Why Choose to Believe in Jesus and Not Buddha or Muhammad? *

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There are many ways in which people express their views toward religions. The most common seems to be that all religions are the same. Yes, some will concede, there might be differences on the surface, but when we dig down to the fundamentals, all religions are the same. This leads that person to wonder why Christians would choose to follow Jesus Christ over Buddha or Muhammad. If all religions are the same, why choose one over the other?

Let’s take a deeper look at this question and explore the assumptions behind it.

Baseball and Cricket Are the Same, Aren’t They?

I was born and raised in Canada. I like to say that if you prick my skin today, I still bleed maple syrup. After completing my undergraduate degree in Toronto, I worked in the city before moving to England to take up postgraduate studies. Before leaving Canada for England, I met with as many friends as possible to say goodbye.

Some of my friends knew I loved baseball and encouraged me to play cricket when I moved to England. “They are basically the same sport,” one friend said. “You are good at baseball, so you will be good at cricket.” This all sounded good and encouraging. It was all sincere and well-meaning. But simply not true. Although baseball and cricket might look similar, there are fundamental differences between them.

First, baseball is played on a baseball diamond, comprised of an elevated pitcher’s mound, clay home plate area, dirt infield, and grass field. The cricket field, known as the pitch, is all grass. There is no pitcher’s mound or home plate, but a wicket. More than that, in baseball we call the person throwing the ball a pitcher. In cricket we call the person throwing the ball a bowler. The person hitting the ball in baseball is called a batter. The person hitting the ball in cricket is called a batsman. In baseball, there is never more than one batter at a time. In cricket, batsmen work in pairs, never alone.

The major point to understand here is that although the sports might look similar, the differences between them are huge. There is a reason one sport is called cricket and the other is called baseball. Although it can be said that the two are bat and ball sports, they are fundamentally different games.

But Why Jesus?

That’s how it is with religion, too. At first glance, all religions might look the same, but even a little bit of probing tells another story.

Let’s see how Buddhism and Islam compare to Christianity.

Unlike Christianity, which centers on Christ, Buddhism does not center around its founder, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha. Buddhists prefer to emphasize what he taught more than his life. In fact, although the teaching within Buddhism is something that he awakened to, Buddhists believe it was not unique to him. Fortress Press’s Introduction To World Religions explains this further: “Others had awakened before him, and there will be many, many after him too.”^[i]

Likewise, many people compare the prophet Muhammad to Jesus Christ. But that comparison in itself is poor, primarily because Islamic doctrine does not view Muhammad as God while Christian belief holds that Jesus Christ was and is God. A more apt comparison between Islam and Christianity would be between the Holy Quran and Jesus Christ. Muslims consider the Quran to be the revelation of God while Christians consider Jesus Christ to be the revelation of God.

Either way, the main hurdle to get past is the fact that Jesus Christ is far more than merely a prophet, religious founder, or “awakened one.” Simply put: Jesus Christ is the center around which the Christian faith orbits.

My friend Michael Ramsden quips that if you remove Christ from Christian, “all you are left with is Ian, and Ian cannot help you.” The point is that if you take Jesus Christ out of Christianity, you no longer have Christianity. The Christian faith stands or falls on the life of Jesus Christ. The same cannot be said of the other faiths. If you remove Gautama Buddha from Buddhism, the faith can remain because Buddha is not essential to the beliefs. There could have been another awakened one.

Jesus Christ famously told His friends that He was the “way, the truth, and the life.”^[ii] “If you are looking for instructions for life, I am the way,” says Jesus. “If you are looking for truth, come to Me,” says Jesus. “If you are looking for life—the kind of life that will outlast this physical life on earth—you will only find it through Me,” says Jesus. The way to live, the truth about reality, and eternal life are all found in Jesus Christ. The teachings of Christ are of enormous importance, but following His teachings flows from knowing Him and engaging with Him in personal relationship. Provocatively, Christian belief is clear that you can know all of Christ’s teachings and even follow them, but if you do not know Him personally, you have missed the main goal.

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Even the Questions Are Different

One of the things that surprised me in my exploration is that even some of the questions within different systems of belief vary. In other words, not all religions are asking the same questions.

When college students ask me, “Don’t all religions lead to God?” it is daunting because the question itself insinuates that Christians are arrogant to claim that only their truth leads to God.

But here is where we need to take a step back and ask what the different faiths are claiming and what their goal is. In Christianity, the massive claim is that if a person engages with Jesus Christ in a relationship, a relationship with God begins in that moment. Underlying that reality is the belief that having that relationship with God is the ultimate goal in this life. From this comes peace, grace, forgiveness, and wholeness.

But this is not what other religions are after. It could be said that the driving question in Buddhism is, “How can I deal with suffering?” It’s been said that Buddhism is a “religion-size answer to the problem of suffering.” There are other questions that circulate throughout Buddhist thought. But we can be confident in this: The number one question for Buddhists is not how we can get to God. It is simply not focused on answering that question.^[iii]

Likewise, the fundamental question of Islam is not “How do I get to God?” but “How can I get to paradise?”^[iv] The two questions are vastly different.

There might be differing opinions on what the big questions are within Buddhism and Islam, but we can be sure of this: The tenets and the questions within each faith group are different.

So when people ask, “Don’t all paths lead to God?” we now can see that the question itself leads to Christ. Islam and Buddhism, frankly, are not interested in that.

But there’s more. And I like this part a lot.

When we study the Christian God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, we begin to realize that He blows open our categories for understanding where He fits and where we fit in this question. Let me explain.

The story of God sending His Son to Earth tells us that no matter how hard we try to get to God, He is the only one strong enough to bring us to Himself. No path gets us to God; only God can brings us to God. Enter Jesus.^[v]

God is the One who comes to us. He initiates the relationship. He pursues us. He comes after us. And we respond.

As much as we might think that life is about finding the right path, Christianity tells us that no matter what path we are on, the Christian God is pursuing us. He is coming after us. The life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Christ give us a picture of this pursuing love God has for us.

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^[i] Christopher Partridge and Tim Dowley, Introduction To World Religions Second Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013), p. 202.

^[ii] John 14:6a

^[iii] In his book 3 Theories of Everything, former Buddhist Ellis Potter explains that the goal in many Eastern faiths is to simply stop being reincarnated (p. 18).

^[iv] I am grateful to my friend Dr. Andy Bannister for pointing this out to me. Bannister’s book Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? is worth the read!

^[v] I like how Bruxy Cavey explains this in his book The End of Religion, pp. 40–41.

*This an excerpt taken from my forthcoming book Short Answers To Life’s Biggest Questions.