In college, a friend of mine spent a summer in Nepal. She came back with so many great stories and illustrations about people in general. She told stories of people who would believe in Jesus along with the rest of their gods. It was an incomprehensible addition. I thought, “How could you add another religion that doesn’t mesh with what you already believe.” It didn’t make sense. Adding a god that said, “I’m the ONLY way to heaven” didn’t seem congruent with a belief that said, “Be good and you’ll reach nirvana.”
And so I was baffled, and felt pride because my culture was smarter than them. We all knew that wasn’t possible. We Americans are better.
But I doubt that assessment is so true after all. It seems like American Christianity goes something like this: “Yea, I believe in God. And yea, I’m going to heaven and have fun here along the way.” The correlation between Americans and Nepalese isn’t the type of idol we serve, but the existence of important personal idols. Whereas the Nepalese add elements of religions, Americans add Christianity to narcissism and greed. We say, “Sure I believe in God and He has changed my life,” but so many of us would be hard-pressed to describe the change without a large degree of bs and hand-waving. You see, we’ve taken on Christianity like another god in our harem. We seek create a philosophy that is most pleasing to ourselves, while we forget that is not a logical nor reasonable thing to do.
So I ask, “Have you added Christ to your stable of gods?”