Religious Nuts

I recently met a Buddhist lady. But she was not a Buddhist simply because she was drawn to the particular teachings of this religion, but (as I assessed it) more as a rebound from some bad experiences she had in “Christian” churches (I use the term loosely). She was subject to some serious abuse from what sounded like preachers of the “prosperity gospel”, meaning that members of the church should give all their money to the preacher and in turn they will be blessed all the more. Meanwhile, the pastor is driving a Ferrari and living in a mansion, while those givers are left with nothing but desperate faith in the preacher’s rotten character. She was very hurt from these experiences and ended up leaving the church and Christianity as well.

But she took it too far and denounced all of Christianity as evil, based on her few experiences in a small, hick Texas town. Surely the perspective of the cultural transcendence of the Gospel from the backwoods of Texas can be blurred a bit. She said she liked Jesus (even loved him), but “couldn’t stand his crazy-ass friends.” I would be very prone to agree with her that there are plenty of people who claim to follow Jesus that are nuts, and sometimes even wolves in sheep’s clothing. But to dismiss them all by a blanket generalization is just plain reckless. I think there’s a lot of people that are nuts from other religions and worldviews, but I can’t judge the truthfulness and value of their substances based on the character of their proponents. I can look at atheists I would say seem nuts, as well as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, etc. Really, the only common denominator in the nuts of all these groups is that of humanness. People are nuts! And sinful. People do terrible things, regardless of their religious affiliations. This is just one way of expressing the Christian doctrine of total depravity, which says that no one is righteous (Psalm 14:3) and we all do evil, as it is the nature of our unregenerate hearts.

She became Buddhist when she was invited to a temple and felt a feeling of great peace when she prayed there, contrasted to the spiritual chaos that she had experienced in church. While she admittedly had no idea what Buddhism teaches, her affinity for it developed from what she perceived as possessing value, as giving her peace and a sense of acceptance and non-judgment.

But the thing is, like all humanistic religions, that her religion is essentially her preconceived preferences, not particularly Buddhism or Christianity. In effect, she is not appealing to Buddhism and rejecting Christianity as if they are absolutely mutually exclusive (at least in some moral principles). She is merely appealing to what she already believes, indeed knows, is true. She has already formulated her beliefs prior to investigating Christianity or Buddhism, or whatever. It is whatever gives her peace, acceptance, warm feelings, etc. And this is sort of the prevailing wind of this world pertaining to spirituality. In effect, it is just paganism—a certain breed of selfishness that props up its own religion, worldview, and preferences above what is revealed from God. What characterizes man-made religion is that it always originates from the person. It is always man looking up to heaven speculating about what God (or whatever) is like. If this is, in fact, all that religion is (including Christianity), then it is logical that the tenets of relativism are true: there is no religion better than another; in fact, they are all useless in the end since none of them can knowingly make contact with reality. But humans don’t behave this way. Religion is built into us, even when we want to claim relativism. Take these three common sayings claiming relativism from our religious culture:

• “I don’t like this religion; I like THIS one”: This saying essentially appeals not specifically to the religion of the speaker’s liking because it’s superior, but to himself and his own beliefs. This is the opposite of Christianity which says truth comes from God and not from religion or from our perspectives and preferences.
  
  
• “All religions are the same”: This statement says so in an attempt to be accepting and tolerant, but this is actually just another statement of belief/doctrine and immediately defeats the point it tries to make if applied to itself. The insistence that all religions are the same is, in effect, itself a religion, and the chosen one of secularism.
  
  
• “Doctrine isn’t important, let’s all just love each other”: This statement of the unimportance of doctrine is actually making a doctrinal statement, since I could make the opposing unprovable statement that rather we should hate everyone. Love (the real type of love Jesus demonstrates by dying for his people, and for his enemies) is very much a Christian doctrine, and not to be confused with the emotional type of love that an American “Christian” may purport.
  
  

All this is in effect simply pride in oneself instead of in God. It’s all elevating the human ability to discover truth, instead of in God’s ability to reveal it. Surely it’s an arrogant view that props up the religious musings of the fallen sinner’s depraved mind over the mystery-revealing, all-knowing mind of God who created all.