The Next Reformation: Do non-Christians Know God?

Many Christians have veered from their fundamentalist dogma to debate, explore, or even embrace the possibility that there are sincere believers of other faiths who may unknowingly be worshiping the same God.

I am not here to answer this question in the definitive form but merely to report on a new Christian persuasion that may slowly be making its way into mainstream Christianity.

Brahman, “The Ultimate Reality”,  Bhagavan, “God”, Ishvara, “Cosmic Controller and Lord”, and Paramatma, “Super Soul”, are the most commonly used names of God in Hinduism.

Shangdi, a Supreme Being worshiped in ancient China, is the name used for God today among many Chinese Christians. Protestant missionaries adopted the word Shen to refer to God.

Ek Onkar is the name of God in Sikhism, meaning One Creator.

With the breakdown of the “church walls” into a postmodern, anti-establishment, and non-organizational Body of Believers whose likes we have not seen since the reformation of Martin Luther, boundaries and dogma have become fuzzy and uncertain.

Without the ever-so-wise counsel of Christian leaders, who is there to stand tall on a raised pulpit and tell Sunday Christians what to believe and how to interpret what they read?

The hard reality for many Christians is that their leaders have veered from a potent relationship with the God they serve and are teaching comfortable Pharisaical tenets, while passing around collection plates as often as they can.

It’s easy to be “Christian”; there are a set of “truths” to abide by, we do our Godly-duty by attending services and every now and then we tell a friend who doesn’t want to hear it about Jesus. Ahh, feels good. And it is comfortable.

In the Book of John, Jesus said that He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” and that no one comes to the Father but through Him. Could that be interpreted to mean that people from other religions who maintain faith in God and relationship with Him will still get to Heaven, even if they do not know it is Jesus they ultimately worship? Are there others who worship God in “spirit and in truth”?

In the postmodern age of plurality, it is difficult for an empathetic Christian to deny others the path to God and salvation. Especially in a day and age where Christian and “non-believer” have become increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another.

Followers of Christ today watch the same shows, mostly speak the same way, have the same divorce rates, and are as immersed in their culture and daily struggles as anyone else. This creates an equal footing with unbelievers around them.

Without a manifest difference in the Body of Christ, a sort of empathy and horizontal relationship is created between believer and non-believer; and it becomes difficult to determine for certain if God is the Lord of Plurality or the exclusive God whose name you must know to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and there is no doubt that He has been crucified and resurrected from the dead. True Believers cultivate a genuine relationship through prayer and daily experience with their Creator. But there is a pervading feeling among an increasing numbers of Christians today that the Muslim, Hindu, or Jew praying to God in a far away land where Christ is not pervasive in the culture and where Jesus may not be freely preached, will still be saved by the grace of God. After all, Christians reason, God is fair, and not only fair, but full of grace, and not only graceful, but Perfectly Loving, and wishing that none should perish.

Is it possible that the Muslim’s prayers prayed in Iran are acceptable to God? That the West African practicing the Yoruba religion in a remote part of the world has a real relationship with the God we know as Jesus? Is a marriage of “spirit” and “truth” formed between God and man regardless of name?

What about the nontheistic Buddhist who has attempted to absolve all desire from his soul? As Christians, we know this is not possible; and that only Christ Himself was able to accomplish such a feat (by desiring only His Father’s will and not His own). As humans we are unable because our innate sinful makeup will ultimately point us back to ourselves and away from God.

Of course, we all know that according to the teachings of the Bible, no one is sinless, and therefore, no one can enter into heaven without the intercession of Christ and His sacrifice on the cross. That is the pervasive theology; but could there be room for a pluralistic interpretation of salvation among sincere believers of all faiths who seek God with all their heart, mind, and soul?

The truthful answer–regardless of how your church friends and your own religiosity will react, is this: a massive reformation is needed in the church today, much as it was needed in Martin Luther’s time when he nailed his proclamation to the church walls.

We must, as Christians, throw off the shackles of all forms of slavery to non-truths that binds us to our self and all forms of familairity and marriage with false religion (in the form of our present day Christianity) and strive as the Body of Christ to find out the truth regarding this and many other matters facing our understanding of faith today.

Without some consensus among the True Body of Believers independent of past religious thought and worldly church leaders, we risk remaining in a dark age of sorts regarding our understanding of the One who has set us free.

“I say, then, neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man whatever has the right of making one syllable binding on a Christian man, unless it be done with his own consent. Whatever is done otherwise is done in the spirit of tyranny…I cry aloud on behalf of liberty and conscience, and I proclaim with confidence that no kind of law can with any justice be imposed on Christians, except so far as they themselves will; for we are free from all.” (Martin Luther).