With all of the occasions I've had to talk lately, I'm running a little low on words. But I recently rediscovered the following book excerpt, so I'll copy it down for consideration.
“There is an admirable air of humility about the statement
that the truth is much greater than any one person or any one religious
tradition can grasp. The statement is no doubt true, but it can be used against
the truth when it is used to neutralize any affirmation of the truth.
How does
the speaker know that the truth is so much greater than this particular
affirmation of it—For example, that “J'sus Chr-st is the truth”? What
privileged access to reality does he have?
In the famous story of the blind men
and the elephant, so often quoted in the interests of religious agnosticism,
the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from
the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see
that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are
only able to get hold of part of the truth. The story is constantly told in
order to neutralize the affirmation of the great religions, to suggest that
they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one
aspect of the truth.
But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the
opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The story is
told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the
full truth which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies
the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the
religions and philosophies.”
- --The
G0spel in a Pluralistic Society, Lesslie Newbigin, pages 9-10.
