many of you asked....

about my quoting jim carrey in email this week: here's more for our thinking

I don't know if you guys saw Jim Carrey's comments to 60 Minutes. Excerpt:"This is where I hang out with Buddha, Krishna...all those guys," says Carrey about a lean-to adorned with candles and a bed built high on his hillside property in Brentwood, Calif. "I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Christian. I'm whatever you want me to be...it all comes down to the same thing," he tells Kroft. Carrey says he believes they are all the same God and it is this conviction and spirituality that make him happy.Religious exclusivism, from a Christian perspective, is the belief that the only god is the triune god of Christianity - Yahweh - and that you can't approach him as Buddha and while you might be able to use the word 'Allah' the content you'd pour into that word would be trinitarian, nicene Christianity. Though a lot of readers here believe this, as do I, religious exclusivism can be a real drag these days (even as it was in the first century, when Christians were called 'atheists' by adherents to the Roman pantheon because Christians denied all the Greek and Roman gods and household gods). So, here's your challenge. If you were Jim Carrey's friend and had coffee, er, he doesn't drink it, a *smoothie* every week with him to catch up on life (notice that I'm presupposing that you a. already know him, and b. appreciate him as a friend and love him as a person) and he were to float the idea that all the major "religions" are the same, how would you participate in the conversation? How can you present a vision for an exclusivistic spirituality that would not be a drag for him - that would be encouraging. Is a winsome exclusivism possible? (author Jon Barlow)