By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal
The Catholics’ Pope Francis in a recent 11-day pilgrimage to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, blurted quite an overblown statement that all religions are “paths of trying to reach God,” a statement that naturally spawned an emotional debate among members of other religions.
To get a more accurate context of the Pope’s statement, here is what he said in toto, “All religions are paths to God. Since God is God for everyone, we are all children of God. But my God is more important than yours. Is this true? There is only one God, and our religions are languages, paths to reach God. Some are Sikh, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, some are Christian, but they are different paths.”
Believers of other religions may have different issues against the Pope’s statement, but our own perspective of the Pope’s statement is, with due respect, simply unbiblical.
The Bible is crystal clear and very specific who the God we or we should profess and worship, and that is God the Father, whose only begotten son is Jesus Christ, who was begotten from the Father’s bosom way back from eternity, that is, before the universe or creation, for Jesus was with God the Father and the Holy Spirit at the very moments the Father was directing the creation of all existence (please read Proverbs 8:22-32; and John 17: 5,24, to get a full enlightenment on this statement). And thereafter God sent down His laws, commandments and doctrines to His creation, to humanity, by way of further identifying or describing who the God of the Bible is, the God who created us is, that we ought to worship. Any deviation from His laws and doctrines as set forth in the Bible makes immediately the ‘God’ we worship no longer the God of the Bible, the God-creator, but a false God, an unbiblical God, from the judgment of the biblical God.
That is why God asserts that we should follow all, yes all — without exception — His laws and commandments, collectively known otherwise as His will, because these are his identifications or marks of the true God that the Bible establishes (please read Matthew 28:20 and Matthew 7:21, to get a full enlightenment on this statement). God is so concerned with the integrity of His words as His hallmarks that not a dot or smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen can be condoned to mess His words (please read Matthew 5:18, to get full enlightenment on this statement). If we profess faith in God by following some of His laws and drop the others because they give us discomfort or add to them for our comfort or pleasure or for some other personal reasons, let us be ready to receive this God’s eventual rebuke, “away from my sight, you evildoers, l do not know you,” despite our previous works or claims of miracles and miracle work for others in His name (please read Matthew 7:21-25, to get full enlightenment on this statement).
By the same token, the Sikhs and the Muslims worship their Waheguru and Allah, and the Hindus worships cattles, serpents, and rats, the Buddhists worship Buddha, and many other religions that worship their own gods, certainly not the same God that Pope Francis professes to worship or the “God” he claims all religions’ paths to. The Muslims that believe in Jesus, with due respect, may not be even the Jesus the Bible speaks of because they don’t believe that Jesus was begotten of God the Father.
How then can we make sense to the statement of Pope Francis that “There is only one God…” and that “All religions are paths to God,” in the face of this multiplicity of intensely, even fanatically worshiped and idolized different Gods?
And the more basic question comes to the fore. Is the God subject of Pope Francis’ papal dictum of paths to all religions the one God in the Bible?
As we stated above, the earmarks of the God of the Bible are His laws and commandments He set therein. We are prohibited from adding to or subtracting from these laws or doctrines (please read 1 Corinthians 4:6, Deuteronomy 12:32, to get a full enlightenment on this statement). In our worship of the true God the Father, and His son, Jesus, we are to punctiliously and absolutely insulate ourselves from man’s inventions and doctrines, from traditions and customs( please read Mark 7:7-9, 2 Peter 1:16, Matthew 15:8-9, Ecclesiastes 7:29, Ezekiel 13:2, Romans 1:30, 2 Timothy 4:3-4 and Colossians 2:8, to get a full enlightenment on this statement); if we mix or blend our worship of God with these man’s ways and thoughts then we clearly run the risk of God’s rebuke at the gate of His Paradise on judgment day, “l do not know you,” or in the light of the Pope’s thesis will say, ” l am not the God that you think all religions are paths to.”
For it cannot be denied that Pope Francis’ religion has injected many man’s inventions and doctrines totally alien to the Bible into its worship of God, thereby incurring the concomitant curses the Bible metes out to anyone adding or subtracting from what is written in the Good Book (please read Revelation 22:18-19, to get a full enlightenment on this statement). And what is more fatal result — the cutting off of any relationship with the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. We can enumerate these man’s inventions adverted to, but we do not want to sound disagreeable any further by rubbing them in. After all, we absolutely mean no offense to any religious feelings, we only desire to vent the truths of the Bible, the sole and genuine repository of God’s words. In our inexorably advancing age we are simply getting brutally frank and honest, the way we are, against lawlessness, abuses, ineptness, and corruption in politics and in government. To our fellow believers, we mean nothing but a true Christian enlightenment borne of purely God’s words. We were born a Catholic, raised strictly catholic by the very strict parental catholic clutches on our spirituality, from which the truth miraculously set us free eventually. Thus, our affinity and goodwill to the catholics and other religions understandably remain, and seek peace with all.
But at all costs, the truths in the Bible must prevail, with our vigorous wish that the Bible, the wonderful repository of God’s flawless, pure and sharp words be the foundation of all religions. Only then and there can we validly say, “All religions are paths to God”!
