THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY (TPP)

TPP is a religion, philosophy, and worldview, which claims that there is one Truth that is at the core of all religions. It might be obscured by their many cultural expressions, but there is a single saving truth that is at the core of all of them.

Although I appreciate the fact that TPP adherents believe that there is one unifying and knowable spiritual truth that permeates all religions and perhaps even the experience of all of us, this video failed to specify what this truth is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_CNg4dpU54

Interestingly, the Scriptures agree that there is one Truth, but that we all reject it. However, this Truth is so knowable that we are “without excuse” for not knowing it:

·       But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. (Romans 1:18-21 NLT2)

This pertains even to the religions of the world. They have the truth but reject it, but not all of it. Although we reject the true knowledge of the Creator, we still retains His moral truths, as we also retain the knowledge of the physical world. The philosophers are aware that in order to reap tomatoes, tomato seeds must be planted, watered, and cultivated. TPP is also aware of spiritual laws – When we hurt others and struggle within ourselves to deny, suppress, or to rationalize our sinful actions, creating an unresolved conflict within, which deprives us of peace. TPP is probably also aware, as are many religions, that when we treat others with respect and kindness, we often feel at peace within ourselves and with others.

However, while TPP and many other major religions tend to retain these moral truths, they also reject the most basic and important truth – We are lost and without the mercy of God. Instead, the world religions have each developed a formula of how we can ascend the ladder to God and to His approval of us. Climbing this ladder is inevitably performance-based – following laws, accumulating good karma, achieving enlightenment, or by exercising a loving heart. They focus on how we can become acceptable and meritorious before God or heaven, instead of recognizing that we are unacceptable, even though we might, through great exertion, climb our way to the top of the ladder.

Why do our own efforts fail to suffice? Because all of our efforts are contaminated by sin and self-deception! We are infected with the hubris that we can make ourselves acceptable to God, even as our guilt, shame, and various manipulations to prove our worth tell us otherwise. Consequently, we are trying to make ourselves clean by bathing in a cesspool of our self-deceit. Thus, we remain dirty no matter how hard we scrub.

At their core, all the religions are not the same. The Biblical faith understands that the mercy of God comes first, and that we receive this mercy by acknowledging what should be apparent – We are hopeless sinners in desperate need of the Savior. This becomes the only soil from which God-pleasing obedience can emerge. Otherwise, our good deeds become poisoned by self-righteousness and then arrogance.

In light of this, to insist that all religions are the same at their core is to refuse the facts in favor of a comforting and popular ideology.