Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
All religions are not equally valuable
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
March 2003
I do not believe that all religions are equally valuable. Doctrinal and sectarian issues aside -- if your religion encourages you to hate, or teaches you to think of yourself primarily as a victim, or as laden by guilt instead of dealing joyfully and creatively with life's challenges, it's a bad religion.
The struggle against bad religion starts with relating to God as person, not as idea or rule book.
Nothing new here. In what must be the ultimate good news/bad news line of all time, Jesus said "I am the truth." He continued, "You shall know the truth (meaning himself), and the truth shall make you free."
If you read the gospels in their plainest sense you discover that Jesus invites people into a relationship with him in which truth does unfold, but that relationship is primary: "Come, follow me."
Certainly every relationship requires some knowledge and conscious commitment. If you call Jesus Lord and believe him to be alive, St. Paul says, you will be saved. It's what life is like afterwards that is so interesting: having a relationship with living Truth.
Jesus called ordinary people to follow him, to know the one who is truth, to consciously live in relationship. Being in relationship with the one who is truth is how the truth sets you free.
The good news: everyone can do this. The bad news: religious thinking or theological pronouncements that do not come from within a conscious relationship to living Truth, regardless of their degree of technical accuracy, can be destructive.
St. Augustine of Hippo addressed one of his greatest works to God. Martin Buber, the great Jewish teacher, taught us to honor God as "You" not as "him" or "it."
Relationship implies living life consciously in the presence of God, praying yes, but always listening, always listening.
We can never say the last word about one with whom we are in relationship. Every person is ultimately a mystery. Every person has depths we will never plumb. Every person surprises us.
John's gospel, where Jesus says he is Truth, is in general something of a protest against the degree to which early Christianity was too tightly wrapped, too authority-oriented. John is smart enough not to get into the argument -- Did you every try to argue somebody into calming down or relaxing? -- but to present a picture that allows each person to assume responsibility for their connection with God.
When my primary relationship to the eternal becomes a relationship to a person, I know both more and less. I know more, because personal relationships have an emotional as well as a knowledge component - when St. Paul says "I know whom I have believed," he knows that he is not saying I know what I believe. It's not just ideas, it's a relationship. You know whether or not you have one.
When God is so presented and actively sought, there is less room for agnosticism, though atheism may get a boost from those who give up the chase.
If religious Truth is a person, I cannot ever describe that person or our relationship with anything like a final word. The person may never change, but I do. What I was able to understand when I was fifteen was different from what I see at fifty-five.
What is true of persons is true also of a culture. We see truth connecting in different ways than we did 150 years ago. Slavery is gone and women vote, for instance, where once scripture was read as forbidding such change.
For me to claim to say a final word about God means that one of us is dead.
As relationship deepens, more truth appears. This may be why some say that as they get older they believe less more - because, in their relationship with God, they have discovered truth as a person.Return to the index of Bishop Paul's columns for the secular press
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