Which Worldview or Religion Should You Choose? 1-Minute Case: 2 Key Questions
Everyone has a worldview, whether they admit it or not.
Religious. Spiritual. Secular. Everyone has a worldview, whether they admit it or not. No one believes in “nothing”. Even atheistic materialists depend on assumptions like immaterial laws of logic and mathematics, moral values, the rational intelligibility of the universe, and the principle of uniformity (tomorrow will be similar to today) in science and life. Everyone has a framework through which they interpret reality.
Even doubters have beliefs
Polymath Michael Polanyi contends in Personal Knowledge that doubt and belief are ultimately similar. How could that be? “The doubting of any explicit statement,” Polanyi explains, “denies (one) belief… in favour of other beliefs which are not doubted for the time being (p. 272).”
1.One-ism or Two-ism?
Is reality fundamentally one or two? Is everything of the same nature or is there a Creator-creature distinction? Hindu commentator Shankara notes on Mundaka Upanishad 2.1.10, “Everything is Brahman (divine).”
The Buddha Dharma Education Association claims in a commentary on The Infinite Life Sutra “in reality everything is an illusion (p.39).” Atheistic materialism sees everything, even love, beauty, morality, logic, mathematics and your life purpose as mere by-products of unguided chemical reactions.
Is all divine, illusory, or just matter in motion? Yet, in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, there is a fundamental difference in nature between God and all other beings or things (Two-ism). However, in Jesus, the two natures coincide, truly human, truly God in the hypostatic union. Jesus paves the way to connect man with God.
2. Who was Jesus- Lord, liar, lunatic, or legend?
Why Jesus? Aside from the fact Jesus is the most influential person in history as per Time magazine in 2013, Jesus is highly regarded across many religions. In Islam, according to sources 600 or so years after the life of Jesus, Jesus, though born of a virgin, did not claim to be God but merely a prophet.
Judaism rejected Jesus as the Messiah and charged Him with blasphemy for His claims He co-rules with God at God’s right hand (Mark 14:60-64).
Jesus made audacious claims about Himself, applying Scriptures about God to Himself (Matt. 21:16), declaring He was greater than God’s temple (Matt. 12:6-8), claiming authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:1-10), to judge all humanity (Matt. 7:21-23), and to be present (aka omnipresent) wherever His followers are (Matt. 18:20).
As C.S. Lewis argued, no one can seriously dismiss Him as merely a good teacher. He is either Lord, a liar, a lunatic, or, as sceptic Bart Ehrman suggests, the divine claims made about Him are legendary fabrications.
Yet strikingly, even Ehrman has occasionally conceded, despite flip flopping a few times, that all four Gospels present Jesus as a divine figure.
Bonus
What’s your solution to suffering? If God exists, does He meet you in grace or must you climb your way to Him? This is the journey. Where are you on that journey?
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