Sermon Illustrations
Pluralism's Basic Premise is that All Religions are True
In his recent book, author Mark Clark wrote:
If you want to understand the dogma of religious pluralism, consider a scene from the comedy movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. If you haven't seen it, Ricky is a professional race car driver whose car crashes during a race. Thinking he's on fire, he runs around the track crying out, "Help me, Jesus! Help me, Jewish God! Help me, Allah! Help me, Tom Cruise! Use your witchcraft on me to get the fire off of me! Help me, Oprah Winfrey!"
In other words, when it comes to god, you'd best hedge your bets. One god doesn't necessarily exclude the other gods, so don't limit yourself to just one when you can believe in all of them at once! This concept has its roots in Hindu and eastern philosophy, and has largely been adopted in Western culture. It can be found in several popular versions:
I am absolutely against any religion that says one faith is Superior to another. I don't see how that is anything different than spiritual racism -Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
My position is that all great religions are fundamentally equal. -Mahatma Gandhi
One of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe there's only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to God. -Oprah Winfrey
Pluralism’s basic premise is that all religions are true, or at least partially true; and have value. And in our culture, it is considered narrow-minded and judgmental to believe anything else. So how do we respond to the theology of Ricky Bobby?
Source: Mark Clark, “The Problem of God,” (Zondervan, 2017), Page 205