Isn't It Arrogant to Say One Religion Is True?

It is meant as a conversation-ender, and it usually works.

But look at what the objection itself is claiming.

The tolerant-sounding position is also an exclusive claim.

"All religions are equally valid paths to God" sounds like the humble option.

It is a specific claim about the nature of God — that He is the sort of God who is reached equally by contradictory routes.

Most of the world's religions flatly deny that.

So the person saying it is not standing above the argument. They have entered it, on one side, while telling everyone else not to.

There is no neutral position available here. Every answer excludes something.

The religions are not saying the same thing.

This is usually asserted by people who have not compared them.

Is God personal or impersonal? Islam and Christianity say personal. Much of Hinduism and Buddhism does not.

Do you live once or many times? Christianity says once. Reincarnation says otherwise.

Was Jesus God incarnate? Christianity says yes. Islam explicitly says no, and calls the claim blasphemy.

Did He die on a cross? Christianity says yes and stakes everything on it. The Qur'an denies it happened.

Those are not different flavours of the same statement. They are contradictions, and treating them as identical is not respect. It is refusing to listen to what any of them said.

Christians did not invent the exclusivity.

If it were the church's idea, dropping it would be easy.

It traces to Jesus.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

His followers repeated it under threat, in front of the authorities who had just killed Him.

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

A Christian can abandon that, but not while claiming to follow the man who said it.

Exclusive claims are ordinary, not offensive.

Every serious belief excludes its opposite. That is what it means to believe something.

The person who says all paths lead to God excludes everyone who says they do not.

The atheist who says no path leads to God excludes every religion at once, and is rarely called arrogant for it.

Truth claims are not arrogant by nature. If they were, no one could say anything at all.

Arrogance is about manner, not content.

Here is where the objection lands a real blow, and Christians should take it.

Plenty of us have been smug, dismissive, and cruel about this.

That is arrogance, and it is not made acceptable by the claim being true.

Scripture does not leave the manner to preference.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

Meekness. The instruction to give an answer and the instruction to give it gently arrive in the same sentence.

And the content itself removes any grounds for superiority. Christianity says salvation is a gift to people who could not earn it. Nobody boasts about being rescued.

So is it arrogant to say one religion is true?

It is arrogant to say it with contempt. That charge sticks, and often.

It is not arrogant to believe something and say so, because the alternative on offer is doing exactly the same thing.

The real question is not whether the claim is polite.

It is whether Jesus was telling the truth about Himself.