Our postmodern culture has adopted the poorly informed, yet profoundly tolerant stance that, “All paths lead to God!” We are all just spiritual mountain climbers taking different approaches to the same divine peak. While it is true that all religious paths do end on a summit, the problem is that each summit is 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 let’s put aside the silliness that they all represent the same mountain.

I’m actually giving these different peaks more credit than they deserve, because in reality they’re nothing more than mounds of mystical human refuse upon which we have defiantly stuck our spiritual flags. In order to make ourselves feel like we have somehow reached the thin air of divine significance, we place religious oxygen masks over our noses to make it appear as if we’ve scaled a mountain of consequence when in reality we are just shielding ourselves from the smell of our own spiritual poop. We can admire the rolling hills of the religious landscape, but in the distance, Holy Mount “God” looms, daring us to climb His cliffs of significance.

All this talk of many pathways to the same god does, however, reveal something quite interesting. It appears that we humans assume that there is only one god at the end of all our religious searching. Where did we get that idea? Sadly, while most people believe in one ultimate Realty, they seem content playing in the safety of the sandy dunes of religious pluralism rather than scaling the Holy Mountain of God with “fear and trembling.”

But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah. (Jeremiah 2: 28)