As we begin to seek the God who is, we need to understand one of the most common misconceptions underlying this important task; the idea that all spiritual paths lead to God. The concept of many paths to the same God raises three very serious issues. First of all, it implies that the object of our spiritual search is ill defined, nebulous, and inconsequential. Vague cosmic energy sources, remote divine essences, or diffuse universal spirits are ultimately meaningless when they are optional and leave us free to choose any or all of them. Just because our tolerant postmodern spiritual marketplace says its okay for everyone to set up their own religious booths doesn’t guarantee that they won’t sell us “God junk.” Second, many paths implies that mankind is the one who sets the rules for God engagement, and not God Himself, which, as I discussed in my last blog, amounts to self-worship. Finally, if you look carefully, you will see that each religious path does in fact end on a summit, but the problem is that each summit is inconveniently located on a completely different mountain range. We can get out our megaphones and congratulate each other for reaching the top of our respective peaks, but lets put aside the silliness that they all represent the same mountain.

Actually, I’m giving these respective peaks more credit than they deserve, because in reality, they are nothing more than mounds of mystical human refuse on which we have defiantly stuck our spiritual flags. We foolishly make spiritual mountains out of human molehills. We admire the rolling hills of the religious landscape, while in the distance, Holy Mt. “God” looms, daring us to climb its sheer cliffs of significance. In order to make us feel like we have somehow reached the thin air of divine encounter we place religious oxygen masks over our nose to make it appear like we have scaled a mountain of consequence, when in reality the mask just protects us from the smell of our own mystical poop.

All of this talk of many pathways to the same “God” does, however, reveal something quite interesting. It assumes that there is only one peak or God in the first place. So where did mankind get the idea that there was only one reality upon which all religions converge? It kind of sounds like most people actually believe that ultimate truth does exist after all. Sadly, we seem content to live in the valley and groom spiritual trails that go nowhere rather than scale God’s Holy Mountain with “fear and trembling.”