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Perceptions #200022
"Foreign Religions"
by Penney E. Nichols
It is a beautiful trip to drive through Malibu Canyon. The creek and the cliffs create a stunning scenario. What also grabs one's attention on the eastern end of the canyon is a Hindu temple. It is ornate and interesting as well as "foreign." What is it doing in the United States? It is the temple of an eastern religion surrounded by the mysticism of the Far East. The United States is the nation of Western religious influence - Christianity.
This temple raises some questions. Why have so many "foreign" religions been so widely accepted and practiced in this culture? New Age crystals. Pentagrams and witches. Astrologers, palm readers, and crystal ball soothsayers. Buddhism. Islam. Mysticism.
The intrigue intensifies when one remembers that this is the scientific age. There should be no place for fortune tellers in an educated society; that is for primitive peoples. Hasn't it been proven that science has the answers to the problems of life - determine the genetic genome and you can tell what the future holds for the individual?
In reading history notes from my college days, I discovered this line. "Roman religion left an absence of the divine in the people, thus they turned to foreign religions."
Someone has said that God has created a hole in our soul that can only be filled by the Divine. When a religion removes the divine, when it so secularizes its mission that "God" becomes a curse word, a foreign word, when religion is the source of success rather than salvation, it is no wonder that people turn to "foreign" religions to fill the emptiness.
As Roman religion became the norm, even the politically correct stance, is it possible that the religion of Jesus has lost its supernatural nature, that it is no longer of God, the Divine Creator in our day? I think the day is coming when a church building will look as unique to the observer as the mosque or temple looks to me now. I think we need to compete for the souls of men on the battlefields of humanity.
We need to speak a word for the Christ and hold him up as the only begotten Son of the Most High God. We need to take Jesus into the "foreign" places so that they can bow before the Great King. It is true. There is no salvation under any other banner.