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[Music] Facing Other Faiths, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] I invite you to attend with me to the reading of God's Word

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as it is recorded in the Gospel according to John, the 14th chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered 1, and again in the Gospel according to Matthew, at the 28th chapter, beginning at the verse numbered 16.

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Reading first from John. "Do not be worried and upset," Jesus told them. "Believe in God and believe also in me. There are many rooms in my Father's house,

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and I am going to prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not so. And after I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to myself so that you will be where I am.

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You know how to get to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way to get there?" Jesus answered him, "I am the way.

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I am the truth. I am the light. No one goes to the Father except by me. Now that you have known me," he said to them,

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"you will know my Father also. And from now on you do know him and you have seen him." Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father. That is all we need."

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Jesus answered, "For a long time I have been with you all. Yet you do not know me, Philip. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Why then do you say, 'Show us the Father'?"

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Continuing the reading from the last chapter of the gospel according to Matthew. The eleven disciples went to the hill in Galilee where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him, even though some of them doubted him. Jesus drew near and said to them,

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"I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go then to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

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And remember, I will be with you always to the end of the age." And may the same spirit that inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Will you pray with me?

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It was late on a Sunday night and I was taking the last plane from Chicago to Pittsburgh. I was bone weary.

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I can recall that I was so tired that I even had difficulty anchoring myself with my seat belt. It was while I was working with the belt that a fellow came and seated himself next to me. I remember looking at him quickly, the thought going through my mind, "Why are planes so crowded late on a Sunday night?"

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Even a quick glance showed me that he passed my requirements for a Sunday night traveling companion. First, he was sober. Second, he was small so he didn't overlap the armrest between the two of us. And third, he did not look like he was given to much conversation.

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I settled back in the seat and watched the stewardess do her thing. It was obvious she was tired too. And then there was the roar of the engines and the run for the end of the runway and a lift-off so smooth that you wouldn't have noticed if you had not been looking out the window.

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Chicago below us stretched out like some giant Christmas tree and then we were over Lake Michigan and it was dark. I reached up and flipped on the overhead light and picked up the pamphlet I'd brought along for reading. It had been written by a friend of mine, Dr. Ralph Winter.

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Bright yellow pages and the title of the document stood out boldly across its front, "The Grounds for a New Thrust in World Mission." I opened it, page one. "You don't hear much about missionaries anymore."

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That's not what the page said. That's what he said. He didn't introduce himself. He just said, "You don't hear much about missionaries anymore." I turned and looked at him as I thought of what to say. I could see that he was prosperous, although still very young.

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I would guess his age, because the crow's feet were beginning to show at the corners of his eyes, to be in the early thirties, the dry look, of course. He pointed to the pamphlet and said, "I noticed the title of the pamphlet and that's what led to my comment. You don't hear much about missionaries anymore."

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And as he pointed, I saw the ring on his hand that indicated that he was a graduate of Northwestern University. "No," I said, "you really don't. There's a kind of new attitude with regard to missionaries. It's strange. If you're zealous concerning friendship, well, then you're called loyal. And if you're earnest concerning scholarship, well, that's called research.

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And if you're conscientious about the building of character, that's called discipline. But if you're zealous and earnest and conscientious about spreading your faith, well, that's called fanaticism. And we don't like to talk much about it. I think that's the reason you don't hear much about missionaries anymore.

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After all, in a world like ours today, fanaticism is the arch sin. It's better to be immoral than to be a fanatic. I mean, you do your own thing and I do my own thing, and everything will be all right until you try to convert me into doing your thing, and that is absolutely wrong.

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No, you don't hear much about missionaries anymore." "Well, I'm not saying I'd be that severe," he replied. "It's just that, well, you must admit that they're a little bit off-balance." I thought about those words. Off-balance.

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I suppose that's as good a way to describe a missionary as there is. They were ordinary at one time, but then for some reason, inexplicable to most of us, they pick up and go halfway around the world in the pursuit of a vision. And when they come back, I guess they are off-balance.

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They can't discuss the World Series with us. They don't know anything about the Super Bowl. They don't seem to have any interest at all in the latest TV or Hollywood scandal. Their clothes always are a little bit out of style because it's been three and a half years since they were last here.

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How long have they been gone? Well, long enough to have had amoebic dysentery three times, long enough to have fooled each other through a siege of malaria, long enough to have gotten the news about Dad's death before they even knew that he was sick,

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long enough to see 10,000 people die of hunger, long enough to miss their kids right down in the deepest center of themselves, long enough to have forgotten how to speak our language with ease. They might be great in Swahili in a marketplace,

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but somehow their words seem awkward and stumbling here, and they're not as warm as we would like them to be. Yeah, off-balance. The question is, by whose scales? Ours or God's?

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Oh, he replied, "I didn't mean to be too pressing about it, but I—" You must acknowledge that those people are, by nature, intense. Intense. But what's wrong with them being intense?

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I mean, lots of people are intense. I went and saw a movie two weeks ago. It was called "King Kong," and I read an article in a magazine just about three days ago that said that the movie has already grossed $24 million.

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Now, a lot of people are very intense about that movie. You can now buy "King Kong" candy bars, for example. And you remember that scene when the big monkey takes the girl and holds her under a waterfall, and then after she's all washed off,

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breathes on her and makes her dry again? Well, I saw an ad in the newspaper for a 1600-watt hairdryer called the Kong. Now, somebody's very intense about selling that, and I suppose pretty soon we'll have fake fur rugs called Kong rugs

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and leather chairs shaped like a gorilla's hand. And then, of course, there'll be the eight-foot-high doll that breaks its way out of chains and cages, batteries not included and the chains and cages optional.

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And there'll be King Kong coats by Dicker and Dicker of Beverly Hills, and you'll be able to get King Kong perfume called Island Mist or Go Ape or something like that. And there'll be a mouthwash called Banana Breath,

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and a new musical on Broadway called The Kong and I and a song with a Kong in my heart. Lots of people get intense about things. But when a missionary gets intense,

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when he runs off around the world and gives himself to the hungry and the starving and the ignorant, when he seeks to serve them with everything he has at great personal cost and when he does it all to bring them to his savior,

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well, that's the kind of intensity that somehow is wrong with us. Yes, I suppose you can call them intense, but it's an intense world, and what's wrong with their intensity? I have a missionary friend who spent the last 30 years in the Far East,

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and he was recently contacted by an oil company. They offered him $50,000 a year to go to work for them because his contacts and knowledge of the Far East were so excellent, and he turned down the offer,

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and they came back and offered him $80,000 a year, and he turned down the offer, and they came back and offered him $100,000 a year, and he wrote them a letter in which he said,

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"Look, it's not a matter of the salary. The first salary you offered was bigger than any salary I've ever known or ever will know. Your difficulty is your job isn't big enough. I'm already caught up in a job vastly more important

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than anything you could ever offer me." Well, that's intense, yes, but is there anything wrong with that kind of-- "Would you like coffee or tea or Coke or orange juice," the stewardess said?

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He ordered orange juice. I had cabs. [laughter] And, of course, the peanuts that come with everything on an airplane

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wrapped in that little silver foil container, which was, I'm convinced, invented by some evil and mysterious Chinese magician, making it impossible to open. He sat in his seat and wrestled with his,

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and I sat in my seat and wrestled with mine, and in the middle of it he began to chuckle, and he said, "I guess I kind of touched a nerve when I spoke to you about missionaries.

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Are you a preacher?" [laughter] I said, "Guilty as charged, and I guess you're too tired to talk on a Sunday night."

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I thought about that for a moment and decided to lie. "No," I said, "I'm not too tired." And you could see by the look on his face that he intended to go deeper. We might have started here, but he wanted more than that.

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"I think what I'm trying to say," he argued, "is that, well, everybody has a right to their own faith, and what right do we have to go over and seek to bring somebody else away from the faith which is theirs to ours?"

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Of course, you're never surprised when you hear someone say that. It's an expression of an attitude that's very common here in America. We talk about freedom of religion, and we believe that all religions should be treated with respect.

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We don't carry it too far, of course. We don't carry it all the way. The Mormons, for example, believed in polygamy, and we made a law which made that illegal,

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and I assume that if there was a religious sect in America that started to practice cannibalism, we would pass a law which would prohibit that also. We don't go all the way in saying that anybody can do anything

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in their religion that they want to do. But generally, there is a mood across our country, and this young fellow was expressing it, that all religions are equally good.

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And I sure wish somebody would lay that attitude to rest, and that right quickly. The people who say that have never seen what some people in the world do in the name of religion.

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I mean, if you'd stood where I stood in a fetish market in Lomé and Toboland in January, and saw them tying the entrails of dead rats around the necks of children to keep the demons away,

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and by those entrails condemning those children, as it were, to a Berman-ridden death, if you saw that, or if you stood in Australia and witnessed Aborigines there who inflicted horrible mutilations on each other

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in the name of religion, I mean, if you witnessed that, or saw the fear in some people's faces in Ghana when you talk about a witch doctor

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who threatens to sneak up to you at night and sew your lips shut and rub your tongue with a magic stone and cut all the fat out of your kidneys and insert evil there so that you become one of the walking dead,

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and if you believed that and were so terrified by that that you fled your village and died somewhere off in the wilderness, lest the rest of your family be infected by what the witch doctor wanted to punish in you,

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if you saw a society where women climbed onto flaming pyres with the dead bodies of their husbands and saw the terrible things that are inflected on individuals as expressions of religion,

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well, you wouldn't be so quick to say that all religions are equally good. That's not a tolerant attitude. That's an ignorant attitude. And to testify to it is to testify to a cruelty

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and to an indifference to human suffering which does no one any honor. "My friend," I said, "not only are all religions not equally good,

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but you're caught up, I think, in a very serious contradiction. I mean, if all religions are equally good, as you suggest, then that means that this missionary's religion is just as good as all the others,

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and part of his religion is to spread that religion everywhere he can in the world. And if you're going to accept all religions, then you have to accept him with his zeal to spread the gospel everywhere he goes. And if you deny him, well, that's just a subjective prejudice on your part,

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and I don't really have to take that very seriously. But I'll go a step further and say to you in all earnestness that there are some religions on the face of this earth that must be resisted in the name of humanity,

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in the name of decency, and in the name of truth. We can be as tolerant as we want to, you know, but truth is not tolerant. Truth is very intolerant.

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If something is true, then its opposite cannot be true. We have religions on the face of the earth that teach exactly opposite things. There's just no way for them both to be true. If one man says that prayer affects things

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and another man says that prayer does not affect things, one of them has to be wrong. If an astronomer says that a certain planet has an atmosphere in which life can exist and another astronomer says that same planet does not have an atmosphere in which life can exist,

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one of those men has to be wrong. You may not know which one it is, but they can't both be right. Truth is by nature intolerant. Now, a Christian looks at Jesus and understands Jesus to be God.

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He hears Jesus say, "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the light. No one comes to the Father but by me." I don't know anyone today who would contest the fact that Jesus lived, that he walked this earth, and that he made claims just like that in the course of his ministry.

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Those things are recorded in the Bible, which is the most examined, the most studied, the most argued over, the most debated book in history. There's no question but that Jesus said these things about himself, and they've been recorded for twenty centuries.

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And when he said them, he was either telling the truth, or he was lying, or he was a lunatic. He was either divine, or he was himself deceived, or he was engaged in deceiving somebody else. Now, the Christian accepts what he says to be true. And he accepts what he says to be true because of the testimony of his experience,

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and the experience of other people, and the use of his reason, and his own involvement in faith. Oh, the Christian's smart enough to know that he can be fooled in his experience. There's such a thing as an optical illusion that can fool your eyes. There's such a thing as an echo that can fool your ears.

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So he doesn't rely just on his own experience. He relies on the experience of a lot of other people as well, and the Christian has a lot of people on whom he can rely. Christianity is now the oldest religion on the face of the earth.

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Christianity is the only religion on the face of the earth that is in every nation on the face of the earth. There are more Christians than there are adherents of any other two of the world's faiths. Christianity has had more impact upon civilization than any other faith. Christianity is growing more rapidly in the world today than any other system of belief.

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And the searching one sees all of this evidence, gathers it to himself, and then, beyond that, surrenders himself to this Jesus, and in his own experience, discovers who Jesus is. Discovers that there's a gap between God and man, and that somehow Jesus bridges that gap.

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That he did it, and that he did it in a way which made it absolutely unnecessary for it ever to be done again. And a Christian experiences that in his own life. He offers himself to the Lord who does that. And while he doesn't claim to know everything, and fully expects new things to be brought to his knowledge,

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he still knows in his heart that that which he does know is true. It's like the chemist who sits down and works with molecular weights and the symbols of the elements. He may learn more about those elements, he may in fact discover additional elements, but that which he knows will stand.

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So the Christian discovers that that which he knows about Jesus is true, and he builds his whole life on it. And having surrendered to this Jesus, he goes out and tells other people about it, not in an arrogant way, for he understands that his knowledge is nothing to his credit.

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He goes out without pride, or without supercilious spirit. He goes out principally because he's been commanded to go by the Lord that claims him. And he goes out because he believes exactly what you believe, my young friend, namely that truth should be exalted above falsity.

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That's the reason the Christian announces what he announces. Just then we hit some turbulence. I have a theory. The theory is that where the flat plains of Ohio meet the rolling hills of Pennsylvania,

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there will always be turbulence. The plain was going ahead like it had two flat tires. But he didn't seem to notice that. He said to me, "All right, I'll accept your argument that not all faiths are equal,

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and I'll accept your argument that truth is intolerant, but we're talking about more than faith here. We're also talking about culture. Now, if you met somebody from another society and were dealing with them

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only in terms of their religion, well, that's one thing, but when you go into another country, you're affecting their entire culture, and do we have any right to impose our culture on the culture of another?" Oh, that's the argument I hear so often on the campus, I said.

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A philosopher would call that ethical subjectivism. There's no doubt about the fact that cultures do differ. I mean, in one culture it's wrong to have only one wife, and in another culture it's wrong to have more than one wife.

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Cultures do differ. But are you seriously going to suggest that it's wrong to interfere with another culture? I mean, if that's the position that you're taking, you've painted yourself into a very perilous corner.

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I mean, if it is wrong to interfere with the culture of that headhunter in Barnea, then it's also wrong to interfere with the culture of that drug pusher in the ghetto eight blocks from where you live. If you're wrong when you interfere with the culture of some hot-and-tot in Africa,

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then it's just as wrong for you to try to influence the culture of that racist in Georgia who's a charter member and a practicing member of the local KKK. Every time you teach someone who's ignorant, you're affecting culture. Does that mean you're against education?

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Every time you take someone who's sick and make them well, you're affecting culture. Does that mean you're against the practice of medicine? Every time you take someone who's starving and feed them so that they live, you are having an influence upon culture.

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Does that mean that you are not in favor of feeding the starving? I mean, you've got to realize that this doctrine of yours of the non-interference of culture applies as much to Toledo as it does to Timbuktu. I find myself very concerned right now about the growth of transcendental meditation here in the United States.

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And it concerns me, first of all, because it's a false religion. And it concerns me, secondly, because it's ripping off millions of dollars from millions of citizens. And it concerns me, thirdly, because its claims of having some unique insight into the needs of man which can be met by meditation are altogether phony.

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Oh, meditation does have benefits, but meditation can be practiced in any one of a number of ways, not necessarily the very expensive way which they recommend, and in any of those ways it will do you good. So the thing that frightens me the most about transcendental meditation is

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it's an honest expression of a Hindu-dominated culture. And a Hindu-dominated culture is a selfish, self-indulgent culture. I remember sitting at a dinner table with E. Stanley Jones, who lived and worked in India for so many years, and having him tell us at the table about

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being in the midst of a famine where people were falling over from hunger. And he saw four people fall together in one moment, and he ran to get help. And he saw two holy men brooding, and he ran up and said, "Come, we must help these people. They are ill." And the holy men looked up at him and said, "We are holy men. We don't help anybody."

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Well, that's basic to Hindu thought, basic to most Buddhist thought, basic to most Islamic thought. You help only yourself. Religion is something that is introspective. It deals only with your own needs and your own desires, and that kind of attitude has cut the nerve of progress in cultures about this world.

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And I don't believe that those cultures are in any way the equal of our own. I'm not ready to say that they're as good as our own. And it seems to me that I'm commanded to go into those cultures and do everything I can to lift up the worth of a man. Paul Tillich says in his book, The Theology of Culture, that you can't affect a culture unless you're willing to be involved in it.

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Well, when Christians get involved in another culture, they do so not prejudiciously. They give themselves to an objective standard, the will of Jesus Christ, and accepting that standard, they seek to apply it to the culture. They don't change any aspect of the culture which is not opposed by that standard. But when there is a difference, when Jesus says one thing and the culture says another thing, well then, yes, they argue for change, and I make no apology for that.

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The plain fact of the matter is that in terms of dealing with cultures, the Church's record is not bad. Oh, I'm not going to whitewash things and say that that record is a perfect one. The Church has made some bad mistakes. But on the whole, its record excels that of any other human institution you can name.

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As long ago as 1659, when the first missionaries were going out from parts of Europe to China, one of the instructions given to them was this. Do not attempt to take France, Spain, and Italy to China. Do not introduce all of that to them, but only the faith, which does not deprive them or destroy them from the manners and the customs which are theirs,

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but rather lifts up and preserves those things which are precious to them. Please turn your cassette to the other side. [Pause] You won't find any course there on world religion.

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The only faith in the world which is visually engaged in studying other faiths is Christianity. Buddhists do not sit down and study Christianity in their universities, but Christians sit down in their universities and study Buddhism precisely in order to understand the culture. And the reason that Christianity is the only religion on the face of the earth which is in every nation on the face of the earth is precisely this.

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It is harmonious with all the world's cultures. The other faiths are far more tied to a particular culture than Christianity is. The majority of the world's Christians are not Westerners. The majority of the world's Christians are colored from other parts of the world.

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In fact, the biggest problem which the Church encounters today is governments that are trying to make the Church be an agent of cultural change. Missionaries in Brazil now are being threatened with being thrown out of the country. Why? Because, the Brazilian authorities say, they focus only on religion and are trying enough to change the culture of the people to whom they go and minister.

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A little light came on over our heads that said, "Fasten seat belts." "I wish so many people hadn't gone and seen that movie Hawaii," I continued. They read the book, or else they go and see the movie. They see a missionary depicted in the worst of all possible terms,

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barging into a culture and breaking it up into little pieces and rearranging those pieces to suit themselves. And after that, they think that all missionaries behave in just such a way. Well, on the Today Show a few nights ago, they had a football player who had just written a book in which he confessed he was a homosexual. Does that mean that all professional football players are homosexuals?

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And some businessmen have engaged in bribing people overseas. Does that mean that all businessmen are crooks and bribe people overseas? So Sinclair Lewis sits down and writes the book Elmer Dantry, and he depicts all preachers as lecturers. Does that mean that all preachers are lecturers? Certainly not.

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I talked to a young man who came home from spending some time in Guatemala, and he said that he wished he could bring aspects of Guatemalan culture into our culture. And I've heard that from so many missionaries. They're not overawed by our way of doing things.

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They find things in other societies they find oftentimes to be of more value than our own, and want to bring these things back with them. I wish that the other people who went out from America were as concerned from the cultures of other countries as Christians are. There are 105 American businessmen overseas today for every one missionary that is overseas.

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Why, there are some countries in the world where American businessmen outnumber the citizens. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, there are a total of 225,000 citizens and 235,000 American businessmen in that land. And I might add that those American businessmen have their own bars and saloons and bring in their own booze. And you talk about offending a culture.

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That's an Islamic culture, and Islam is radically opposed to the use of alcohol. No missionary, including missionaries who do not hesitate to take a drink, no missionary, would ever think of going into an Islamic culture carrying a bottle with it. But other representatives of our country do it without ever thinking about it at all.

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The Church is the agency which is most sensitive to other cultures. We don't seek to destroy them, except where they are enemies of Christ. And where they are enemies of Christ, then in the spirit of Christ, we seek to teach and to minister. Okay, okay. I'll go along for the moment.

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All I can say is this. If this is a Christian nation, with all of its robberies and all of its rapes and all of its crimes and all of its water gates and everything, if this is what goes on in a Christian nation, I don't know where we get off going to any other nation and trying to sell them Christianity. My friends, I said, that sounds very humble.

00:34:16.000 - 00:34:37.000

You go farther than I would. I'm not ready to describe America as a Christian nation. But if you want to say that, okay. And I'll confess to you, I'm impressed by your humility. You rightly acknowledge the sin which is ours as a nation. That's a virtue. But my friend, honesty is a virtue, too.

00:34:37.000 - 00:35:10.000

And if you're going to maintain that because our record is not pure, we can't go and seek to teach others, if that's what you're going to maintain, then honesty demands that you stick to that position consistently. And that means because we've got some rotten schools, we close all our schools until our education is perfect. Then we begin to teach. Because we've got some very poor hospitals, we close all our hospitals until all our hospitals are perfect.

00:35:10.000 - 00:35:29.000

And then we begin to make people well. It's very easy for you to sit back and say, "The Church is full of hypocrites." Well, I've been in the Church all my life, and I know there are a lot of hypocrites there. But there are less hypocrites in the Church than any other group I've ever belonged to.

00:35:29.000 - 00:35:59.000

If you want to see a bunch of hypocrites, go to the Rotary Club, or the Kiwanis Club, or any other club you'd like to name. Go to any other aggredation of humanity anywhere. I don't single out the Rotarians. I've been one for too many years. I'm simply saying to you, the only difference between the hypocrites in the Church and out of the Church is the ones in the Church admit it. The Church has the highest moral standards in the world. It shouldn't come as any shock to you that sometimes we fail in achieving them.

00:35:59.000 - 00:36:33.000

But the fact that we fail doesn't mean we cannot go with those things that we do significantly accomplish by the power of God. And if there's any honesty in you at all, my friend, you're going to have to admit that. When you look at the Church, it was just then that the wheels of the plane touched the runway, and they kind of screeched as if they were angry that the plodding earth had caught the plane and wouldn't let it go. If there's any honesty at all in you, then I say, don't look at the Church's mistake.

00:36:33.000 - 00:37:20.000

Look at the Church's Christ, and look at the guidance He gives in His Word written. You and I both know the book is always better than the movie. Two minutes later we were at the gate. I got up to go. "You getting off here?" I said. "No," he said. "I'm going on." So we shook hands, and I started down the aisle, thinking as I went, "You talk and you talk and you talk, and you never know if you said the right thing to the right guy at the right time."

00:37:20.000 - 00:38:22.000

And I left the plane, and I went down the passenger chute, and I stopped in the waiting room, and I turned and I looked back. He said, "I'm going on." I wonder where. I wonder how far. Oh God, tonight, bless that young 20th century man who soars above the clouds in skies that are a whole world wide. Amen.

00:38:22.000 - 00:38:54.700

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves His peace. I'm going to the bathroom!