This will be an obvious statement to some, and utterly outrageous to others. But here goes – I believe all religions are equal.

In a time of resurgent antisemitism and now Islamophobia too, this needs to be considered again and again. What is the relationship of Christianity to other faiths? What is the paradox of love?

All religions are equal and of equal value. Just because bad people exist in all religions and in none, just because bad people will by their nature manipulate and exploit what is good, we must be even more careful not to blame religion for their actions. By definition, people of bad faith do not speak the truth, nor are they motivated by it.

Why and how can all religions be equal? What we mean by the word religion matters here. I think all religions are the means by which human beings express their innate longing for the transcendent. Sometimes that sense of the transcendent can be achieved through science, through awe at the natural world.

Religions are the expression of faith, not the thing itself. Religion is not God but a reaching after God, and because God is God and we are not, religions necessarily fall short. Language, and religion is a language, with signs and symbols and imperfect expression, will always fall short of the reality it seeks to express. And tradition, doctrine and dogma, all formed and formulated by human beings, can and has clearly fallen far short of what the human heart longs for.

In the Gospel of John we find what I think are some of the most comforting words ever spoken by Jesus and, yet, perhaps ironically, they have also become some of the most misunderstood and, I would argue, damaging to the inclusive message of the Christian faith.

In those desperate days before Jesus’ brutal execution, he prepares his disciples for the loss that is to come. For three years he has walked and lived amongst them; laughed and cried with them; taught them and baffled them. They are his friends – his family. They are so close to him. They love him. And he loves them.

Now, in this tender conversation recorded by John, Jesus tells them he must leave them. They are not ready; they begin to panic, even to grieve prematurely. Don’t you worry, Jesus says. I’m going ahead of you, that’s all. One day you will be with me again. You know the way.

‘You know the way where I’m going’, Jesus says!

‘Do we?’, says the over-thinker, Thomas, ‘“Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

And then those words of Jesus that have been repeated in churches down the centuries ‘I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me’.

It matters hugely that we reflect on this because if Christians are saying that only those who follow Jesus can be saved, it raises questions that only cognitive dissonance can really ignore. Are all those people of love and goodwill of other faiths not therefore saved? And what about all those millions of people who lived before the time of Jesus? A bit of bad luck there, methinks! And those who have never heard of Jesus because they happen to be born in the wrong place and at the wrong time? Are they damned too? Answers on a postcard! In this I agree with the views of atheists who have long argued that one’s religion is for most an accident of birth. It doesn’t trouble me to own that thought, nor does it make me doubt my own Christian faith. Because religion is not God, it is the coat we wear. The language we use. Not the thing itself.

So what did Jesus mean when he said ‘I am the Way’? Did he mean the way to God is through him? Yes, I think he did! But does that mean only professing Christians can draw close to God and this regardless of their capacity for love. No I don’t. I am convinced that a loving Muslim or Jew of atheist or anyone else is far closer to God, far closer, than a hate-filled and dogmatic fundamentalist of any faith. Jesus never placed doctrinal purity above love; he never placed tradition above love; he placed nothing above love.

He couldn’t have made it clearer: in that same ‘farewell discourse’ where he describes himself as The Way, he also says – as he kneels to wash the disciples feet, the job of a slave – ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”. The way that Jesus speaks of as the way to God was never through tradition, or church, or doctrine and certainly not birth-right, but through love. Jesus is Love written into the world. That is the Way to God. For all of us.

And what about that well known ‘sheep and goats’ passage in Matthew? Again, no reference to doctrine, or dogma, or man-made rules. No hoops to jump through or creeds to sign up to; instead a simple statement – feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner – if you see me in these marginalised people, and love accordingly, he says, then the Kingdom of heaven is yours. Not doctrine. But Love.

Jesus, fully human and yet fully divine, most perfectly the image of God and of Love, came to this world to show us how to love. Jesus is indeed the Way. He was killed not because of some vengeful need on the part of God for sacrifice, but because human beings struggle in the face of love; they struggle to know what to do when their own failings are seen in such a pure light. And so they lash out; sadly, sometimes they kill. Humans killed Jesus, God didn’t. But he rose again because love is stronger than hate, life greater than death. And Love is still the Way. That is what I believe.

Religion is how we express that love. But my religion is not more true because of a particular doctrine. It is not less true because some of its teachings are troubling. People sometimes sadly turn Holy Books into tablets of stone instead of engaging with them as living records of human striving after goodness. If we could begin to let go of our obsession with traditions, and literalism, and everything else that narrows the human mind and heart, we would truly find that the Way is the Way of Love, not Nationalism nor any form of exclusivity.

We should not be surprised that Christianity’s relationship with the world is in essence a paradox. Conquering through sacrifice, the servant King, dying to live; it is all paradox – and the greatest and most beautiful paradox is the nature of God, which is Love. And Love is utterly inclusive.