Some say there are many paths to Heaven – so long as you pick a path, we are all going to Heaven.<\/p>\n
One reason provided by some about why many religions exist is, each religion possesses a part of the truth – and since no single religion can possess all truth, we have many religions.\u00a0 Further, it is arrogant for one religion to claim it has all truth.<\/p>\n
This idea has been conveyed by a story of some blind men and an elephant.<\/p>\n
As Wikipedia summarizes: In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one touches a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes on what they felt, and learn they are in complete disagreement.<\/em><\/p>\n In John Godfrey Saxe\u2019s version (1816\u20131887), one man falls against the side of the elephant and proclaims the elephant is\u00a0a wall.\u00a0 Another leans on the tusk and proclaims an elephant is a spear.\u00a0 Another touches the trunk and proclaims the elephant is a snake.\u00a0 Another touches the knee and proclaims the elephant is a tree.\u00a0 Another touches the ear and proclaims the elephant is a fan.\u00a0 And the last one grabs the tail and proclaims the elephant is a rope.<\/p>\n The point of the story is that while each blind man is proclaiming what they believe to be is an absolute truth, in fact all of their truths are just relative based on their experience of the elephant.\u00a0 No one has the Truth, in its entirety.\u00a0 This story is often used to critique those who proclaim some knowledge of absolute truth \u2013 most commonly those with a monotheistic religious world view.\u00a0 It is intended to teach us how knowledge and truth is in fact relative.<\/p>\n Here is Lesslie Newbigin\u2019s response:<\/p>\n In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant\u2026 the real point of the story is constantly overlooked.\u00a0 The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of it.\u00a0 The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmations of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth.\u00a0 But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite.\u00a0 If the king were also blind, there would be no story.\u00a0 What this means then is that there is an appearance of humility and a protestation that the truth is much greater than anyone of us can grasp.\u00a0 But if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth, it is in fact an arrogant claim with the kind of knowledge which is superior that you have just said, no religion has. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As Tim Keller further clarifies:<\/p>\n To say, I don\u2019t know which religion is true is an act of humility.\u00a0 To say, none of the religions have truth, no one can be sure there\u2019s a god is actually to assume you have the kind of knowledge, you just said no other person, no other religion has.\u00a0 How dare you?\u00a0 See, it\u2019s a kind of arrogant thing to say nobody can know the truth because it\u2019s a universal truth claim.\u00a0 To say, \u2018Nobody can make universal truth claims.\u2019\u00a0 That is a universal truth claim.\u00a0 \u2018Nobody can see the whole truth.\u2019\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t know that unless you think you see the whole truth.\u00a0 And, therefore, you\u2019re doing the very thing you say religious people shouldn\u2019t do.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some say there are many paths to Heaven – so long as you pick a path, we are all going to Heaven. One reason provided by some about why many religions exist is, each religion possesses a part of the truth – and since no single religion can possess all truth, we have many religions.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[89,77],"tags":[108,153,296,388,444],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-religion","category-religion","tag-absolute-truth","tag-christianity","tag-lesslie-newbigin","tag-religious-pluralism","tag-tim-keller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3hM8I-du","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}