What is a Christian way to think about other religions? In the first part of this series, we established that there is no neutral standard or standpoint, and that we must always judge religions in light of some ultimate truth-commitment, even if for some that is only oneself. We must give up any pretence at the possibility of objectivity, or else we would be guilty of self-contradiction. Therefore, what I am now going to offer is a Christian approach to religious pluralism, with the caveat that it is not the only possible one and many Christians may disagree with it.

To be a Christian means to make Jesus Christ the ultimate standard of judgment and the light by which to discern truth from falsehood, good from evil. Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6). Paul concurred: ‘there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5). In other words, Jesus demanded absolute and total allegiance, and claimed to be the ultimate source of truth and spiritual guidance. He did not claim to be merely another wise teacher like Socrates, Confucius, or Mencius, whose sayings are followed because they make sense to the listener or because of the reputation of the speaker. Jesus wanted, not just to offer wisdom, but to invite us to leave everything and follow him, to submit to him as our master above all other masters.

Some people think that Jesus’ claim to ultimacy means that to follow Jesus means to believe all other religions are wrong. But this is a mistake.

The first point about this claim of Jesus is that it is far from strange or unique. The founder of every major world religion made similar claims about themself as the ultimate guide to truth. For example, Sri Krishna said, ‘I am the goal of the wise man, and I am the way. ... I am the end of the path, the witness, the Lord, the sustainer. I am the place of abode, the beginning, the friend and the refuge. ... If you set your heart upon me thus, and take me for your ideal above all others, you will come into my Being.’ Similarly, the Buddha said, ‘You are my children, I am your father; through me you have been released from your sufferings. ... My thoughts are always in the truth, for Lo! my self has become the truth.’ If Jesus had not claimed ultimacy for himself, he would not have founded a religion the way I am using the word (recall in the first part of this series, where I defined a religion as one’s commitment to what is ultimate).

Some people think that Jesus’ claim to ultimacy means that to follow Jesus means to believe all other religions are wrong. But this is a mistake. Jesus is claiming, not that you can find truth nowhere else, but that he is the ultimate authority or paradigm through which we view the world, to help us see what is true and what is false elsewhere. If Jesus is the truth, this in no way implies that every other religion is all lies or wrong from beginning to end. How could they be, when they agree on so much? It is a strange feature of the modern way of thinking that it loves to posit radical ‘either/or’ alternatives, without seeing the overlap, the layers, the inclusiveness of one thing in another, and the deeper synthesis which reconciles surface-level contradictions. A Christian perspective does not require believing that other religions are lies, but that they only have part of the truth where Jesus has it all. There is all the difference in the world between believing a lie, and believing only part of the truth. Let’s consider some of the other world religions. For a start, to be a Christian automatically implies agreeing with Judaism on a huge amount. Insofar as Judaism denies Jesus as the Messiah, there is a conflict. But this is not a positive belief of Judaism, only an absence where Christianity claims a presence. Similarly, for Christians to consider Islam ‘totally wrong’ is a massive failure of perspective, an inability to notice the enormous overlap Christians have with Muslims, not only on the One Transcendent Creator God, but on all kinds of ethical issues, prayer, worship, fasting and so on. Something similar applies to Hinduism, which is often mistakenly considered polytheistic only because of its reverent denial of the conceivability of Transcendence, from which some Christians would do well to learn. To notice first what we disagree on and let that obscure all the common ground is a failure of charity and graciousness, which makes it a fundamentally unchristian attitude.

There is all the difference in the world, as well, between calling Jesus the truth and calling Christianity a complete explanation for everything, as if Christians understood Jesus completely and had nothing more to learn. To believe in Jesus is not to understand even Christianity in all its fullness, let alone the ways in which Jesus is manifest dimly through cultures that have never heard of him, or who have heard of him only as a symbol of Western imperialism. St Paul says that for Christians, Christ is ‘before all things, and in him all things hold together’. That means everything has contact with Christ simply by being a thing, by existing. The apostle John writes: ‘All things came into being through him [the Word], and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people’. So if anyone has life, they have their being in Christ, and the light of Christ reveals at least some truth to them.

For Christians, Christ is the fullness of the truth, and all else is only part of the truth. But Christians still have only part of the truth, because their knowledge of Christ remains incomplete and imperfect. Why could another religion not reveal something of Christ, as long as it didn’t contradict the trusted revelation of Christ in the Bible? How would we know, unless we took the time to listen and learn about other religions, without fear, without defensiveness, without needing to prove things or score points in an argument, also without compromising the ultimate authority of Christ as the supreme judge? Throughout the history of Judeo-Christian religion, the true insights of ‘outsiders’ have been accepted and become part of the faith of ‘insiders’. The Bible’s Book of Proverbs has chapters 22-24 lifted from Egyptian literature. The ideas of circumcision, a sacred temple, and a divinely appointed king all originated from practices in the surrounding nations, adopted and sanctified by Israel. St Paul quotes Greek poets as speaking truth about God. Justin Martyr recognised truths taught by Plato which enlarged the Christian understanding of God and the world. His maxim, “all truth wherever it is found belongs to us as Christians,” summarises the generous attitude Christians ought always to have in their search for wisdom and truth, without ever watering down the fullness of the truth in Christ.

True tolerance, as John Dickson puts it, isn’t the easy acceptance of every viewpoint but the noble ability to love those with whom we deeply disagree.

Concluding thoughts for those on a journey

We cannot expect all religious people in the world to come to agreement quickly and without great labour of understanding, love, and forgiveness. In the meantime, I propose the following attitudes for everyone, whether Christian or not, who acknowledges their own limited and non-objective perspective and yet is serious about the quest for ultimate reality.

Provisionality: faith is a journey, truth is a destination. To call it ‘faith’ means that it is not certain, that it is provisional, that it can grow and change. Everything you believe is always provisional. Never say ‘I will never change my mind on this’ because you do not know the future. This is particularly true for Christians. Rowan Williams describes Christianity as a basic life commitment which one takes before having all of the facts and evidence. In other words, to be a Christian means to be betting your entire life that following Jesus is the best way to live. You can’t prove this, you can’t be certain of this. You can’t even evaluate its likelihood from any neutral or objective standpoint. But you only have one life, and how you spend it will be your bet.

Authenticity: live your beliefs to the max. That is the only way you may find them to be false, or the only way others will be attracted to them if they are true. Much of the confusion in the world is a result of hypocrisy. Do not add to it. Learn also to articulate your own beliefs clearly to yourself and others. This means getting to know them by diligent study.

Empathy: learn to see the world from other points of view. In 2017 the world’s top religious leaders issued a joint appeal: “make friends with followers of other religions.” Some people say there is too much talk and not enough action in the world. I say there is not enough real dialogue, not enough listening, which implies someone is talking. No harm can be done to anyone’s faith by listening, seeking to understand, not prejudging. And for Christians, it is a requirement, not an optional extra, because it is the basis of love. True tolerance, as John Dickson puts it, isn’t the easy acceptance of every viewpoint but the noble ability to love those with whom we deeply disagree.

Hope: the truth gives itself to be known. The universe does not fundamentally lead astray those who seek the truth with all their heart. This cannot be proven. That is why it is called hope. But certainty is not a luxury granted to anyone. You only have a choice between hope or despair, i.e. hope or its absence. Neither option makes more rational sense than the other, yet as life-attitudes they pervade your every choice and belief. Which one will you adopt as your own?

Review

Belief

Culture

Film & TV

Joy

Death & life

Wildness

30 August 2024

7 min read

Nick Cave’s Wild God challenges a too comfortable culture

Eavesdrop on profound discomfort and raw wonder.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A singer, wearing headphones, turns from a microphone in front of him.

Listen with Nick.

nickcave.com

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there lived an anonymous mystic who we’ve since come to know as Julian of Norwich. After coming chillingly close to death at the age of thirty, she spent the subsequent decades of her life in a small side room of St Julian of Norwich church (the inspiration behind her pseudonym), speaking to people only through windows and writing masterfully about her supernatural visions of God.

Her anonymity, modesty, and creativity meant that she was free to write about God without the pressure of being theologically or doctrinally ‘correct’. She wasn’t too interested in making her writing academically bulletproof, nor was she too bothered with institutional rightness.

Rather, she experienced, and she wrote. She pondered and she wrote. She suffered and she wrote. She rejoiced and she wrote.

She was utterly captivated by God, and that meant that she was free.

I think that Nick Cave is free, too.

His latest album reminds me of Julian of Norwich’s work; baffling, subversive, mystical, rooted in a truth that can’t be proven. A truth he wouldn’t be interested in proving, anyway. It, too, swerves ‘rightness’. It, too, refuses to dilute the oddness of faith. It, too, is irresistibly intense. I pressed ‘play’ at around 8:03am this morning, assuming that this album would be the soundtrack to my mundane morning. But two songs in, I found myself sitting on my kitchen floor with my coffee, a notebook, and the album turned up to a volume that would have justifiably annoyed the neighbours.

This is not a casual album. Any true Nick Cave fan would scold me for ever expecting it to be.

The album is a ten-track-long ode to a Wild God who has met Nick in the darkest of places. Places, I’m sure, he never wanted to go. Places, I’m sure, he will never fully leave. Such a wild God is a challenge to a culture that has enthroned comfort. We’re too easily spooked. But Cave, through a combination of circumstance and intentionality, appears to have entirely shunned comfort. And so, he’s in prime position to introduce us to a God who will confound us.

Julian of Norwich’s book and Nick Cave’s album are centuries apart – yet, somehow, it feels as though they have been made from the same materials: profound discomfort and raw wonder.

Suddenly, you’re reminded that you’re eavesdropping on a man who has lost his son, conversing with a God who lost his too.

This is Cave’s eighteenth album with the Bad Seeds. Together, they have created a soundscape to get lost in, a changeable climate controlled by their instruments: you get caught up in a cyclone during the title track, the cymbals crash like waves on the shore in ‘The Final Rescue Attempt’, you can hear the gentle droplets of rain fall in ‘Frogs’, the strings somehow sound like a sunset in ‘As The Waters Cover The Sea’.

It’s music that baffles your senses.

And then there are the stories that the songs are telling.

The album opens mid-way through a bar, its first song – ‘Song of the Lake’ - sounds as if it was playing before you hit play. In 2015, Nick and his wife Susie lost their teenage son. In 2022, Nick lost another son. The last two albums offered up by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen – they have an address, and the address is grief. They’re laced with palpable agony. And so, beginning this album mid-way through a bar, it’s as if Nick is telling us that we’re picking up a conversation where we left off in 2019. This album wouldn’t exist if the previous two didn’t exist.

He uses the opening song to remind us of the tragic circumstances in which he lost his teenage son, Arthur, by referencing the nursery rhyme character, Humpty Dumpty – who, of course, ‘had a great fall’. Nick quotes, ‘… and all the king's horses and all the…’ before cutting himself off with ‘… oh never mind. Never mind.’

What’s the meaning of this recurring ‘never mind’? Is it agony or acceptance? Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s neither. Maybe Nick, as usual, doesn’t want to be too knowable.

Some of his thoughts feel finished and firm, others feel unexplored and new – like we’re hearing them at the same time that Nick is. On occasion it feels as though he’s teaching us something, on other occasions, he’s the one asking the questions. It’s about him, and then it’s not about him. It is intensely personal and then it’s cosmically minded. It’s sturdy, then it’s fragile. It’s from the point of view of a deity, then it’s from the perspective of a frog in his pocket.

It is pretty uncontainable.

But the song that my mind seems to have gotten snagged on is ‘Joy’, which sits about a quarter of the way through the album. Again, he begins the song by telling us how he ‘woke up this morning with the blues all around my head… I felt like someone in my family is dead,’ he speaks of his ‘pain and yearning sorrow’ – all of which hits you in the stomach, because such lines are wholly unexpected in a song entitled ‘Joy’.

You could read a 100,000-word long thesis on the theology of joy. Or you could just listen to this song. I think it would teach you everything you need to know.

The way Nick chooses to sign it off is to overtly tell us so. His goodbye is a direction, his epilogue is an invitation.

Despite the references to his grief, Nick recently shared that he nearly titled the album ‘Joy’. And I get why. If you think of joy as some kind of light and fluffy thing, you might not spot it. But if you, like Nick and his band of Bad Seeds, perceive joy to be something that can hold tension, confusion, and even sorrow – you will see that it is all over this project. As Nick has already taught us, faith and hope can be found amid carnage. And Nick’s new(ish)-found faith has quite obviously turned him upside down.

His wild God has clearly swept him off his feet.

The remaining songs on the album - the ones that I don’t have the wordcount to do justice - they take God/death/life, and they ponder them from every angle. There is a childlike wonder to this album, a pure kind of excitement. The kind that you'd think would be irreconcilable with the realities of grief but is somehow able to sit right alongside it. Nick isn’t trying to explain the God that he has found, or the ‘conversion’ he’s experienced – he’s just celebrating it, and inviting us all to listen.

He's simply loving God and enjoying being loved right back. It really is all very ‘Julian of Norwich-esque’. It will offend you if you try too hard to put it into a neat box.

But then there’s the last song, which is where I’ll bring this gush-a-thon to an end. It is a hymn. Like, an actual, albeit tweaked, hymn – the last song is a rendition of ‘As the Waters Cover the Sea’.

All of a sudden, there’s a gear change to grapple with. Nick is placing himself in a church, he’s tying himself to a particular religious tradition, he’s joining a particular community and affiliating with a particular history. It turns out the God of whom he speaks is not abstract, he’s the Christian God. You’re reminded that you’ve been eavesdropping on a man who has lost his son, conversing with a God who lost his too. The lyrics have been hinting at this all the way through the album, but the way Nick chooses to sign it off is to overtly tell us so. His goodbye is a direction, his epilogue is an invitation. He is basically saying -

If you’re intrigued by the Wild God, here is where precisely I have found him…

And this kind of religious specificity being used to tie up an album so full of metaphor and mystery. An album I thought I had worked out, an artist I thought I had finally cracked, a message I thought I had deciphered…

… Oh, never mind. Never mind.