Combining Religions

Continuing with the previous post's thought, in my local paper today, there was a column by a local high school history teacher. Each year he asks his classes to imagine the earth is inhabitable due to a thermonuclear holocaust and everyone who is left has to go to another planet. He asks them how they would set up society on this new planet. He asks them to consider laws, religion,the military, weapons, etc. Here is what he writes about the religion question:

The question of religion often gets brought into the discussion in this brave new world [he means the new planet]. There is an understandable tendency to cling to any aspect of their lives that brings them spiritual comfort, especially after the cataclysmic event that brought them into extinction [he means in the make-believe exercise]. But recognizing that religious differences also caused much of the misery back on Earth, the proposition went forward in two of the classes that a new religion of the people be declared, and be formed by recognizing the comonalities that exist in all religions.

Well, that isn't surprising as this is certainly the thinking today, even in many Christian groups. But here is the surprising twist in his students' thinking. Listen to what he says next:


[the new religion] did not pass [in other words, it was not adopted] by either of the two classes. Some differences they decided, could not be reconciled or ironed out, but a person's relationship with God is sacrosant and is not given to compromise.

It's sad when the unbeliever "gets it" and the Christians don't. In this case, I would surmise, living in So. California and the fact this is public school, not a private Christian school, that the majority of these students are not born-again Christian believers (this isn't the Bible Belt). But they get it. They get that there is something inherently wrong and off about trying to combine religions. They did seem to have understood this fact themselves. Sadly, in Christendom today, we are hearing more and more about how we need to "reconcile" with Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, liberal Protestants, Mormons and so forth. Also, how we need to incorporate some of their beliefs into ours. It was Jesus who said,

"...the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." (Luke 16:8)

So true. So sad.