Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: crf@ginger.princeton.edu (Charles Ferenbaugh) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Strangers in a Strange World Message-ID: Date: 17 Dec 89 07:04:33 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Princeton University Lines: 61 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [This is a response to a thread of discussion about Taoism and Buddhism. The posting this responds to was from jrossi@jato.jpl.nasa.gov. --clh] >By embracing paths, methods, and ideas that are >found in Eastern philosophy and religious thought, I am able to focus >inward on my heart, and also seek first the Kingdom. Buddhist practice >is really about tearing yourself away from the world. At least in my >case, I do it for God. And if I sin less because of it, like you said, >it is well and good. There seems to be some confusion here about the relationship between Christianity and other religions. Maybe this analogy will help... Imagine yourself working on a large jigsaw puzzle, putting pieces together to form a picture. You've made some progress, so after a while you decide to take a break. Looking up you find many other people around you working on the same puzzle (that is, each one has his/her own copy). So you walk around and observe their progress. To your surprise, you find that most of them have put a few pieces together, and some of them have even matched pieces that you haven't gotten to yet, but none of them have made anything near the amount of progress you have made. This confuses you for awhile until you realize the difference: you have been working all the time with a box-top that shows the picture you are working toward, while these other people have no large picture to work from and can only guess at what their final result will be. Now I realize this isn't a perfect analogy , but it makes its main point well. Namely, all of us (the people) are trying to make some sense out of life (the puzzle). In doing this each of us have certain clues (the puzzle pieces) which help us in our quest; among these I would count the natural world around us, our own experiences, and our conscience - see Romans 1. But as Christians, we have an additional resource which none of the others have, namely, the sinless life of Jesus Christ on earth, lived in a perfect example of fellowship with God and total dependence on him in daily life (the picture on the box-top). (Aside: I believe that, in addition to being an example to us, Jesus was also the atonement for our sins, enabling us to have this fellowship. Ultimately, this fellowship also enables us to understand God better. But this is only a clarification; the original analogy still works even without bringing up this fact.) This idea has helped me a great deal when considering other religions. To apply it to the example in Buddhism above: apparently Buddhism teaches about withdrawing from the world, in (to some extent) a similar fashion to Christian teaching. It may even be that, given some people's background, the Buddhist way of teaching this will make more sense than the Christian way does. Great; that's one more truth learned. But it's not a reason for saying that Buddhism is just as true as Christianity. All this proves is that Buddhism has a hold of at least one truth, whereas Christianity can be called a means for finding all truth (all truth that humans can know, that is) because of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. All this to say: 1. Any religion can have some truths in it. 2. Ultimately, only in Christianity can we have any hope to find all truths that can humanly be found. 3. #1 and #2 do not contradict. Grace and peace, Charles Ferenbaugh