Jesus Among Other Founders III

In most sports games, there’s almost always a need to change the players involved in order to keep them fresh. A lot of sports that require such heavy athletic ability will have a system for accomplishing this: football has strings, Hockey has lines, and basketball has substitutions. Sports and some religious worldviews are a lot alike.

Take Islam. “If you said to a Muslim, ‘Did God have to reveal himself to Muhammad or could it have been through anyone else?’ They’ll insist it was given to Muhammad, but theoretically it could’ve been anyone.”

Take Buddhism. If you said to a Buddhist, “Can anyone experience what the Buddha experienced,” or “Could, by chance, anyone have discovered the same things about Nirvana that Buddha discovered?” You would find the answer to be “yes.”

Take Zoroastrianism. When you ask if the teachings and philosophy that Zoroaster proclaimed could’ve been proclaimed by anyone else, the answer would also be a theoretical “yes.”

Take the Baha’i worldview. In this system of belief, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, etc… were all great prophets that revealed new parts of God. If you ask whether or not these prophets could’ve been replaced, it would say, almost emphatically, that they could have.

Founders in most religions are usually mere vessels or messengers. As you can see in the above examples, you can take the founder out of the worldview and still have a worldview-little has changed. But what about Christianity? What happens when you take Christ out of Christianity? The entire worldview crumbles. “Christ is the substance of the Revelation-this testifies about HIM!” Jesus is not merely a messenger, but the sender! If you replaced Jesus with say, Paul, Paul could not say that HE was the “Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Paul could not claim a status of deity in which he would be humanity’s savior. It’s not just about belief in Christ’s teachings, but in Christ himself. In Buddhism, you don’t know the Buddha, only his teachings. In Islam, you don’t know Muhammad, only his revelation. With Christianity, you are getting to personally know Christ. It has been said,

“When you take ‘Christ’ out of ‘Christian,’ all you’re left with are the letters I-A-N, and Ian cannot help you.”

~ by johnfoxe on July 26, 2008.