To refer to Christianity as one of the great religions of the world is equivalent to calling Jesus one of the great prophets of all time. 

The crucified, risen, and ascended Christ does not belong in a panoply of exalted religious teachers.  Even to make Jesus first among equals is not reverence but contempt.  Jesus is not just to be highly regarded.  He is to be feared and worshipped as God of God, Light of Light, and very God of very God.  Anything less is profanity.

Yet that is what flows so often today from presidents, popes, and pundits. How often are we not hearing Christianity paralleled with Islam, Taoism, Judaism, and Hinduism as all teaching brotherhood, tolerance, and the golden rule.  All are said to be noble and decent.  Masses take it for granted that the ideals of all religions are in harmony.

If Barack Obama is to be believed, peace is the ambition of all devout believers regardless of whatever particular religious conviction or "faith" they hold.  Have not all creeds something of value to contribute?  Can we not unite on the common ground of personal dignity, belief in God, and the milk of human kindness?

Not if we hope to live.

The offense of Calvary is that it excludes all other means of salvation.  It knows no other God and Savior than Jesus Christ and him crucified.  The Son of God and Mary's son is not a seer or saint. 

He is God incarnate, peerless, and singularly righteous.

Christ is no also-ran.  He is Conqueror of sin and death.  He is the way and the truth and the life.  There is salvation in no other.  There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.  He is the true God and eternal life.  There is no other. (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 John 5:20)

The fatal flaw in the homogenization of all religions is not only that it hopelessly muddles and reduces the Name of God to negligibility but simultaneously elevates man and makes him center.  This is both rude and arrogant.

Man on a pedestal is an idolatry which assumes anyone who adheres to the best principles of his own personal creed can rise above intolerance and sectarianism.  He can advance civilization and continue an evolution of humanity from rags to riches.  It lays hope on a blind presumption that well-intentioned people can achieve ever greater heights if they will only be nice to each other.
 

I have greater respect even for Islam than for this kind of naïve milksop ideology.

Islam, at least, brooks no compromising.  You don't hear Muslim imams preaching that all religions are equal.  In Islam Christ is pandered to only because the real Christ of Scripture is opposed.  Christ is marginalized and condescendingly called a "great prophet" which only results in presenting him powerless.  It is like giving Jesus an honorary doctorate, sculpting him into a nice figurehead, a kind of titular luminary or ceremonial person without real divinity.  Jesus is paid complements, set up there with all the other great religious notables.  The result is that the truth of God is denied and the hope of the world is demoted and dashed.

Can we not agree on this: there are NO versions of the truth.  There can only be THE truth. 

God's Word 1.0 isn't soon replaced by edition 1.2.  Attempts to reconcile diametrically opposite creeds are futile no matter how ingenuously or artfully they may be expressed.  I always found it so ironic that a thug like Rodney King, would beseech such a romantic notion, "Can't we all just get along!"  Six thousand years of human history have pretty much answered that.

The one essential truth and marvel revealed by the Word of God is that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ gave His eternally begotten Son, the Son He loves, not to be exalted but to be disgraced, not to communion with other "higher ups" but to the very point of death on a cross for the wicked.  The Gospel chronicles Christ's riches to rags.  He gave up everything, even His own life for us. 

Christ Jesus came into this world not to be acclaimed but to be sacrificed.

"Though he was in the form of God, [Christ Jesus] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death." (Phil. 2:6-8)

Christians do not regard Jesus' crucifixion as belonging among ESPN's highlight films of the top ten examples of religious duty.  #10 - The pilgrimages of Mohammed.  #9 - Joseph Smith's "discovery" of the Golden Tablets.  #8 - Gautama Buddha founding the community of Sangha  #7 - Luther's courage at the Diet of Worms  #6 - Mahatma Ghandi's fast-unto-death in Delhi; #5 - Joan of Arc's martyrdom at Rouen; #4 Godfrey of Bouillon's liberation of Jerusalem; etc. 

Rather, the death and resurrection of Christ has swallowed up every presumption of man, every self-importance, every sacrilege and curse.  God endured the patronization and flippancy of sinners who venture a truth, if not above, at least equal to Him.  He bore our sin. 

Strangely, yet marvelously, Christ "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped."  (Phil. 2:6)  He didn't jealously assert Himself better than others or deserving more than what He received.  Jesus never played king of the mountain.

In fact, Jesus had no rivals, because no one ever served the way He did.  No one ever gave the way He did.  No one ever died the way He did, the righteous for the unrighteous.  No one ever loved the way He did.  No one ever forgave the way He did, and no one ever reappeared from death the way He did.

"Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2:9-11)