The old man looked up from his coffee, a pained expression on his face. “I don’t understand why you don’t believe!” he exclaimed, emotion welling up in his voice. “I don’t know,” the younger man seated across from him replied. “I guess I just can’t believe that one religion has it all figured out. I mean, how can we know God–if he’s really there?”

Like the old man, I’ve encountered several people who believe that no religion has God figured out, that there are any paths to God. Some of them have used the “elephant and the blind men” analogy to explain their position. The analogy goes something like this:

Four blind men were asked to describe an elephant. The one who grabbed the trunk said, “An elephant is like a snake.” The one who touched a side said, “An elephant is like a wall.” The one who grabbed a leg said, “An elephant is like a tree.” And the one who grabbed the tail said, “An elephant is like a whip.” None of them had it right because none of them could touch the whole elephant.

This analogy doesn’t hold up when talking about God. The only way we *know* that the blind men have it wrong is that we are observers in a position to see and understand the whole elephant. We can only declare that the blind men have partial knowledge because we have complete knowledge. To make the same claim about God–that no one religion has it right–is to presuppose that we have knowledge of the whole of God. We can only judge that any one religion’s understanding is partial if we have a greater understanding. This is absurd. None of us is in such a position. The argument fails to hold up.

What does hold up is that God revealed the truth to us. One way to God *can* be supported when it was God himself who showed us the way. That is one of the reasons I follow Jesus.

Merry Christmas!