Is Christianity Arrogant?

She said, you assume to be sane that you think that the only way that you can really know God is through the person of Jesus Christ. Is that correct? And I said, well, that would be correct.

And then she said, well, I wouldn't want to be an immoral person like you. That's why I'm a Buddhist. Christianity claims to know the one and only way to God. Is it arrogant to claim an absolute truth?

Hello and welcome to Let My People Think, where this week we'll hear from RZIM President Michael Ramsden. The Christian worldview believes that there is only one way to God. It is through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Critics like to peg such a claim as arrogance. After all, who are we to claim that we are right and all other worldviews are wrong? The question makes for a good soundbite. But when you take a closer look at both the accusation and the Christian worldview, you'll find that it's incorrect.

Here's Michael with his message titled, Is Christianity Arrogant? I remember I was speaking a few years ago at an event a bit like this. And at the end, I said, look, any question you can ask me, you can ask. And a lady stood up and she said, OK, I have a question for you. She said, you didn't say this in your talk, but you seem to assume it is true. She said, you assume to be sane that you think that the only way that you can really know God is through the person of Jesus Christ.

Is that correct? And I said, well, that would be correct. And then she said, well, I wouldn't want to be an immoral person like you.

That's why I'm a Buddhist. And so at the end of the meeting, I went up to her and I just said, I said, can I ask you a question? She said, yes. I said, you're telling me that you don't want to look at what Christianity says because you think it's immoral.

It's morally wrong to go around saying other people are wrong. She said, that's right. I said, didn't the Buddha say that the Hindus were wrong? Didn't the Buddha say that the caste system was evil and that the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas were not actually divine revelation? And her mouth fell open. And she said, he did say that.

I read it this morning in my devotional readings. So I said, well, look, if you're prepared to believe in the Buddha, even though he said other people were wrong, why are you not prepared to listen or pay attention to what Jesus Christ said? Because he said other people were wrong. She said, I don't like where this is going. And I said, I can appreciate what you're saying. I said, I understand the concern you have. I said, but it seems to me that the concern you have is going to somehow reflect back to you. And actually, we became friends through that particular encounter.

And she was in a church the next morning, probably because she still wasn't quite sure what I said and so was deciding to come back and see if it was me or her. But we actually got on quite well. There was a very famous professor of political thought at the University of Oxford called Isaiah Berlin. Isaiah Berlin wrote many, many books and was sort of a tiring intellectual figure of the 1960s.

And two, he was a polymath. He wrote about all kinds of subjects, history, philosophy, political theory, economics and so on. But two things that he continually came back to, to look at, to examine as a scholar and as an academic were to do with the issue of freedom.

What does it mean to live in a free country? And the idea of monism, the idea that there's only one form of truth. And Isaiah Berlin lived and saw communism, fascism, Nazism and so on all come and go.

And these things bothered him. And so what Isaiah Berlin did is he began to say, look, he said the idea that if you want to have a free society, if you want to have a libertarian society, you must have one where you have pluralism. Where you don't try to say, look, one, there's just one type of truth. There are many types of truth. Now, the way he defined pluralism is different to how many people define it today.

And it took me a long time just to explain the differences between those two things. But it's important to understand he's not talking about pluralism as if we were, if you know what postmodernism is and the way that a postmodern would talk about pluralism. To him it was something slightly different. But what he basically was trying to argue was that we have to somehow create a free and loving and just society. And the essence of that was pluralism, the idea that there are multiple truths. And Isaiah Berlin, the way he put it was this. He said the enemy of pluralism is monism, the ancient belief there is a single harmony of truths into which everything, if it is genuine, in the end must fit. He said the consequence of this belief is that those who know should command those who do not.

To cause pain, to kill, to torture are in general rightly condemned. But if these things are not done for my personal benefit, but for an ism, socialism, nationalism, fascism, communism, fanatically held religious belief or progress or the fulfillment of the laws of history, then they are in order. And then a little while later in the same essay he goes on to say monism is one step away from despotism. You see what he's saying? He's saying if you have a group of people who believe they have the truth, they will then believe that they may employ any means necessary no matter how brutal they may be to make everybody believe in that truth.

Monism is always a step away from despotism. If you believe you have the truth and you're sure about it, then you're always in danger of becoming a despotic. The apostle Paul, for example, is very often accused of being arrogant.

The apostle Paul was, many of you know, the writer of the most part of the New Testament. And it went like this, he seems so sure, he seems so certain, he seems so self-assured. Imagine when I walked into this auditorium this evening, I stood in front of you and my first line to you was this. Ladies and gentlemen, I've flown all the way over from Oxford tonight to tell you that I know for sure I am going to heaven.

Now how does that sound? And the answer is it seems to sound to many people as being very, very presumptuous and certainly arrogant. Because in effect what I seem to be saying is, guys, I'm better than you. I'm so much better than you that God himself is eagerly awaiting my arrival in heaven. And I've just come here to tell you Americans, really, A, why we're so superior, and B, why you need to get your act together. And of course, from my perspective, things started to go wrong in 1776.

And we're going to have to go a long way back to put everything right, but you know, it can still be done. So the question still then remains, and it's particularly acute within the Christian faith, where the idea of assurance of heaven, of being able to say I know, undermines any idea that maybe surely that just simply breeds arrogance. It is inherently arrogant.

What makes you think you're better than everybody else? Now the way I'd like to try and respond to that is by taking something that Jesus said, which I'm sure will be very familiar to many of you, and trying to look at it with slightly fresh eyes, and then draw the lessons out and apply them back in. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told a parable. He said, look, two men went to the temple to pray together.

And they both go to the temple, and they both pray together. One of them was a very religious man. He was a Pharisee.

Now you need to be careful when you hear that word. Pharisee, most of us, we think, what you need to understand when Jesus used that word, a Pharisee means someone who is very morally upright. Someone who, if we were alive today, would most certainly be in a religious setting like this very, very regularly. And the other guy was a tax collector. Now, I'm sorry if you do work for the IRS, but it's universally true that tax collectors are not normally considered to be very popular people.

And if you are a tax collector and you're suffering from rejection, then please do come to the talk I'm giving about how to live with suffering. And the other one was a tax collector who was certainly hated. Jesus said they both went to the temple together to pray. Now the Pharisee, he stood somewhere near the front, because he's a religious man, and he stands there and he says, God, I'm better than everybody else. Now, he tries to introduce a dose of humility into it, because he's a type of a Calvinistic humility here.

I want to be careful how I use that word, some of you may not know what that means. But what he basically does is he basically says, God, you made me better than everybody else. You did a great job with me. And I thank you that I'm not like all these other people, adulterers, cheats, liars, murderers, and especially tax collectors. Well done, God. And by the way, just in case you're wondering, I'm tithing plus a little bit extra. And that's basically what he prays. It is very self-assured, and it is very self-righteous.

Now the tax collector, however, he's standing at the back of the temple. He's looking down at the floor, and he's beating his chest. Now, I was raised as a child in the Middle East. And in the Middle East, when people mourn, if you're very, very upset, if you're in a state of deep contrition, well, in those kinds of settings, what happens is, well, men, well, especially now, what they do is they tend to fire guns up into the air. But women will normally beat their chests. Men will do other things, anything from tearing their garments to shaving their head or their beard or what have you.

It's very unusual for a man to beat his chest, because that's what women do. But this tax collector is so sad about the situation he finds himself in, he beats his chest. So Jesus said, this guy is standing at the back, and he's beating his chest, and he looks down at the floor, and he says, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus says, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, he went home having been justified before God rather than the religious guy. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted, and whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

Now, what's going on in this little story? Now, the difficulty is that we're going to have to put ourselves back to try to imagine the setting that Jesus was talking in. In Aramaic, which is the language everyone spoke in Jesus' time in Hebrew, when you say, I'm going to the temple to pray, you're saying one of two things. Either one, I'm going to the church, you know, it's empty, I'm going to sit down somewhere quiet and just pray. Or, I'm going to a big service. It means both. You could be coming to an event like this, or you could be coming by yourself. Now, in this context, they're coming to an event like this.

We know that for two reasons. Both men come up to the temple together, they both leave together, they both pray at the same time, but it's the prayer in particular that you realize tells you the context about what's going on here. Because what the second man prays, what the tax collector prays, is not, Lord, simply have mercy on me. Now, I don't know if there are any visiting Episcopalians here today. I go to an Anglican church back in England, and if you have a formal set of liturgy, there's a little thing called the Kyrie eleison that you may say. Do we have any Episcopalians here who know what the Kyrie eleison is?

Anyone visiting? No? No Episcopalians?

What a shame. You say, oh, I go to the Anglican church, which I guess is linked with this Episcopalian church over here, because obviously the queen is head of the church. And so, you know, given my feelings about 1776 and all of that, it just seems like a good idea. So, I do like Baptists too, but that's a whole other issue. So, in the Kyrie eleison, what people stand up is they say something in Greek. They say, Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy. That's what it means. But that's not what's actually written down in this passage at all. Because although they would have spoken Aramaic, the Gospel of Luke, as you probably know, is written in Greek. What the second man prays is actually something very different.

What he actually prays is, Lord, hellas totoimoi, which in Greek basically means, Lord, be propitious to me. At the temple, every morning and every evening, there was a service. People sang.

They then, whatever. There was then someone would stand up at the front and they would say something. And then, when that bit had finished, there'd be a sacrifice. A lamb would be sacrificed for the forgiveness of sins.

After the sacrifice was made, the priest who'd done the sacrifice would go through the back of the temple to burn incense. At that point, no one could see anything. It would be like if I walked off stage. So, at this point, what would happen is everyone would bow their heads in the congregation and just start praying. So, imagine, if I left the stage, you wouldn't be able to see me.

There's no point just sitting there doing nothing. So, you'd probably bow your heads and start praying. Oh, Lord, may that man not come back again. So, at this point, he would go and burn incense and then eventually he would come out. Everybody knew that. That's why, if you read the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 1, in verse 10, it says, When it came to Zechariah's turn to go and burn incense, all the people stood outside praying. In Luke 1-10, of course, everyone knows that. Whenever the priest goes in to burn incense, everyone stands outside offering prayers.

And that's the setting here. Two men go to a religious service. The sacrifice is made. The priest goes in to burn incense. One man, who's very sure about his own righteousness, stands there and says, God, I'm better than everybody else.

Fantastic. The other guy beats his chest, looks at the floor, and literally prays, May this propitiation, may this sacrifice, may it be for me. May this sacrifice for forgiveness of sins, may it be for me.

Literally. May the forgiveness which is being made possible, may it be for me. And Jesus said, I tell you that that man went home having been made right with God. You see, there's something that we need to understand about when we talk about being sure of going to heaven. You see, there are two different ways of being sure about anything. Let's suppose that my wife and I have a disagreement. And, you know, let's suppose I'm definitely in the wrong, which obviously never happens. It's hard when you're perfect.

But let's suppose we've had an argument, I'm in the wrong. Well, there are two ways I can get myself out of that hole. Number one is I can try and somehow make myself righteous. Does that make sense? Do good things. Somehow do a whole host of services, a whole host of things I think that somehow will make it up.

Buying things, maybe I'd even go to great extremes and even put my dirty laundry in the laundry basket in our bedroom. Something like that I normally never ever do just to indicate the fact that, you know, I'm now being a good boy. Does that make sense? To earn the credit back. That's like a self-righteousness.

Does that make sense? I am now trying to make myself right with her. I'm now engaging in a course of actions.

And when I think I've done enough, eventually the guilt feelings pass away. I'm okay now. I've rescued the situation.

That's how the first guy who prayed is thinking. God, look at me. Sure, I may have done some bad things, but I'm doing really well. God, I'm giving you a lot of money. I'm not just giving you 10%.

He was giving more than the strict 10% he needed to give. He said, I'm leaving my life. I'm a good guy. I'm okay. He's making himself right before God. The second guy who prays, he prays very differently. Let's go back to the whole thing about with my wife. I can remember hearing a guy, John Piper, use this illustration once.

It was very interesting. He said this. He said, look, supposing you have a fight with your wife. He says, she storms out of the room. She goes and stands downstairs. He says, you follow her down into the kitchen. He says, you can almost cut the atmosphere with the knife.

You know what I'm talking about? He says this. He says, what needs to happen here?

The answer is plain. She needs to apologize. Oh no, I need to apologize.

Sorry. And ask for forgiveness. That would be the right thing to do.

But here's the analogy. Why do I want her forgiveness? So that she'll make my favorite breakfast. So my guilt feelings will go away. So there'll be good sex tonight.

So the kids won't see us fighting. It may well be that every one of these desires comes true, but it would all be defective motives for wanting forgiveness. What's missing is this. I want to be forgiven, so I'll have the sweet fellowship with my wife back. She is the reason I want to be forgiven. I want the relationship restored. Forgiveness is a way of getting obstacles out of the way so that we can look at each other again with joy. You see, the second way to find yourself back in relationship, in right relationship with someone, is you have to say sorry. And at the heart of the Christian gospel is the concept of repentance. That the only way to become a Christian is you can't be born one, you can't be raised one, you can't just simply achieve it by going to church enough and having your card stamped. You can't buy it.

You can't earn it. You can come before God and say sorry. Now, there is a big difference between the way that I apologize to my wife and the kind of repentance that's been won from me by God because there is a difference. Normally, if I've upset my wife, she's upset with me and angry with me, and I go and so long as I'm contrite enough, does that make sense? So long as I am genuinely sorry and I genuinely say sorry, my sort of sorriness earns her forgiveness.

Does that make sense? And in most cultures of the world, that's how we think about forgiveness, right? So let's suppose Mark too, and he's the senior pastor here, so let's suppose we do the Q&A, Mark decides he'd like to ask a question, and I look at him and I say, Mark, that's a stupid question.

You have the intellectual capacity more commonly associated with forms of pond life, invisible to the naked eye. So let's suppose, and that's my response, and let's suppose for some very bizarre reason he takes that to be insulting. And after everyone has left, you've all gone back to your cars, and Mark's sort of sitting there, sort of slightly stunned, I go up to him, pat him on the back and say sorry about insulting you publicly like that. Well, let me ask you, if I insulted you publicly like that, after everyone left, I slapped you on the back and said sorry, would you forgive me?

No. Most of you are prepared to be honest. No, you wouldn't forgive me.

But let's suppose I insult you publicly from this platform, and as soon as the words leave my mouth, I go silent. My bottom lip begins to tremble. My eyes well up with tears. I fall down on my hands and knees.

I start wailing and sobbing uncontrollably. I crawl over to where you are sitting. I hold onto your ankles, and I beg you to forgive me. Now would you forgive me?

Some of you are very hard to please. I can see that. But you will forgive me when you feel I have been contrite enough, sorry enough, sad enough. Does that make sense?

When I have sort of like suffered enough inside emotionally. Does that make sense? And then, OK, I will forgive you. Because in our cultures, forgiveness is earned.

Does that make sense? But that actually is not the kind of forgiveness that's at the heart of understanding what it means to become a Christian. The Christian gospel isn't, look, you've messed up.

You need to be sad about it. If you're sad enough and contrite enough, and you come and you clasp onto God's ankles, and you beg and you wail and you cry, and you do all the other things you're meant to do, then eventually God will forgive you. That's not how it works. The way it works is, before we knew we needed to be forgiven, God offers a sacrifice to make forgiveness possible. Before we even knew we needed to be forgiven, God comes and finds us and offers us forgiveness as a gift.

The nearest analogy would be me insulting Mark and me not being sorry about it at all. And him coming to me and making it clear through the most gracious and kind means possible that he was happy to forgive me, and he offers me forgiveness as a gift. And the way you accept that kind of offer of forgiveness is through repentance. You say sorry. Sorry doesn't become the means by which you earn forgiveness. Sorry simply now becomes the means by which you receive forgiveness. And it is inherently humbling.

Two men went to the temple to pray. One sees the sacrifice that makes the offer of forgiveness possible, stands in front of it and boasts about how wonderful he is before God. The other one casts his eyes down, beats his chest and cries and says, may this be for me.

I need this. Jesus said he told this parable to people who trusted in themselves and in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else. True Christian conversion is inherently humbling. It's not incidentally humbling. Humility isn't something that you do on the side. There is something inherently humbling about genuinely coming and receiving that kind of forgiveness, which is why Jesus said you should be able to tell true Christians by the fruit you see in their lives. You should be able to look in their lives and see this.

And it's on that basis you may then be sure. Have you ever been in a situation where you've offended someone? Maybe you didn't even mean to. You go to apologize. The next day you say, look, I'm so sorry about what happened. And they say it was nothing. And it's clearly something. Have you ever experienced that?

I mean, it's very annoying, isn't it? Because you know you're in the wrong. You know you shouldn't have done it. You're trying to say, look, I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have said it. I shouldn't have done it.

I was wrong. And they're going, it's nothing. Don't worry about it.

But actually, it very clearly is something very big. Similarly, you may have had the experience where you know you have to apologize. You go to someone. You say, I'm sorry. And they say, I forgive you. And the next time you see them, it's abundantly clear, isn't it? You're not forgiven. You only need about a second in the room with them, don't you?

You walk in within a second. You can look at them and you know whether there has been genuine restoration of relationship, don't you? You know. Well, that's what it's like with God. We've all done things that we shouldn't have done. Through the cross of Jesus Christ, he makes it possible for us to be forgiven. He offers us forgiveness as a gift.

It's called grace. In the face of the offer that he makes, we then repent. And we receive his forgiveness.

Repentance is the means by which we receive the forgiveness he has offered. And we put our trust in him, our faith in him. We now have relationship with him. And you know the next time you come into his presence, whether it's there or not. And it's not presumptuous because you either know him or you don't. You're either in that relationship or you're not.

But the reason you're in that relationship has got nothing to do with you at one level because it's got everything to do with him. He was willing to forgive. He was prepared to forgive. He made the provision for forgiveness. He offered forgiveness.

The question is, have you accepted it? And if you have accepted it, then you know you are forgiven. And you know with whom you will be when you die.

Not because anything's great about me or you, but because there's everything great about him. Do you know that kind of forgiveness in your life? Becoming Christian is an inherently humbling process.

It should work itself out into every aspect of our life. And what we're sure about is not ourselves. What we're sure about is him. That's why Paul writes, I know whom I have believed and am convinced. He's sure of the one in whom he is trusted. Certainty comes.

It's not arrogant. You're now in a relationship with him. If you're not familiar with our ministry, be sure to visit our website to learn more about our efforts around the globe. There you can see a list of upcoming conferences and events being held at the Zacharias Institute.

Sign up for an online class through RZM Academy. Or learn about the work being done through our humanitarian arm, Wellspring International. Our website is a great place to learn more about RZIM and to find content to help you grow in your Christian faith. We see it everywhere. From musicians and movie stars to neighbors and friends at work. People aren't interested in having a spiritual life, but treat faith more like an a la carte menu at a restaurant. Choosing what they like and dismissing the rest. Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra are the cheerleaders calling on Western culture to embrace a spirituality devoid of the biblical Christ. Cutting through the hype and seduction is the clear voice of author and apologist Ravi Zacharias. In his book, Why Jesus, Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass-Marketed Spirituality, Ravi answers the attraction known as the New Spirituality.

They have sort of hijacked everything under the nomenclature of Eastern spirituality. There's value. There's value in silence. There's value in reflection. There's value in solitude. Something that we in the West have forgotten.

So I think they harnessed something of value and made it exclusively their own. As if the Christian faith never talks about it. Yes, spirituality in the Christian tradition too has had a lot of these ideas. The only difference is they don't gaze inward. They have to gaze outward towards God. God is the ultimate vision, not yourself. Billy Graham calls Why Jesus a powerful defense of how Jesus Christ brings meaning and hope to an individual life. And Charles Swindell says, I am not acquainted with a brighter mind or a more relevant and devoted defender of the faith than Ravi Zacharias. Why Jesus, available online at rzim.org. Suffering, God's silence, the existence of truth. Those are just a few of the topics covered in RZIM's Just Thinking magazine. Editor Danielle Durant. I'm often encouraged by letters we receive regarding just thinking.

You never know what one sentence can do in the life of an individual. We've gotten a number of letters from those who are outside of Christianity, but they found something intriguing and just thinking and said, I want to read more. Sign up for email delivery of Just Thinking at rzim.org. Your generous donations allow us to provide these radio programs, videos and other resources to help encourage you in your Christian journey. To partner with us, either through prayer or financial support, you can call us at 1-800-448-6766 or to donate online, visit our website. That web address again is rzim.org or rzim.ca in Canada. If you have comments, questions or prayer requests you'd like to share, you can email us at rzim at rzim.org or you can write to us at RZIM Post Office Box 1820, Roswell, Georgia, 30077. Be sure to let us know how you listen to the program when you contact us. Let My People Think is a listener-supported radio ministry and is furnished by RZIM in Atlanta, Georgia.