King Charles recently stated that he is no longer just the defender of the Christian faith but the defender of all faiths. Such a statement is doublespeak. I totally agree with defending the people of every faith if they’re not trying to dominate or destroy your civilization and culture: that’s a Godly thing to do. I’m also happy to live next door to and mix with people who are not at all like me. However, if you claim that all faiths are equally valid and aim to defend all faiths you are unavoidably denying all faiths, because all real faiths have specific beliefs-not the wishy-washy, willy-nilly half-hearted, non-committal drivel you want us to believe.
Is the aim of syncretism to get us all to sing cum-by-yah together? If it is, it isn’t going to work unless everyone denies their own convictions. Those who want me to deny my convictions are unavoidably trying to replace them with their own. As soon as you make any sort of statement about who God might or might not be, you are stating something which someone else may disagree with. You’re contradicting yourself. So then, do we all have to stop talking about God, unless our proclamations are so generalized that we really aren’t saying anything meaningful at all? Aren’t we sewing confusion? Either some specific things are true or nothing is true, and not everything can be true at once. Up is not down and circles are not squares.
IN attempting to promote universalism we could say that “everyone agrees that God is love”. Is he, she, it…love – really? How do you know? Is that what you “think” God is like? Perhaps. with all the trouble we see in the world today, we could reasonably say that God is hate: how can you then disagree without discriminating against a position? If you disagree on no particular grounds except what you “think” God must be like, you are generalizing, guessing and disagreeing with anyone who may think that God is hateful, and I can tell you that a lot of people think that way: it’s one reason why they ignore Him. How can we paint a picture of what we “think” God is like, perhaps based on a majority or a lowest common denominator type opinion? Are we not then creating God in our own image? What if God is something altogether different? Is a majority always right? If you think it is, you should stop criticising and mocking Donald Trump, because a majority voted for him in the last election. You should accept him and praise his voters for getting it right, and stop whining about what he said and what he didn’t say.
Faith has to be in something specific unless you want to stick your head in dreamy clouds of nothingness and claim that any kind of specificity must be untrue. But if you name something you believe to be true about God, you are being specific. You are making claims about who or what God is, and you are unavoidably denying that God could be the opposite of what you say he, she or it is. That’s hypocrisy, isn’t it?
You can’t defend Christianity without offending Allah, because Islam has specific beliefs and convictions. For example, any self – respecting Muslim who knows his Koran will tell you as hundreds of them on a march through the city of Leicester I once saw did, that God has no son. You can’t defend Allah without denying the Christian faith, because Christianity has specific beliefs and convictions. For example, the Christian Scriptures are plain that Jesus Christ is the one and only Son of God, and that He is the way, the truth and the life. If you generalize and say your faith is in everything, you are showing yourself either to be a liar or a fool, because you are claiming to believe in something you have no framework of tangible reference for. It’s all coming out of your own head, unless you choose to point to some nugget of reason, history, scientific evidence, tradition or conviction.
Are all gods really the same? Thie insistence that they are is like saying that if you wear a size thirteen shoe you can put on a size 8 or a size six or all sizes at once and they’re all going to fit. It’s like saying a cat has four legs, two legs and a thousand legs all at the same time. It’s like saying all words have the same meaning. It’s like believing your sister is a man, a chicken, a hippopotamus, a dinosaur and a pine tree all at once. Sadly, many people are now so determined to deny objective truth that they would defend this view. Compare the teachings of any of the great faiths and you will find enormous differences, and anyone trying to actually live by those faiths instead of denying all their tenets and history is going to recoil when you tell him or her that all gods are the same.
I occasionally hear that I shouldn’t dare claim my God is the true God or the only one. Well, if you want us all to agree that we have no idea what or who God is that’s the end of the discussion isn’t it. Let’s all go and play bingo or mow the lawn, because nobody can know anything about why we’re here, who put us here, what he or she or it expects of us, or what the future holds. People who draw this line (or who actually attempt to obliterate all lines) are generally atheistic or severely agnostic, and I think this is a strong hint of where the “all gods are the same” mantra comes from. It’s actually an attack on Western Christian values, because the same people are very happy to let the Muslim, the Hindu or the Buddhist believe whatever they want to believe. There’s no attack on them or on their culture from the woke warriors of our time.
If there is a God at all He, or she or it has certain characteristics, and working to ignore or deny those characteristics is a denial of human powers of logic, reason, deduction, enquiry, will and knowledge. Scientists make hard and fast claims about things that supposedly happened billions of years ago, with no video recording available to back it up, and people just accept it all wholesale. However, make observations about who or what God must be like based on reality and they all want to ignore it as though it has no significance.
Nature shouts the character of God, and you can’t help seeing certain facts about the universe and humanity without coming to certain conclusions. God’s power is virtually infinite. He is outside of nature and time. He has great aesthetic sense. He is endlessly creative. He is seemingly endlessly patient with human nature, and his intelligence is far beyond our imagining. Would such a God not seek to speak to his creation in some way? The bible claims to be the message of God to humanity, written down hundreds and thousands of years before the Koran came along. How then can we see the two as being one, when they contradict each other in so many profound ways? I can tell you, the Muslims will not accept such nonsense.
If a man walks into your house tonight claiming to be your son when you don’t even recognize him, puts his feet on the table and starts eating your food and eying up your young daughter, do you just let him have the run of the house? Do you say, “Oh yes, all young men are the same, therefore you are my son – help yourself”? No, you say, “We don’t recognize you. Our son has black hair and yours is blonde. Our son is very tall and slim, and you are short and stout. Our son is called David and your name is Harry. Get out now or we will call the police”. Two people are different, and you can say they are the same as much as you like, but they are not the same. Hundreds of people have many more differences. If you have any sense at all, you will have established that your son has certain characteristics that others do not have – not least the DNA in his body which has come from your own. That’s how you know him. So it is with God. Not all men are the same and not all gods are the same. In fact, they are very different.
The phrase, “Diversity is our strength” is also doublespeak. It’s an oxymoron. It’s like saying we’re determined to mix oil and water, or that we are determined to make gold from copper and iron – or dare I say – iron and clay (Daniel chapter 2). Yes, I personally can live next to and respect people of any background, colour and faith, and they are of equal value to me in the sight of God, but my principles, my beliefs, my background and my culture are totally incompatible with those who are intent on changing my faith and my nation.
King Charles is doing his subjects a great disservice. He is denying the gospel of the Christian faith, in which Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the Life, no-one comes to the Father but by me”. He is denying his promise to and his role as defender of “the” faith. He is promoting a future of unrest in a once-Christian nation, and he is dishonoring and disbelieving God.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 