What the learned Professor of the School of Religion in one of our State Universities believes is that “all roads that lead to God are good.” People have traveled every road under the sun of human experience and have justified their course by insisting that they were “worshipping God.” Indeed, what claims have not been associated with God! Much that people call “god” is not God.
But let us see if the “religious” professor could be right, even by the laws of reasoning. If “all roads that lead to God are good” then the end gained justifies the means used in reaching that end. But is this necessarily true? Joe Brown wanted to support his family, a very good end in itself. Using the professor’s idea that it doesn’t matter at all how one reaches that good end, Joe Brown chose stealing as a means of livelihood. Does the end justify the means of reaching it? Absolutely not!
What does God say? Shall we do evil that good may come? (Romans 3:8) Any sober-thinking person could easily answer that question. Does man’s way to heaven reach there? God plainly says that “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps “(Jeremiah 10:23). God has declared the human race to be blind and walking in darkness. Shall we then agree with the brilliant professor that it hardly matters which road man takes to God? Shall we then accept his inference that man doesn’t need a revelation from God, a new life from God, a new direction from God?
Truly, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” Listen to God’s prophet: “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them“(Isaiah 8:19, 20).
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware of false prophets” (Matthew 7:13-15).
Who has been getting your ear? The televangelist, the clever magazine writer, the college professor? Give God a hearing. “Take heed what ye hear,” is God’s command. Give ear to the Bible. Give ear to its message in the Gospels and the Epistles. Hear the message of God. There is only one right road to God and it has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
-by Harold Brenneman