Forgive if you’ve already seen the video below. But this weekend I was involved in a few really good conversations on the nature of Christian exclusivity, and so today want to share it here. If you like this video and the argument it presents, it would mean a lot to me if you would share it via Facebook and your social network. Thank you.
For more of my xtranormal videos—including my series The Smith Family Chronicles, about a young woman, Jane Smith, who comes out to her conservative evangelical parents—see my YouTube channel.
In the comments below, Dallas Jenkins (son of Jerry Jenkins, author of the Left Behind series, and director of the 2010 faith-based feature film What If …) wrote:
If this were the only verse addressing eternal life in heaven, the point would be valid, but Jesus also said, “…that whosoever believes in me shall not perish but have eternal life.” And the Apostle Paul in Romans said, “…that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” And when Paul and Silas were asked in Acts what must be done to be saved, they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” … . John 14:6 isn’t the only verse we go by to indicate that accepting Jesus as savior and Lord of your life is what provides eternal salvation.
But, again, “Whosoever believes in me shall not perish …” is not the same thing as saying “Only those who believe in me shall not perish …,” in the same way that saying “Everyone who passes this class will graduate” is not the same as saying, “Only those who pass this class will graduate.”
The same holds true with your other chosen quotes: “Believe in Jesus Christ and you will be saved” does not at all mean the same thing as “Only those who believe in Jesus Christ will be saved.”
If the point I make in this video about John 14:6 is valid, then the points I’m making about these other quotes are also valid.
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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In regard to the video about the dialogue over John 14:6b, which says, “No one comes to the Father except through me” is quoted and interpreted out of its immediate context. The interpretation given is that Jesus decides who comes to the Father. The developers of this video conveniently left out the first part of the verse which clearly states, “I[Jesus] am the way and the truth and the life.” Notice the definite article “the.” Jesus is not “a” way meaning that He is one among several ways. If anything, He has already decided that its only those who go THROUGH HIM that will get to the Father.
Hey y’all! I just wanted to introduce myself and say hello. I am new to this blog and boy do I love it! I found the link from a friend over at The Wartburg Watch. It’s a good blog so check it out. Right now, the conversation is regarding one you have here often: homosexuality and Christianity. Feel free to go by and add to the discussion. Let’s see: I’m 34, black, HOT HOT HOT (okay, kidding), would identify as a Christian, but you know, many others woudln’t. Hmmm… I am straight BUT I do support gay marriage and all that shabang. There migh tbe a pun there. HOld up? Is this a family site? jCan I say words like damn and you know, the s-word? Let me know. Dont want to ruffle feathers. I love blogs that challenge my thinking on Christianity in particular. I grew up Baptist, then was church of God. Got into a lot of crazy Jesus stuff that was NOT him and then went Reformed/neo-Calvanist at a pretty popular southern baptist church in the DC Metro. Not hard to figure out.
After some really bad experiences, and exhaustion from trying to submit to my brothers, and focus on my sin… I quit that and went rogue. Now the blogs have to deal with me. But hey, I still love Jesus and that’s all that counts. Yessiree.
Anywho, I have a lot of catching up to do here. I wish I could put this blog on a plate with a side of country bacon… DELICIOUS!
Many kisses,
Trina
Cool! Nice to meet you!
You sound fun! Glad you found your way here. Welcome! Oh, and all that $#!*, it’s ok here.
Somewhere in this string is a reference to the “parable of the good Samaritan”. This parable is part of a slightly larger story which might be called “Jesus’ response to a theological test question.” The test question was implicitly about who would be saved. That Jesus made a person of another religion the hero of the story, constitutes the answer. Jesus seems to have been a universalist.
John,
I continue to enjoy your posts and feel drawn to a lot of what you say– even with my continued agnosticism (or existentialism, or whatever). From my perspective, the Bible probably teaches both that only Christians go to heaven and that non-Christians could go as well. Yes, this is my blasphemy– the Bible is not consistent!
The theological subtleties of ideas surrounding salvation are more difficult than some other stuff though. I think this rumination better illustrates my point…
I love 1 Cor 13 and its sentiments. Beautiful stuff! The Sermon on the Mount is powerful and I can acknowledge its force and see my many, many failings there.
But this same Bible has God commanding the killing of babies and children (1 Sam 15:3), stirring up wars (Jo 11:20), sending famine and violence (Dt 32:24-25), killing 70,000 people because a king took a census (2 Sam 24:15-17), hardening people’s hearts (Rm 9:18), commanding that people be stoned for trivialities like picking up wood (Nm 15:32-36), killing people himself for other seeming trifles (Acts 5:1-10, 1 Chr 13:9-10), commanding that certain prostitutes be burned to death (Lv 21:9), commanding people to kill their own children/spouses/dear friends if they worship other gods (Dt 13:6-10), commanding that a rapist must marry the unengaged woman that he violated (Dt 22:28-29), and torturing people in hell (Rv 14:9-11).
I tried for years to reconcile this stuff and I just can’t do it anymore. It made me feel like a complete fraud. I can’t approach the Bible one way and all of life another. What I have written will be offensive to some– but I think it should be totally unobjectionable. I just don’t think it should be shocking to say that baby-killing and stoning people don’t mix with being patient, kind, keeping no record of wrongs, and the like. Sometimes the Bible teaches things that are wonderful and amazing. Other times, frankly, it seems utterly horrific.
So I say hold to the good and don’t try to excuse the bad. Then instead of worrying about “clobber passages,” you can just say things like “this verse advocating the stoning of homosexuals is obscene.” This may seem like it makes life more confusing, but I have come to the conclusion that trying to explain why the Bible is a unified message is much, much more difficult.
The Bible does fail in many ways IMO, it’s love that never fails. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m just too much of a spiritual dumb-ass to understand all this. But if there are times when it’s OK to kill babies and children, then I admit that I have no idea what “God is love” could mean…
Aggie, I cannot speak to any disagreements with what you wrote, I am savoring every honest line. I can’t add anything because I love this so much I’m absorbing it. You said the words I couldn’t find.
As Soulmentor has said a few times here (which I also love), is it about replacing God with the Bible? The Bible is not God. God is love. And yes, you truly know what God is love means because it shows in your words.
Beautifully put. I’ve been on this exact journey and come to the same conclusion. The Bible is an ancient book that chronicles the history of an emerging people. Those people eventually gave rise to Jesus of Nazareth, whose life of love has been (and continues to be) a revolutionary gift to us all.
“The Bible does fail in many ways IMO, it’s love that never fails.”
So true.
Somewhere along the line, people have come up with this misguided idea that the only way something can be true is if it is literally factual, and that therefore the two choices regarding the Bible are absolute literal belief in each word on the one hand, or chucking the whole thing on the other.
But that only applies (if it even does then) if you buy the idea that the Bible is supposed to be understood as dictation taken down by humans word for word from God.
I’ve always seen the Bible as a written record of one group of people’s relationship to God. That God is real, and their experiences were their experiences, but just like a diary or a memoir, how they interpreted what they experienced and what they wrote about it, and what else they mixed in with it is as much a reflection on the people who did the writing as it is on the God they were writing about.
If I spent the week with someone famous, I’d take pictures and write about it, and be sure to include all my impressions and interpretations, hopes, memories, and fantasies about what it meant. But it wouldn’t be an accurate description of that person, just of my experience of them, however truthfully I wrote it down. And someone else who spent another week with that same person, or even someone else who spent the same week with them that I did, would truthfully write something that might be very different – because it would be about their experience, not mine.
The idea that a nomadic desert community in the 4th century BC could encounter God and decide that God wanted them to slaughter their enemies says more about how those people saw the world and their place in it than about God, though it can also be seen as a powerful example of the fact that God meets us all where God finds us, and works with us from our own individual starting points, wherever that may be.
It doesn’t mean God wants babies smashed against rocks. It means God is able to work in the hearts and minds even of people who think that it’s what God wants from them.
I don’t know, I’m not sold. John 3:18 “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” NIV. That seems pretty limiting to me.
You don’t have to be “sold.” You just have to be open.
There’s a lovely reply to this same question elsewhere on this thread about taking this verse in context with the surrounding ones. What I and others here have explained using other words is this: whoever follows The Way of Jesus is not condemned, but whoever does not follow the way of Jesus suffers already because they do not follow the way of the One who is Divine in human form.
Eric, here’s the verse in NASB: He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the [a]only begotten Son of God.”
[a] or unique
It could be even more limiting if we look at it this way: Calvinsits who hold to selective predestination would read this verse entirely differently than free will Arminians and look to it as weighty evidence of their position. They might read it as: He who believes in God/Jesus is not judged because his belief is evidence of God having chosen him; he who does not believe has been judged already by God and therefore is not one of the elect. Because he has not believed he was not predestined and is therefore condemned already
They see belief as evidence of having been selected to be the elect and not condemned. And unbelief as evidence of having been already condemned to be an unbeliever in this life.
I’d say you’ve got a good start. How would we know that God will not have mercy on all? The promises in the scriptures are for people to believe in, to be sure, but nothing limits God’s capacity for love beyond those promises. The meaning of salvation needs exploring, and also the way in which God’s intention seems from the beginning to involve people who are neither Christians nor Jews (see that God has a relationship with non-Abrahamic kings in Canaan in Genesis, for instance.) The scriptures were written for people who believe, and therefore their promises are aimed at people who already believe. Telling us to believe is more like a parent saying, “I won’t let you fall, believe me,” than saying, “You are my favorite and I’m going to let your brothers and sisters fall.” I think there’s more to be said than you have. But it’s a good start.
Perhaps hermeneutics, that moldy theological term ought to be brought down from the attic again. All those gotcha passages Jenkins and most evangelicals site involve Jews ( newsflash:, those kosher eating, Sabbath keeping “Christians” were Jews ) talking to each other ( and the occasional gentile proselyte) about um, 1st century Jewish tweets. “Saved” to them meant something radically different from what it has been made to mean to the anxious southern Baptist living in Kentucky, circa 2012 AD. Believe me, our 1st century Jewish folks had better things to worry about and were busy working out Jesus’ apocalyptic statements ( “arrival of the Kingdom, Day of the Son of Man”), usually interpreted to mean impending judgment of Israel…like literally the end of *their* world ( 70 AD, anyone?). Jesus pointed the way forward ( salvation) for a traumatized Israel. This story endures…and we get to live it out today by, you know, following Jesus. I have loosely sketched out the narrative-historical hermeneutic, which i subscribe to and which authors and bloggers like Andrew Perriman thoughtfully expand upon. The standard, decontexualized, evangelical hermeneutic certainly gets butts in seats on Sunday. It is preached with good intentions ( sometimes), but sorely lacking in my opinion.
Hey Buddy! Small blog world, eh? LLOL! How funny is THIS! This is a great blog, youve been holding out on me. No fair. : ( But this is SO why we are friends.
Hugs,
Trina
Absolutes from nowhereland and everywhereland do not visit scriptures. I think it’s enough to say that exclusivism has no special claim.
Keep in mind, in his context, Jesus has little to say about World Religions, many of which had yet to emerge on the scene.
John, I don’t think one verse says it explicitly. You have to look at the whole content of Scripture. In the Gospel accounts, Jesus makes allusions to and assumptions of divinity. He also makes allegiance and commitment (“faith”) to him the turning point re: eternal life.
But what do we mean by eternal life?
What about John 3:18 “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” NIV
Really?
Has it occurred to you to even read the verses on either side of it?
“16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
Taken in context, it’s nearly impossible to read that as “Just believe in Jesus, period.” Instead, it’s manifestly clear that people who do evil are avoiding the truth of God, and people who do good and live in truth are doing so in God.
Jesus isn’t just some guy who came to have a group of people ghostwrite his biography and help market his self-help program. The Christ, co-eternal with other aspects of the Divinity, came to earth in the human form and human experience of Jesus. This text seems to me to be far more about aligning ourselves with the Christ, the human experience of the Living God, than it does with professing a particular creed or religious allegiance.
People who believe are not condemned. How do you know they believe? It isn’t because they say so. It isn’t because they profess so. It isn’t even because they think so. It is because they live their lives in truth and light. God has the monopoly on that, but Christianity doesn’t.
Very nice, Lymis. Carl Jung would likely have some thoughts on this as well.
Ah! Deep breath of relief.
Don’t have the bandwidth to view videos but may I suggest these:
• Romans 2:13-16 ~ FOR IT IS NOT THE HEARERS OF THE LAW WHO ARE RIGHTEOUS IN GOD’S SIGHT, BUT THE DOERS OF THE LAW WHO WILL BE JUSTIFIED. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. THEY SHOW THAT WHAT THE LAW REQUIRES IS WRITTEN ON THEIR HEARTS, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, GOD, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, WILL JUDGE THE SECRET THOUGHTS OF ALL.
• 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 ~ For since death came through a human being; the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, SO ALL WILL BE MADE ALIVE IN CHRIST.
• 1 Timothy 4:10 ~ For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, WHO IS THE SAVIOR OF ALL PEOPLE, especially of those who believe.
• 1 John 2:1-2 ~ My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the Christ, the righteous; and his is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and NOT FOR OURS ONLY BUT ALSO FOR THE SINS OF THE WHOLE WORLD.
God will be nothing less than completely successful at anything that He sets out to do. He will have his way in everything and shall have every last soul with him when their time comes to leave this plane.
Yes. This!
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