The discussion on Yoga reminded me about why Christians have difficulty talking or thinking clearly about other religions. Here are a few observations on my part.

1. The dominant status of Christianity in American culture has created a lot of confusion about Christianity, what it is, what it teaches, etc. This isn’t helped by the fact that Christians themselves differ and do plenty of their own intramural fighting about these things. As the preferred status of Christianity continues to erode in our culture it is likely that some of this confusion will dissipate as well.

2. In my experience the most universally embraced quasi-religious belief system in our culture is moralism. Moralism is about behavior. There are good people and there are bad people. Good people do right most of the time, bad people don’t. People should be good and do right.

This gets connected then to lots of Christian notions as well as notions from other religions. Where death is concerned the idea is “good people go to heaven”. Americans don’t like to talk about hell unless they want to express a desire for punishment for someone who has hurt them or done some obvious public atrocity.

It also pops up in the popular American adaptation of the idea of karma. Do good things, good things happen. Do bad things, bad things happen.

Americans, however, are as selective about their ideas about karma as they are about hell. If you would suggest that children with birth defects or who are born into poverty deserve the suffering that comes their way because of wrongs they did in a past life Americans most often protest.

3. The common religion of Moralism has not only deeply impacted non-Christians in the culture but also Christians. Many people believe that the role of religion is to make people moral. This is one of the enduring reasons that people who themselves don’t go to church send their children to Sunday School. They believe that the job of the Church is to make people moral. “Good people go to church, therefore what the church does is make people good.”

One of the things you learn as a pastor is that it is tremendously difficult for people to hear something other than their assumptions.

One result of this confusion, that I find both Christians and non-Christians participate in, is that Christianity asserts that non-Christian people, and people who adhere to other religions are immoral.

Many people who are paying attention immediately object. Morality is by no means a monopoly of Christians or Christianity. CS Lewis himself in the appendix to his book “The Abolition of Man” listed natural laws of morality he called the “Tao”. People rightly note the similarities between the moral laws of many religions (including agnostics and atheists) and cry “foul!” and they are right.

You don’t need a metaphysic to be moral.

Many religions can help you become more moral and have proven track records to demonstrate it.

4. Because Moralism is the dominant, operating assumption for what a religion is for in the culture AND because religions have similar moral codes people then commonly jump to the next conclusion that “religions are all the same.” As I’ll point out in a subsequent blog post, this is a bad jump to make, and I’ll demonstrate why.

When Moralism is the dominant, practical, religious assumption, as it is in our culture, people tend to project it onto other religions (or even onto their own) its assumptions and go further to conflate the religions. “Religion” as it is then presumed is about two major things: what happens to you when you die, and how are you supposed to behave here. Moralism then says that “good people go to a good place when they die” and “religion teaches you right from wrong.” Many quickly then jump to a third thing that says “all religions are the same” and in fact they all look the same if your own religion is essentially moralism.