Last week going door-to-door, I rounded a corner to visit some duplexes, and a man was standing outside, who seemed 65 plus, short and heavy.  I approached him with the intent of preaching the gospel.  The first thing he said was, can you help me get into my house, I locked myself out?  I followed him to his condo.  He needed to get over his back fence to get in, which was about six foot high.  I lifted him up to where his behind was on my right shoulder, and then I shoved him up with both hands in that same anatomical area to slide over to the other side of the fence.  He got in his house and invited me to come in and sit down.  I thought, “Wow, this is going to be a great opportunity to preach the gospel to this man!”

I sat down on his couch and his little dog Marlie walked over to me for me to pet.  And the man said, “He’s friendly. . . if you’re a good person.”  Marlie was friendly.  A sign.  Then I sat and listened to this man espouse his hatred of biblical Christianity, much different than how I thought it was going to go.  He would not let me talk at all.  I sat and listened and listened. . . . and listened.  I just looked at the man, hearing the falsities proceed from his mouth in rapid fashion one after another, waiting for a pause to refute in as nice a way as possible.

From his story, I heard from the man that he had several heart attacks in the last few years until he went in for surgery to have a stint put in a major artery.  He had considered just dying of the heart attack, but Marlie, the dog, gave him reason to live.  I didn’t want him to die of a heart attack after sharing my thoughts with him, but it didn’t matter.  He wouldn’t let me talk, despite the fact that he said that the Hebrew language behind the Old Testament came from two different species of space aliens.  I tried to remove a disapproving look from my face, because even when my countenance showed even the slightest show of disagreement, he would turn red and his voice would raise in anger.  He hated Leviticus, because in that book the God of the Bible said to destroy other people (my brain said Leviticus was the priesthood and sacrificial system).  That wasn’t God, he said.  After fifteen minutes, I rose from my seat, said goodbye, and walked out.

At one point, the man said that he had deeply studied twelve or so religions and that he found that they all were the same.   In other words, all religions taught the same teachings.  Through my entire adult life, I’ve heard this same belief and exponentially more today.  Now I hear that school of thought all the time.   This false doctrine or religion has a name now:  perennialism.

In its most developed representation, perennialism says that religions are just iterations of a singular spiritual comprehension, that is the deeper reality.  It would say that embracing the deeper reality should be the goal of the religion.  Many perennialists would explain the religions as providing a variation of archetypes, essentially the same characters known by different names.  In Christianity, Jesus is one of them.

The perennialist looks at a religious person with the condescension that religion is an expression for a simpler mind.  He can grasp this, so if it works for him all the better, just as long as he doesn’t take it further than what it really is.  When he starts condemning others that take a different viewpoint, that is taking the religion further than he should.  As along as it results in helping others and giving him the strength to deal with his own difficulties and overcome obstacles, then it’s good.  Perennialism isn’t saying there is a god any more than conventional wisdom, something tried and true through many years for which the religion provides understanding or enlightenment.

Perennialism provides grounds for toleration.  None of these religions has a unique corner on the truth.  The truth weaves its way through all of them.  The key for perennialism is to receive the ultimate enlightenment from the religion that will bring the optimal personal and societal wellness.

Even if professing evangelical churches do not claim perennialism, in greater numbers they embrace the popularity of perennialism.   Christianity works better as a philosophy of life that helps its adherents thrive and succeed in a worldly sense.  It allows them both to be a Christian and then to fit into this world.  Millennials especially are drawn to the elimination of dogmatic belief and practice.  They can still call themselves a Christian and say they believe in Jesus Christ, while not rejecting the religion of other people.  Professing Christians and other religions coexist.

Professing evangelicals might argue that more non-Christians will be drawn to a perennialistic style of Christianity.  The tolerance they mislabel love means they are loving non-Christians.  This favorable acceptance will draw non-Christians to Christianity, bring them in, and the church will grow.  They will believe in Jesus, because this Jesus matches their deeper understanding of Jesus.

What does someone do with perennialism?

As I said, I’ve encountered perennialism my entire adult life without having a name for it.  When someone says that all the religions are the same, he has reduced all the religions down to where they seem to agree to him.  The so-called “golden rule” is major.  What I’ve noticed is that the do unto others is mainly do unto me.  The golden rule means I’ll get treated like I want to be treated.  The attraction to the golden rule is what it does for me personally.  Self-wellness is the actual religion, which contradicts the rudimentary teaching to deny self and follow Christ.

The apparent agreement between religions is agreement on what Jesus calls the second great commandment, love thy neighbor as thyself.  I hear this from forms of perennialism and I point out that love thy neighbor is the second commandment.  You can’t keep the second without keeping the first, love God.  To love God, He must be God, as God has revealed Himself, which He does in great detail in the Bible.  It also must be love, which God lays out in His commandments.

I tell people that whatever similarity there is between religions is because false religion counterfeits the truth.  Sure there will similarities because that is the nature of the counterfeit.  That’s how the counterfeit deceives, is by imitating certain aspects of the truth.

Maybe the person feels good about his perennialist religion.   God doesn’t accept it.  He’s sinning against God by disobeying what God said.  He’s a sinner in trouble with God.  He needs Jesus Christ, not for a more comfortable life on earth, but to save Him from God’s just wrath against His sin.  God is going to punish Him for sinning.  He needs to know about this.  That is the biggest threat to his well-being, because it effects him through all eternity.  It is also true.

Perennialism is an attack on the truth.  It contradicts numbers of biblical teachings.  I am sad that so many Christians have taken up the cause of perennialism.  The allure is a 2 Peter 2 one:  lust.  They like a Christianity that continues to walk according to lust.