Jesus just lost his job.

On his recent visit to Singapore, Pope Francis sacked the Savior of the world, confidently declaring that Jesus’s self-proclaimed job description as “the way, the truth, and the life” was redundant since, in the pontiff’s view “all religions are paths to God.”

The pope’s words, delivered last Friday at an inter-religious meeting with young people, has triggered a tsunami of confusion and a volcano of outrage. The Vatican quickly issued a new translation of the pontiff’s words, which proved to be a distinction without a difference.

Rome has spoken: We definitely prefer a cuddly, roly-poly interfaith elephant swinging its trunk to the Beatles’s “All You Need Is Love” to a prickly orthodox Christian porcupine who believes in sticking to St. Peter’s slogan: “There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”

Who needs an exclusive gospel when you can walk into a supermarket and choose from 48 varieties of yogurt — none of them claiming to be the only true yogurt?

No One Else Really Believes That, Either

Francis used an analogy comparing religions to “different languages that express the divine.” He warned his listeners never to utter the ultimate blasphemy: “But my God is more important than yours!”

“Is this true?” Francis asked. “There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood?”

Certamente, Papa! I mean, if I can say “amore” in Italian, “cinta” in Indonesian, “liebe” in German, and “love” in English, I’m not going to go around the world willing to die for proclaiming the uniqueness of Italian just because “amore” sounds a little more dolce than “ihunanya” in Igbo.

But languages are not religions, and even someone who knows nothing about the major world religions will wince at the pompous pontifical pronouncement, which is being relayed to every tribe and tongue and nation by the media. It’s not just evangelists seeking to preach the Gospel to non-Christians who will respond to Francis’s words with a face-palm emoji.

A monist Hindu will cringe, because advaita Hinduism doesn’t believe in a Creator God. Actually, creation, according to many schools of Hinduism is an illusion — maya. Says the Yoga Vashista, “The world is nothing but a mere vibration of consciousness in space.” And God isn’t creator: how can God create since God isn’t even a person? The Hindu god Brahman (not to be confused with the highest caste Brahmin) is a principle.

This theory holds that creation comes about because of a delusion. The moment I realize I’m not who I am, but I am god, my spirit (atman) becomes one with the great consciousness Brahman and I attain salvation (moksha).

Seriously, No One

This, needless to say, is a dork’s guide to Hinduism. Philosophically, Hinduism is as complex as two millepedes dancing the rumba. But if “creation as illusion” is Hinduism’s credo, the followers of Hinduism and their Buddhist and Jain cousins aren’t going to go gaga over Pope Francis’ narrative of “one God” or the post-Vatican II tosh from progressive pulpits of all religions leading to the “same God.”

And how would Buddhists who are simply nontheists or Buddhists who believe that the gods themselves are helpless and need to be enlightened respond to the pontiff’s theological swashbuckling?

Ironically, the person who makes the claim that all religions lead to God or to the same goal is patronizing and disrespectful to all religions. He or she is seeking to mold them into a preconceived notion of religion that exists only in his or her imagination and not in the real world where such religions are faithfully practiced.

Speak to any knowledgeable Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Jew. They will tell you that their religion is different and unique, will feel insulted if you tell them it is not very different from Christianity.

‘No Other Gods Before Me’

One tome that occupies a place of honor in my library is the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. I make a beeline for this book whenever I have to preach on biblical texts that mention the Greek goddess Diana or the Canaanite fertility bull-god Baal or the Mesopotamian god of child sacrifice, Molech.

The dictionary is a veritable encyclopedia of hundreds of gods and goddesses romping around the ancient Near East when the biblical prophets were banging their drums about the uniqueness of Israel’s God, Yahweh, and later the uniqueness and definitiveness of Jesus.

Is Pope Francis making an empirically verifiable claim that all the gods and goddess from Apollo to Allah, from Vishnu to Venus, from Mithra to Mannanan, are basically saying the same thing and are offering different ways of salvation to the same God? Would Pope Francis concede that all the religions described in this book are “paths to God?”

What would Pope Francis say abot the prophet Elijah’s failed attempt at interfaith dialogue? Elijah not only challenges the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel to a monumental contest (“My God can light a barbecue using wet wood, your god cannot!”) but in Hebrew he tells them: “Maybe your god is relieving himself! He’s gone to the loo!” (1 Kings 18:28).

What would Pope Francis say to the Apostle Paul, who “was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16)? The Greek verb paroxyno, from which we derive our English word “paroxysm,” originally had medical associations and was used to speak of a seizure or epileptic fit.

The word is not only used to describe Paul’s reaction to the worship of false gods, but is regularly used in the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament — to portray Yahweh’s reaction to idolatry.

Six Blind Men and One Elephant

At best, the Vatican’s virtue signaling makes it look like the village oaf in the eyes of billions of adherents of other religions around the world. At worst, such invertebrate attempts at “building bridges” only confirms what most devotees of other religions already believe: their religion is superior to Christianity, and indeed is the only way to Ultimate Reality.

Ironically, for all its claims to pluralism, Hinduism remains tolerant only as long as it is permitted to exist as the all-encompassing umbrella under which all other religions can seek shelter. So a Hindu from a non-classical Hindu tradition is comfortable affirming Jesus as god, as long as Jesus is one of the polytheistic pantheon of 33 million gods (who, incidentally, have deluded themselves in thinking they are separate from the principle of Brahman).

But tolerance is the Vatican’s new mantra, and a ginormous interfaith elephant squatting in St. Peter’s Square is its new mascot.

Rome has jettisoned the Great Commission of Jesus to preach the Gospel to all nations, and has adopted instead the ancient Indian parable of the six blind men and the elephant, which claims that our knowledge of God is like six blind men who each feel a different part of an elephant.

One grabs the tusk and says, “An elephant is like a spear!” Another feels the trunk and says, “An elephant is like a snake!” The blind man hugging the leg thinks, “An elephant is like a tree!” The one holding the tail claims, “An elephant is like a rope!” Another feeling the ear believes, “An elephant is like a fan!” The last blind man leaning on the elephant’s side exclaims, “An elephant is like a wall!”

Pope Francis regular harangue from the pulpit against Catholics “proselytizing” (he almost never properly defines the slippery word and never exhorts us to preach the Gospel and convert non-Christians to faith in Christ lest they go to Hell), and his uncritical affirmation of all religions, faiths, and sects is eloquent testimony of his belief in the parable of the elephant’s presupposition, i.e. we are all blind, or partially sighted, and each religion only has an inadequate grasp of the greater truth.

The Only Cure for Our Human Ailment

There is, however, a problem. Most people who tell this story (I’ve heard countless liberal Catholic priests parrot it) forget to mention that in the original version of the parable, the most important character in the story is the king.

The king isn’t blind. The king alone can clearly see what the whole elephant really looks like! The king gathers the six blind men and allows them to make fools of themselves. This is the only reason the storyteller is able to conclude that the blind men have only a partial grasp of the truth.

It is the king who makes the claim to seeing the full truth. Christianity makes the outrageous claim that Jesus sees God as He really is because Jesus is God.

No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. John 1:18

We, in turn, see the whole truth only because Jesus has revealed Himself as God’s full and final revelation.

When Pope Francis gives Jesus the heave-ho and replaces Him with a multifaith mishmash of the religion of motherhood and apple pie, he demotes Jesus from King of Kings to one of the blind men feeling his way around the elephant.

I certainly don’t wish to be like the lady who goes to her doctor and tells him: “I am ill. I don’t know what disease I am suffering from. But just prescribe aspirin and I’ll be all right. After all, all diseases are the same and aspirin cures all diseases.”

The Bible tells us the human race’s fatal disease is sin. The punishment for sin is death. Jesus alone offers us the cure for sin and death by His cross and resurrection.

“There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.” And there is no other way by which we can be saved.

 

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.