The third area wherein the church must change is in the language of ABSOLUTES! There really isn’t any need to insult the other 70% of the world that’s not Christian by saying that they are going to hell if they don’t accept Jesus as Lord because there is NO OTHER NAME by which one can be saved. Now, while I totally agree with that statement in John 14:6, it’s not so clear (if at all) just HOW that might come about. Is it here in this life time, in the life after death, or in some ways here that we’re not understanding? What it automatically does though is make us look haughty (even if we’re right who needs the heat?) and creates enemies that we already have enough. Is this so hard to see?
Never mind how each denomination thinks it is the ONLY WAY. You must be water baptized by sprinkling, speak in tongues, not eat pork, go to church only on Sunday, say your prayers in a certain way, and another thousand ABSOLUTES! Few people are in the market these days for such goods.
And then there’s the “God said“, or “God told me“.
Well, that sure closes off the discussion doesn’t it! 
Paul Van Buren says that we’re living in the “age of dissolution of the absolute“. I couldn’t agree more. How many things have I thought were absolute, no longer are, and I am a better follower of Jesus as a result. What that translates into is that any kind of exclusive uniqueness or finality of truths is not going to sit well with the world. It’s not that everyone is a relativist. Hardly!
Christ IS and should be the CENTER for all who call themselves Christians, but a Christian doesn’t put down a Muslim based on their Islamic faith, nor a Buddhist because he or she embraces Dharma. I could go on and on with such analogies, but I spare you. All things do eventually cohere IN Christ, but I sure don’t know HOW all that happens so in the meantime, I’m just going to love people and BE the witness of LOVE. There’ll more fish at the end of the pole with love than arrogance, absolutism.
As John A. T. Robinson said, “God is characteristically to be found on the shifting frontiers of social change, in the relativities of events, rather than in a timeless absolute or beyond it all.”
Well said!
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