Are Christians Being Judgmental Toward Non-Christians?
Some people say Christians are guilty of judging those outside of passing judgment on non-Christians because they don’t share our faith. I am not qualified to judge anyone, as a sinful person who deserves condemnation as much as anyone else, but I am qualified to communicate Truth, and Truth necessarily applies to everyone by its nature.
A lot of people have been told that all religions are “the same” and should therefore be considered equivalent, but they don’t realize that the different religions teach very different things about God and man’s relationship to God, as well as giving mutually exclusive answers to the key questions of life: the origin, purpose, meaning, and destiny of humankind. These differences aren’t small or insignificant, and because they contradict one another, they are irreconcilable; a fundamental law of logic is the law of non-contradiction, which says that two opposing statements cannot both be true at the same time and under the same circumstances, or that a single question cannot elicit two contradictory answers under the same circumstances or at the same time. Some people refer to this as the “either/or – both/and” question: can both A and B be true, or must it be either A or B?
If we know that two opposing claims can’t both be correct, the next step is to find out which, if any, IS correct. All religions make specific statements about reality, about God, and about human destiny, and all of them claim to be true and the others false, so each person has to make a choice about which one they believe is true.
Jesus made some very strong statements about Himself. For instance, He told the crowds that followed Him that, “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes upon Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life,” This is not a “one of many” statement, or a “maybe” statement, but an absolute statement about what God has done and how it affects people. But Jesus didn’t finish there; He continued, “…for God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. The believer into Him shall not be condemned, but the unbeliever is condemned already, that he has not believed into the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” Jesus came for one thing: to save the world, and those who are saved from condemnation are those who have faith in Him. (The Greek verb pisteuo has no verb equivalent in English. The word is “faith” as a verb, but we don’t have such a word, so it winds up being translated as “believe” or “believe on / into”. It’s a miss, because the meaning of the Greek word is to be fully confident, or fully persuaded, and the object of that confidence is Christ, rather than a set of facts: “have confidence into” or “upon” Jesus Christ.
So here, Jesus has ‘drawn the line in the sand,” as they say. He has made an exclusive statement that says: I am here to save you from the condemnation of your sin. You are either saved through Me by having confidence in Me (who I am, what I say, what I have done) or you remain in your sin, and are therefore condemned for it. He has said that faith in Him is the only way to be saved, and when we understand that Jesus Christ is God having taken on human flesh, that makes perfect sense. The original problem of history was the failure of Eve to believe what God had said about becoming personally acquainted with evil, and Adam’s refusal to honour God as God by obeying His (only) law, no matter what. Jesus has said that it is necessary to honour God as God by believing Him – what He revealed about Who He is, what He has said, and what He has done. The solution to the problem is to kill the root of unbelief. When that happens, the person is forgiven, the Holy Spirit is sent to them to live in them and guide their lives, and they will be received by God as adopted sons, to enjoy fellowship with God for eternity.
So God has required that all people acknowledge God as God, believe what God has said, and receive Jesus Christ, in order to come out from under condemnation and have everlasting life. The other religions all, without exception, teach that a person must believe in their particular “God” or gods, and perform certain deeds to ‘earn’ favour with “God”. They all also claim exclusivity – that their ideas and ways are right and all others are wrong. Even the New Age movement – which is primarily Hinduism, mixed with traditional Chinese mysticism and other pantheistic or panentheistic ideas, adapted to western self-absorption – rejects all other religious ideas as false, and harmful to the future of the earth and humanity. Barbara Marx-Hubbard, or Alice Bailey and her many followers – the latter of whose ideas are the primary basis for the New Age movement as it is today –all insist that those who do not join their religious framework are hindering the advancement of the species and imperilling the earth, and that the monotheistic religions are evil and ignorant. They and all of their followers advocate not only the dismissal of alternative religious ideas, but the necessary extermination of those who will not get in line with their beliefs, and specifically name Jews, Muslims, and Christians for destruction. So while their media ‘face’ talks about “love and light and harmony”, their leaders and teachers preach hatred, intolerance, and destruction of dissenters – all for the “greater good” of the planet and the human race!
What that means is that every religion at its most honest is intolerant and unaccommodating of any conflicting religious belief, and expects that those others will change or lose their benefit in eternity, however they define that. Every religion is equal in claiming itself to the only way to “God” and the only truth. Is Jesus right, or is one of the others? Because I know Jesus, I know that Jesus Christ is as He declared to His followers: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” For many, many reasons, I know that the Bible is a true record of the history of the world and of God’s revelation of God to man.
If someone believes in a different “God” or gods, or thinks they can work their way into God’s favour when God has said that’s not possible, they have, in effect, made God to be a liar. It’s pretty much impossible to be on good terms with someone whom you have called a liar. In other words, God doesn’t accept anyone until they accept God as God is, and what God has said for what it is: the word of God. But because God desires all men to be saved, He has offered the same salvation to all men, on the same basis. Everyone, anywhere, who comes to God on God’s terms will be received by God and brought into the family. That’s why people who know Christ go all over the world to tell others about God’s call to come to Christ, and why we speak to anyone who will listen anywhere.
And God has done amazing things in places where those messengers cannot go for various reasons. God has said that anyone who seeks after Him will find Him. There are stories from all over the world, of people experiencing visions or dreams in which the true message of the true Jesus was shared with them, and they sought until they resolved that it was true, or people in “deepest, darkest Africa” who were insulated from any gospel outreach, but were searching for the truth, whom God brought out of their own place by a series of unanticipated events, to a place where they would hear of the living and true God, Jesus and His covering for their sin, and they believed into Him and were saved. Some of those return to their homes to tell the others what God had shown them, sometimes at great risk of their safety, particularly former Muslims.
Other religions cannot be true because they contradict what God has said. And because God has provided one and only one means of being saved from the condemnation for our sins – and we ALL sin many times – therefore anyone who refuses what God has provided will remain condemned and lose the offer of forgiveness and adoption into the family of God, the greatest benefits of which are received after this earthly life. But God loves those people as much as He loves me, and He loves you, and wants those of us who know Him to tell those who don’t, and invite them to hear and believe and trust Him so they can be part of the family. And every true Christian, who knows and loves the Lord, loves every one of those who join us from every background everywhere, and we love those who have not joined as well, and ache for them to hear and believe
Follow
