Of Geography and the God of All the Earth

A colleague this past week had a religious conversation in which an old academic chestnut was brought up. This was the one that begins with the undiscerning observation that the different religions are in fact pretty much all the same. Step two in the argument is that all religions basically teach the same thing, such as to be a decent person and kind to your neighbors. Step three in the argument is needed to explain why, then, if they all teach the same thing are there so many different religions. The third step is the assertion that the different religions are manifestations of different cultures or civilizations around the world. Judaism, so the argument goes, is the manifestation of an ancient culture from the area of Palestine, Christianity the religion of Europe and its colonies, Islam the religion of the Middle East, Hinduism the religion of India, and so on. The final step of the argument is that—and therefore—there is precious little in the way of “truth” in religion and certainly not enough to argue about.

No doubt you have heard the argument before, and as you consider it you very likely can see how thin of an argument it is. I have nearly always encountered it as a variety of argument intended to end rather than engage in conversation.

With regard to the first two parts of the argument, there certainly are similarities among religions, but it seems that the more knowledgeable one is about a particular religion the more prone he is to see how different it is from others. Religious converts are particularly good experts on differences in religion, the differences being powerful enough to motivate a change of beliefs and not infrequently a change in their entire way of life. The sameness tends to be seen more by those who are more casual about their religious knowledge.

As to the third and fourth elements of the argument, it is one thing to recognize geographic and cultural influences in religions and quite another to assert that the discovery of these influences means that the quest for religious truth is a waste of time and effort. To begin with, geography fails even as a superficial explanation for religious difference. How does it explain different religions that are embraced by large numbers in the same region. India is one very clear example, where several religions have tens of millions of adherents. It also poorly explains how Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have such close geographical ties that they have had and continue to have bitter disputes over the same sacred sites, most especially Jerusalem.

This is not to say that one cannot find original roots of particular religions in one place or another. After all, the religion had to start somewhere, with someone or some group living in some place on earth. From that place the particular religion spread to other places and people.

But now I present a different case. What of a religion that has its rising in two different locations, on two separate continents oceans apart? That is the case with the doctrine of Jesus Christ. With the testimony of the Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon taken together we have two witnesses—one from the Old World and one from the New World—that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the world. No other religion can or does make that claim. Each volume of scripture is an ancient record of God’s dealings with His children, teaching the same plan of salvation through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead. In the writing of these records there was no comparing of notes between the separate series of authors, no communication other than through God and His Holy Spirit.

Whatever the geographical explanation of religion might claim, its claims fall to the ground in the case of Christianity. There truly is something different about the doctrine of Christ. It comes with the tangible testimony of dual volumes of scripture that proclaim with two voices from two hemispheres the single message that Jesus Christ is the God of the whole world and not just a part of it. As Christ explained to His disciples in ancient America,

Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men . . . ? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. (2 Nephi 29:7, 8)