The Way Series: Whether You Believe It Or Not
(Disclaimer: I realize that what lies ahead is a controversial issue for many of my friends and family. There are plenty of people who know me who will fundamentally disagree with my theology. I expect some of you will take issue with my interpretation of your understanding of Jesus. Others will disagree with what I find to be true about God/Jesus. I still love you, and I hope you still love me too.
I also realize that people of other faiths will take issue with the emphasis I put on Jesus, or how I center him over and above the Qur’an, the Buddha, the Torah, or any other holy people/books. I don’t do this to minimize your faith, but to clarify that my beliefs are deeply rooted in a tradition too. That being said, thanks for reading this, the most difficult and trepidatious (from a Christian perspective) thing that I have written.)
Have you ever found yourself in an argument about truth? Like, one of those frustratingly painful conversations with someone who just willfully chooses to believe something contrary to all of the evidence that stands against them? Have you ever found yourself saying, “It’s true whether you believe it or not”, shaking the dust off your sandals, and walking away from a conversation?
I think we all have this sort of a relationship with truth. We know something is true, either based upon science, data, gut feeling, or intuition. We also know that no one can make that thing/belief/data/science/feeling less true by disbelieving it. We don’t live in a world where someone has to believe a truth in order for it to be true (perhaps unless your name is Donald Trump). We don’t have the power to activate the power of truth by our own personal views on it.
Truth is true, whether you believe it or not.
I was going to meander towards a conclusion to this series. I may still write out some of my thoughts about why Jesus isn’t saying he is the only access point to getting into heaven after you die when he says that no one comes to the Father except through him. You may be interested in that. But really, it doesn’t matter all that much.
What matters more is how much credit we give ourselves when it comes to how true something is. There is a large contingency of Christians that believe that one must believe something to be true in order for it to be true. They believe that, until a person chooses to act on truth, that truth isn’t yet true. More specifically, they believe that Jesus isn’t Way, Truth, Life until you believe that he is. If you never believe it, then he isn’t your way, he isn’t your truth, and he isn’t going to be life to you. In fact, he will be eternal conscious torment for you. They believe that life is all about what happens after life, and they use Jesus as a talisman to get into the good life after we die.
But this can’t be the case, because truth is true whether you believe it or not.
What I mean by that is that I believe Jesus showed us, in a deep and profound way, what God is like and what God wants us to be like in relation to others. I believe, along with the opening poem of the gospel of John, that in Jesus was life, and that life was the light to all humanity. I believe that a special sort of truth entered into our sphere through Jesus. I believe, along with Paul, that through Jesus God is reconciling all people to himself. I believe that God intends to redeem and repair all of creation through Jesus. For me, this is true. I think this is true for everyone too.
And it is true whether you believe it or not.
What I mean by that is, everything that needed to be done has been done in and through Jesus to start that process of reconciliation, redemption, and repair of the world. The author of Hebrews wrote that there is nothing else that can be done. Jesus is it. This is true for everyone — Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, Jew, Agnostic, None, Muslim, Druze, Secular Humanist — everyone.
That is the good news of Jesus. As Paul understood it, Jesus is the Savior of all humanity, especially of those that believe in him (1 Tim. 4:10). I love this verse because it challenges my past self so deeply. It challenges those who would exclude people from freedom, peace, and redemption because they don’t believe the right things. Because, Jesus is true whether you believe in him or not. And if what Jesus said is true, if what the Scriptures testify to is true, then redemption is yours. Whoever you are.
I realize that this is still a very territorial belief. It is still deeply Christian. Because I am a Christian, I believe what Jesus says about himself. I like to think of this ‘territorialism’ (inspired in part by Jesus’ words about himself) as exclusive inclusivism.
Jesus is exclusively inclusive.
It is hard to read the Scriptures as a Christian and come to any other conclusion (although I realize many have). Jesus is absolutely exclusive in that he has made the way to truth and life. And he is absolutely inclusive in that his way is for everyone to walk on, regardless of their religion, culture, or belief system. This is evidenced by his time spent with Samaritans and Gentiles, as well as prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners. He was not excluding anyone in his exclusivism.
The only thing, according to Jesus, that excludes anyone from participating in his Way is the way they live towards others. If you don’t care for the people on the lowest end of the totem pole, you aren’t on the Way. If you don’t practice radical forgiveness, you aren’t on the Way. That doesn’t mean you can’t get back on the Way. As uncomfortable as it makes Christians who believe ‘works’ aren’t the Way to salvation, it is clear that Jesus spent almost all of his time teaching us how to live, not how to believe. Perhaps this is because he was being exclusively inclusive, and that he came to give his salvation to all humanity, whether they believe it or not.
That’s the funny thing about truth. It is uncomfortable. It is dangerous. And it doesn’t rely on our ability to embrace it to be true. It just is. And in this case, this truth is good news for everyone, whether you believe it or not.
