I was talking to a Sikh, and he said that when he is working with different religions, he does what that religion requires. Why can’t we get on with all religions?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Finding Truth in our Modern Age’.

I would like to meet him first, and then to come alongside him. If you ask me in abstract, I would say that that is an attitude typical of religion. I'm not a theologian as you've already gathered, I am a classicist. I taught Greek and Latin: language, literature, civilization and so forth. That would be a typically pagan attitude. The Romans didn't mind which gods you sacrificed to or worshipped, so long as you sacrificed to the god of the state. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. If you were in Rome, you offered sacrifices to the Roman gods. If you were in Athens, you could still offer sacrifices to your own god, but you offered a sacrifice to the Athenian god, Athena, because that is the very basis of idolatry. There are many, many gods, and, while you might be attached to one of them in particular, you also ought to reverence everybody else's gods because they're gods in some sense.

And so when a man like your friend says that as a Sikh he does Sikh things, but when he's with Christians he does Christian things, and when he's with Muslims he does Muslim things, I should say that there's a man who is pagan in the sense that he has the typical attitude of the ancient world. He is saying that you do these Christian things to get salvation, but it doesn't harm you to pray to other gods, your own god specially, because they could add their weight to help to get you saved.

I would want to enquire what he's expecting from doing these Christian things; and what Christian things? Very often people look upon Christianity as a system of symbols. It's singing hymns, so they'll sing hymns. You have prayers, so they'll have prayers. You have this ceremony of bread and wine, so they'll join in that as well without beginning to perceive what it stands for. All without personal repentance and faith solely in Christ.

So that is the way I should begin to come at it. Ask him what he is expecting to get out of all these various performances of Christian, Muslim and Sikh affairs, and see what he says.