I Want to Believe #7

CHAPTER 7: "IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA ON THE ROAD"

Summary

The major question of this chapter and the next four is "What are we to make of the different religions?" (96).

Lawrenz makes two points to set the stage for this chapter and the next four: First, the billions of adherents to the various religions demonstrate that people want to believe. "Human beings are spiritual creatures, even if they are unaware of it" (97). Second, All religions are not the same. Lawrenz cites the Dali Lama who has stated that trying to combine Christianity and Buddhism is like attempting to put "a yak's head on a sheep's body" (98).

In briefly recounting the life and spiritual journey of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, Lawrenz highlights the irreconcilable differences between Christianity and Buddhism.

First, Buddhism is quite uninterested in the search for God. Some students of the religion have suggested that, at best, Buddhism is a kind of practical atheism or pantheism. Christianity, on the other hand, is focused centrally on the search for God and in being in relationship with God, who is humanly embodied in Jesus Christ.

Second, in Buddhism truth comes strictly from within the human person. By contrast, Christianity teaches that truth comes from the outside, from revelation. "In Christianity, hope centers on the belief that help comes from the outside; we are rescued by God in Christ when we couldn't do it ourselves" (101).

Third, Buddhism teaches reincarnation with the eventual hope of reaching nirvana, "which is not heaven but simply release from the perpetual cycle of reincarnation, like getting out of a revolving door" (102). Christianity, on the other hand, seeks not release from this life, but its renewal, its transformation. It seeks not a rejection of the physical world, but bodily resurrection.

Reflections

I very much appreciate what Lawrenz is doing in this chapter. One of the most significant arguments he makes is one I have been teaching for years as I have taught apologetics-- the belief that all religions are the same is not a way of showing respect to all religions, as many assume, but is in fact disrespectful of all faiths in that it fails to take the unique and identity-forming aspects of those religions seriously. In other words, the "all religions lead to God" approach is in actuality a way of saying that all religion is ultimately not important. Lawrenz quotes Ravi Zacharias:

"All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not.... Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive" (97).

I am not in a position to evaluate Lawrenz' account of Buddhism; I know so little about it myself. But given the careful nature of the discussion in the book so far, it seems reasonable to assume that Lawrenz has done his homework in seeking to understand Buddhism in order to be fair as he critiques it.

In the next chapter, Lawrenz will turn his attention toward atheism.