Clint Roberts believes Christianity is the truest religion, but he challenges anybody to call him bigoted.
“If calling a belief wrong is bigoted or arrogant, then we’re all guilty…Everyone practices the discrimination of ideas. You have to or you wouldn’t survive,” he said.
Roberts, a minister at the Summit Church, spoke to a crowd of about 20 Thursday night in the Union Theatre about the Christian interpretation of spiritual truth.
“It’s the fundamental teaching of the Old Testament that the objective Christian view of God is right and that all others are wrong,” he said.
Roberts spoke to the crowd as an invited guest of Salt Company, a student-led ministry of Summit Church.
Though Roberts told the crowd that the topic would be controversial, he also said it should be embraced and examined for that same reason.
“You can be controversial for good reasons because sometimes you have to be…We thought it would be fun if people came who disagreed. If what you believe can’t stand up to scrutiny, I really question the value of those beliefs,” he said.
He also said for Christians, defending beliefs can be an ongoing, uphill battle.
“It’s amazing to me how Christians are expected to back up every single thing in the Bible while others soak up this blissful blind faith…It seems as if every view of life is valued, but there’s one that isn’t: the good old Judeo-Christian belief,” he said.
However, Roberts said, Christians aren’t the only ones who hold their faith in higher esteem than others.
“You’re supposed to pretend you don’t feel a religion holds more truth than any other. Every person listens to some kind of voice…Trendy religion today makes plenty of doctrinal statements and expects people to just believe. Christians aren’t the only ones with an authority,” he said.
But according to Roberts, Christianity’s guiding text holds something others do not.
“I think the Bible is more grounded in reality than any of the other stuff out there, and I have every right and reason to stipulate that yeah, what I believe is true,” he said.
Though Roberts didn’t say Christianity was the most truthful religion, he encouraged the crowd to turn that question inward.
“No one seems to quiver over what people have to say…they just come out and say it. Our immediate culture has decided they don’t feel enlightened enough to say these kinds of things, but it seems what you’re not allowed to do is say the Bible is subjectively true,” he said.