What about other faiths
up:: Biblical Worldview MOC Level of Certainty: This is something I keep thinking about. This page collects ideas and arguments I find intriguing. I am not yet sure if I agree.
Here I wrestle with the ramifications of the existence of other faiths.
The benefits from prayer and meditation are unrelated to a specific belief
This finding in the research I found most challenging. As a Christian, I believe that The more closely a person or culture adheres to a biblical worldview, the closer they are to objective reality. How is that connected to the evidence that the blessings of prayer or meditation are independent of any specific set of belief? They don’t even have to be religious! It could be money, power, peace or whatever!
However, while the internal benefits of contemplation seem to be the same across the board, the way it plays out in society isn’t. Your view of God affects all of your life and so does it affect all of society. I have seen firsthand the fruits of belief systems that fall short of God’s ideal and therefore perpetuate injustice and allow suffering though lethargy: In animistic and secular belief systems and even in Christian nations if we can’t grasp God’s plan fully (Common misconceptions in Christian worldview).
The gospel as ‘subversive fulfilment’
Daniel Strange lays out in ‘For Their Rock is not as Our Rock’: An Evangelical Theology Of Religions the idea of the gospel being the ‘subversive fulfilment’:
“Sin must not be denounced in general, but in the particular idolatrous forms in the culture. Salvation must not be declared in general but as fulfilling the very hopes that the culture wrongly puts in it’s idols.” Timothy Keller’s summary of the idea in Plugged In – Connecting Your Faith with Everything You Watch, Read, and Play
(The Gospel is subversive fulfilment of idol stories)
Other religions fall prey to the false counterfeit of divine revelation. Other religions are idolatrous. The gospel is their ‘subversive fulfilment’: Subversive in that it is totally surprising, fulfilment in that the true longings are met in Jesus.
Origin
Transclude of How-God-Changes-Your-Brain-–-Breakthrough-Findings-from-a-Leading-Neuroscientist#the-benefits-from-prayer-and-meditation-are-unrelated-to-a-specific-belief