Daily Devotionals

Devotional: December 4th

For Reading and Meditation:
     Acts 4:1-12

We looked yesterday at the statement to the effect that all religions are the same. We must watch out for such statements, for when they are repeated over and over again, and by seemingly sincere people, we can be brainwashed into accepting them. In 1966, when the first multi-faith service was held in an Anglican church in London, in which Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians took part on equal terms, some Christian newspapers described it as a "betrayal of the faith." Nowadays there is hardly a mention of such services although they take place regularly in different parts of our nation, and also in other countries. People seem to have given up the idea of syncretism - the idea that all religions can be fused into one - and are focusing more on pluralism-the recognition of each faith as being of equal value. I take my stand with Dr. Visser't Hooft who said: "It is high time that Christians should rediscover that Jesus Christ did not come to make a contribution to the religious storehouse of mankind, but that in Him God reconciled the world unto Himself." The words of our text for today were displayed outside a church in London until the minister was told by the local authority to take the poster down as it offended some local inhabitants who were adherents of other faiths. "It is not the best way to love one's neighbor as oneself" was how one critic put it. But how can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we make no attempt to share with them the knowledge of salvation in Jesus Christ?

O Father, in an age when the faith once delivered to the saints is being watered down, deepen my understanding of it so that I may contend for it without being contentious. In Christ's Name I pray. Amen.

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