Religious pluralism? What the hell is that, right? In this case, we are talking about a worldview according to which one’s religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth, and thus that at least some truths and true values exist in other religions, or according to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the assigning of validity to all faith traditions. This is the subject of a short article written by His Holiness in the latest edition of ‘Shambhala Sun Magazine’ and more importantly, the reason you should turn off your computer and head to your local book store right now and pick up a copy. The beginning of the article can be read here, and while I am not going to reproduce the entire rest of the article here both for copyright reasons and issues of the health of my fingers, I would like to share the paragraph I felt really hit home with me.
…from the theistic religion’s point of view, if one believes that the entire cosmos, including the sentient beings within it, is a creation of one all powerful and compassionate God, the inescapable consequence is that the existence of faith traditions other than one’s own are also God’s creation. To deny this would imply one of two results: either one rejects God’s omnipotence – that is to say that, although these other faiths are “false ways”, God remains incapable of stopping their emergence – or if one maintains that God is perfectly capable of preventing the emergence of these “false ways”, He chooses not to do so, then one rejects God’s all-embracing compassion. The latter would imply that, for whatever reasons, God chose to exclude some – in fact, millions of his own children – and left them to follow false ways that would lead to their damnation. So the logic of monotheism, especially the standard version that attributes omnipotence, omniscience and all embracing compassion to God, inevitably entails the recognition that the world’s many religious traditions are in one way or another are related to God’s divine intentions for the ultimate well being of His children. This means that, as a devout follower of God, one must accord respect, and if possible, reverence to all religions.
Although I have tried to put this into words for years, I have never been successful because I have never been able to argue the point of view that ‘my faith tells me I’m right and you’re wrong.” I just didn’t have the smarts to debate that argument. Obviously, His Holiness is vastly superior to me in the realm of religious debate (not to mention several million other things, I’m sure).
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