Who's Your Authority?

I have 4 kids. This probably doesn’t happen with most children, but sometimes my kids disagree and argue and fight. Oftentimes, when a dispute arises, they look outside of themselves for another voice to settle matters. Mine.

Notice, they don’t appeal to our neighbor. “Mr. Jones said...” They don’t appeal to the president of the United States. “President Obama said...” They need the appropriate authority in family matters. Me. That’s why they utter two words that carry authority in these parts: “Dad said...” If I issue a decision or take a side, that’s all my kids need to feel they are in the right.

In the same way, disagreements arise amongst religions. A Hindu may offer his religious view as the correct picture of reality while a Muslim would disagree and commend his view as the accurate one. A Mormon proclaims one Jesus while the Christian offers a different Jesus. The world’s religions do not merely offer different views of the same God. They offer different gods altogether.

Furthermore, most believers appeal to religious experience as justification for and confirmation of their religious beliefs. But this too is a problem because such testimony is offered as support for competing views of gods. Thus a personal experience alone is not enough to substantiate one’s views on God.

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