Baseball, Buddhism, and a Man Named Leslie: Part 1 of 3

This was written for a friend who had just accepted Christ. It might have been a little too much for him at the time. He compared it to a fire hydrant. It's long so I'll break it into 3 parts. Enjoy!

Lesslie Newbigin was a missionary and bishop in Madras, India. He retired in 1974 and spent the rest of his life writing to the church to convince it the take the Gospel to post-Christian Western Europe. He passed away in 1998 (1).

Many people say different religions are like the AL and NL. They have a few different rules, but in the end, they’re really playing the same game.

This is an assumption, but we'll have to get back to this later.

Many people are afraid of competition. If the Dodgers and the Red Sox playing in the World series play to win, the players pride might be hurt, and that’s dangerous. To be avoided at all cost. For them, competition = violence. The Reformation taught us how costly religious differences can be. The need at this critical point in human history is for unity. It makes sense. Nuclear weapons can kill everyone and everything, the environment is on the tipping point, and Islamic Extremism scares the crap out of all of us. What we really all need is just to get along.

But the problem is, that turns baseball (and world religions) into


Tee ball.

Everyone gets a trophy. Everyone is a winner. No one is better than anyone. There are no losers.
In other words, all religions are equal paths to God.

To be continued...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesslie_Newbigin, 2007.