Question By Peter
February 18, 2004
When Jesus said, “In my house there are many mansions,” was he giving legitimacy to the other world religions like Islam and Buddhism?
The quotation you cite is from the Gospel of John and most Biblical scholars doubt the literal historicity of any of the words attributed to Jesus in that text. They do not doubt, however, that this Gospel captures much of the meaning of Jesus in its narrative.
The idea that in the Kingdom of heaven there is room for all is one of those essential themes. Organized religion tends to become narrow in its focus to increase its power and to threaten those who think differently with exclusion from God’s presence.
What we need to hear first is that every religious system is a human creation. For this reason alone no religious system can capture the fullness of God. God is not a Christian, a Moslem or a Jew. All religious systems are designed to help us walk into the mystery of God. Most of us walk via the cultural path into which we were born. It is natural to honor the pathway on which we have found holiness. What we do not seem to understand is that we do not bring honor to our pathway by being negative about someone else’s pathway.
Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism have each produced millions of holy lives. So has Christianity. However, holiness is never found in that religious attitude that assumes that truth itself has been captured in my particular religious system. That attitude, rather, produces religious persecution, religious violence, religious bigotry and religious wars. There is far too much of that kind of religion in out world today.
I urge every person of faith to sink their lives deeply into all that their religious system can be but never to assume that God is a Being who can be known only through that tradition. God cannot be limited and the ultimate judgment about what is finally true belongs to God alone, not to us. So walk in love. Join hands with all those who seek God and a god-filled life. They are not the enemies of your religious convictions. They have simply found the Holy One in places different from ours. You and I must honor that place, for God is bigger than any religious system that any person has ever devised.
— John Shelby Spong
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