The Religion of Religion
November 26, 2008 Blogs No Comments
San Diego is a very beautiful and diverse city. We have some of the world’s nicest beaches, zoos, parks, and museums. Our whether is perfect 364 days of the year. We have a huge navy, marine, and coast guard military presence. We have four major universities: UCSD, USD, SDSU, and PLNU. And we are one of the top vacation spots in the country.
San Diego is also a melting pot of religions. There are several Jewish synagogues, Islamic worship centers, a bunch of Catholic and protestant churches, a major Bahá’í center, a Taoist sanctuary, a brilliantly white Mormon temple, we’ve got Hare Krishna temples, Buddhist temples, and we’ve even got a new age self-realization temple up in Encinitas. Those are just the official religions, without even considering all the fringe spiritualists around from Tarot Card readers to Psychics to crystal channelers…who get together for readings, sayonces and special book readings.
Considering this strong religious presence combined with the very outdoorsy nature of most the people who live in San Diego makes it a very spiritually minded and spiritually conscious city. It is no wonder that the most popluar idea around about religion here is that each one is sort of touching one part of an elephant…some have a got a leg, some a trunk, some a tail…we all got a piece of the elephant its just that most of us don’t know we’re holding on to an elephant.
But what is religion? Is there a common principle of religion, a religion of religion? An elephant or a fundamental equalness? If so, is that present within Christianity? Is there actually any merit to the claim of Mahatma Gandhi that, “all religions are fundamentally equal.”
Author and speaker Paul David Tripp is here in San Diego this weekend doing a conference called, “Your Walk With God is a Community Project.” Paul Tripp wrote, “Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands” and “How People Change” which many of you have read and been blessed by, including myself. Paul Tripp is a pastor and professor at 
This last Sunday one of the main verses in our sermon study was Romans 15:4. “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragment of the Scriptures we might have hope.” So I thought it would be appropriate for us to spend some time thinking further about the nature of the Bible this week in my Pastoral journal entry. An important practice for those of us living here in San Diego is to be aware of what the various views are in our culture regarding the Bible so that we will best know how communicate the gospel.
So the cover story of Rolling Stone this week is about the band AC/DC and it titled, “The Gospel of Rock & Roll.” The article basically is about how awesome AC/DC is, how they’ve been cranking it out for 35 years and how everyone should go buy their latest album, “Black Ice.” What interested me most about the article was the use of the word “gospel” and the use of it as an adjective. What does that mean and why is it significant?