Is Jesus the Only Way to God?

James Emery White

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9780830863686
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Isn't it awfully narrow and intolerant for Christians to believe that Jesus is the only way to God? James Emery White responds to common questions.

How many different ways can we have our coffee made at Starbucks?

One hundred? Two hundred? Over five hundred?

Howard Schultz, who bought the fledgling coffee company in 1987 and turned it into one of the world’s most recognizable brands, once estimated in an interview that there are over seventy thousand ways we can order Starbucks coffee. When John Naisbitt first wrote his best-selling book Megatrends (1982), he said that one of the top ten trends of the modern world is a shift from no choice to multiple choice.

It is certainly true of spirituality.

When it comes to an authoritative spiritual text, there’s the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, and the Book of Mormon.

When it comes to religious leaders, you can select from the Pope, the Dalai Lama or your local imam.

When it comes to religious groups, you can link up with those in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism or Scientology.

But do you even have to choose?

Is There More Than One Way to God?

Today, increasing numbers of people believe that there are many roads that lead to God. The idea is that searching for God is like climbing a mountain. Since everyone knows that there is not just one way to climb a mountain—mountains are too big for that—there must be any number of paths that can be taken. Similarly, we tend to look at all of the ideas about God throughout the religions of the world as different ways to God. Thus, the names of God in all of the world’s religions identify the same God.

It reminds me of the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” written by John Godfrey Saxe, which he wrote from an ancient Indian parable. As the story is told, six blind men in search of truth come upon an elephant and try to determine what the elephant is like. The first one, without knowing it, touched the elephant’s side and instantly said, “Well, I know what an elephant is like—it’s like a wall!” The next blind man first touched the elephant’s long, ivory tusk, and said, “No it’s not—it’s like a spear!” The third blind man discovered the elephant’s trunk and said, “Elephants are surely like a snake.” The fourth stumbled on the elephant’s leg and declared, “An elephant is clearly like a tree.” The fifth found the elephant’s ear and said, “I think it’s like a fan.” The sixth blind man came upon the elephant’s tail, and said, “I don’t understand any of you—if an elephant isn’t like a rope, then I don’t know what it’s like!”

The intended moral of the story is simple: Each of the six men insisted that they knew what an elephant is like. Each was partly right, yet also entirely wrong, because each had only a part of the picture, not the whole.

This is how many think about spiritual things and even God. All of the different religions, worldviews and philosophies are like blind men attempting to feel reality and then drawing dogmatic conclusions that can’t possibly be right because they are trying to describe something beyond their limited senses. When people try to describe God, much less the way to God, they are like blind men trying to describe an elephan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Is Jesus the Only Way to God?
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press