be just one tent in a silly circus of elephants and other amusements.

To those who would invent their own heaven, don’t; Jesus already has His and it’s the only one available.  In grace – in the name of Jesus Christ – we are all invited.

It’s all we need, but we mustn’t reject the name.  That’s the elephant in the room.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will post this on Facebook and see what happens.