"Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)


 

"Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6)

That claim is either the most arrogant statement ever uttered, or it is the most important. Across every culture, every continent, every century—only one name. One direction. One way home.

Before we're done today, we'll meet a king who married the world and tried their gods. A thousand voices. A thousand altars. And we'll hear what he said when the noise finally quieted.

For eleven weeks we've asked: What does Jesus offer that no one else has offered and nothing else can? Today we bring that question to three world religions—and we let each one finish a story Jesus Himself told: the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

You might know the story. A young man demands his inheritance, runs away from his Father, and wastes everything on wild, crazy, out of bounds living. He ends up broken, starving in a pigpen, and desperate to go home.

When he finally turns back, Jesus tells us this happens:
"And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." (Luke 15:20)

And then there's a feast and a celebration and prime beef on the spit.

And by the way, if you find yourself far from your father today... I promise you that if you come back to him, he will receive you and embrace you and celebrate you in the exact same way... no matter what you've done.

I know this might go against all your instincts... it might go against all your religious training. But that's the power of this amazing force called grace.

I'm using this parable as the ultimate litmus test.
We owe it to ourselves to ask a critical question: How would other world religions finish this parable?

Because the parable gets radically different endings, depending on who is telling it.

If you hand this pen to a Buddhist, a Hindu, or a Muslim, they will write completely different endings. And the difference is not a small theological detail. The difference means everything.

Welcome to part 12 in our series called What's the Difference.

Today, our topic is Three World Religions

We're going to look at Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.

Now, let's take a look at how the 3 great world religions would end the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Buddhism
Consider the Buddhist ending. Buddhism brings something incredibly real to this story.

It started with a man named Siddhartha Gautama.

He is called the Buddha—which isn't actually a first name. It's a title meaning "the Enlightened One."

This Enlightened One looked at the human condition and exposed what most of us spend our lives running from...

Pain is not an accident. It is structural.

There's a pain that runs through everything, and he traced it to its root.

For him, the root of all pain was ATTACHMENT. Craving. Desire.

The desire to hold what cannot be held.
The desire to be what we cannot permanently be.
The desire to have anything at all.

Desire is the root problem. That includes attachment. That includes affection. That includes passion. That includes love. That's your problem.

Love anything at all and your heart will be broken and you will suffer.

What wounds you most is the desire to not be wounded.

What wounds you actually is any desire at all.

So under Buddhism, the way the parable ends is that the prodigal son never even begins the journey home.

Why not?

So how should he solve it?

The prodigal son sits under a tree. He meditates. He realizes his suffering comes from his attachment—to the father, to the inheritance, and to his own identity as a son.

His desire to go home is the problem.

So he extinguishes that desire. He reaches heavenly indifference. Heavenly apathy. They call it Nirvana. He does not go home. He realizes home is an illusion.

There is no Father to reconcile with.

The goal is not relationship.
The goal is release.

The most widely read Buddhist scripture (the Dhammapada), puts it like this:
"You yourselves must strive; the Buddhas only point the way."

Don't miss the weight of that.

Buddhism will point in a direction but it does not give you a Savior.

And YOU must strive in that direction, and you must do it with your own determination and grit.

That desire for home, that desire for your Father, that desire for love—the very engine of the prodigal story—that is the exact thing you must pour a bucket of cold water upon and extinguish like a candle.

If Jesus sat down with a Buddhist, He wouldn't mock their focus on suffering. He would deepen it.

He would say, 'You see how desire enslaves the heart. You have sought peace through detachment. But come to Me—attach your heart and soul and mind and meaning to me—all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'

You are sacred. You are worth loving, worth knowing, worth saving, worth embracing.

To Jesus...
You are valuable.
You are meaningful.
You are capable.
And you are beautiful.

No matter what anybody has told you, or what you have done, or what lines you have crossed.

Don't let the devil or anybody tell you that hardening your heart is the solution to the things that are hurting your heart.

The solution is bringing your heart to the One who loves you—the one who loved you to the sacrifice of an old rugged cross—the One who is the safest of all safe spaces—and to find your healing and salvation in him.

If you don't know him that One is Jesus.

And yet in Buddhism, the burden is entirely on the prodigal daughter or son. Not to come home to but reach a state where home and Father and salvation and love itself stop mattering at all.

To our Buddhist friends we would say:
The human person is not an illusion to be transcended, but a beloved masterpiece ready to be restored.