Jade sucked in her breath. “Marianna, please stay calm, but there is a lion about 50 yards behind you and he sees us.”
“No there’s not. Stop messing around,” Marianna responded, with a nervous laugh.
Barely above a whisper, Jade urged her friend, “You have to trust me. I see one path out of here where he can’t follow us. Please do what I ask.”
How foolish it would be if Marianna responded, “That lion may be real to you, but he’s not real to me.” She will find out the hard way that the lion is real. Sometimes, when we tell our friends about Jesus, they say “That may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.” And you know what? Sometimes we buy it. We don’t want to offend them so we let them believe, and may start believing ourselves, that truth can be relative. But would Jade be a better friend if she gave in and just let her friend adhere to the belief that there was no lion, or would she gently, but urgently try to convince her?
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6). The world cringes at that because they want to find their own path to God, sometimes by being gods themselves. They don’t like Jesus’ exclusive claim. Pilate even said to Jesus in that crucial hour, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In his book “Jesus Among Other Gods”, Ravi Zacharias says that Jesus taught His disciples “the inclusiveness of His love for the whole world. But implicit in that was the exclusivity of His truth, for which they were willing to give their lives. We have reversed Jesus’ order. We have made truth relative and culture supreme and have been left with a world in which wickedness reigns.”
It is not prideful of you to say that Jesus is the only way to God. It is the truth because it is His truth. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Love others enough to share the truth of Christ: He is the path to safety and freedom. That is great news!!