I recently had one of those moments where I wish I had said something as succinct as I can say it now.  One student stated that she had a theory about religion: "having a religion is kind of like having a specific learning style: everybody's got a different one, and no one person's learning style is better than another's."  Really what she was after was that she wanted to say that everyone comes to the same God but through different names for that God, different styles of worship, etc.  It was clear that what was driving her theory was a specific result: "how can I get everyone to love one another so that religion doesn't divide us?"  No one who lives in America has managed to dodge this question.  To operate on this plane is to leave one's own religion behind, to relativize it.  But this new plane becomes an absolute, whereby I assume my power to bring everyone together by having their views come together into a cohesive and visible (though invisible to most) whole.  She was dead on to call this a "theory."  And by providing this theory, she was grappling for a handle on a love that is universal, if only for herself and those she shared it with.  She wanted to say that everyone is right, and that nobody has the right to judge.

I hadn't ever really systematically thought through my approach to this issue.  So here it goes.  It's not that everybody's right, but that everybody's wrong.  And not wrong in an incomplete sense, whereby if we just add up all our religious views then God will appear intelligibly in our giant mosaic.  No, instead there is an absolute judgment on all religion.  Perhaps one of the greatest parables of the punishment (and gift) of our pluralism is the story of the Tower of Babylon, where the desire to be God leads to a great religion, a great city moving skyward.  God confuses their language and scatters them, as loving punishment to keep them from what is ultimately most harmful to them: to take the place of God, to be the judge.  And when I think of our diversity, it is a reminder that we simply do not possess God in our religion.

And yet, insofar as I have been confronted with the reality of Jesus Christ, I have been confronted with a truth that is no mere theory.  I have been told that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world, and in this self-offering we are given the new reality of our plural, diverse humanity.  We are told that every knee will bow and tongue will confess that this one is Lord, that his reality is our true reality.  Theologically, for this to be true, requires the confession that Jesus is God.   Immediately we hear the complaint: "but what about those who cannot confess this?  How will you love the one who disagrees with you? you have isolated yourself from others!"  And I answer: "Because when I confess this, I confess my true love for the other, the neighbor who disagrees.  It is necessarily true love and therefore concrete and practical, because it is the love of Jesus Christ, the incarnate one in obedience.  He is thus no mere theory, and neither is his love which pours over all humanity."